The Swedish television program Uppdrag granskning is focusing on investigative journalism. The investigative report Black Boxes showed, Sweden’s telecommunications giant TeliaSonera is selling authoritarian regimes high-tech surveillance gear to spy on its citizens.

TeliaSonera has enabled the governments of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan to spy on journalists, citizens and particularly members of the political opposition. The Black boxes were used in Belarus to track down, arrest, and prosecute protesters who attended an anti-government protest rally following the 2010 Belarusian presidential election. One Azerbaijani citizen says he was interrogated solely due to the fact that he voted for the Armenian representative in the 2009 Eurovision song contest.

TeliaSonera is the latest Western company revealed to be selling high-tech surveillance technology to authoritarian regimes.