Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Cuba IGIF 2009


Freedom House Freedom on the Net




Cuba


Population: 11.2 million

Internet Users/Penetration 2006: 190 thousand / 2 percent

Internet Users/Penetration 2008: 1.3 million / 11 percent (Note: includes users with access only to intranet)

Mobile Phone Users/Penetration 2006: 152 thousand

Mobile Phone Users/Penetration 2008: 327 thousand

Freedom of the Press (2008) Score/Status: 94 / Not Free

Digital Opportunity Index (2006) Ranking: 129 out of 181

GNI Per Capita (PPP): Unavailable

Web 2.0 Applications Blocked: Yes

Political Content Systematically Filtered: No

Bloggers/Online Journalists Arrested: Yes















Status: Not Free


Obstacles to Access: 25 (0–25)

Limits on Content: 32 (0–35)

Violations of User Rights: 33 (0–40)

Total Score: 90 (0–100)





Introduction


Despite the slight loosening of restrictions on the sale of computer and mobile-phone equipment in 2008, Cuba remains one of the world’s most repressive environments for the internet and information and communication technologies (ICTs). There is almost no access to internet applications other than e-mail, and surveillance is extensive. Nevertheless, a nascent community of bloggers has emerged on the island, creatively using online and offline means to express opinions and circulate information about Cuban society.

Cuba was connected to the internet for the first time in 1997, and the National Center for Automated Interchange of Information (CENIAI), the country’s first internet service provider (ISP), was established that year. However, the executive authorities continue to control the legal and institutional structures that decide who has access to the internet and how much access will be permitted.1


Obstacles to Access


Though the government has claimed that all Cubans have access to the internet, according to the ITU, only 1.3 million people – 11.5 percent – had access to the internet in 2008. 2 However, it should be noted that this number is also potentially over inflated as it includes those who had access to the Cuban intranet only, but not to the global internet. A closer estimate is that 240,000 – 2.1 percent – of the population had some level of access to the world wide web in 2008.3 Restrictions on access have been exacerbated by tight government control over related equipment. The sale of modems was banned in 2001, and the sale of computers and computer accessories to the public was banned in 2002. Exceptions could be authorized by the Ministry of Internal Commerce if the items in question were deemed to be “indispensable.” This policy changed in early 2008, when the government of President Raul Castro began allowing Cubans to buy personal computers. Individuals can now legally purchase a computer and connect to an ISP with a government permit. Nonetheless, high costs put both the internet and mobile phones beyond the reach of most of the population. A simple computer with a monitor averages around 722 convertible pesos (US$780) in retail stores, or at least 550 convertible pesos (US$600) on the black market.4 By comparison, the average monthly Cuban salary is approximately 16 convertible pesos (US$17).5 These computers are generally distributed by the state-run Copextel Corporation, which imports communications, computing, and other ICT equipment. An internet connection costs between 6 and 12 convertible pesos (US$9 and US$15) per hour.

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Cuba had a mobile-phone penetration rate of only 2.9 percent (approximately 327,000 users) as of 2007. However, the government eased restrictions on mobile-phone purchases in March 2008, and reduced the sign-up fee by half, though it still represents three months of wages for the average worker. It is estimated that Cubans signed some 7,400 new contracts for mobile phones in the 10 days following the lifting of the ban, and according to the state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde, an estimated 480,000 cellular lines were in use by year’s end.6 ETECSA, the state-controlled telecommunications company, predicts that there will be 1.4 million new mobile contracts over the next five years.7 Mobile phones do not include internet connections, but it is possible to send and receive international text messages with certain phones.

TTT he government divides access to web technology between the national intranet and the global internet; most Cubans only have access to the former, which consists of a national e-mail system, a Cuban encyclopedia, a pool of educational materials and open-access journals, Cuban websites, and foreign websites that are supportive of the Cuban government.8 Cubans can legally access the internet only through government-approved institutions, such as the approximately 600 Joven Clubs de La Computacion (Youth Computation Clubs) and points of access run by ETECSA; users are generally required to present identification to use computers at these sites.9 Many neighborhoods in the main cities of Havana and Santiago advertise “internet” access in ETECSA kiosks, but field research has found that the kiosks often lack computers. Instead they have public phones for local and international calls with prepaid phone cards. The government also claims that all schools have computer laboratories; in practice, however, internet access is usually prohibited for students or limited to e-mail and supervised activities on the national intranet.

Individuals who do access the internet face paralyzingly slow connections, and tests conducted on the island found that just two e-mails could be sent per hour using Yahoo! mail. Multimedia applications were inoperable. This was the case even at universities, where the connections are slightly better than at ETECSA access points.10 One segment of the population that enjoys approved access to the internet is the professional class of doctors, professors, and government officials. For example, 3,000 e-mail accounts had been issued to medical institutions by 2001, and facilities like hospitals, polyclinics, research institutions, and local doctors’ offices are linked via an online network called Infomed.11 However, even these users are typically restricted to e-mails and sites related to their activities. Beginning in 2007, the government systematically blocked core internet portal sites such as Yahoo!, MSN, and Hotmail. This ban was extended to blog platforms and blog commentary technology during certain periods in 2008. As a result, Cubans cannot access blogs written by their fellow citizens. Moreover, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) remains blocked in Cuba, with the exception of illegal points of connection in old Havana. Some social-networking platforms such as Facebook are accessible in university cybercafes.

There are only two ISPs, CENIAI Internet and ETECSA, and both are owned by the state. Cubacel, a subsidiary of ETECSA, is the only mobile-phone carrier. In 2000, the Ministry of Information Science and Communication was created to serve as the regulatory authority for the internet, and its Cuban Supervision and Control Agency oversees the development of internet-related technologies.12 In May 2008, Deputy Minister for Information Science and Communication Boris Moreno said “Cuba is not concerned with the individual connection of its citizens to the internet. We use the internet to defend the Revolution and the principles we believe in and have defended all these years.”13 The government argues that access restrictions are a direct consequence of the U.S. embargo, which prevents Cuba from connecting to underwater cables and forces it to use expensive Chinese and Venezuelan satellites instead.14 It has been estimated that the cost of laying a fiber-optic cable from Havana to Florida, to allow high-speed connectivity, would cost as little as $500,000.15 In the meantime, Cuba and Venezuela signed documents in 2006 for the purpose of building and operating a fiber-optic cable linking Cuba and Venezuela (as well as Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago) and amplifying Cuba’s internet connections by 2010.16 It remains unclear whether the Cuban government will truly allow widespread access once the infrastructural impediments are removed.


