My Secret Policeman; New York Times, 2/2/16

Mona Eltahawy, New York Times; My Secret Policeman:

"I joke with friends that a phone call is a promotion of sorts. From the start of my journalism career in Egypt in the early 1990s, I joined the many journalists and activists who are surveilled by the government. Sometimes, a state security officer would send a note inviting me to tea — what a perfect euphemism for an interrogation — at headquarters...

I often wonder if Omar Sharif made the transition from one to the other. And I worry what he and his colleagues are doing with the Egyptian government’s increasing ability to trawl data from applications like Skype, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with the help of See Egypt, the sister company of the American-based cybersecurity firm Blue Coat.

National Security is also busy rounding people up. Four members of the April 6 Youth Movement’s political bureau were recently taken from their homes in middle-of-the night raids. The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi also targeted Facebook group administrators, a publishing house and an art gallery in a crackdown ahead of last month’s anniversary of the 2011 revolution."