…An investment firm led by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is behind technology used to mass surveil refugees and asylum seekers in “prison-like” camps across Greece, The Breach has learned.

The spy tech, developed by Israeli start-up companies owned or backed by Harper’s venture capital fund Awz Ventures, is part of a sprawling $55 million EU-funded surveillance system known as Centaur that has been widely criticized by human rights organizations…

The Israeli companies are Viisights, which develops behavior recognition software, and Octopus, which provides command-and-control software for CCTV systems.

AWZ Ventures, where Harper is a leading partner and heads its advisory committee, owns nearly a two-thirds stake of Octopus, while three of Harper’s colleagues sit on its board. In October 2017, AWZ gave the company $7.5 million in funding.

Viisights, for its part, raised $14.4 million from AWZ Ventures in November 2019. Its six-person board includes two partners from AWZ.

Their involvement in the Greek camps is part of a phenomenon of Israeli technology first being “battled-tested” on Palestinians, then “repurposed” for use on refugees in Europe, according to Ella Dodd, advocacy coordinator at legal aid organization I Have Rights.

“The two Israeli companies play a key role in the Centaur system, supplying military-grade surveillance technologies, which have likely been developed on Palestinians,” she said…