Limits on Content


Rather than engaging in the technically sophisticated blocking and filtering used by other repressive regimes such as China and Tunisia, Cuban authorities rely heavily on lack of technology and prohibitive costs to limit users’ access to information. The websites of foreign news outlets—including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Le Monde, and the Nuevo Herald (a Miami-based Spanish-language daily)—and human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch remain largely accessible, though slow connection speeds impede access to the content on these sites.17 Sites and writings that are considered anti-Cuban or counterrevolutionary are restricted. These include many of the Cuban dissident sites based in the United States and abroad, and any documents containing criticism of the current system or mentioning dissidents, supply shortages, and other politically sensitive issues.18 Blogs written by Cubans residing in Cuba are also inaccessible. For example, sites such as cubanet.org, payolibre.com, bitacoracubana.com, cubadebate.com, and prolibertadprensa.blogspot.com cannot be accessed at the youth computer centers. It is a crime to contribute to international media that are not supportive of the government, a fact that has led to widespread self-censorship. Cuban blogs typically feature implicit or explicit elements of self-censorship and anonymity. Many of those working closely with ICTs are journalists who have been barred from official employment, and the prohibitive costs surrounding the technology represent a major obstacle for them. The majority of their work is done offline by hand, typewriter, or computer, then uploaded and published once or twice a week using a paid internet access card. For those contributing to international outlets, content can be dictated via costly international phone calls.

Despite all of these barriers, Cubans still connect to the internet through both legal and illegal points of access. Some are able to break through the infrastructural blockages by building their own antennas, using illegal dial-up connections, and developing blogs on foreign platforms. The underground economy of internet access also includes account sharing, in which authorized users sell access to those without an official account for one or two convertible pesos per hour. Some foreign embassies allow Cubans to use their facilities, but a number of people who have visited embassies for this purpose have reported police harassment. To date there have been no reported cases of Cuban activists using mobile phones or SMS (text messaging) to organize events or disseminate political information. However, there is a thriving improvisational system of “sneakernets,” in which USB keys, CDs, and DVDs are used to distribute material (articles, satirical cartoons, video clips) that has been downloaded from the internet.

The lack of a proper internet connection remains Cuban bloggers’ biggest challenge, according to Roger Trabas, cofounder of the Bloggers Cuba website. In September 2008, Trabas organized the first meeting—dubbed Blogging on Our Own—designed to bring together the island’s bloggers and those involved in online journalism.19 There is no exact count of blogs produced in Cuba, but the Cuban Journalists’ Union (UPEC) has reported a current total of 174. Examples include Yoani Sanchez’s famous blog Generación Y, which draws 26 percent of its readers from within Cuba, as well as sites like Retazos, Nueva Prensa, PayoLibre.com, Cubaencuentro.com, and Convivencia. Regional radio stations and magazines are also creating online versions, though these outlets are state-run and do not accept contributions from independent journalists. However, in a recent development, some of these sites have installed commentary tools that allow readers to provide feedback and foster discussion.

Cubans succeeded in mobilizing via the intranet in January 2007, following the appearance of Luis Pavon Tamayo on a television program honoring people who have made significant contributions to Cuban culture. Cuban artists and intellectuals spontaneously started an e-mail discussion to protest his appearance. Tamayo had formerly headed the National Culture Council and was widely viewed as responsible for a multiyear crackdown on cultural expression during the 1970s. The period, known as the Grey Five, saw Cuban artists and intellectuals censored, sent to labor camps, or driven into exile. The e-mail protest quickly drew the attention of the government, and Culture Minister Abel Prieto met with 20 of those involved to discuss their concerns.20 Prieto initially refused to apologize for Tamayo’s appearance, but in the face of a growing online movement he reconsidered and issued an apology. He said the appearance—as well as the subsequent appearances of two other leading figures in the 1970s crackdown, Armando Quesada and Jorge Serguera—had been an “error,” and explained that “today the leadership of this country regards that period—which was fortunately brief—with great disapproval.”21




Violations of Users’ Rights


The legal structure in Cuba is not favorable to internet freedom. There is no clear constitutional guarantee of internet freedom, and the constitution explicitly subordinates freedom of speech to the objectives of socialist society.22 Freedom of cultural expression is guaranteed only if the expression is not contrary to the Revolution.23 The penal code and Law 88 set penalties ranging from a few months to 20 years in prison for any activities that are considered a “potential risk,” “disturbing the peace,” a “precriminal danger to society,” “counterrevolutionary,” or “against the national independence or economy.”24

Cuba is one of the few countries to have issued laws and regulations explicitly restricting and outlawing certain online activities. In 1996, the government passed Decree-Law 209, known as Access from the Republic of Cuba to the Global Computer Network, which states that the internet cannot be used “in violation of Cuban society’s moral principles or the country’s laws,” and that e-mail messages must not “jeopardize national security.”25 In 2007, Resolution 127 on network security banned the spreading of information via public data-transmission networks that is against the social interest, norms of good behavior, the integrity of people, or national security. The decree requires access providers to install controls that will enable them to detect and prevent the proscribed activities, and to report them to the relevant authorities.

From a regulatory perspective, Resolution 56/1999 provides that all materials intended for publication or dissemination on the internet must first be approved by the National Registry of Serial Publications. Moreover, Resolution 92/2003 prohibits e-mail and other ICT service providers from granting access to individuals who are not approved by the government, and requires that they enable only domestic chat services, not international ones. Entities that violate these regulations can have their authorization to provide access suspended or revoked.

Despite constitutional provisions that protect various forms of communication, and portions of the penal code that set penalties for the violation of the secrecy of communications, the privacy of users is frequently violated in practice. Tools of content surveillance and control are pervasive, from public access points and universities to government offices. Delivery of e-mail messages is consistently delayed, and it is not unusual for a message to arrive without its attachments. The phenomenon is known to occur in hotel cybercafes used by both tourists and locals.

