I am surprised no one is concerned about this in regards to the safety of the callers. The government is obviously taking all steps in silencing in or outbound communication - with the obvious control structure in place over communications, it would seem feasible for the government to trace calls to these specific numbers (even if they block them) and punish people who do so.
Don't get me wrong, I want to know what is going on there, and anyone willing to leak that information out is doing something heroic imho - but the safety of these individuals could be in serious threat - or maybe I am just overly paranoid...
There are limits to what a government can do. Secrecy matters greatly in conspiracies, my suspicion is that it matters a whole deal less in revolutions. In those the regime has other priorities than chasing some random people who called that number, they are probably not even aware of it.
Many things people in Egypt currently do would probably lead to punishment if they did it all on their own, the mass protects them (and that’s one of the reasons why revolutions can work at all). Even if the regime decides to do something about it they would have to use blunt force and not surgical precision, there are just too many things happening at the same time to deal with all of them individually.
This obviously doesn’t make it absolutely certain that there will be no problems, I just think it’s rather unlikely.
Of course. Protests and revolutions are dangerous business. It makes me thoughtful about whether I'd be brave enough to take advantage of these kinds of tools should the necessity arise.
I'm from Tunisia and in the Tunisian revolution When I asked some of my friends if they don't fear being caught for sharing sensitive materials and photos, they told me: Really? The government can know what you are doing on Facebook? May be these were just my friends...
But here is a more amusing story: A boy has a group in Facebook and shared some photos of the interior minister. He left his information out. The cops caught him and brought him to the ministry and abused him. When he was kicked out of the ministry, he met with a TV reporter and told his story and in the end he said that he's going to start a page where he'll put all of the government abuses and funny pictures about the government. The story made my day.
I'd rather take my chances of being one of hundreds (or thousands) of people speaking out on twitter than being one of hundreds of thousands marching on the streets against tanks and men with guns.
Regardless, personally I'd do both. While it's nowhere near comparable to the situation in Egypt, witnessing police brutality in English demonstrations (yes, FAR FAR FAR less severe than in Egypt, but still... one of my earliest memories was being on a political demonstration at age four in which troops of policemen on horses were charging at us with riot police behind) hasn't stopped me. And, where I in the Egyptians' situation, it wouldn't stop my then, either. The danger is far worse, but so the need for action is also far greater.
Don't get me wrong, I want to know what is going on there, and anyone willing to leak that information out is doing something heroic imho - but the safety of these individuals could be in serious threat - or maybe I am just overly paranoid...