The draft of Egypt’s first anti-cybercrime law was finalized by the Ministry of Justice and will be sent to the State Council for revision before ratification by the president.
“Imprisonment for not less than a year will be the punishment for anyone who launches or contributes in launching a website on an information network aiming to promote the committing of any crime stipulated in the penal code, or any laws,” read a text of the draft law obtained by Youm7.
The law grants the detectives and arresting authorities the power to block any website publishing “any phrases, numbers, pictures, movies or promotional materials that threaten national security.” In this case, the filed report would be considered before the criminal court that would issue its ruling to approve or reject on the same day of receiving it.
Those who refrain from submitting to the court’s decision would be sentenced to at least three years in prison and fined not less than 500,000 EGP ($65,000,) and not exceeding 1 million EGP.
In case a lack of executing the court’s ruling led to the death of a person or any damage to national security, a person could be punished by life in prison and fined between 3 million EGP and 10 million EGP.
The law also listed penalties including imprisonment and fine for anyone steals another person’s e-mail and used it in a way to hurt the owner, or anyone created an e-mail or a website and falsely attributed them to another person.
Anyone who disrupts, impedes, wiretaps or “reduces the efficiency of the work of any website” will be facing prison sentence and a fine of at least 50,000 EGP and does not exceed 250,000 EGP.
If the website belongs to the state or any public legal person, the perpetrator will be sentenced to life in prison and a fine of at least 100,000 EGP and does not exceed 500,000 EGP.
