On May 24th, the Egyptian government ordered ISP’s to block 21 news websites including Huffington Post Arabic, Mada Masr and most of the news websites that are remotely opposed to the government of Egypt or represent non-biased journalism. This ban came in the form of a direct order from the presidency to the ISP companies. The government of Egypt justified this decision by claiming that these websites support terrorism, extremism and spread lies. The process of banning them was done by a method known as RST injection. Even though this is not the first time Egypt blocks website, yet this is the first time a ban of websites was publicly announced. The most known ban before that was on the Qatari news websites, AlJazeera, and in that case they were accused of being supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and financed by them.
Legality of Banning Websites
In Egypt, it is very simple to legally ban a website which is done through one of 2 ways; either by an order issued by a high authority (a judge or a higher authority) or by enforcing an anti-terrorism law. However in the case of the recent bans in Egypt, these websites were not notified and no correct legal procedures were taken, especially in the case of Mada Masr.
The technology and human rights researcher at Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Amr Gharbeia, stated that Mada Masr were not officially informed prior to the block and no appropriate legal measures were taken. Mada Masr stated through their Facebook:
“If that is the case, there are two violations, according to Gharbeia: one against freedom of expression and one against the sovereignty of law.”
Broad Effect
The recent bans in Egypt have left other media outlets which impose any criticism against the Egyptian regime, in a very weak position. And the justification, of the authorities in Egypt, for this is that it is for the sake of National Security. Lina Attalah, Mada Masr’s editor in chief told Reuters:
“Nothing explains this blockade more than a very clear intention from the authorities to crack down on critical media in ways that bypass the law”
She further stated to the Gaurdian:
“The main focus now is to try and get the site back up online without it being blocked easily, but in the long run I don’t really know what this kind of fight means for our survival. My gut feeling is that this is not the end, and there’s a way to carry on. But I don’t know exactly how this will happen yet.”
Conclusion
Mada Masr and other websites in Egypt can still be accessed from abroad. When it comes to their readers inside of Egypt, these restrictions can be bypassed and the sites can be accessed by using a VPN service. For the time being we don’t know what to expect next with all this political instability.
