Egyptian protesters who infiltrated the offices of Egypt's State Security apparatus on Saturday found exactly what they were looking for: surveillance files on millions of Egyptian citizens and caches of information on hundreds of sensitive subjects.
They also found secret torture chambers, evidence of vote rigging, possible complicity in terrorism, state surveillance of the Christian minority and extensive lists of passwords to Skype and Facebook accounts used by ordinary Egyptians.
According to the Meta-Activism Project--and the Twitter/Facebook accounts of Egyptians involved in the State Security raid--the use of WikiLeaks was the primary inspiration for the Facebook page and Yfrog Postings. According to Al Jazeera, the action involved hundreds of protesters and a search for documents detailing the hacking, targeting of human rights groups, plus torture devices and secret detention rooms. The protestors left with plenty of those documents, although Egypt's armed forces called them to return them, as they were part of "a larger investigation into corruption and rights violations."
Then, following the discovery, the Egyptian protesters did a very 21st century thing with their new, liberated information cache: They posted it to Facebook and other social networking sites.
A new Facebook group called Amn Dawla Leaks (State Security Leaks), which is posting scans of secret Egyptian security files, already has more than 12,000 fans. Use of it is accompanied by Egyptian protesters who have taken it upon themselves to upload scans of controversial state security files to Twitpic, Yfrog and similar services.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Egyptian Protesters Raid State Security, Post Government Secrets to Facebook | Fast Company
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