Arms Firm That Sold Spy Tech to Dictatorships Wins UK Police Data Contracts

A weapons company that sold mass surveillance technology to dictatorships is now helping British police forces manage their data, a civil liberties group has said.

BAE Systems Digital Intelligence has signed two government contracts worth £3.6m since December 2025 to support the police with “data integration and exploitation”, documents obtained by Statewatch show.

The contracts are part of a plan to save £354m by making the police more efficient. They will see BAE provide “technical and service designs for integrating data across the policing landscape” and “linking policing data” across different agencies.

The firm, a subsidiary of BAE Systems, previously sold hi-tech cyber tools to governments in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE, which campaigners said enabled them to spy on millions and thwart dissent.

Its sales included decryption software that “could be used against the UK and its allies”, the BBC reported when it broke the story in 2017. The company said at the time that it works “within the regulatory framework of all relevant countries and within our responsible trading principles.”

The recent UK contracts are part of a plan to build a “police data factory” to help police forces share intelligence, Statewatch reported. Privacy campaigners say they are concerned the National Data Integration and Exploitation Service will use AI.

Alamara Khwaja Bettum, Statewatch’s executive director, told Computer Weekly that any use of AI in the system would “reflect historic and existing biases within these institutions” and could “lead to over-policing and criminalisation of marginalised communities, particularly racialised groups, migrants and people from low-income neighbourhoods.”

The Home Office told Statewatch the BAE contracts would help “release significant productivity benefits in support of local policing” and “meet policy commitments on policing reform”.

A group of UN experts in 2024 called on BAE Systems to stop supplying parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel amid its genocide in Gaza, saying it was at risk of being complicit in “serious violations” of international law.