“A new initiative launched today by Privacy International aims to track the growth and scale of the global surveillance industry, a shadowy sector consisting of companies selling a wide range of electronic surveillance technology to government agencies across the world. Made available today is the world’s largest publicly available educational resource of data and documents on surveillance, the Surveillance Industry Index (SII), which is based on data collected by journalists, activists, and researchers across the world and is the product of months of collaboration between Transparency Toolkit and Privacy International. Accompanying the index is a landmark report charting the industry’s development and its current reach. The SII, which is completely searchable, features over 1500 brochures and data on over 520 surveillance companies as well as over 600 reported individual exports of specific surveillance technologies taken from open source records, including investigative and technical reports, as well as government export licensing data. The resource will help the public, activists, journalists and policy makers better understand the modern surveillance industry and technologies.”