The new administration of Raul Castro has continued its predecessor’s repressive practices with respect to independent journalism, indirectly affecting the blogging community as well. These practices include the imposition of fines, searches, and the confiscation of money and equipment. There have been a few cases in which online journalists were arrested and punished for their work, most notably the imprisonment of two correspondents of CubaNet. One, Oscar Sanchez Madan, was sentenced to four years in prison in April 2007 for “precriminal social danger,” and the other was sentenced to seven years in November 2005 for “subversive propaganda.”26 Still, bloggers have not been subject to anything akin to the Black Spring of 2003, in which 27 journalists were arrested on grounds that they were “agents of the American enemy.”27

Prominent bloggers do face a wide range of other forms of harassment, intimidation, and restrictions on their rights. Yoani Sanchez and her husband Reynaldo Escobar (a fellow blogger) were summoned for questioning in December 2008, reprimanded, and informed that their right to travel had been restricted, meaning they would be unable to attend a two-day blogging workshop in the western part of the island.28 Other individuals planning to attend the event were also summoned for questioning and pressured to cancel;29 as a result, the meeting of 20 bloggers was reportedly held online to avoid the risk of arrest.30 In May 2008, the government refused to issue Sanchez a travel visa that would have allowed her to receive the Ortega y Gasset prize for digital journalism in Spain.31


1 Ben Corbett, This is Cuba: an outlaw culture survives, Westview Press, 2002,

http://books.google.com/books?id=N2P5n3rU7EkC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=CENIAI+Internet&source=bl&ots=33reH-Vvh7&sig=UBxsUT16g0Z2BLKa0P1e5NMRFB0, Accessed March 20, 2009.

2 Internet World Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats10.htm#spanish, Accessed March 20, 2009.

3 Reporters Without Borders, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=26096, Accessed March 20, 2009.

4 “Cubans queue for computers as PC ban lifted, but web still outlawed,” Irish Examiner, May 5, 2008.

5 “Mobile phone use booms in Cuba following easing of restrictions,” Agence France-Presse, April 24, 2008.

6 Cellular News, http://www.cellular-news.com/story/35917.php?s=h, Accessed March 18, 2008.

7 “Mobile phone use booms in Cuba following easing of restrictions,” Agence France-Presse, April 24, 2008.

8 ETECSA: Empressa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., www.enet.cu, Accessed March 20, 2009.

9 Joven Clubs de La Computacion, http://www.cfg.jovenclub.cu/, Accessed March 20, 2009.

10 ETECSA: Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A.

11 Infomed, www.sld.cu, Accessed March 20, 2009.

12 Ministry of Information Science and Communication, http://www.mic.gov.cu/, Accessed March 20, 2009.

13 “In Raul Castro’s reforms in Cuba, internet remains restricted,” Agence-France-Presse, May 17, 2008, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbs2d7rh33vYKZ6hp3xAwhA4BXvQ, Accessed March 20, 2009.

14 For instance, Government sources cite the cost of 4 million US$/yr to connect to the Internet through these satellites. From this, local sources affirm that 850K US$/yr are just to connect a local association of artists and writers.

15 “Cuba to get high-speed Internet in 2010,” Techweb, July 17, 2008

16 Ibid.

17 “Access impeded to Internet platform hosting popular blogs, other websites,” March 31, 2008, http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/92118/,Accessed March 20, 2009.

18 ONI report on Cuba, http://opennet.net/research/profiles/cuba, Accessed March 12, 2009.

19 “Cuba: More Bloggers are Firing Off Thoughts From the Island,” Inter Press Service, October 6, 2008.

20 “Cuban writers angered by resurfacing of censor,” January 16, 2007, http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000051/005155.htm , Accessed March 20, 2009.

21 “Artists’ congress marks more changes in Cuba,” April 5, 2008, http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=c97b6387-8824-4198-8910-9cc9b06ac8c6, Accessed March 20, 2009. and Arturo Gracía Hernàndez, “Interview with Abel Prieto, Cuban Minister of Culture,” www.embacu.cubaminrex.cu/Portals/7/Interview.doc , Accessed March 20, 2009.

22 Article 53, available at http://www.cubanet.org/ref/dis/const_92_e.htm, Accessed March 20, 2009.

23 Article 39, d), available at http://www.cubanet.org/ref/dis/const_92_e.htm, Accessed March 20, 2009.

24 See – Protection of Cuba’s National Independency and economy. http://cpj.org/reports/2008/03/laws.php

25 Cuba – Telecoms Market Overview & Statistics 2008.

26 Freedom of the Press, Cuba 2008, http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251&year=2008 , Accessed March 12, 2009.

27 Reporters Without Borders, March 16, 2006, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16771 , Accessed March 20, 2009.

28 “Cuba v. the Bloggers,” PoliBlog, December 6, 2008.

29 Global Voices Online, Cuba Government Officials Tell Bloggers to Cancel Planned Meeting, December 6, 2008, http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/12/06/cuba-government-officials-tell-bloggers-to-cancel-planned-meeting/ , Accessed March 20, 2009.

31 “Cuba refuses to give blogger visa to collect prize,” Agence France Press, May 6, 2008.


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Russia IGIF 2009


Freedom House Freedom on the Net




Russia


Population: 141.7 million

Internet Users/Penetration 2006: 25.7 million / 18 percent

Internet Users/Penetration 2008: 29.8 million / 21 percent

Mobile Phone Users/Penetration 2006: 151 million

Mobile Phone Users/Penetration 2008: 187 million

Freedom of the Press (2008) Score/Status: 78 / Not Free

Digital Opportunity Index (2006) Ranking: 51 out of 181

GNI Per Capita (PPP): $14,400

Web 2.0 Applications Blocked: No

Political Content Systematically Filtered: No

Bloggers/Online Journalists Arrested: Yes















Status: Partly Free


Obstacles to Access: 11 (0–25)

Limits on Content: 17 (0–35)

Violations of User Rights: 23 (0–40)

Total Score: 51 (0–100)





Introduction


Since the internet was first launched in Russia in 1988, the country has made significant gains in the expansion of its information infrastructure. Most Russians access the internet from their homes (71 percent of users) and workplaces (41 percent), whereas only about 6 percent use cybercafés. 1 Internet access via mobile telephones and similar devices has gained popularity since 2006, and 10 percent of users currently report using this method. 2 The web is used primarily to check e-mail and for entertainment purposes, and only secondarily to read news reports and blogs.

