#+FILETAGS: @personal
---
title: "Biography"
date: 2003-01-01T00:00:00-00:00
draft: true
language: en
---

The six months sabbatical translator and librarian Amr Gharbeia took in 2004 became a career of linking Arabic content on the web with activism, and of helping civil society and the grass-roots in Egypt and elsewhere to improve their privacy and use technology for social change. An enthusiast for free software and knowledge, he contributed to Arabising content management systems and other software and to starting the Egyptian citizen journalism movement. He is one of the earliest bloggers in Egypt.

Since the Arab uprisings, Gharbeia has focused on the juncture between technology, freedom and the law, and still considers himself a translator between these three domains. He coordinated a civil society effort advocating reforms in telecom regulation and freedom of information policies following the 2011 internet blackout, and investigated surveillance and other digital threats by state actors. His idea for hope in the future includes a stack of free technologies: from permaculture to local manufacturing to free software and decentralised infrastructures. He speaks publicly on matters of technology and human rights, and is currently organising and making available a knowledge base of Egypt's legislations since the end of the British Mandate in 1914 to use for the purpose of policy analysis and reform. His brief time on a Greenpeace ship left him rather critical of the climate activism and NGO agenda's ability to solve planetary problems. When time allows, Amr toys with amateur radio.

Gharbeia is a former Amnesty International staff member, and the former Civil Liberties Director at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

