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The company’s technology used to filter and manage Internet networks was used by Belarus’ state Internet agency to block thousands of websites in the country during national protests over the disputed August 28 elections. Bloomberg reported.
Sandvine said Tuesday that a preliminary investigation found that a “special code” had been inserted into its products to “interrupt the free flow of information during the Belarusian elections.”
“This is a violation of human rights, so we automatically terminate the user’s license agreement,” the report says. – Sandvine takes human rights violations very seriously. Nor will we tolerate technology disrupting the free flow of information, in violation of human rights. “
At the end of the contract, Sandvine announced that it would stop providing software updates and technical support for its equipment used by the state-controlled National Data Sharing Center, which handles all Internet data entering and leaving the country. However, this does not mean that the equipment will cease to function and remain usable in the near future, the spokesperson said.
Sandvine, owned by San Francisco-based private equity firm Francisco Partners Management LLC, presented its equipment to the Belarusian government security team in May. It was brought into the country through the original contractor, the Russian company Jet Infosystems, according to company documents and two people briefed on the matter.
According to sources, the equipment was installed in Minsk, in data centers run by the National Data Sharing Center.
During several days in August, during the protests for the re-election of the disputed president Aliaksandr Lukashenko, the center used Sandvine equipment to prevent people from accessing social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, blocking messaging programs such as WhatsApp and Telegram ”and international news sites. Bloomberg reported this last month.
US Senator Dick Durbin asked the Treasury Department to investigate possible violations of US sanctions on Belarus in Sandvine, saying it would be “very unpleasant if the last European dictator used American technology to prevent Belarusians from using the internet at a time. in which thousands are peacefully protesting re-election and brutal political arrests. “
Some Sandvine employees protested against the company’s work in Belarus. But in an internal conference call last week, the leaders defended their decision, claiming that they had not violated US sanctions and did not consider Internet access a human right.
“We don’t want to play world police force,” said CTO Alexander Haväng.
But on Tuesday, the company said it had ruled that Belarus had violated a licensing agreement that “explicitly prohibits acts that support or allow individual human rights abuses.”
Sandvine has not violated any export control laws or sanctions in the United States or elsewhere, the company said. “From a technology standpoint, we are looking for ways to improve our products to reduce the risk of misuse.”
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