GoKawiilIn early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert.
The Armed Forces asks Egypt's honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honour and our precious Egypt.
A series of messages arrived all ostensibly from the network provider Vodafone. All pro-regime and all with the undercurrent of violence.
Why did Vodafone send these messages? Earlier in the week, all Internet access was cut off now phones were blasting propaganda to the masses.
After the network went down, Vodafone issued a statement saying:
It has been clear to us that there were no legal or practical options open to Vodafone, or any of the mobile operators in Egypt, but to comply with the demands of the authorities.
Do you have to follow orders? Do you have to obey the law even when it is unjust? Should multinational corporations instruct local executives to be loyal to their parent company or the rulers of the country they live in?
After the messages came in - including promises that "The Armed Forces cares for your safety and well being and will not resort to using force against this great nation" - Vodafone Global, safely ensconced in the UK, put out another statement:
Under the emergency powers provisions of the Telecoms Act, the Egyptian authorities can instruct the mobile networks of Mobinil, Etisalat and Vodafone to send messages to the people of Egypt. They have used this since the start of the protests. These messages are not scripted by any of the mobile network operators and we do not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content. Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable. We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator. Statements - Vodafone Egypt
A few years later I was at a networking event chatting to a guy. We'd both previously worked for Vodafone. Me in the UK, he in Egypt. I asked him about the incident - he talked about how they built the SMS infrastructure, what they did to secure it, how they prevented spam, and how one day armed men arrived.
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