Egypt Sentences Tourist to 8 Years Jail for Complaining about Vacation Online | Hacker News Reader

Egypt Sentences Tourist to 8 Years Jail for Complaining about Vacation Online

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53 pointsglitcher19 comments

I traveled to Egypt during a short lull in the revolution (early 2011) and couldn't get over the state of tourism then - I can't imagine how desperate it's gotten nowadays.

From the moment we left our hotel room we were incessantly harassed by vendors hawking everything from taxis to fake artifacts. Sometimes there would be a dozen of them surrounding my family stopping us from moving.

I have a very thick skin having traveled widely, but it got to a point where we couldn't wait to get out of Egypt!

That doesn’t sound as a good idea for a country with lots of tourists like Egypt to start putting them in jail.

Not a good signal for others.

Definitely not worth it from the tourism angle

Good lesson in the value of being familiar with the local law when you visit places that don't protect basic rights you may take for granted.

I was going to say something like that, but it seemed too cruel.

I'm not saying she deserved it. Sorry if it sounded dismissive.

Sorry to sound critical of you. As I said, I almost posted it.

There is a lesson here about how essentially innocent people get caught up by draconian and unappealable corporate policies. In this case, about video licensing. And, seriously, there's a whole VPN industry focused on evading geo-restrictive content availability. But being naive, she didn't think enough like a criminal. And used a valuable Microsoft account.

And seriously, If she had thought it through, she could have used a different VPN, and a different persona with a throwaway Microsoft account. And her primary account would be fine now.

I do try to reach naive people like her. To explain the concept of compartmentalization, and the basics of using virtual machines (VMs) with VPNs and/or Tor. To create unassociated personas. Show them how to play safe.

But it's hard. I don't speak Turkish. And I can not move freely in meatspece as Mirimir.

The 'good lesson' is to play safe and try a virtual tour instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Egypt

"Most sources agree that Egypt is a gross violator of human rights."

The article mentions that she was partially a victim of the social media algorithms that helped her post go viral. But even if the social media engagement algo's weren't so tuned for spreading outrage (since that is so successful at increasing engagement), I can't help but worry that governments like this may start preemptively searching for these types of content violations regardless of if the message becomes widespread.

Surely the point of posting it was to spread the word. It going viral seems consistent with her original intent.

Lesson learned: Never ever go to Egypt.

That's logical and mature. Surely America or other states other than Egypt would never detain people for potentially libelous speech, no matter how bad the optics are.

- A Person Visiting Egypt Routinely and Finds All of Our Nations an Embarrassment

For all practical purposes defamation is not a crime in the US[1]. Some states still have the laws on the books, but they are not enforced anymore.

The rest of the world however is still a mixed bag [2].

[1] https://cpj.org/reports/2016/03/north-america.php [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

Scratches Egypt from the list

Not sure what to say about this. Proud to be an American I guess. Free speech is a glorious thing.

You may want to keep an eye on things like this then:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/18/doct...

Hopefully this nonsense gets stopped in the courts.

Different that it is a private person suing you vs the state throwing you in jail imo. Also having a family member who's been on the side of one of those sites where people can post anonymous reviews (BadBizReport I think) they are usually bunk. Promotes salacious allegations as restitution is hard to come by and expensive.

https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-...

Also the guy in the article definitely seemed to be harassing the doctor with those emails about people getting arrested.

A civil lawsuit, however frivolous, is a far cry from 8 years in jail.

So would Lebanon have extradited her, if she had waited to post it?

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