After the elimination of independent television channels in 2000–01 and the tightening of press regulations, the internet became the last relatively uncensored platform for public debate and the expression of political opinions. There have not been any significant cases of technical blocking or filtering, but the authorities have increasingly engaged in intentional content removal. Internet freedom has corroded significantly in recent years, and this trend is borne out by the statistics: one internet activist killed, seven criminal cases launched against bloggers, one blogger badly beaten, and ten oppositional blogs attacked by hackers. The legal environment is threatened by a number of new legislative initiatives, and some have even proposed building a massive filtering and censorship apparatus in the mold of China’s infamous “Great Firewall.”


Obstacles to Access


Internet and mobile-phone penetration in Russia continues to grow, and the government largely supports the dissemination of these technologies. The number of internet users jumped from 1.5 million in 1999 to 29.8 million in 2008,3 although this still gives Russia a much lower penetration rate than that in Western Europe, and more than half of Russia’s users are concentrated in the two largest cities.4 Mobile use expanded even more rapidly, rising from a few million subscribers in the late 1990s to 187 million—about 35 million more than the country’s actual population—in 2007.5 The Russian mobile market in 2006 became the third largest in the world by subscribers and revenue, after China and the United States. A massive campaign to connect all Russian schools to the internet began in 2002. While the majority of the schools were connected by the end of 2008, the speed of the link is unacceptably slow at 128 kilobits per second; this connection is shared by a given school’s entire stock of 30 to 60 computers. 6 Although dial-up internet access costs roughly the same across the country, the prices for broadband access in the majority of Russia’s regions are four times higher than in Moscow.7 There are infrastructural limitations to internet access, but the government does not widely block access to the web or to specific web-based applications. The YouTube video-sharing platform, the social-networking site Facebook, and various international blog-hosting services are freely available.

Nearly 75 percent of Russian users still have dial-up. 8 The broadband market, which rose from 3.6 million users in 2006 to 8.3 million in 2008, is relatively liberalized. The state-owned provider SvyazInvest accounts for only 27.8 percent of broadband users, with the rest served by private companies. Many of those are regional companies affiliated with large national firms. As at the federal level, regional ownership usually depends on political connections and the tacit approval of regional authorities. Although this situation is not the direct result of legal or economic obstacles, it nonetheless reflects an element of corruption that is widespread in the telecommunications sector as well as other parts of the Russian economy.

Three leading operators—MTS, Vimpelcom, and MegaFon—hold 85 percent of the mobile-phone market.9 While formally independent, each of these firms has indirect ties to the government. According to independent analyst Vadim Gorshkov, MegaFon is connected with former minister of telecommunications Leonid Reyman, and MTS is linked to the Moscow regional leadership.10 The information and communications technology (ICT) sector is regulated by the Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications and Mass Communications, whose director is appointed by the prime minister. The appointment process is not transparent. Boris Boyarskov, the head of the service for four years until his replacement by a subordinate in December 2008, reportedly served in the KGB during the Soviet era.11 There are no special restrictions on opening cybercafés or starting internet service provider (ISP) businesses, although unfair competition and other such obstacles are not unusual in Russia.


Limits on Content


Legal controls on the internet were first proposed in 1996 by leftist members of parliament, though no action was taken at the time. Since then, however, the authorities have pursued various methods of censorship. In October 2008, a leading information-technology company official, Valentin Makarov, proposed building a Russian version of China’s so-called Great Firewall within the next 10 years.12 Until such a nationwide filtering apparatus is created, website operators and users can evade state interference fairly easily by utilizing foreign hosting services.

There has been only one well documented case of systematic blocking or filtering by ISPs, and it was later downplayed. The website affected, Kompromat.ru, was blocked by several providers in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.13 After the action became public, and the election was over, the filter was removed. However, the practice of exerting pressure by telephone is quite widespread. It is carried out not only by security agencies but also by Kremlin and regional administration officials, who call owners, shareholders, and anyone else in a position to remove unwanted material and ensure that the problem does not come up again. After receiving such calls, managers and editors are more likely to practice self-censorship. The director of leading hosting company Masterhost, Aleksandr Ovchinnikov, admitted that his company gets about 100 requests daily from the authorities to black out “inconvenient”—usually nationalistic or antigovernment—websites.14 Commenting on the Kompromat case, Ovchinnikov said the order to block the site was made “with a phone call.” A similar practice was used in the case of the website of the newspaper Vyatskii Nablyudatel, which was closed in April 2008 at the request of the Kirov regional police due to a forum comment criticizing the regional leadership. After the incident, the newspaper website moved to a foreign host to protect itself from further government threats.15

There is little evidence of intentional and illegal removal of blog posts. On the Livejournal blogging platform, for instance, posts have been removed only if they violated privacy rights (by including personal address details or other private data) or promoted terrorism. However, illegal content removals do occur. In March 2008, the website islam.boom.ru was closed because the prosecutor’s office said that it was spreading extremism.16 In October 2008, hosting service HostZona.ru closed the website Putin-loh.ru (“Putin is a dumbass”).17 The host’s director explained that the content of the website insulted the prime minister and it was his civic duty to close it down.

When the web was not such a popular phenomenon, the Kremlin was able to exert its influence with rather limited means, for example by forum trolling (in internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community) and establishing propaganda websites.18 The so-called Brigade, a pro-Kremlin group formed by paid bloggers and volunteers, is still active, but its influence declined as other users identified its members and began to ban trolls.

The situation started to change after the “color revolutions” in three former Soviet countries in 2003–05, when information technology played a significant role in mobilizing large numbers of people for political protests. In November 2007, Deputy Prosecutor General Ivan Sydoruk proposed increasing government control over the internet.19 The ruling United Russia party presented legislation in February 2008 that would require internet sites with over 1,000 visitors per day to register with the authorities, making them equivalent to print media with circulations of 1,000 or more copies, but the measure was not enacted.20 Many Russians view the internet as a proper sphere for governmental control. According to a Levada-Center poll taken in December 2006, some 22 percent would “absolutely agree” and another 22 percent would “rather agree” with the statement “It’s time to bring order to the internet.”21 However, the Kremlin is not unified on the issue. There have been constant tensions between social conservatives who express aspirations to overtly control the internet (the United Russia party, together with the influential “siloviki” faction, the Federal Security Service [FSB], and the prosectutor’s office) and centrists (Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, President Dmitri Medvedev, and current and former ministers of communications Igor Shchegolev and Leonid Reyman) who do not want to damage their international reputations with censorship scandals and prefer more sophisticated tools to control internet content.

