Netizen Report: Internet shutdowns are ever-present in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Netizen Report: Internet Shutdowns Are Ever-Present in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula

Netizen Report: Internet Shutdowns Are Ever-Present in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula

Future Tense
The Citizen's Guide to the Future
Sept. 23 2016 4:57 PM

Netizen Report: Internet Shutdowns Are Ever-Present in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula

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A shop owner waits for customers in the Old Market district on April 3 in Sharm El Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

Chris McGrath/Getty Images

The Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. It originally appears each week on Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Weiping Li, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

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Over the weekend of Sept. 17, citizens in Egypt’s North Sinai region weathered a shutdown of phone and internet services that went on for at least eight hours. Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that service has been restored in most areas of the region, but there’s little hope that networks will remain connected for good.

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The Egyptian military has controlled the northern zone of the Sinai Peninsula, which abuts Israel and Palestine’s Gaza strip, since mid-2013, when it began in earnest its assault on violent insurgent groups in the region. By early 2014, cuts to telecommunications networks would regularly last throughout the day, in what appears to be an effort to deter insurgents from communicating with one another. This move has brought incalculable damage upon citizens, leaving them unable to communicate, stay in touch with loved ones, and send and receive money, among many other things. The cuts have also helped solidify a de facto media blackout in the region that has resulted from strict punishments for journalists seeking to cover military operations in the area.

In December 2015, Egyptian technologist and Global Voices author Ramy Raoof told Time magazine that security authorities were cutting network connections “indiscriminately,” noting that they have made no effort to preserve basic or emergency services, such as the ability to call for an ambulance. And when networks are down, insurgents can use other unblockable means of communications like roaming foreign (chiefly Israel-based) mobile networks and satellites. Like many others, Raoof reasons: “It doesn’t prevent the bad guys from doing bad things.”

Kuwaiti royal faces jail time for insulting emir on Snapchat
A Kuwaiti court convicted Sheikh Abdullah Salem Al Sabah of insulting the royal family, despite the fact that he is the grandnephew of the emir. He has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $16,500 for sending a Snapchat message in which he criticized the main cabinet, which is occupied entirely by members of the royal family (and his own).

Russian blogger convicted of publishing “extremist statements” about Syria
Russian prosecutors are calling for opposition blogger Anton Nossik to be sentenced to two years in a penal colony for publishing “extremist statements” online. The charges stem from a blog post titled “Wipe Syria from the Face of the Earth,” in which Nossik called for bombing territory controlled by the Syrian government. The post was published just days before the Russian government began a bombing campaign in support of the ruling Assad government. Nossik’s verdict is set to be announced Oct. 3.

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Why didn’t the United Arab Emirates have an “Arab Spring”?
Despite a relative absence of government protests, state-sponsored repression in the UAE is commonplace: Tactics like arrests, forced disappearances, torture, unfair trials, deportations, and revocation of citizenship are used to silence dissent in the country. Despite boasts by UAE leaders of the high living standards of citizens, “for the time being ... activists and government critics do not seem to enjoy the happiness, well-being and safety the Emirates offer,” writes Global Voices’ Afef Abrougui.

New research shines light on political censorship in Bahrain
Bahrain is using an internet filtering software called Netsweeper to censor political content, including Shiite websites, local and regional news sources, content critical of religion, and pages related to human rights and opposition politics, according to new research by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. Citizen Lab researchers found that the software was being used on nine Bahrain-based internet service providers during the summer of 2016. The report concludes: “The sale of technology used to censor political speech and other forms of legitimate expression, to a state with a highly problematic human rights record, raises serious questions about the corporate social responsibility practices of Netsweeper.”

More than anyone else, the US is knocking on Twitter’s door
Twitter’s latest transparency report shows that the U.S. government made more requests for users’ personal data than any other government—and that overall, the number of government requests rose 2.1 percent since the last quarter, affecting 8 percent more user accounts. Twitter also revealed more detailed information about who is making the requests. The company said the FBI, Secret Service, and New York County District Attorney’s Office were the top requesters for account information in the United States.

Latin American indigenous language activists promote new emojis
Calls for more emoji diversity have expanded beyond skin color to include more culturally diverse representations, writes GV’s Eddie Avila. In addition to a recent petition to include a hijab emoji, indigenous language activists in Mexico and Chile have begun to create their own emoji sets reflecting traditional dress and linguistic expressions in languages including Huastec, spoken mostly in central Mexico, and Mapudungun, spoken by the Mapuche of Chile.

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