In Egypt, concern greets plan to launch nationwide surveillance system

A plan to install surveillance cameras on streets across Egypt has raised fears that citizens' privacy will be infringed upon and that a further crackdown on dissent may be on the way.

Egypt’s interior ministry will set up a nationwide camera surveillance system to "combat crime and terrorism," local newspapers reported last week.

Al-Ahram quoted an official as saying the system would create a "marked improvement in security by enabling police to single out suspicious activity and allow intervention before crimes or acts of terror unfold".

But activists in Egypt say the system will serve only to tighten state control.

“The project is a direct threat towards individuals’ liberties and freedoms,” Ramy Raoof, an Egypt-based researcher in digital security, told MEE.

 The lack of clarity over which government body will oversee the project and therefore have access to the information collected is, according to Raoof, a matter of concern.

 “[There is a] mind-set of more policing and control [and] what we have been seeing in the past few years is an increase in [the government’s] interest in monitoring people lives,” said Raoof.

Adel Soliman, a former army commander and critic of the current government, expressed similar worries about what purpose the project will serve.

“If [the system] is to serve the police and security apparatus, then there are obvious concerns about it impinging on human and personal rights,” said Soliman.

Soliman said that a network of cameras had already been set up in many public spaces in Egypt, referring to a group of protesters who, after breaking into the state security office in 2011, found documents detailing widespread government surveillance.

Those revelations set off a series of high-profile information scandals.

Since then reports have since shown that rather than rolling back surveillance, the government, amid a rise in attacks on army and police personnel and an ongoing campaign against militants in Sinai, has used counterterrorism to justify expanding its policing.

Roads, buildings and public squares

The companies contracted to install the nationwide system have not been disclosed but Soliman said that a company affiliated with the government's intelligence agencies is likely to inherit the project.

The CCTV cameras, which will be installed on key buildings, roads and public squares, will be hooked up to one security system that ensures constant surveillance around the clock, local media reported.

Stores and shopping centres may be obliged to mount surveillance cameras outside their premises, Khaled Negm, minister of communication and information technology told a group of journalists at a press conference in Cairo.

Egypt is not alone in using CCTV for domestic security and officials have pointed to high-tech surveillance systems in the US and UK.

Still, activists says, if the project goes ahead, it would be one of the most advanced in the Middle East.

Crackdown on dissent

All three of Egypt's intelligence agencies - the Interior Ministry's amn al-dawla, the intelligence services known as al-mukhabarat; and the military intelligence agency - could be involved, said Amr Gharbeia, an independent Egyptian privacy advocate.

Surveillance could be used to prosecute activists and protesters without due process, he said.

“There is almost no oversight over intelligence agencies in Egypt. Their role is... that of sovereign actors over which [the courts] have no mandate,” said Gharbeia.

Last year al-Araby reported that footage of police killing protesters during the January 2011 uprisings recorded on cameras near Cairo’s National Museum had been erased.

Though a court ordered the national intelligence services to hand over the footage in relation to the trying of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, the video was no longer available between the required dates of 25 to 31 January 2011.

In addition to a law banning protests passed in 2013, Egypt has taken steps to monitor its citizens, enlisting an online security firm to monitor the country's cyber communications after authorities unveiled a new campaign to keep social networking sites under surveillance.

The move built on the government’s establishment of an emergency task force to monitor and intercept online communications in response to a wave of protests in the industrial city of Mahalla in 2008.

Security researchers found evidence that a device linked to the US-based security firm Blue Coat, was used on a public network in Egypt in 2013.

According to Gharbeia, the Interior Ministry has used the system to identify and arrest groups of people critical of the government, often based on comments on Facebook.

“Police sources have been boasting of arresting people in the hundreds, even children, sweeping up groups of people associated with a particular IP address,” the Intercept reported Gharbeia as saying.

Gharbeia says the government has also gone as far as pressing telecommunications companies to identify owners of sim cards before activating a telephone line to start working.

“There is more pressure on telecommunication companies not to activate a phone line unless they have linked a sim card to a particular person. This means someone, not an authorised government official, has access to personal information and identification records in order to do so,” said Gharbeia.