On Wednesday, EFF will give recommendations to the European Parliament for how to combat one of the most troubling problems facing democracy activists around the world: the fact that European and American companies are providing key surveillance technology to authoritarian governments that is then being used to aid repression.

Recent reports by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News have exposed the shadowy but growing industry that sells electronic spy gear to governments known for violating human rights.

The technology’s reach is very broad: governments can listen in on cell phone calls, use voice recognition to scan mobile networks, read emails and text messages, censor web pages, track one’s every movement using GPS, and can even change email contents while en route to a recipient.

Some tools are installed using the same type of malicious malware and spyware used by online criminals to steal credit card and banking information. They can secretly turn on webcams built into personal laptops and microphones in unused cell phones. And all of this information is filtered and organized on such a massive scale that it can be used to spy on every person in an entire country.

Ordinary citizens, journalists, human rights campaigners and democracy advocates have all been targeted, eviscerating privacy rights and chilling free speech. Ample evidence suggests information acquired through this spy gear appears has played a role in the harassment, threats, and even torture of journalists, human rights campaigners, and democracy activists.

Yet dozens of companies from the U.S. and E.U continue to sell this technology, including to authoritarian regimes. The market for surveillance equipment has grown to a staggering $5 billion a year.

We hope the EU moves quickly on this problem, as recent reports show it is only getting worse. We also hope the U.S. Congress is listening because with U.S companies sell the same equipment, they are not only undermining own foreign policy in these countries, but destroying the human rights the State Department claims it supports around the world.

When asked by the Guardian if he would be comfortable knowing that regimes in North Korea and Zimbabwe were purchasing this technology from the companies he does business with, Jerry Lucas, president of Telestrategies Inc., said, “That’s just not my job to determine who’s a bad country and who’s a good country. That’s not our business.”

By instituting EFF’s "know our customer" standards, we can make it their business.