Bangladesh, Dec. 6 -- The fall of Bashar al-Assads regime in December 2024 opened a rare window into the inner workings of one of the worlds most secretive authoritarian governments. Among the most alarming revelations emerging from the “Damascus Dossier” – a trove of 134,000 Syrian intelligence documents obtained by Germanys NDR and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its partners – is the discovery of how Syriatel, the countrys largest telecom operator, functioned as a surveillance arm of the Syrian regime.

For decades, Syrians suspected they were being monitored. What they did not know was the staggering scope of this intrusion – how deeply intelligence agencie...