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Free software that can detect the presence of surveillance spyware has been launched by a global coalition of human rights and tech organisations.

Organizations including Amnesty International, Privacy International, Digitale Gesellschaft and Electronic Frontier Foundation have teamed up to unveil the open source tool Detekt.

Detekt, they say, is the first publicly available tool that spots surveillance spyware that has been increasingly used by governments to read private emails and remotely turn on a computers camera or microphone to secretly record activities.

The toolwas developed by German security researcher Claudio Guarnier, whowas part of the team that firstidentified that the commercially available FinFisher spyware sold to law enforcement and governments had been found running on computers all over the world.

According to Guarnier, the goal of Detekt is not to create a generic malware detector but a free and open source utility for human rights workers and concerned citizens to try to detect the potential presence of spyware we've observed being used against civil society.

Guarnier told BetaNews: The tool is a utility, but it's also a message and an attempt to raise awareness on the issue of governments abuse of largely misunderstood and unregulated surveillance technologies. Hopefully people will engage and initiate a debate before it's too late to change anything.

Earlier this year, WikiLeaks released copies of surveillance software developed by German company FinFisher, which it said would help the tech community build tools to protect people from it.

A recent study from Candian-based researchers Citizen Lab claimed that software developed by FinFisher, which used to be part of UK-based Gamma International before its relocation to Germany, had been used to spy on prominent human rights lawyers and activists in Bahrain. FinFisher command and control servers have been found in 35 countries, including Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, Bahrain, and Malaysia.

According to Amnesty International, Detekt is a strike back against governments who are using information obtained through surveillance to arbitrarily detain, illegally arrest and even torture human rights defenders and journalists.

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Free tool detects government surveillance spyware