Russia’s vibrant blogosphere includes over 3.8 million blogs.22 Approximately 80 percent of Russian-language bloggers live inside the country with the remaining 20 percent living outside in the large Russian diaspora.23 President Medvedev started a video blog in October 2007, and three regional governors followed suit.24 Unfortunately, blogs do not have a major influence on political life. This is due less to the apathy of Russian web users than to the government’s success in preventing online activism from spreading to the streets or reaching wider media audiences. Almost all large non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (based in Moscow and Saint Petersburg) have their own websites, but those based in the regions are less likely to have a presence online. Non-Russian-speaking ethnic groups are underrepresented on the web. There is little discussion of the Chechnya issue, as opposed to the leadership of Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. During the Russian-Georgian conflict of August 2008, the Russian blogosphere, even its liberal elements, generally supported the Russian invasion.

Livejournal is the most popular blogging platform, accounting for 45 to 50 percent of all Russian-language blogs. This may be due to its adoption by a group of the Russian internet elite (Anton Nossik and Yuri Zasurski, among others). Other factors include the site’s “friendship” mechanism and the relative simplicity of the interface.

The Kremlin allegedly started to influence the blogosphere in 1999–2000 through just one organization, the Foundation on Effective Politics, led by Gleb Pavlovski.25 In 2006–08, the Russian internet experienced a proliferation of Kremlin-affiliated “content providers” that were essentially propaganda sites.26 Among the new net-propagandists were Konstantin Rykov and his New Media Stars,27 Vadim Gorshenin of Pravda.ru,28 and Aleksey Chesnakov of the Center for Political Conjuncture Research. Each of these media managers, according to prominent journalist Oleg Kashin, has a liaison on the president’s staff. The emergence of competing propagandist websites led to the establishment of a vast network of online propaganda that collectively dominates search results, among other effects.29

If an opposition or grassroots organization starts its own internet platform, Kremlin-related groups will launch several that are similar in form, if not in content. These sites create confusion among users by adopting similar imagery, slogans, and names. Meanwhile, bloggers who report on regional protests or some other sensitive incident are swamped by other blogs that give an opposite account, sometimes using sophisticated language but also resorting to obscenity to discourage debate.

The topics targeted with such tactics vary from region to region but often include political opposition, dissidents like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, murdered journalists, jobs and working conditions, and cases of international conflict or rivalry (with countries such as Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine, but also over U.S. and European foreign policies). The issue of spontaneous protests triggered by the economic crisis appears to be a growing concern.

The most successful civic action coordinated with the help of online forums and blogs was the movement against the restriction of right-hand-drive automobiles, which are imported from Japan and used widely in the Far East. Beginning in 2005, the organization Freedom of Choice (Svoboda Vybora) used forums to organize political action in different cities in Siberia.30 In addition to thwarting government attempts to discontinue the use of right-hand-drive cars, the group has taken up other issues important to motorists, including road quality, taxes, insurance rates, and special driving rules for senior government officials.

There is little information on the use of SMS, or text messaging, in political agitation. However, presidential staff used SMS in mobilizing people to participate in national elections in 2007.31 The same practice was used in several regional election campaigns.32 Certain mobile operators like Vimpelcom have stated that they prohibit political agitation through SMS. The use of political SMS messages is linked to other problems, including loose laws on commercial advertisements via SMS.33

As social-networking sites and blogger platforms have grown in importance, they have caught the attention not only of the Russian government but also of Russian business magnates, or oligarchs. Since they are eager to maintain good relations with the Kremlin, oligarchs are likely to resort to various nontransparent practices to ensure that their web services are free of objectionable material or activity. In December 2007, a day after the parliamentary elections, Livejournal was bought by the oligarch Aleksandr Mamut.34 Some journalists accused the new owners of leaking “closed” and “friends-only” entries to the police and the FSB. In December 2007, the creator of the most popular social-networking site, Odnoklassniki, publicly announced that his service refused to cooperate with the FSB.35 Although the veracity of his statement remains uncertain, it suggests that the FSB has pursued such cooperation. In June 2008, the Kremlin-affiliated oligarch Alisher Usmanov bought a 50 percent stake in Livejournal from Mamut.36 In July, Usmanov announced his purchase of significant stakes in Odnoklassniki and another social-networking site, Vkontakte.37


Violations of Users’ Rights


Since 2006, conditions for user rights in Russia have significantly worsened. Bloggers have become subject not only to hacker attacks but also to physical violence and legal prosecution. Although the constitution grants the right of free speech, there are no special laws protecting online modes of expression, and even constitutional guarantees are routinely violated. Online journalists do not possess the same rights as regular journalists unless they register their websites as mass media. Recent police practice has been to target online expression using Article 282 of the criminal code, which restricts extremism. The term is vaguely defined and includes xenophobia and incitement of hatred toward a social group.

Following the 2007 parliamentary elections, the government launched at least seven criminal cases against blog and forum writers. In the best-known case, 23-year-old blogger Savva Terentyev was convicted in July 2008 of denigrating the human dignity of a social group—the police—and sentenced to one year of probation.

The government’s technical capabilities in monitoring online activity have risen drastically in recent years. Since 2000, all ISPs have been obliged to install the “system for operational investigative measures,”38 or SORM-2, which gives the FSB and police access to internet traffic. The system is analogous to the Carnivore/DCS1000 software implemented by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and operates as a packet-sniffer which can analyze and log data passing over a digital network.39 However, no known cases of SORM-2 use have been reported. Legislation approved in April 2007 allows government services to intercept data traffic without a warrant,40 and in August 2008, the FSB announced the creation of a new portal to monitor the Russian internet and mass media. Little detailed information has been released on how the portal works, although the main aim of the project is the monitoring of public opinion.

Hacker attacks on opposition bloggers became a mass phenomenon in the summer of 2007, in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. Ten popular bloggers were targeted by a group of hackers sponsored by Kremlin-affiliated political operatives. The blogs were ravaged and defaced. DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks became another powerful instrument of the Kremlin’s hidden influence. In May 2007, during a major public and diplomatic row with Estonia over the fate of a Soviet war memorial in the Estonian capital, numerous Estonian government and other websites were attacked, and few Kremlin-based internet-protocol addresses were spotted.41 A similar tactic was used during the Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008, although the Georgian side also used DDoS attacks, combined with ISP filtering of the “.ru” country code.42 During the 2007 electoral campaign, the websites of three parties—the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS),43 Yabloko,44 and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR)45—were attacked.

