Sandvine added to US trade restriction list for supplying technology used for censorship in Egypt

Canada-based Sandvine Inc., a company used to block websites in Egypt, including Mada Masr, has been placed on the United States Department of Commerce’s trade restriction “Entity List,” according to a Federal Register listing published Tuesday.

Sandvine devices are used by authorities in Egypt to control network traffic, assisting in the blocking of websites, blogs and virtual private networks to contribute to control and surveillance exercised against political opposition and criticism.

Sandvine has also been linked to a hack that targeted opposition politician Ahmed Tantawi’s personal phone.

The Federal Register cited Sandvine supplying technology to the Egyptian government, “where it is used in mass web monitoring and censorship to block news as well as target political actors and human rights activists.”

Such activities are “contrary to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States,” the Federal Register document added, according to Reuters.

As per the decision, the company is now effectively banned from purchasing goods and technology from the United States.

Sandvine manufactures PacketLogic devices to effect deep packet inspection, review and ultimately redirect user net traffic. While the device can be used to alert users to billing issues and bandwidth cap limits, it may also be used for surveillance, censorship and infecting users with malware.

The dual-use technology has also been used to “covertly raise money” by hijacking Egyptian users’ connections and redirecting them to revenue-generating content, said the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory investigating malware threats against members of civil society worldwide, in its report on the technology in 2018. The same report also documented the use of the technology to deploy government spyware in Turkey.

Sandvine has sold over US$30 million worth of technology to state network provider Telecom Egypt as well as Vodafone Egypt, along with state entities, including the Defense Ministry and the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, since 2019, according to company documents reviewed by Bloomberg. A deal between the company and Telecom in 2020 was worth more than $10 million, Bloomberg said.

In parallel, Egyptian authorities have implemented blocks on hundreds of websites since May 2017,  including those of news outlets and civil society organizations. As of September 2020, 628 websites were blocked, according to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

Mada Masr was among the first to be blocked, and has worked to circumvent the block by creating mirrors for the website. Without fail, every successive mirror has eventually been blocked as well.

A Citizen Lab report released back in September also linked Sandvine to the breach of former presidential hopeful Ahmed Tanatwi’s phone, with researchers concluding with “high confidence” the Egyptian government’s implication in the hack after the device's forensic examination.

Tantawi, along with some of his campaign members and supporters, is currently on trial after his campaigning for the 2024 presidential elections, from which he withdrew a day ahead of the election process due to intense obstruction during his campaigning process.

"We will continue to leverage all of our enforcement and regulatory authorities to prevent US technology from enabling destabilizing activities, from mass surveillance and the targeting of human rights activists and political opponents to nuclear weapons programs," US Commerce official Matthew Axelrod said in a statement after the document’s publication, according to Reuters.