What we’re seeing is the same technology that has enabled freedom movements around the world is also being used to target and track down political dissidents. In the case of Egypt, we have a company called Narus, it’s now owned by Boeing—that sells what’s called Deep Packet Inspection. It allows the Egyptian telecommunications companies, many of which are run by the state, to open up online communications, to look at texting via cell phones, and to identify the sort of dissident voices that are out there. And it goes beyond that. It also gives them the technology to geographically locate them and track them down. We had a similar problem happen in 2009 in Iran, when you had Nokia Siemens, which was a Finnish-German joint venture, selling technology to the Iranian Telecom Authority, which was also owned by the Revolutionary Guard there, to be used to track down and imprison cyber-dissidents there. And Egypt has a very sophisticated internet infrastructure, which, again, is a double-edged sword, because it’s made it very easy for the government to shut it off, while at the same time allowed for this sort of outpouring of dissidence. And the Reporters Without Borders has taken a deep look at internet abuses in Egypt and ranks it as one of the largest internet enemies.
Narus provides a technology that sits on routers throughout the Egyptian network, that filters and spies on communications. It’s a surveillance technology. Narus was started by Israeli security experts. And they specialize in selling this. They sell it to other governments. Vodafone is a mobile phone technology system. The Vodafone Egypt is another joint venture there that also has a large Egypt control, which allows them to pull the switch on cell phone communications.
Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. It was introduced in the last session by Senators Lieberman, Carper of Delaware, and Collins of Maine. It made it through the Homeland Security Committee in December, but it died by the end of the session. A Wired story from earlier this week indicated that they intend to reintroduce this bill. And the problem with the bill is that it creates in the executive branch the capacity to cut down what they call critical—to shut down critical infrastructure in the case of a national threat. So, we are—at Free Press and others, ACLU and others, are trying to make sure that that legislation, if it goes forward, doesn’t have that specific language in it.
China has blocked keyword searches for the word “Egypt.”
Technology doesn’t create revolutions. It doesn’t create social protest. And it can be used to squelch social protest. But at the same time, it can, sort of help these movements, help dissident groups coalesce and then act.
– from democracynow.org