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1) How should I relate your profession in my book? As a researcher, a sociologist, a journalist or, an activist?
My activism years are mostly over now, and since 2011 I have been more involved in policy work, só I guess you can refer to me as a veteran activist and privacy advocate.
2) Did you participated in the media camp in Tahrir? If yes, can you descrecer me, briefly, how was physically this camp? How many tents? How many people involved?
Youssef Faltas came to me and said he would like to give a tent for people who will sleep over every night. I took the small blue two person tent from him and that was just it. Ahmad Gharbeia, Ahmad Abdalla and myself had a banner saying “we collect videos” and we did take content from USB sticks and SD cards and on our laptops. This was the seed for the revolution archive which started the Mosireen media collective. I was one of five founders. There is no big sotry, really. Just a few people with the right skills at the right time.
3) This is already a much talked topic, but in your opinion what was the real role of new technologies in the Arab Spring in Egypt?
It is a much discussed topics, and I find both sides of the argument lacking. Empirical or descriptive ananlysis done by people who were not there, Zeynep Tefukci comes to mind but she is not the only one. This strand has no way of catching the social interactions that went on during the crucial days but also for years before. They are dealing with a partial dataset, even when it comes to the people who came together via an internet dynamic. Most of the key interactions between these individuals took place in spaces, electronic and otherwise, that are not immediately available to academics. Sifting through online streams will not give you a complete picture.
This is of paramount importance during street actions, when people doing the most important thimgs, or people witnessing the most important things, have no time to post. I always go back to the Tweets from Tahrir book to demostrate this. Even though I am featured in the book, the greatest majority of the tweets are from people who did not spend all the time in the square. If you spent all the time in the square, you probably didn't have a connection, a charged phone, or the space of mind to do side things like posting.
The other side of the argument, however, is also lacking. The revolutions would have started anyway. Granted. There are socio-economic, environmental and political reasons for this to happen. However, one cannot ignore the majr influence the internet has provided, especially in Egypt. For several years before the revolutions, the internet was developing skills to argue in an open space, to coordinate without heirarchy(and mostly fail there), to have appealing campaigns, to offer a discource that is not dry as the political parties do, and most important of all, to focus on building a process, not an organisation. The call to occupy Tahrir and the popularity it had was no surprise in that sense, because it was building on eight years of using technology for social change.
Having said that, all the internet could do, and all the democratic groups could do for that matter, is to create a crisis. This is the only tactic we have been able to use ectively throughout the movement's history in 2003's anti-war demonstrations and first Tahrir occupation in my lifetime. The situation would not have escalated to pose a real threat to the regime if not for the massive street violence that took place on 28 January 2011. We create a crisis. Much bigger groups do the weight-lifting.
The role of new technologies is also limited in the sense that during the sit-in days, in addition to my phone which I used for endless interviews with big media (I was tweeting on BBC News instead of @gharbeia), the most useful technologies were sticks, rocks, and blankets.
4) What was the regime intention to turn off the internet?
I do not assume the ability to read the regime's mind, but I imagine limiting free flow of information, information of the violations it is committing, but also information and messages encouraging more people to join the protests. We do know there has been a plan put in place to overtake telecoms in case of emergencies following the 6 April 2008 protests in the Detla city of Mahalla.
5) Why the regime action was so unsuccessful? Turning off the internet, social networks and cellular phone, the demonstrations grew even faster. Why the censorship did not work?
Perhaps because it was too late already, and perhaps because while trying to scare people away using the big media, the regime itself sent a message that what's happening is unprecedented. Everybody knows that if whatever happening is small indeed, the regime will be safe to ignore. It was clear this was too big to bury or crush.
6) You said in an interview to researchers Alexander and Miriyam something like: “the network is the people, not the technology”. Can you talk a little more about this sentence? I would love to use it in my book. Ideally, can you explain ‘what you said exactly' and ‘in what context you said it'?
I do not remember that particular interview, but this is a line I use often. I do not see technologies except for their effect on social relations. Social relations are not only about new technlogies, however. They are also about how people hack them and find new uses. When asked of her opinion on a new internet service, Jillian says 'Ask the Egyptians'. Twitter was not created with the Egyptian use case in mind of coordinating information to trace an activist kidnappen by plainclothes police from the streets of Cairo while the information is shared on websites and with human rights groups and the press. This is a hack, and such heavy use by Egyptians actually broke Twitter in 2008 and forced it to stop international SMS delivery. Twitter is created so that people can talk about the busy Tokyo underground, or the quarrel a teenager had with her grandmother, or the success of a 27 single man in cooking a bowl of pasta after work. Facebook was created so that people can spy one another and poke each other. Facebook did not imagine it can be used so people can RSVP to toppling a dictator party. I am basically re-itirating Ethan Zuckerman's Cute Cat Theorum. These websites are created to share pictures of cute cats, not for instigting social action.
It was very clear to me while sitting in the 'media tent'. We collect material from people who shot them, then we carry this content, across the Nile on the same infamous bridge, under curfew to a place with Internet. Sarah Carr lived in Dokki and was so frustrated with internet services she changed to a smaller ISP months before the revolution. Noor ISP also serving the stock exchange and a few other critical accounts and it was small anyway, so it was not shut down until a few days later. The other part of the social network, bloggers, journalists, and activists who built trust and skills over the years, stayed at Sarah's and frantically uploaded the material and spoke to the media. It occurred to me then that Facebook.com, twitter.com and youtune.com are not social networks. They are social services used by the social network. We are the social network, and if the services are not available, as they weren't in Tahrir the first few days, the social network will find a way to communicate and organise. People will hold meetings in rooms, drop leaflets on the streets, march in the neighborhood to gather more people, like they have always done. Social services websites replace the rooms, the leaflets and the streets. The social network is always made of people.