US company sold Belarus the IT gear to block the Internet

[Rogue Valley]

The California based US tech company Sandvine Inc. (Procera Networks), which is owned by the private equity firm Francisco Partners, sold "deep packet inspection" software to Belarus in 2019 for $2.5 million dollars. This software is currently being used to filter 40% of the Internet traffic in Belarus, blocking social media such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, vK, and the Telegram messaging app. Sandvine teamed up with a Russian firm - Jet Infosystems - to deliver and install the software. The software was installed at the National Traffic Exchange Center in Minsk which is state owned. The equipment gave the center the ability to blacklist as many as 150 million website URLs, stopping people in the country from visiting them. Sandvine may have violated US sanctions against Belarus. Senator Dick Durban of Illinois has asked the Treasury Department to look into the matter. It's definitely a bad look when US technology is used to prop up a fraudulent regime. This is also causing internal problems for Sandvine whose employees do not want to see their software used by dictators to suppress dissent. Sandvine employees at offices in Canada, Sweden and the U.S. have complained to their managers and circulated messages and videos discussing the situation in Belarus.