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Climate Talks: Live stream amidst talks of spying at COP27 [1]

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Date: 2022-11-08

The Guardian reports that cybersecurity experts are warning that the official COP27 application requires users to provide access to their camera, location, photos, and emails, raising concerns that Egypt is using it to surveil attendees. To date, on the third day of the talks, the app has been downloaded 5000 times. Over 25,000 are attending the conference, including climate activists from around the world.

Egypt, an authoritarian regime, has already arrested huge amounts of protestors in the lead-up to the conference and isolated and vetted protestors near the talks. The country, which has about 65,000 political prisoners, is being pressured during the talks to free hunger-striking prisoner Alaa Abd El Fattah.

“This is a cartoon super-villain of an app,” said Gennie Gebhart, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s advocacy director. “The biggest red flag is the number of permissions required, which is unnecessary for the operation of the app and suggests they are trying to surveil attendees.

“No reasonable person will want to consent to being surveilled by a nation state, or having their emails read by them, but often people click these permissions without thinking much.”

“You can now download the official #Cop27 mobile app but you must give your full name, email address, mobile number, nationality and passport number. Also you must enable location tracking. And then the first thing you see is this,” tweeted Hossam Baghat, the head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, linking to an app screen showing the face of the Egyptian president.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/8/2134533/-Climate-Talks-Live-stream-and-talks-of-spying-at-COP27

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