When there are no grounds for a criminal case, physical violence has been used against bloggers and online commentators. Citizen reporter and blogger Grigorii Belonuchkin was beaten after filing a voting-fraud lawsuit against a local electoral commission in April 2008.46 Well-known political activist Magomed Yevloyev, creator of the Ingushetia.ru website, was killed by personal security agents of Murat Zyazikov, the president of the Russian republic of Ingushetia, after being detained at the local airport.47 Zyazikov was dismissed two months later, but no criminal case was launched against him or his security personnel.


2 http://www.gfk.ru/Go/View?id=338, accessed March 20, 2009.

6 Industry experts’ opinion.

7 Based on the comparative research of the ISP prices: http://eburg.nag.ru/, accessed March 20, 2009.

9 “Russian Telecom Sector - Dynamic Growth in 2006,” Ezine @rticles, http://ezinearticles.com/?Russian-Telecom-Sector---Dynamic-Growth-in-2006&id=552086, accessed March 20, 2009.

11 RFERL Newsline, April 21, 2004, http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/rferl/2004/04-04-21.rferl.html, accessed March 20, 2009 and “Kremlin appears to be rattled by unrest,” St. Petersburg Times, December 16, 2008, http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=27850&highlight=boyarskov, accessed March 25, 2009.

13 http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/20677/, accessed March 20, 2009.

14 http://www.nr2.ru/moskow/169361.html, accessed March 20, 2009.

18 More on that topic here: http://ds.ru/ss1.htm

24 http://blog.kremlin.ru/, accessed March 20, 2009.

25 http://ds.ru/ss1.htm accessed March 27, 2009

27 Rykov’s projects include: vzglyad.ru, Russia.ru, chaskor.ru, litprom.ru; see also: http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/529896.html, accessed March 27, 2009

28 Gorshenin’s projects include: yoki.ru, politonline.ru, electorat.info

30 http://www.19may.ru/, accessed March 20, 2009.

33 http://e-moe.com.ua/node/786, accessed March 20, 2009.

36 http://www.dengi.ua/news/38264.html, accessed March 20, 2009.

37 http://www.kp.ru/online/news/117169/, accessed March 20, 2009.

46 http://www.golos.org/a1376.html, accessed March 20, 2009.


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IGIF - Glossary of Terms


Freedom House Freedom on the Net



Glossary


Note: Glossary definitions based on those available from the following sources, as well as additional explanations drawn from other sections of this study: Merriam-Webster Online, www.merriam-webster.com and Webopedia: Online Computer Dictionary for Computer and Internet Terms and Definitions, www.webopedia.com.


Blog: short for weblog, an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often links to other websites or blogs provided by the writer; most blogs allow reader comments and are used to foster discussion surrounding certain topics; while most contain reflections on bloggers’ personal lives, increasingly they are being used to comment on social and political issues


Blogosphere: all of the blogs on the internet or within a specific country, e.g. the Tunisian blogosphere


Broadband: a high-speed internet connection in which a single wire can carry many channels at once, allowing a high data-transfer rate; necessary for viewing multimedia content


Bulletin Board System (BBS): an electronic message center; most bulletin boards serve specific interest groups; users can post information or products for sale, and other posters can respond


Chat Room: an online location that allows multiple users to engage in a real-time, text-based conversation or discussion


Cybercafe: a commercial location where patrons can use the in-house computers to access the internet for a specified fee and time; most often used by travelers or those without a home internet connection


Cyberspace: the nonphysical world created by computer systems; the internet, for example, creates a cyberspace within which people can communicate with one another, do research, or simply window shop; like physical space, cyberspace contains objects (files, mail messages, graphics, etc.) and different modes of transportation and delivery


DDOS Attack: Distributed Denial of Service Attack; generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, either temporarily or indefinitely; this is usually done by overloading the attacked website with so many requests for information that it crashes and cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable; those responsible often infiltrate computers around the world and program them to join in the assault as an automated network, or “botnet”


Dial-up: an internet connection over a standard telephone line, usually with a very slow speed that makes it difficult to access some features, especially multimedia applications


DNS: domain name system; an internet service that translates domain names—the appellations commonly used to identify websites, e.g., www.example.com—into numerical IP addresses; because domain names are alphabetic, they are easier to remember, but the internet is actually based on IP addresses; every time a user enters a domain name, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address; for example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4


DSL and ADSL: digital subscriber line and asymmetrical digital subscriber line; allow data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network, at a faster speed than dial-up permits; the internet connection can be maintained without obstructing telephone use on the same line; ADSL features a greater flow of data in one direction than in the other, so that download speeds are often much faster than upload speeds


Firewall: a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network; can be implemented in both hardware and software; all messages entering or leaving the protected network pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria; while in most countries these are also used by companies to prevent employees from accessing content unrelated to their work, in several countries—most notably China and Iran—firewalls are set up on a national level to prevent citizens from accessing certain content from abroad


Forum: an online discussion group in which participants with common interests can exchange open messages; forums are sometimes called newsgroups


Forum Trolling: the practice of lingering in a chat room or forum and reading the posts instead of contributing to the discussion, often used to denote a “spy” who observes what is being said or discussed and then reports that information to authorities or who attempts to maliciously disrupt conversations or agitate users in a forum or chat room


Hosting Service/Host: a service provider that houses, or hosts, multiple websites on its server computers in exchange for a fee


ICT: information and communications technology, including computers and mobile devices


Instant Messaging/I-Chatting: real-time, text-based communication between individuals in what amounts to a temporary private chat room


IP Address: the numeric address of a computer on the internet; used to identify a computer and network in much the same way as a social security number or national identity number is used to identify a person


ISP: internet-service provider, a company that provides access to the internet for a fee; supplies customers with a software package, a username, a password, and telephone numbers to initiate a connection


IT: information technology, the broad subject concerned with all aspects of managing and processing information


Netizen: citizen of the internet; a person actively involved in the online community


Packet Sniffer: computer software or hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a network; often part of a firewall system; can be used to spy on users and collect sensitive information such as passwords


Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): a method developed for transmitting private documents and data over the internet; uses two-layer encryption to ensure security; most often used in websites that handle private data, such as credit-card or banking information; denoted by the use of “https” in the URL rather than the standard “http”


SMS/Text Messaging: short-message service; brief text messages of no more than a few hundred characters, sent electronically from one mobile phone to another


Social-Networking Site (SNS): a website that enables users to create public profiles and form relationships with the site’s other users, e.g., Facebook, MySpace, Orkut


Uniform Resource Locator (URL): the global address of a document or page on the World Wide Web, e.g. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=383&report=79&group=19 is the URL for Freedom on the Net


Universal Serial Bus (USB) Modem: a specific portable USB device that looks similar to a USB flash drive (a data storage device) and can be plugged into any USB port on a computer to allow broadband access to the internet


Value-added Network Service (VANS): a network provider hired to facilitate electronic data interchange or provide other network services; before the arrival of the World Wide Web, some companies formed value-added networks to exchange data with other companies, but contemporary VANS providers focus on offering data translation, encryption, secure e-mail, management reporting, and other services for their customers


Video Sharing: the practice of uploading video clips—including those captured using mobile phones with video features—for viewing by others; some video sharing takes place via paid web-hosting sites, but most occurs on popular free websites such as YouTube


Virtual Private Network (VPN): a way to maintain fast, secure, and reliable communication by using the internet to connect remote sites or users; often explained as tunneling a smaller network through a larger network, a VPN can be established to circumvent strict internet controls and censorship within a given country; multinational corporations that operate in repressive internet environments often purchase from the government the right to use VPNs to connect to their home offices


VoIP: Voice over Internet Protocol, a category of hardware and software that enables users to make telephone calls via the internet; these calls do not incur a surcharge beyond what the user is paying for internet access, just as users do not pay for sending individual e-mails


Web 2.0: the metaphorical second generation of the World Wide Web; refers to advanced graphical features, multimedia formats, greater interactivity and content production by users, and related online services, including blog hosting, video sharing, and social networking


Wi-Fi: wireless technology that provides an internet or network connection for properly equipped computers, mobile phones, and other such devices within a given physical or geographical area


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Egypt IGIF 2009


Freedom House Freedom on the Net




Egypt


Population: 76.8 million

Internet Users/Penetration 2006: 5.1 million / 7 percent

Internet Users/Penetration 2008: 10.7 million / 14 percent

Mobile Phone Users/Penetration 2006: 18 million

Mobile Phone Users/Penetration 2008: 31 million

Freedom of the Press (2008) Score/Status: 59 / Partly Free

Digital Opportunity Index (2006) Ranking: 91 out of 181

GNI Per Capita (PPP): $5,400

Web 2.0 Applications Blocked: No

Political Content Systematically Filtered: No

Bloggers/Online Journalists Arrested: Yes















Status: Partly Free


Obstacles to Access: 8 (0–25)

Limits on Content: 11 (0–35)

Violations of User Rights: 26 (0–40)

Total Score: 45 (0–100)





Introduction


While the Egyptian government has aggressively and successfully sought to expand access to the internet as an engine of economic growth, its security services and allied individuals have increasingly attempted to curtail the use of new technologies for disseminating and receiving sensitive political information. This is usually through such “low-tech” methods as intimidation, legal procedures, detentions, and real-world surveillance of online activists.

Egypt first introduced access to the internet in October 1993 through the Egyptian Universities Network and the Egyptian cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). The prime minister, the minister of communications and information technology, and the heads of the country’s leading internet service providers (ISPs) are all graduates of the IDSC, a fact that may explain the civilian government’s internet-friendly policy. The public first gained access in 1996, but the technology did not really take off until 2002, when the government introduced a “Free Internet” program, whereby anyone with a telephone line and a computer could access the internet for the price of a local call ($0.15 an hour). Offline repression of online activists is sporadic and keyed to sensitive political events.


Obstacles to Access


Access to digital communications has grown exponentially since it was first made available to the public in 1996, but widespread poverty and poor infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, remain barriers to access. According to government statistics, 0.58 percent of the population used the internet regularly in 1999. By 2008, the figure had grown to 14 percent and 10.7 million users.1 Broadband internet, while widely available, remains prohibitively expensive for most of Egypt’s population, 40 percent of which lives on $2 or less a day.2 In 2008, just over 1 percent of the population had a broadband connection at home, but internet cafes offering such connections are common, even in urban slums and small villages. In December 2008, an average of 200,000 people a week used these cafes. Also in 2008, 31 million people had a mobile telephone.3 Later generation mobile phones, such as Apple’s iPhone, are available in the country, but without the Global Positioning System (GPS) feature, as the authorities have banned the technology, claiming it would enable terrorists to target military installations.4 The video-sharing site YouTube, the social-networking site Facebook, and international blog-hosting services are freely available.

More than 200 ISPs serve Egypt’s population of roughly 80 million people, but Link.net and TE-Data are by far the largest.5 Most ISPs lease bandwidth from these two companies, both of which are run by men with close connections to the government. Three mobile-phone operators—Vodafone, Mobinil, and most recently the Dubai-based Etisalat—serve Egyptian subscribers. All three offer broadband internet connections via USB modems. Mobile-phone services and ISPs are regulated by the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA) pursuant to the 2003 Telecommunication Law. The NTRA’s board is currently chaired by Minister of Internet and Communications Technologies Tariq Kamel, but it also includes representatives of the president, the ruling party, the interior and defense ministries, and the country’s domestic intelligence service, State Security Investigations.6 There have been no reported incidents of ISPs being denied registration permits.


Limits on Content


The Egyptian government does not engage in widespread censorship of the internet.7 Court cases against traditional journalists and “friendly” phone calls from military or security officers to both journalists and activists have established such topics as the military, the president’s health, Muslim-Christian tensions, and torture as sensitive topics that must be handled with particular care, if at all. However, online writers routinely disregard most of these “red lines,” often with impunity. Some ISPs offer subscribers “family internet” packages that block access to pornography and sites advocating violence, in exchange for a small premium.

