Egypt\u2019s Parliamentary Committee of Communications and Information Technology approved recently Article 31 of the draft-law of the cyber-crime bill that stipulates punishing any internet service provider (ISP) which refrains from implementing website blocks issued by courts.<\/p>\n
According to state-run newspaper Al-Ahram, the article stipulates that that a penalty of no less than one year\u2019s imprisonment and a minimum fine of LE500,000 will be imposed on any ISP refraining from implementing a decision issued by the Criminal Court to block any of sites representing a \u2018threat to Egypt\u2019s national security\u2019.<\/p>\n
In March, Parliament\u2019s Communication Committee approved of three articles of the cyber-crimes bill in a move which paved the way to the legalization of the state\u2019s blockage of hundreds of websites that the government claims threatens the country\u2019s national security.<\/p>\n
Article 7 of the law stipulates that the state body assigned to investigate websites allegedly representing a national security threat has the full authority to directly block the websites in question.<\/p>\n
However, the law does not clarify which state body is responsible for the task.<\/p>\n
Article 7 added that if there is an urgent need to take measures against websites with content of a \u2018threatening\u2019 nature against Egypt\u2019s national security. Authorities can directly notify the National Apparatus for the Organization of Telecommunications to block it.<\/p>\n
The law further stipulates that after the assigned authority has taken the decision to block a website, a court can refuse to apply the decision.<\/p>\n
Article 8 says that administrators of the blocked website can appeal the decision seven days after it has been implemented.<\/p>\n
Since May 2017, about 500 websites, including news and human rights sites, have been blocked to the Egyptian public.<\/p>\n
Blocked sites includes independent news website Mada Masr, the privately-owned Daily News Egypt, and Qatari-owned news agencies Al-Jazeera, El-Sharq, Al-Raya and Al-Watan, in addition to the US-based HuffPost Arabic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Egypt\u2019s Parliamentary Committee of Communications and Information Technology approved recently Article 31 of the draft-law of the cyber-crime bill that stipulates punishing any internet service provider (ISP) which refrains from implementing website blocks issued by courts. According to state-run newspaper Al-Ahram, the article stipulates that that a penalty of no less than one year\u2019s imprisonment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":82822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7863],"tags":[29594,36208,36206,2484,36207,36209,36204,36205],"class_list":["post-82821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-section","tag-al-jazeera","tag-al-watan","tag-daily-news-egypt","tag-egypt","tag-el-sharq","tag-huffpost-arabic","tag-isp","tag-mada-masr"],"yoast_head":"\n