Rights groups file lawsuit to halt state’s Internet tracking

Eight human rights organizations have filed a lawsuit to halt the Ministry of Interior’s new Internet surveillance system, according to an official statement released on Wednesday.

The system is designed to monitor both public activity, such as posts on social media platforms and forums, and also private activity, such as communication in chat rooms, phone calls and texts.

The ministry will exercise its “electronic grip” by setting up a “monitoring instrument” to deal with security risks on social media, including any material that defames religion, spreads rumors or slander, incites violence, calls for protests or sit-ins, encourages debauchery or “liaising with the enemy,” or any other of a long list of threats enumerated by the ministry in a leaked report.

The system is a flagrant violation of the recently passed Constitution, which grants the right to free speech, access to information and the right to security and privacy, the rights groups claimed.

The ministry’s new mechanism aims to “identify those who pose a threat to society” by identifying terms and expressions that violate the law and a general moral code. It will also analyze the opinions and trends of social media users by tracking the most common topics, according to the report.

The ministry’s system will be able to monitor everything published on users’ social media accounts in a timeline format, and monitor followers, fans and friends of certain accounts and add them to special lists in the system.

“The system does not only threaten the privacy of millions of social media users in the private sphere,” the statement argued, “but also threatens public freedoms for its ongoing public monitoring of what individuals do on the social media platforms that have become an integral part of the public sphere.”