Blocked Websites List

On the 24^th of May 2017 Egyptian authorities blocked 21 websites. All blocked sites were news sites. Later authorities expanded the block to include a large number of websites that provide various content and services reaching up to at least 549 sites

AFTE produced several reports on the situation of internet surveillance in Egypt, that can be accessed on the following links:

• Decision by an unknown authority … on the block of websites in Egypt
• By decree sometimes… on website blocks in Egypt
• Closing windows… internet surveillance in Egypt
• By judicial decree… a reading in the YouTube block verdict”
• Thousands of Websites are collaterally blocked in Egypt

 

In this document, AFTE publishes a periodic update of blocked websites in Egypt, including surrounding circumstances and classification of blocked sites.

Monitoring methodology

• AFTE used the Tor Project (OONI Probe), a free software and observatory that acts as a network to detect surveillance, control and interference with Internet traffic. OONI Probe enables testing the blocking of websites, as well as another spectrum of network tests. It also allows users to publish test results. AFTE compares the results obtained through the tool with the results of other tests published by users from Egypt.
• AFTE has tested access to blocked websites across a variety of Internet service providers in Egypt. AFTE used the Tor browser to make sure that these blocked websites work outside Egypt.
• We communicated with users – directly or via social networks – who are using different networks to ensure that they can access blocked websites. We also followed user publications on social networks that reported their inability to access certain websites.
• No official data has been issued by the various telecommunications companies, the NTRA or MCIT, and therefore no government data has been relied upon to confirm or deny the blocking practices, with the exception of some material published in newspapers and on news websites concerning the 33 websites which were blocked by a decision from  the Committee for the Inventory, Seizure, and Management of Muslim Brotherhood Funds, in addation to 11 other websites which were blocked by a decision from the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR).
• Sometimes results of examining blocking are variable, if different methods were used to write the scope of blocked domains (adding/not adding WWW) or using HTTPS protocol.

Most relevant results

• Since 24 May 2017 until the end of June 2020, AFTE has identified at least 549 blocked Websites. Some websites are permanently accessible, others are intermittent.
• The number of blocked websites varies according to each network of the four companies which were monitored by AFTE (WE, Vodafone, Orange and Etisalat).
• It was noted that the number of blocked websites varied according to the date of monitoring. We found increase or decrease in the number of blocked websites on the same network on different days.
• It was noted that on some days, the blocking of most blocked sites was ended, and then it returned. The reason for this is unknown.
• We monitored the blocking of the Skype application website for instant messaging on Vodafone, Etisalat, Orange and We networks (Internet Mobile 3g / 4g) while the website is not blocked on ADSL service. The same application has been blocked in Egypt since 2010 on various mobile Internet networks.
• In August 2017, the Egyptian authorities began to block websites which provide VPN and proxy services, and the scope of such blocking has been extended to include the largest number of websites. It is worth mentioning that a large number of these websites remain blocked, while they are no longer functioning at all.
• The Tor Project website, all its websites, the i2p project website and the Free Internet project website were blocked. These websites allow the internet users to use the Internet while maintaining privacy and anonymity.
• AFTE also noted the blocking of the Tor network, while internet users are still able to use the Tor Browser through the use of Tor bridges, despite attempts by the authorities to block many of these bridges.
• The public can sometimes access a number of press and media websites that have been blocked. AFTE attributes this to technical issues in the tools used by official entities to implement the blocking.
• A number of press institutions have been unable to overcome the economic repercussions of the blocking, which led to shut downs, layoffs, and cuts in the number of journalists employed so as to be able to sustain operations.
• Most media bodies, including the Journalists Syndicate, the SCMR, the Broadcasting Syndicate, the National Press Authority and the National Broadcasting Authority have not made any attempt to put an end to the widespread state practice of blocking websites.
• Despite the issuance of laws legitimizing the practice of blocking press and media websites, the entity responsible for the blocking, and the methods and technologies used remain unknown, except in the case of a few websites that have been blocked by the Committee for the Inventory, Seizure, and Management of Muslim Brotherhood Funds and by the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR).

Contexts of blocking websites:

 

First: Websites that were blocked as a result of editorial policies:

 

On June 11, 2017, the news websites Al-Bedaya (the Beginning) and Al-Badil (the Alternative) were blocked after publishing an opinion piece titled “Egypt is not for sale: Arhil” (the word Arhil implies calling on a leader to resign). The piece was attributed to the journalist Khaled El-Balshy. However, Al-Badil issued a statement announcing that its website had been hacked and that it was not responsible for the article. It explained in the statement that “one of its published pieces had been taken down, its content and title changed, and the aforementioned article published in its place. The statement indicated that “shortly after the publication of the article, Al-Badil’s followers had difficulty accessing the website from Egypt, so it seems it was blocked.

Around the same time, El-Balshy published a statement titled, “On the fake article attributed to me and on blocking Al-Bedaya website,” in which he explained that the article published on Al-Badil was “fabricated,” and that he publishes his articles on Al-Bedaya, a website that was blocked on the same day.

