At a meeting on Tuesday evening with the members of the Rotary Club of Cairo Royal, Telecommunications Minister Tarek Kamel answered a question by saying that his ministry allows security organs to tap people's personal mobile and land phones. He justified this by affirming that this happens throughout the world and that if Egypt did not do so, there would be no investors. This is the first time I have heard that phone tapping brings investments. Before reading the minister's statement, I used to delude myself into believing that investors go to a country where they can enjoy all freedoms and public rights, including free and secret communications concerning their business so that their information is not leaked to their competitors. The minister then went on to say that phone tapping requires special technological potentials and that the government can not tap into 40 million subscribers. Therefore, he said there are some rules for tapping, but he did not specify whether these rules are constitutional, legal or only technological. If the minister were as concerned with the Constitution as he is with communications technology, his answer would have reassured investors and normal people even more. In fact, Art. 45.2 of the Egyptian Constitution sets forth that correspondence, telegrams, phone calls and other forms of communication must remain secret and may be confiscated or tapped only with a judicial warrant and for a specific period of time, according to the Law. If the minister were concerned with the law, he would know that the first phone tapping measure is a notification filed by a competent security organ to the Public Prosecution. Such notification contains information about a specific crime committed by specific persons. At the end of this notification, the security body asks for permission to tap phone calls and record information related to the crime. If the Public Prosecution is persuaded of the seriousness of the investigations, it requests an authorization from the judge for no more than a month. At the end of this period of time, the security organ must transcribe the phone calls it has recorded and submit them to the Public Prosecution and if the latter finds indications that the crime has been or is being committed, the authorization is renewed in the same way and for the same period. The process eventually comes to an end when enough evidence is collected against the suspects and they are arrested, with the Prosecution's authorization, of course. The Ministry of Telecommunications is responsible for guaranteeing the secrecy of phone calls, correspondence and telegrams. Based on the previous explanation, the Ministry is not entitled to tap phone calls or to give any security organ the authorization to do so. And the same applies to private telecommunications companies working in this field according to professional rules, as the contracts with the subscribers set forth that the latter's communication must be secret. In other words, the ministry, by doing so, violates the Constitution, the Law and professional values and does something which falls out of its competence. The security organs which record phone calls to find out a crime do not have the right to use what has nothing to do with this crime, as this information is part of a person's privacy – even it that person is charged with a crime. Likewise, they do not have the right to spread this information to the public opinion. In the mid-1980s, we (the Tagammu Party) obtained a device allowing us to detect bugs in multiple places inside the party's and Al-Ahaly newspaper's headquarters. Mr. Khaled Mohieldin phoned Interior Minister Hassan Abou Pasha and said to him: "You are spying on us. This is something we don't fear, as we're not breaking the law, and if you use this information to protect the country, we have no objection. But if you pass our secrets on to the National Democratic Party (NDP), this is something we can't accept, as it has nothing to do with national security." No one obviously objects to using all potentials to protect national and social security and to find out spies, plotters, terrorists, corrupt people, poison traders, thugs and thieves of public money. Indeed, we desperately need sufficient budgets enabling security organs to update their working tools and reform their financial conditions in order to adequately reward those organs for the great efforts they make and the great risks they run. Yes, the latest constitutional amendment allows, in Article 79, the enactment of an anti-terror law containing the exceptions to the guarantees set forth in the Constitution, including those in Article 45.2. However, the law has not been enacted yet and the constitutional amendment itself sets forth that such exceptional measures must be carried out under judicial control. Yes, the Emergency Law, which has been extended until May 2010, allows tapping phone calls and correspondence. The government, though, has declared that it was asking this extension for reasons related only to terrorism. Thus, the government can not tap non-terrorists' phone calls without a judicial authorization. In a nutshell, we want an official declaration dissipating the doubts raised by the minister's declarations and, if not to reassure our poor countrymen, to reassure foreign investors that Egypt is a country freedoms are guaranteed. Oh lords who are in the government, mercy on us!
