If the idea of blockchain technology is to simplify financial and administrative transactions by removing intermediaries and essentially decentralizing processes, why partner with La Poste Tunisienne, a state-owned enterprise? Walid Driss of the startup DigitUs answers his own question: « I never thought I’d be working on a project in collaboration with an administration in Tunisia, let alone on a technological project, something quite disruptive and very cutting edge… » But Driss and business partner Hichem Ben Fadhl never intended to go it alone, and although they had considered other partners at the outset, La Poste had « a clear need, and there is a gap in the ecosystem that we want to help fill. »
The State of Surveillance in Tunisia
Acknowledgement: The State of Surveillance in Tunisia is the result of an ongoing collaboration by Privacy International and Nawaat.
Privacy in Tunisia: Legislation, Application, and Public Outreach
The Tunisian constitution of 2014 enshrines (via Article 24) the protection of privacy at home and in the domains of communications correspondence and personal data. The text itself conforms with European case law, but what about current legislation, its application, and its impact on Tunisians?
Terrorism and ICT: Keeping alive old surveillance practices in Tunisia
On the surface, the counterterrorism law of 25 July 2015 appears to introduce innovative measures to address crimes associated with new technologies. A number of these provisions, however, contain flaws including vague definitions, the privilege of immunity granted to investigators, threats to fundamental rights to privacy and access to information, and the exclusion of the National Authority for the Protection of Personal Information from the special commission in the fight against terrorism.
Hacking Team : the company that spied on you during the Tunisian revolution!
Classified by Reporters Without Borders among “The Enemies of Internet,” Hacking Team is an Italian company specializing in software, surveillance systems, and decryption. On 6 July 2015, company servers were hacked, rendering public 400 Gb of information. One item to have emerged is a table showing the company’s past and current clients where we find listed for Tunisia the ATI, Tunisian Internet Agency. According to the leaked information, ATI benefited from Hacking Team services via a contract for a “demo” system in 2011—in the midst of the country’s revolution.
Tunisia: A new campaign for a better internet
Complaining about expensive prices and bad services is definitely the most repeated talk anyone would hear in Tunisia and the internet is no longer excluded. In fact, internet is not only a tool to gather people for a cause, organize boycott campaigns or even protests. Internet and more precisely slow internet and its cost became the subject of the protest today.
Tunisia’s ICT Sector: Lobbies within the Council for Digital Economy deviate from National Strategic Plan
Tunisia has missed its opportunity to create an independent, multi-party governance apparatus, to develop and employ mechanisms for open and transparent decision-making and thereby save the ICT sector which is presently overrun by business and politics.
Fellagas: an Interview with Tunisia’s Islamists hackers
In the past few days, several Tunisian hacking attacks targeted governmental and media websites. Following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, the same group of Tunisian islamists hackers, that is called “Fallaga”, claimed the responsibility of the #Jesuispascharlie cyberattack that targeted more than 150 French websites. The group had also hacked the Tunisian Journalists Union website after it expressed its support for the French satirical weekly newspaper, Charlie Hebdo.
Lobby-Leaks: the challenge of transparency in Tunisia
It is not a secret that lobbies exist in Tunisia. But who are these influential groups that make and demolish the political decisions ? Tunisian activists, who call for more transparency, tried to shed some light one these networks through a network graph which is likely to shake these opaque and complex spheres.
Arab IGF III: What we will remember
The 3rd edition of the Arab Internet Governance Forum ‘Arab IGFIII’ was the opportunity to notice how the global debate on Internet Governance has spurred the regional and local discussions on Internet Governance related topics.
Global Surveillance Monitoring – Nawaat Partners with Privacy International for Legal Reform in Tunisia
Defining the core of Nawaat’s collaborations with Privacy International, Sami Ben Gharbia points to the present legal battle that encompasses the Technical Telecommunications Agency mandated by decree and the (leaked) draft law concerning cybercrime, both of which must be addressed by «deconstructing the legal discourse of these threats and coming up with a proposal that will respect human rights.»
ATT and New Cybercrime Draft Law are But Snags in Tunisia’s Threadbare Legislative System
It is the transgression from the notion of censorship as a right and protection against physical and verbal violence that Tunisia’s legislative body must now recalibrate in order to advance in this period designated as democratic transition. That Tunisian law adheres to international standards is not merely insufficient, but ill-fitted, unconstructive, and myopic if compliance with international conventions translates into the copy-paste importation of text and a lack of contextualization and comparative analysis.
Inciting Local and Foreign Investment in Tunisia’s ICT Sector
n Tunisia, the prominent actors and agents of democratic transition and the national media landscape that are so often the topics of Nawaat’s investigations—including the ATI, the ATT, the HAICA, whistleblowing platforms, freedom of expression and the right to information, transparency, the engagement of civil society—are also the foundation and driving forces (along with several important institutions mentioned below) of the vast and dynamic realm of Information and Communication Technologies.
‘US Promotes Network to Foil Digital Spying’ …while Sayada Builds Network to Foster Digital Justice
That the Mesh Sayada case study has been presented in the context of US surveillance operatives is relevant to one discussion but is meanwhile a superficial and imprecise presentation of the project for citizens who participated in its development and to whom it belongs. The mesh network was not brought to Sayada; it was built in Sayada as a locally-devised, collaboratively-implemented initiative to promote Open Source and Open Data principles.
American Embassy Tunis on Facebook: an online space for American soft power?
After perusing the American Embassy Tunis Facebook page, the page welcome statement seems either a laughable euphemism or an endearing show of naïveté. The description is accurate to the extent that the the page accomplishes what it promises and what one would expect from an embassy Facebook page, for it serves as a cultural counterpart to the official Embassy of the United States Tunis website’s services and procedural information and news updates.
Chelsea Manning and the Arab Spring
After Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison Chelsea Manning said in her statement that “Sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society.” I don’t know if she knows that she helped us, in this part of the world, to move toward that noble goal. Closing a cell door on a prisoner with a free mind has opened a thousand and one doors for a free society.
Freedom Online Coalition: A Call To Governments From Civil Society
This is a call to governments from civil society. this call was presented during the closing ceremony of the Freedom Online Conference that took place in Tunis between June 17-18, 2013. This call captures the “Sense of the room” at the Justice Tent that was organized at Nawaat on june 17th, 2013.
Justice Tent: Leaks and transparency in the digital age
The recent revelations leaked by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have shown the depth of collusion between intelligence services and […]