Al-Bedaya has not been publishing content since December 2017, while Al-Badil stopped publishing after an announcement in April 2018 that attributed its shut down to “the continued block on the website’s content that prevents it from reaching the public.”

The news website Darb was also blocked in Egypt on April 9, 2020, one month after it’s launch. The Socialist Popular Alliance Party created the website, which is headed by Editor-in-Chief Khaled El-Balshy.

The Masr al-Arabia (Arabian Egypt) news website has been subjected to a number of abuses. The general manager of the website has been arrested twice, the editor-in-chief detained, and police have raided the local news website office several times. The office has been shut down and all the website’s accounts confiscated.

State bodies continued to tighten control over the website, with the Cabinet issuing a decision in early 2017 that prohibited interaction with 24 websites including Masr al-Arabia— until the site was blocked in mid-May of the same year.

And the pressure on the website didn’t end with the block. Masr al-Arabia’s editor-in-chief was detained for three months pending investigation. He was charged with translating and republishing false news by The New York times. However, before his scheduled release in July 2018, the Supreme State Security Prosecution began to investigate him for similar charges in relation to Case 441/2018. Sabry remains in prison until now pending investigation.

The site was hacked on January 12, 2017, and published an article attributed to Amr Badr, the editor of the site. Badrdenied knowledge of the article in a post on his personal page on Facebook, explaining that the site has been hacked and that “at the same time Al-Youm Al-Sabe’epublished on the same day a reply to an article I did not write.” Shortly thereafter, the site was blocked in Egypt. The circumstances of the blocking of the site are the same as the circumstances of blocking Al-Badeelsite one day earlier: Hacking, publishing a fake article, followed by the block.The January portal stopped publishing content in November 2017.

A topic entitled “The nature of the relationship between media and security in Egypt” was published on the site on 5 September 2018, causing the blocking of the site in Egypt the day after it was published. The subject addressed the intervention of “sovereign agencies” in the media scene through the acquisition of the group “Media Egyptians” owned by the company “Eagle Capital” on the networks of various television channels. One day after the blocking, on September 7, a statement was published entitled “Raseef 22 is forbidden to Egyptians … Until when thesuppression of freedom of expression?” The statement said: “Disappointed and sad … That is how we feel after the Egyptian censor decided to block our site Raseef 22. For someone to come and try to separate you from an audience you loved and which admired you is not an easy matter for workers in a media outlet.” Raseef 22 is still banned for Egyptians.

Al-Khalig Al-Gadid website published a news report on 17 January 2018 entitled “Sisi dismisses the head of the General Intelligence Service after the leaks scandal.” The news agency reported that President El-Sisi conducted a wide-ranging change in the General Intelligence Service, that involved the change of its head and a number of leaders of the authority”It also said that Sisi had dismissed Maj. Gen. Khalid Fawzi from his position and replaced him with the agency’s deputy, General Ibrahim Abdel Salam. A few days after the publication of the news the site was blocked in Egypt, in addition to the Lebanese Al-Akhbar site for publishing a story entitled “Sisi dismisses intelligence chief: Failure in the Palestinian and Media portfolios“.

 

Second: Websites that were blocked as a result of human rights content:

 

On September 5, 2018, Human Rights Watch published a report entitled “Here we do incredible things” about torture and national security in Egypt under Sisi. The report, according to Human Rights Watch, is based on interviews with 19 former detainees and another detainee’s family who were tortured between 2014 and 2016, and shows how police officers and national security routinely use torture during their investigations, to force suspected dissidents to confess, disclose or punish information. Two days after the report was published, the organization’s website was blocked. On September 11, the State Information Service issued a statement in which it responded to the report as “biased” in favor of the Brotherhood and that it was based on the “Brotherhood narrative,” according to the statement. Human Rights Watch’s website is still blocked in Egypt.

 

Third: Websites that were temporarily blocked

 

Al-Qahira 24 (Cairo 24) website published a photo story on the attack on Hisham Genina on January 27, 2018, while Genina was on his way to attend his trial to challenge the dismissal from his office. The website was blocked ob the following day.

The website of “Fi Al-Fann”was blocked in Egypt for two days, after the website published a news story on March 19, 2018 about the attack of Turki Al Sheikh, the former Chairman of the Sports Authority in Saudi Arabia, on the Egyptian singer Amal Maher. The story addressed that the singer filed a complaint after she was attacked in front of her house in Maadi (complaint no. 4410/2018 Maadi misdemeanor). The news story was deleted after a few hours, but the website was blocked the next day. The blocking was lifted later on 22 March 2018.

