Amnesty: Egypt Planning for Mass Surveillance of Social Media

Amnesty International has issued a statement saying that the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior has issued a tender for a system that would allow mass surveillance of social media:

Under the proposed plans, disclosed in a leaked tender by the Ministry of Interior this week, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and possibly mobile phone applications such as WhatsApp, Viber and Instagram would be systematically monitored.

“The plans by the Egyptian authorities to indiscriminately monitor social media a few months after the adoption of a new constitution guaranteeing the right to privacy shows the little regard they have for human rights or the rule of law. The plans also spark serious fears that systematic monitoring of social media networks will be used by the authorities to further clamp down on the slightest sign of dissent,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director for Amnesty International.