6 Responses to “Kefaya website censored in Egypt?”  

1. 1 Fhar May 5th, 2008 at 10:40 am

   Yes, Kefaya’s site has been blocked in Egypt at least since I started checking yesterday afternoon (Cairo time), as is الشعب, the Labor Party’s paper, and both are accessible via a proxy in the Bay Area.

   I recommend people use this program to keep tabs on net filtering. It was developed by a Tunisian blogger.

   http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/403checker/

2. 2 mado May 5th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

   yes comrade the web site is blocked.
   ana la7zt kda mn ambr7 @ night bas a3taked anwo hyb2a 7agb mo2akt.

3. 3 Lars A. May 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

   I’m really not so sure, unless someone could provide more concrete evidence. I also tried to log into the Kifaya and 3amal sites yesterday, as I guess did almost any journalist, researcher, activist or pretty much anyone who tries to keep tracks on things in Egypt.

   But the thing is that, without being certain, I expect the 3amal and Kifaya sites to be run on relatively small-capasity servers. So if traffic is high, they would probably shut down. That they were available by proxy doesn’t mean they were blocked, as a proxy could be from before the server broke down because of high traffic.

   That doesn’t mean the sites weren’t blocked, though, only that I’d really like to see more hard proof.

4. 4 Fhar May 5th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

   The proxy I was using doesn’t cache pages. It simply forwards http requests, so the internal and external tests were are the same time, and I repeated them throughout the evening and earlier today.

   The strange thing about it was that Kefaya timed out, whereas 3amal (actually just their newspaper, not the party website, which just seems to be broken) returned an Error 103.

   The thing that makes me wonder if there might be another explanation is that neither site seems to have any logistical or tactical importance. If they are being blocked, it is obviously meant simply to be punitive, as there is no tactical reason to block them to maintain security.

5. 5 ash-shakkak May 5th, 2008 at 11:40 pm

   Worked fine on Link.net yesterday and today. Loads slow, suggesting overloaded server.

6. 6 Hossam el-Hamalawy May 6th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

   Thanks for the info shabab.. I’m more inclined to think it’s overload of internet traffic other than a govt blocking attempt.. but I have no way to be sure of that from here in California…