Speculations Egypt Spying on COP27 Delegates’ Phones

Date: 12 November 2022 - 20:42

News ID: ۱۰۸۸۷۵

CAIRO (Al Jazeera/AFP) –

Cybersecurity concerns have been raised at the United Nations’ COP27 climate talks over an official smartphone app that reportedly has carte blanche to monitor locations, private conversations and photographs.

About 35,000 people are expected to attend the two-week climate conference in Egypt, and the app has been downloaded more than 10,000 times on Google Play, including by officials from France, Germany and Canada.

Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology developed the app for the summit’s delegates.

It is meant to assist attendees in smoothly navigating the conference, but “the government of Egypt may have weaponized the app and now has the ability to surveil all of the summit attendees”, David Bader, an expert in data science and cybersecurity, told Al Jazeera.

Analysts warn the COP27 app can extensively monitor the user’s movement and communications, and is able to read users’ email and encrypted messages, record phone conversations, and even scan the entire device for sensitive information.

Bader noted while the developer states the app does not collect data: “Surprisingly the app does have the strange ability to access the user’s name, phone number and email address, all of the user’s email – with the ridiculous explanation for ‘app functionality’ and one’s photos for ‘account management’.

“Would you want a stranger accessing your private photos, let alone a foreign government?” Bader said, warning there could be more clandestinely going on with the app.

The majority of apps ask permission to access various aspects of a smartphone, including location for GPS functions or cameras for social media, but users need to be cautious, said Kevin Curran, professor of cybersecurity at Ulster University.

“One has to ask whether each of these permissions are necessary,” Curran said, describing the COP27 app as “highly intrusive”.

“In this case, it is difficult to identify a smoking gun. What we cannot ascertain is whether the Egyptian government is using this for data collection,” Curran told Al Jazeera.

He noted, however, the app could continue to provide information on users even after the climate conference ends on November 18.

According to an analysis of the app by American media group Politico, it can monitor communications even when the device is in sleep mode.

March for Hunger Striker

Meanwhile, chants of “free them all” and “no climate justice without human rights” rang out between the halls of COP27 Saturday, in the largest protest since the UN climate summit began.

Jailed Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, who is at the summit campaigning for her brother’s release, marched in the front line with hundreds behind her.

Seven months into a hunger strike, Abdel Fattah began refusing water last Sunday, as world leaders arrived in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27.

With them came Seif, who at two press conferences this week was heckled by apparently pro-regime attendees, who called her brother a “criminal,” not a “political prisoner.”

Behind her on Saturday -- winding between halls inside which world leaders negotiated over the climate crisis -- hundreds of protesters demanded urgent action towards climate justice and human rights, an AFP correspondent said.