Government says Facebook's temporary permit expired

Apr 3, 2016 19:50 GMT  ·  By

The Egyptian government has announced it blocked Facebook's Free Basics Internet plan for its citizens, claiming that the service's temporary permit had expired. News agency Reuters claims authorities banned it because Facebook didn't cooperate with the government's request for surveillance.

Facebook's Free Basics plan is part of the company's Internet.org initiative to provide free Internet to regions of the globe where Internet is either too expensive or unavailable.

Facebook Free Basics was already banned in India

The catch with Facebook's Free Basics plan is that the company partners with local ISPs to provide free Internet access, but only to a limited set of services it deems important.

For this reason, the plan was banned in India at the end of 2015. Now, in statements made by government officials this week, they're saying that the Free Basics' plan temporary permit has expired, and the service had to shut down.

Prior to this announcement, there was no known public record specifying that Egypt has granted Facebook a temporary permit for Free Basics.

Government wanted to spy on its citizens, Facebook said no

Reuters claims, citing sources inside the Egyptian government, that authorities have decided to close down the service after Facebook didn't want to cooperate with the government on various surveillance requests.

Last September Facebook boosted the service's security after local human rights and privacy advocates have complained about it not using encryption.

Since then, the service has been operating via HTTPS, taking the user's traffic and relaying it to other service providers in encrypted format, making it almost impossible for government agencies to spy at any point during this transfer on its citizens.

Facebook's Free Basics Internet plan was used by over three million Egyptians, from a total population of 90 million. Standard Facebook services, like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook's main website and mobile app remained unaffected when accessed from other ISPs.