Tuesday, March 8, 2011

An Egyptian Wikileaks ... Facebook

The page is called Amn Dawla Leaks ("leaking state security"). We find ample evidence of the surveillance state set up by the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt: passwords or Facebook accounts Skype Egyptian citizens, monitoring reports of the Christian minority in the country, or photographs of cellulles suspected of having been used to torture opponents and Islamists.

These documents were seized by protesters who broke into force last Saturday at the premises of the Department of Homeland Security, which published them on Facebook. The creators of the page claiming inspiration from Wikileaks, even in their logo, which mixes a candle and the hourglass decorated with globes of Wikileaks.

Created March 5, the page has already received nearly 14,000 "like" the mark of appreciation of the social network. SECURITY REDUCED HIGH POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION But the similarities with the website that has published tens of thousands of reports of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan end there.

Unlike Wikileaks, Amn Dawla Leaks little concern for the anonymity of its contributors: if the police investigation, Facebook can indeed be forced to provide identification information available to it to investigators. Similarly, where Wikileaks relies on a vast network of mirror sites, which allowed him to keep copies online after entering his domain name by the U.S.

authorities, Facebook does not guarantee the sustainability of what is published. As host, Facebook is legally responsible for the suppression of unlawful content on its platform in most countries. In the past, the social network has shown that he preferred to delete the content targeted by complaints rather than take the risk of being condemned or blocked in most authoritarian countries.

The risk of a complaint is currently low for Amn Dawla Leaks. But if it is unlikely that the page is covered by the supporters of the regime Mubarak, Egyptian citizens might not like to see the surveillance reports published on the social network. Unlike Wikileaks, which designed its infrastructure to enable publishing of large volumes of documents on all subjects, Amn Dawla Leaks compromise is dedicated to a single subject, with a low security but a particularly effective tool for dissemination.

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