Spy-Gear Business to Be Sold

By PAUL SONNE and MARGARET COKER

French technology company Amesys is offloading its business that sells Internet-interception equipment, a move that comes six months after it became public that Moammar Gadhafi's regime had been using the technology to spy on Libyans.

French technology company Amesys is offloading its business that sells Internet-interception equipment, a move that comes six months after it became public that Moammar Gadhafi's regime had been using the technology to spy on Libyans.

Bull SA, Amesys's parent company, said Thursday it had "signed an exclusivity agreement with a view to negotiating the sale of the activities" related to its Eagle interception product. Bull declined to identify the buyer.

The Eagle system, which Amesys developed for Libya after signing a 2007 contract with the regime there, allowed Gadhafi's security services to intercept emails, online chats and Facebook messages of targets. The sophisticated electronic spying by the Gadhafi government continued as Libya's revolution kicked off in February of last year.

• Firms Aided Libyan Spies Aug. 30, 2011
• Life Under the Gaze of Gadhafi's Spies Dec. 14, 2011

First Look Inside Security Unit

A surveillance center in Tripoli provided clear evidence of foreign companies' cooperation in the repression of Libyans under Col. Moammar Gadhafi's rule.

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The existence of a surveillance center in Tripoli outfitted with Amesys's Eagle equipment was first reported by The Wall Street Journal last August. According to surveillance files reviewed by the paper, the regime wielded the Eagle snooping technology against Libyan dissidents, journalists, human-rights campaigners and everyday enemies of the state.

On Thursday, Bull said the business falls outside its core remit. "This activity is nonstrategic for the Bull Group, which wishes to focus...its expertise on mission-critical electronic systems and, in particular, on areas involving the protection of personnel and national security," the company said in a statement, referring to the Eagle product.

The Eagle business represents less than 0.5% of Bull's overall revenue, the statement said. Bull reported revenue of €1.3 billion ($1.71 billion) in 2011, suggesting sales from the Eagle business would have been less than €65 million in that year.

A significant chunk of Amesys's revenue streams for the Eagle system is thought to have come from Arab and African governments. An Amesys spokeswoman couldn't be reached for comment on Thursday evening, but last year declined to comment on specific Eagle contracts outside of Libya.

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Moammar Gadhafi

It is unclear how much the Arab Spring revolutions have affected sales of the system, or the profitability of existing contracts. Bull said Thursday that the buyer would take over existing contracts.

The Amesys system in Libya was switched off last year after Moammar Gadhafi and his allies began losing grip on the country. It remained offline as of the start of 2012. The payment structure of Amesys's contract with the former regime is unclear. It's also unclear if the company is still owed money.

In the past, both Bull and Amesys have defended the decision to sell the interception system to Gadhafi.

"The contract was concluded at a time when the international community was in the process of diplomatic rapprochement with Libya, which was looking to fight against terrorism and acts perpetrated by al Qaeda," Amesys said in September.

It's unknown if the likely new owner of Eagle will sell the interception technology to repressive governments or service potentially controversial existing contracts that may exist outside of Libya.

Amesys's dealings in Libya became the subject of attention after The Wall Street Journal discovered the abandoned spy center in Tripoli where agents working for Gadhafi sat in an open-plan office and operated the Eagle system to sift through the online communications of Libyan targets. The technology intercepted the flow of traffic from Libya's main Internet service provider and harvested information from the stream using a method known as deep-packet inspection.

The spy center was lined with posters and English-language training manuals stamped with the name Amesys. One poster hanging in the center, which described the Eagle system, said: "Whereas many Internet interception systems carry out basic filtering on IP address and extract only those communications from the global flow (Lawful Interception), EAGLE Interception system analyses and stores all the communications from the monitored link (Massive interception)."

Lawmakers from the opposition Socialist Party in France have called for a parliamentary inquiry into any role the French government might have played in facilitating Amesys's sale of equipment to Libya. The request is still making its way through the government there.

Human-rights groups have filed court complaints asking French prosecutors to investigate Amesys for what the groups call possible violations of export rules and complicity in torture. Those complaints are pending.

Amesys says it has done nothing wrong. The company's activities, it says, "strictly adhere to the statutory and regulatory requirements of both European and French international conventions."

Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com and Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com