Hossam el-Hamalawy
Interesting figures given by Telecommunication Minister Tarek Kamel on Tuesday (quoted in Shorouk newspaper). The minister put the number of internet users in the country at roughly 13 million citizens. The last official figures I had across were the 2008 govt report put an estimate of 9.17 millions.
If the minister’s talk is true, this means one hell of a huge leap in one year.
We have to expose the company for this:
Vodafone’s global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, told a Westminster eForum event on Wednesday that following food riots at Egyptian government-subsidized bakeries in March 2008, the Egyptian authorities demanded communications data from Vodafone to help identify rioters.
“We’ve had to hand over data on people in Egypt due to the food riots,” said Mullins. “Regulation can be a Trojan horse.”
Vodafone is not the first service provider to be forced to hand over customer data. In 2005, Yahoo gave Chinese authorities details which helped in the arrest and conviction of journalist Shi Tao.
Which riots happened in March 2008? The “food riots” Mullins is referring to are for sure the 6th and the 7th of April. There has to be a campaign against the company to expose these practices and find out more information about what happened. I’m honestly shocked how all parties involved in the surveillance, whether its Vodafone or the Egyptian Ministry of Telecommunication, are just too happy to go on the record stating publicly their crimes.
The surveillance is so systematic and rampant, that even Pope Shenouda had come out banning the Copts from confessing over the phone, coz “telephones may be tapped, and the confessions would be heard by State Security”!!