Military, Security & Surveillance

A contract between a British subsidiary of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company and Sangcom, the communications arm of the Saudi National Guard, is being investigated after Ian Foxley, a former project manager, blew the whistle. Read More

A third wildcat strike this year has closed yet another South African platinum mine less than a week after the police opened fire and killed 34 miners at the Lonmin mine north of Johannesburg. One reason for the clash is a war between rival unions. Read More

TrapWire, am intelligence contractor founded and run by former CIA officers, offers to track "suspicious" activities from surveillance video footage. The company has been spotlighted in a new Wikileaks release. Read More

Blackwater has agreed to pay the U.S. government $7.5 million to settle 17 federal criminal charges that include supplying guns to the king of Jordan and offering private security and military training services to South Sudan without a license. Read More

Hundreds of workers at a Haryana factory for India's biggest carmaker - Maruti Suzuki - are being rounded up by police after a violent clash left a manager dead. The incident has become a symbol of the clash between winners and losers in the country's economic boom. Read More

SpectorSoft spyware is the latest tool to be employed by some U.S. government officials to conduct surveillance on staff, The Florida company has been revealed to be selling "keylogger" software to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to track every digital move of certain employees. Read More

Two global institutions - the United Nations and the Olympic Games - face charges that they are using "unaccountable and out of control" private security contractors. One of the companies at the heart of both controversies is G4S, a private security company in the UK. Read More

AgriSol, an Iowa company, has been linked to plans to evict 160,000 Burundian refugees from Katumba and Mishamo in western Tanzania, according to "Lives on Hold," a new report by the Oakland Institute. Read More

Sierra Nevada Corporation from Sparks, Nevada, and R-4, Inc. from Eatontown, New Jersey - are two companies at the forefront of the covert war in Africa, where they operate small Swiss aircraft to spy on behalf of the U.S. Special Operations Command. Read More

Details of 6,500 "extraordinary rendition" flights conducted by CIA contractors to transport over 1,100 victims to and from prison sites around the world are to be released by NGOs Reprieve Access Info Europe working in collaboration with Kent University and Kingston University in the UK. Read More