Digital security expert Ramy Raoof. Image: CELS. Some rights reserved.
Ramy Raoof is a digital security expert bent on helping activists, journalists and others to protect their privacy, and he has won international awards for his efforts. He serves as senior research technologist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a member of the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO), which prioritises work on informational rights as well as police brutality and social protest.
Ramy has extensive experience in the Middle East and North Africa, and in recent months he has been sharing his knowledge with organisations in Latin America. He has seen firsthand how Egyptian officials use the information they collect through surveillance to harass and smear people working at NGOs. This crackdown on activists, which has intensified since 2013, seeks to silence dissent and diverse viewpoints. But Ramy says Egypt is far from alone in its murky use of state surveillance: the problem is global.
