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* Digital-Crime-Scenes_Afsaneh-Rigot-2022                            :ATTACH:
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:ID:       bdda77a5-efb1-43f5-8b38-ad1be0dbc47b
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:NOTER_DOCUMENT: Digital-Crime-Scenes_Afsaneh-Rigot-2022.pdf
:ID:       e2dd1f8e-6c38-409a-a939-b1bb53a35247

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So called 'dual-use' technologies cannot be called so in countries like Egypt. In over ten years of following criminal cases with human rights concern that were brought to court, I have not come across a single case of prosecution using digital evidence obtained by targeted telecoms surveillance. The same can be said of forensic software such as Cellebrite 
pdf:~/org/inbox/pdf/Digital-Crime-Scenes_Afsaneh-Rigot-2022.pdf::6

** Debauchery law not colonial

Egyptian legal framework is not 'colonial-era criminal laws'. Egypt was not part of the British colonies. It was occupied but not colonized. Egypt's 1961 law has nothing to do with British law. Its closest parallel is the Swiss anti-prostitution legislation. If you look at the transcripts of the legislative memos from the time, you'll see it was born out of anti colonial resistance and advocacy, local and European, to end 'white-slavery'.

** Economic courts do not apply a lower standard of proof

The 2019 amendment to the economic courts act 120/2008 came into being in the normal way, and was not issued by decree.

The main issue with cyberlaws, and not just the Egyptian one, is that they create whole new legal domains, requiring the high courts many years, and possibly decades to create the body of jurisprudence and precedent governing this new domain. A similar process happened when modern courts were created to apply criminal codes. I followed the drafting of the cyber crime law since 2007 and until its passing and my main argument has always been there are no new legal domain required as there are no new crimes, only new ways to commit the same old crimes. This goes against the Budapest 2001 Convention on Cyber Crime, which Egypt based its Cyber Crime Act on, then made it much harsher and more overbroad as it is typical of Egyptian laws.

I do not think that using cyberlaw, at least in the case of Egypt, means a lower standard of evidence. Economic courts are normal criminal courts (same as national security courts) that, in theory at least, apply the same procedures. In reality, it could be claimed that judges sitting in economics courts, mostly looking financial crimes, have less experience in cases related to personal freedoms compared to other criminal courts, although the record is generally not good across all courts. However, my impression is the main factor affecting fair trials in cyber crime law are 1) a flawed law, 2) inexperience of most judges with the digital domain, 3) haste of ruling, particularly in first degree criminal courts, and in the case of LGBT cases, 4) bias against the accused.
