Dear colleagues, good morning.

 

My name is Nada Osman. I am a second-year student of the Master of Advanced International Studies at the DiplomaticAcademy of Vienna.

 

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in that symposium and pleased to be here.

 

Today I am going to talk about Egypt and Human Rights in terms of Technology and Science.

 

International human rights are, in fact, accounted as worldwide legal standards and norms that are set to assure the rights and defend people and communities against any kind of violating practices (threatening or undermining the liberties and beliefs of individuals around the world).

 

In this case, I will be talking about the situation of human rights in Egypt in terms of technology. Despite the fact, that Egyptian sources and literature discussing this sort of issue are rare, I managed to focus on a couple of points/ that I will be discussing now.

 

The medium of technology that I will discuss now is “social media” and how human rights are violated on social media by different actors. First, how the technology, that is represented in social media, is being abused to track people’s activities, intrude on privacy, and be exploited in human trafficking. Secondly, the issue of government surveillance and suppression of freedom of expression in Egypt.

 

Even though the technological evolution, that we are experiencing for decades, has granted us a broad space of freedom, it has been proven to be, simultaneously, a hindrance that confined human rights in Egypt.

 

Regarding the first model, as we have said before, this duality is dealing with the technological standard and with the some who do not distinguish between the freedom guaranteed in human rights and the infringement on the freedom of others and the chaos of freedom. Thereby, they are underestimating the value of freedom and turning it into a curse that, in turn, would put them under legal accountability. In spite of the great efforts implemented by the Cybercrime investigations department in Egypt, it is still a bit difficult to contain or deter this kind of crime. Over the last decade, we have seen plenty of individuals who became victims of blackmailing and threats because of violating their privacy / through hacking or social media, and yet the authority was not able to protect the rights of many of the victims / which, in turn, engendered suicide cases.

 

The second model I am going to talk about is the government surveillance of social media. Since 2015, the House of Representatives in Egypt has discussed, through the Communications Committee, the passage of legislation to regulate the use of cyberspace. And indeed, the Cybercrime Act No. 175 of 2018 and the Personal Data Protection Act No. 151 of 2020 were later enacted. In effect, these have contributed to the strengthening of surveillance practices. And since then, more comprehensive and mass internet surveillance is being carried out by the government and its security services in particular, and this is viewed as an infringement of privacy and rights across the digital public and private spheres.

 

As a result of this mass surveillance on social media, more individuals have become apprehensive about expressing their opinions or even visiting certain pages, inducing self- censorship of what can be written or expressed.

 

The protection of rights against any tyranny, oppression, or bullying is a necessity, and the competent authorities should prevent intrusions and extortion that would make a person an object of disrespect and dishonor.

 

To conclude, the lack of effectiveness of the law in the prosecution of hackers and criminals and the ignorance of people of it, at both the level of social websites and all technological media content, would dramatically escalate the number of crimes. As a result, this agony would bring about insecurity whereby freedom of expression begins to diminish.

 

So, it is of utmost importance to reformulate and develop the perception of human rights in cyber technology so individuals could be able to defend their rights and create effective platforms which would effectively represent them in maintaining human rights in technology.

 

Thank you for your attention.