In the past four years, Egypt has witnessed the birth of a lively and diverse “blogosphere.” Many bloggers have become media celebrities and have won international awards for their work. This in turn may have helped spur interest in blogging among young Egyptians. As the number of blogs has increased, so has the diversity of opinion and content. Lesbian and gay Egyptians compete for space and attention on the internet with activists from the conservative Muslim Brotherhood. Opposition and human rights activists have found innovative ways to use blogs and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Jaiku to call attention to causes and organize protests. In some cases, they have succeeded in doing what traditional activists rarely have. In 2007, a Cairo court sentenced two police officers to three years in prison for beating and raping a microbus driver based on video evidence first obtained by Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, who posted the video on YouTube.8 Egyptian bloggers have also played a crucial role in focusing the government’s and the media’s attention on the problem of sexual harassment of women on the streets of Cairo. The publicity generated by their reporting has given rise to dozens of governmental and civil-society campaigns seeking an end to the problem, and the police have begun to take action.9


Violations of Users’ Rights


No laws specifically grant the government the power to censor the internet, and authorities have resisted calls to censor websites.10 Egypt’s constitution upholds freedom of speech, and the 2003 Law on Telecommunications as well as guaranteeing a citizens’ right to privacy, also requires a judicial warrant for surveillance.11 However, articles of the penal code and the Emergency Law, which has been in effect without interruption since 1981, give security agencies broad authority to monitor and censor all communications.12 Amendments to the Press Law passed in 2006 preserved provisions that criminalize “spreading false news” and criticizing the head of state of Egypt or another country,13 and courts have ruled that these restrictions apply to online writings.14 Constitutional amendments passed in 2007 paved the way for future counterterrorism legislation that could uphold Emergency Law provisions allowing for widespread surveillance.15 Nevertheless, in December 2007 an administrative court judge issued a decision rejecting a request by a fellow member of the judiciary to ban 51 Egyptian websites, including those of several human rights organizations. In his decision, the judge emphasized the importance of respecting freedom of expression, including on the internet.16

It is difficult to gauge the extent to which Egyptian security services monitor internet and mobile-phone communications, but the surveillance is believed to be far-reaching. Among the evidence pointing to this conclusion are the recent detention of two activists for using Facebook to organize strikes (see below), and the anecdotal reports that police often appear in advance at the sites of protests that were planned by text messages and e-mail. Those speaking on mobile phones to known activists and journalists within Egypt report that they frequently hear a suspicious echo or strange clicks and beeps. The legal environment allows for such surveillance, and indeed the security services have sought to perpetuate the impression that their monitoring is pervasive. At least one security officer has boasted in the press that the internet is monitored in real time.17 In addition, security services use legal and extralegal means to collect internet and mobile-phone users’ records from ISPs, internet cafes, and mobile-phone companies in the course of their investigations.

To date, only one person has been sentenced to prison in Egypt for his online activities, but security services have used detentions and harassment, and in some cases torture, to intimidate online writers. On February 22, 2007, Abd al-Karim Nabil Suleiman (widely known as Karim Amer), then a 22-year-old student of religious law at Al-Azhar University, became Egypt’s first blogger to be sentenced to prison for his online writings. A court in Alexandria handed Suleiman a four-year prison term on charges of “insulting Islam” and “insulting the president.”18 On March 10, 2007, blogger Mohammad al-Sharqawi, who had previously been tortured for participating in a street protest, returned home to find that his laptop, which he said contained an unreleased video depicting police abuse, had been stolen, though cash and other valuable items were not taken.19 On April 14, 2007, security officers arrested Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated blogger and journalist Abd al-Monim Mahmud. He had recently blogged about his experience of torture in 2003. He was held for 47 days on charges of belonging to a banned organization before being released without trial.20 Security forces arrested Isra Abd al-Fattah for using Facebook to call for a general strike on April 6, 2008. She was held for two weeks, despite a prosecutor’s decision to dismiss charges of “inciting unrest,” before her eventual release on April 23. And in May, state security officers detained and beat Ahmed Maher, a 27-year-old engineer who had also used Facebook to call for a general strike to mark President Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday three days prior. The officers released Maher without charge the next night, but warned him that he would be beaten more severely the next time he was detained.21 Others have received less-publicized threats and low-level harassment. This focus on legal repercussions and extra-judicial intimidation for online activity is the primary method of state control of an otherwise relatively open medium, and although recent, appears set to increase.


1 International Telecommunications Union via “Internet world stats”: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Default.aspx, Accessed on March 10, 2009

2 World Bank and Ministry of Economic Development poverty assessment update, 2007

3 ITU, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Default.aspx, Accessed on March 10, 2009


5 Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Web site, “Telecom Reform Milestones,” http://www.mcit.gov.eg/tele_Mileston.aspx, Accessed March 10, 2009.

6 National Telecommunication Regulatory Agency Web site, http://www.tra.gov.eg/english/DPages_DPagesDetails.asp?ID=175&Menu=5, Accessed March 10, 2009.

7 Open Net Initiative, Egypt Country Profile, http://opennet.net/research/profiles/egypt, Accessed March 10, 2009.

8 “Egypt: Police Officers Get Three Years for Beating, Raping Detainee,” Human Rights Watch, November 6, 2007, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/11/06/egypt-police-officers-get-three-years-beating-raping-detainee?print, Accessed March 10, 2009.

9 “550 Schoolgirls harassed in one day,” Al-Arabiya, November 20, 2008, http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/11/20/60477.html, Accessed March 10, 2009.

10 Report of the State Commissioner Committee, June 2007, in response to Judge Abd al-Fatah Murad's lawsuit demanding the state censor 51 web sites of human rights organizations and blogs on national security grounds, on file with the author. The committee rejected the law suit after government lawyers explained why the government did not want to begin censoring the Internet.

11 Law 10 of 2003, article 65.

12 Law 162 of 1958, renewed in 1981.

13 Law 147 of 2006.

14 International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/opinion/edblog.php, Accessed March 20, 2009.

15 “Egypt: Proposed constitutional amendments greatest erosion of human rights in 26 years,” Amnesty International, March 18, 2007, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE12/008/2007/en/dom-MDE120082007en.html, Accessed March 10, 2009.

16 “Court rejects request to ban 51 websites,” Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/89371, Accessed March 25, 2009

17 Egypt Internet Country Profile, Reporters sans frontieres, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10732, Accessed March 10, 2009.

18 “Internet Enemies: Egypt,” Reporters sans frontieres, 2008, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=26150&Valider=OK, Accessed March 10, 2009.

19 Interview with the author, March 12, 2007.

20 Interview with the author, June 15, 2007.

21 Interview with the author, May 8, 2008.


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