Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster

[Ed Jewett]

US behind Egypt internet crackdown
Sat Jan 29, 2011 3:27PM


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Police fire tear gas towards protesters in Suez, Egypt
U.S. companies are involved in providing technology that helps the Egyptian government to crack down on communications and monitor protestors on the Internet and mobile phones.

A U.S. company appears to have sold Egypt technology to monitor Internet and mobile phone traffic that is possibly being used by the ruling regime to crack down on communications as protests erupt throughout the country.

Boeing-owned, California-based company Narus sold Telecom Egypt, the state-run Internet service provider, "real-time traffic intelligence" equipment, more commonly known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology. Common Dreams

HIGHLIGHTS


The company is also known for creating "NarusInsight," a supercomputer system allegedly used by US' National Security Agency and other entities to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of public and corporate Internet communications in real time. Common Dreams

Telecom Egypt, the nation's dominant phone and Internet service provider, is a state-run enterprise, which made it easy on Friday morning for authorities to pull the plug and plunge much of the nation into digital darkness.

Narus provides Egypt Telecom with Deep Packet Inspection equipment (DPI), a content-filtering technology that allows network managers to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers on the information superhighway.

"Anything that comes through (an Internet protocol network), we can record," Steve Bannerman, Narus' marketing vice president, once boasted to Wired about the service. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on; we can reconstruct their (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls."

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Egypt's government "not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media." Huffington Post



FACTS & FIGURES


Narus, now owned by Boeing, was founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts to create and sell mass surveillance systems for governments and large corporate clients.

In addition to Narus, there are a number of companies, including many others in the United States, that produce and traffic in similar spying and control technology: Zeugma Systems (Canada), Camiant (USA), Procera Networks (USA), Allot (Israel), Ixia (USA), AdvancedIO (Canada) and Sandvine (Canada), among others.

When commercial network operators use DPI, the privacy of Internet users is compromised. But in government hands, the use of DPI can crush dissent and lead to human rights violations.

Virtually all internet access in Egypt is cut off as the government battles to contain the street protests that threaten to topple President Hosni Mubarak. Telegraph

HJ/KA/DB

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