On October 31, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), alongside 27 other human rights organizations and experts, called on technology company Sandvine to publicly commit to upholding the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and to provide stronger oversight and transparency of its newly announced human rights processes and policies.
The letter was prompted by Sandvine’s removal on October 21 from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List of companies subject to export controls. The company had been added to the list February 2024 due to its sale of deep packet inspection technology to governments, including Egypt and Belarus, that used it for deploying spyware and “in mass web-monitoring and censorship to block news.” The Commerce Department stated that Sandvine was removed due to changes in its corporate structure and leadership, its ongoing exit from non-democratic countries, establishment of a human rights due diligence process, and other reforms.
CPJ and its partners are calling for Sandvine to provide remedies to those harmed by its previous actions, in addition to other transparency and accountability measures relating to the company’s announced reforms.
“While Sandvine claims it will implement corrective measures to redress the harm caused, it has yet to clarify how it plans to address the impact on Egypt’s 110 million citizens, deprived of access to independent news under an oppressive regime, or on journalists who have risked their safety to inform the public,” Nora Younis, editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based news website Al-Manassa, told CPJ. “Where is the apology to the Egyptian people?”
Al-Manassa is one of the independent media outlets in Egypt that remains blocked due to Sandvine’s technology, which was sold to Egyptian authorities.
Read the letter here.