[OC] Commercial surveillance tools by vendor country of origin (35 tools tracked)

Tool: Python + matplotlib.
Data: the Surveillance Tools Open Database we maintain at predaxia.com/surveillance-tools.

Each of the 35 tools is scored 1 to 5 on how well its existence and use is documented: court filings, OFAC sanctions, Citizen Lab and Amnesty forensics, multi-source reporting. A handful of vendors operate across two countries (Intellexa is North Macedonia and Israel, Paragon is Israel and the US), so those get counted in each. That's why the bars add up to more than 35.

Israel being roughly a third of the map didn't surprise us. What did: how many of the single-tool countries are recent additions. The industry is spreading, not consolidating.

Full disclosure, it's our dataset, so happy to take corrections if anyone has stronger sourcing on a specific vendor. Curious what people think is missing. The gap we keep getting told about is China beyond Hikvision and Dahua.