Eli Lake reports in the Washington Times:
Two European companies - a major contractor to the U.S. government and a top cell-phone equipment maker - last year installed an electronic surveillance system for Iran that human rights advocates and intelligence experts say can help Iran target dissidents. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran's state-owned telephone company. A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for "lawful intercept functionality," a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement's ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.
Read the whole thing. Lake notes that "Since 2005, Siemens had done more than $900 million worth of business with the U.S. government and employs about 70,000 people in the United States. Nokia is one of the leading mobile handset providers in the United States." It's hard to believe that Siemens expected Iran wouldn't use this technology for ill. How much longer will the federal government continue to do business with a company that aids a regime that is killing U.S. troops in Iraq?