The Nation: Surveillance Sale

In the wake of détente, American businessmen have discovered that the Soviet Union is a promising market for everything from soft drinks to heavy machinery. But now a more sensitive line of goods is about to go on sale in Moscow. The Soviet Chamber of Commerce has invited several U.S. companies to put on display at an exhibit of modern crime technology such wondrous electronic devices as an $8,700 spectrograph > (voiceprint identification machine), a $3,695 psychological-stress evaluator, which serves as a lie detector or interrogation aid, and an as yet unmarketed “fraudproof identification system,” which uses light patterns that cannot be duplicated to prevent the fraudulent use of credit or ID cards (all Soviet citizens over age 16 now carry identification cards). The most likely Russian customers: the KGB (the Soviet secret police) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which monitors the compulsory Soviet ID system.

There is a growing congressional sentiment that the peddling of surveillance gadgetry in the Soviet Union is carrying détente too far. This is “analogous to selling gas chambers to Hitler,” says Ohio Congressman Charles Vanik, one of 50 Congressmen who support a bill that would sharply restrict such sales. They fear that political prisoners and dissidents would be the first and most obvious targets of such equipment and that the sale of it by U.S. businessmen is unconscionable.