Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

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newcastle
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Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by newcastle »

The latest dotty idea to be discussed in Parliament


ByThink MarketingPublished on April 16, 2017

Egyptian Members of Parliament are proposing a new bill to require social media users in Egypt to pay monthly EGP 200 [Avg. 11 USD per month] as a form of “registration” fees.

According to members of Parliament, this law would help the government to monitor cyber crimes and restrict any users, pages or posts that damage Egypt’s reputation, contribute to the dissemination of fake news or incite people against public peace and national unity.

In statements to Parlamany, Reyad Abdel Sattar, a member of the Free Egyptians Party, said that requiring Egyptians to pay monthly registration fees would allow the government to discover those who use social networks for “bad” reasons against the state’s institutions.

“The purpose behind the suggested subscription is to put all users under government surveillance so it can effectively restrict any attempt by Egypt’s enemies to use social media as a mean to broadcast rumors and incite [people] against Egypt’s army and police forces,” he explained to Egypt Independent.

Egypt will inform Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that his website services will no longer exist in Egypt unless the website allowing the application of the suggested code that would enable the government to count Facebook users and monitor the published content, he added.

The government recently suggested that a cyber crime law be drafted and referred to Parliament for discussion. This law should be finalized soon in the hopes that it would effectively contribute to confronting all violations on social media outlets, including hate speech, hacking and terrorist propaganda.

https://thinkmarketingmagazine.com/egyp ... overnment/

I don't see Zuckerberg buying this one, nor do I see Egypt blocking Facebook


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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by Horus »

You do have to wonder what sort of idiot dreams up these things :urm:
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by DJKeefy »

Nearly half of some Egyptian wages :stp

Maybe they will start charging them for the air they breathe next, like everyone says, anything is possible in Egypt :roll:
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by DJKeefy »

Parliament considers social media draft law, would refer unmonitored Facebook users to trial.

Paving the way for state surveillance over social media networks in Egypt, writer of the social media draft law MP Rayed Abdel Sattar told Egypt Independent on Sunday that 60 MPs have approved its potential discussion in Parliament.

Before the draft law takes the floor in a general session, the bill will first be referred to the Parliaments Legislative and Constructional committees for revision.

"On Tuesday, the Parliament's Legislative and Constitutional committees will discuss my suggested draft law which would facilitate state surveillance over social networks in Egypt by making users enroll in a government-run electronic system that will grant them permission to access Facebook," Abdel Sattar explained.

The MP said he suggested this law in order to control Facebook pages or users who spread false news or terrorist propaganda against the state.

Prior to its referral to the parliamentary committee, Egypt Independent received a copy of the social networks draft law. It includes six articles about how the law will be activated if approved.

The first article stipulates that the law will cover all social networks and applications that work via the internet and are used as a means of communication, including text messages, video and voice calls.

The second article stipulates that the government will establish a communication authority assigned to give Egyptian citizens and foreign residents permission to use social networks. This article also stipulates that accessing Facebook under these restrictions should be free.

"This authority will launch a website through which people can apply for permission by submitting their full name, ID number and email address. Permission will only be granted once the authorities have verified the applicant's personal information," the second article read.

The third article states that once the law is approved, all social media users in Egypt will have six months to enroll in the system. Those who use social media networks without permission from the government will be referred to trial. If found guilty, the user could face six months in jail or a fine not exceeding LE5,000.

When this draft law was first announced by Abdel Sattar earlier in April, many Egyptians took to social media to voice their concerns and outrage over these possible restrictions to their personal freedoms.

The MP has justified this law by saying that extremist ideologies, fake news about Egypt and other propaganda are heavily promoted on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook released a statement on Friday to announce that a campaign will be launched with the aim of suspending deceptive accounts and pages and fake news sites being shared on the social media outlet.

Abdel Sattar said: "This statement from Facebook aligns with the goals of the draft law. The website administration realizes the dangers of not restricting and monitoring what is being published."

Source: http://www.egyptindependent.com//news/p ... sers-trial
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by DJKeefy »

DJKeefy wrote:
The third article states that once the law is approved, all social media users in Egypt will have six months to enroll in the system. Those who use social media networks without permission from the government will be referred to trial. If found guilty, the user could face six months in jail or a fine not exceeding LE5,000.
Looks like over half the population of Egypt is going to jail :lol:
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by newcastle »

Doesn't seem to apply to us tourists.

Governments have been able to mass monitor social media for years.I'm not sure what this proposed law adds .

Facebook et al are unlikely to comply with the Egyptian government accessing an individual's account without good reason .

Does registration make it any easier for the government to hack into an individual's account? Over to Horus/Keefy!
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by DJKeefy »

I have absolutely no idea how they could 100% monitor peoples activity without access to facebooks database, for sure facebook would not allow them this. :)

All social media sites including email and chat sites use databases to store the information, this can be accessed by the owners or other people that have been given permissions from the owners to access the information.

Same like this forum and all other forums, the owners can access anything from the database if they wish to do so, the only thing that they can not do is see a users password, this is stored in a hash key format (encrypted), so if you lose your password the only thing i can do is reset it.

The only way I can see is if the Government employ 1,000's of Egyptians to go on facebook like anyone else would go on facebook and randomly look at the posts of those who have registered their account with them. :roll:

If they are charging people to register then this is another way the Government is conning it's own people out of money :stp
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by newcastle »

My thoughts exactly Keefy.

There's probably already an army of government spies on social media sites reporting "inappropriate" content and, as you say, accessing an individual's FB account is not generally possible.

Of course they can always arrest an individual, who's been reported by a spy, and beat the password out of them ;)

Maybe this proposal is their way of deterring social media users who are not in tune with the government's policies, without actually shutting the media down?
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by Horus »

Sounds like just another daft idea that will do and achieve nothing, it is very unlikely that they could obtain any such information voluntarily. They are probably banking on people being scared or conned into registering their accounts, but all that would do is to indicate where to look on social media regarding what those people may be saying publicly, they still could not see stuff that was not in the public domain such as passwords. As Keefy says they would need many people (or maybe special software, but I doubt it) that was capable of scanning for key words in peoples face-book pages to try and narrow down their search, otherwise it would be an impossible task to read everything. Of course there may be some reverse psychology being used here as in “If they do register, they have nothing to hide, so go after the unregistered ones”?
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by DJKeefy »

newcastle wrote:My thoughts exactly Keefy.

There's probably already an army of government spies on social media sites reporting "inappropriate" content
The amount of times I have been threatened with deportation etc by Egyptians over negative posts I have made on the Luxor4u facebook group, posts that are taken from sources such as al ahram or Egypt Independent, other posts I get threatened with is the "Only in Egypt" photos, most of which I get from Egyptian sites :roll:

These days I just tell them "obviously this group is not for you so go ahead and report me", I then remove them from the group. :lol:
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by DJKeefy »

I am so happy our server is in the UK :D
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by Horus »

That is why I smile when some people say things like “members should be careful what they say as the authorities monitor the site” so what exactly are they going to do? Fair do if you live there and can be identified, but most members do not live there and only travel for holidays, the ‘snoopers’ will have absolutely no idea who who is making the posts from outside Egypt unless you give them that information yourself. ;)
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Re: Egyptians to pay for a state-monitored Facebook

Post by Dusak »

If they ever decided to peek at my FB page, they would be dead from shear boredom withing moments. :lol: I only pretend to live in Luxor, I'm actually in a cryogenic chamber in Scotland with my still active brain connected to the internet.
Life is your's to do with as you wish- do not let other's try to control it for you. Count Dusak- 1345.
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