 

Fourth: Websites that were blocked a short while after their launch

 

A few hours after the launch of the site “Kateb” site it was blocked in Egypt. The site addresses “issues from a human rights perspective, and is concerned with the freedom of the press and the media, and the right of society to know and circulate information.”Kateb is a website launched by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, whose website was blocked on 6 August 2017. On November 5, 2018, the authors of the website decided to freeze theirwork in protest against the “press and media laws” or what they described as the “laws of the execution of the press.” In the face of all these difficult changes, we made the difficult decision of freezing work on the site and to give ourselves the opportunity to look for legal alternatives to face what is going on, or prepare for a new attempt. ”

“Geem” was blocked in Egypt less than a month after it was launched. The website was launched on July 5, 2018 and blocked on the 29th of the same month. Geem is an electronic site addressing issues of gender, sex and sexuality and targets young people and young adults in the Middle East and North Africa and around the world, seeking information on these topics and their intersections with different aspects of life. ”

Fifth: Websites that stopped activity because of the blocking

 

Egypt’s “Al-Qessa” website started in mid-2016, and it defines itself as “an Egyptian website, providing professional analytical news services”. It was blocked in Egypt on June 18, 2017. By the beginning of 2018 and the difficulty of working while blocked, it announced the suspension of its work on January 3:”Due to the pressures, restrictions, obstruction and blocking practices of the Egyptian authorities towards Al-Qessa site, the team decided to temporarily suspend its written and visual analysis on Alkessa.com as well as its accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram. God willing, we shall return soon stronger than we were”

“Egypt Daily News” is an English-speaking independent website launched in 2000 and blocked in May 2017 with the blocking of websites by Egyptian authorities. After about 10 months of continuous blocking, the site announced on April 4, 2018 that it had been closed. “We will not close the site because it was blocked, but because we see it as an insult and distortion of our reputation, to be placed on a list of terrorist sites and sites against Egypt,” the statement said.

The site was launched in July 2015 and was blocked on the 24^th of May 2017, at the beginning of the block wave. The site announced that it will stop posting content starting the 30^thof March 2018 an d directed its readers to “Arabi Post”, which was also blocked on 30 October 2018

“Korabeya” is a sports site of the news network “Ocean” owned by Media Pan Arab Media Group, launched in 2008. The “Ocean” network was blocked in Egypt on May 28, 2017 and followed by “Korabeya” on July 6 of the same year. The site resorted to a new path, but it was also blocked. The site’s authors decided to stop indefinitely or “until reaching the body responsible for the block and treating the situation in a radical manner”. They also stated that “We are facing a hidden force – we do not know who it is, We do not know what methods should be used to address the issue of blocking the site from Egypt twice in less than a year. We, ye decision makers, are a purely Egyptian institution. ” Both Korabeyaand the “Ocean” network are still blocked in Egypt.

The media platform “Maddad” was launched in May 2017. It was issued by the Al-Karama Foundation for Press, Publishing and Distribution. A month later, on June 16, it was banned in Egypt. It tried to “extend” a year to continue despite the ban. On May 16, 2018, it issued a statement “We are forced to say that it is time to close the temporary or permanent experience, we apologize for not being able to continue to provide the content that we tried as much as possible to present and in the form we aspired to. We might have made mistakes in the realization of the different stations and issues, but we never offered anything we did not believe in. ”

 

Sixth: Websites that were blocked by a decision of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation

 

The SCMR has issued decisions to block 11 news websites, including seven owned by the MO4 Network, as well as Al-Sabah, Al-Ikhbariya, Al-Mashhad and Al-Shoura.

The online magazine El Fasla published an article titled “Emirati passport ranked first worldwide” on December 3, 2018. The article included the phrase “you can have your 7,000 years of civilization,” which the SCMR alleged was an “unprofessional transgression and unjustified insult to the Egyptian passport.” In response, the SCMR sent a request to the General Authority for Investment (GAI) to suspend MO4, the parent company of El Fasla, as well as CairoTime and CairoZoom.

The GAI responded to the SCMR’s request on December 13, stating that it “found no evidence of [MO4’s] existence,” and it “does not fall under the authority’s auspices and is not subject to the laws it is entrusted with implementing.”

By the end of the month, the SCMR Complaints Committee had recommended that the council block the CairoScene website as it had not acquired a license from the council, and that its parent company MO4 did not have a license from the GAI. According to the Complaints Committee, the website contained “indecent photos and pornographic language.”

After El Fasla, CairoScene was the second of MO4’s websites to be blocked by the Complaints Committee for operating without a license, as well as for “publishing content offensive to the Egyptian state.” Eventually, the company’s other websites were blocked for operating without a license, including CairoZoom, SceneArabia, StartUpScene and El Scene.

The SCMR’s decision to block websites owned by MO4 Network was the first application of the Law Regulating the Press, Media and the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (Law 180/2018), which gives the SCMR sweeping powers, including the authority to block news websites.

MO4 Network also owns El Scene, which was blocked in Egypt on June 26, 2017, shortly after it published what became known as the “army cookies” video in which a group of young men review different sweets, including one produced by the army-owned company Tibarose.

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