Flickr removes pictures of secret agents

Photography website Flickr has deleted photos of Egyptian intelligence agents from the internet. The pictures were posted by Hossam Arabawy, a famous Egyptian blogger who is closely involved in the protest movement that caused the fall of the authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak, last February. According to the online photo service, Arabawy did not create the footage himself and may therefore not publish them on Flickr.

A spokesman for Flickr confirmed that they have removed photos from Arabawys pages, according to technology blog Techcrunch. Arabawy took part in a raid of the headquarters of the infamous Egyptian state security service Amn al-Dawla, situated in an eastern suburb of the capital Cairo, earlier this month. Protesters were able to reach the archives of the intelligence agency, in which numerous records were found on opponents of the regime and the modus operandi of the organization.

Arabawy found a disk with images of secret agents of the service. He posted the photos on his Flickr profile, but, last Friday he announced on his blog that Flickr had removed the pictures. Flickr, currently owned by internet company Yahoo, says the display of the pictures is a violation of copyrights to the material. Under the terms and conditions of Flickr, users may not publish images on their page without permission, if they do not own the copyright. The intelligence service is probably the holder of the copyrights to the pictures and, -from a copyright point of view- therefore they are they only ones to decide what happens to the material. Employees of Amn al-Dawla had already begun to detroy thousands of photos and documents, before their offices were stormed by angry civilians. Arabawy is not amused by the procedural approach chosen by Yahoo and accuses Flickr of "censorship". He believes that showing the images serves a more fundamental interest than the protection of copyright.

Bronnen: Techcrunch, BlogHerald