Egypt Introduction Over the past half-decade, the Egyptian government has increased its repressive hold over freedom of information on the Internet. It has extended existing policies of censorship and surveillance while displaying evidence of limited and relatively unsophisticated computational propaganda techniques (Freedom House, 2016). Thus, computational propaganda and cyber troop efforts in Egypt must be viewed in the context of existing Internet controls and censorship efforts. Egypt also plays a role in spreading or facilitating disinformation elsewhere in the region. An Overview of Cyber Troop Activity in Egypt. Organizational Form Since assuming the presidency in June 2014, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has increasingly utilized social media and Internet controls (Freedom House, 2019). Internet freedom declined further since 2018 as a result of new legislation. In August 2018 President Sisi signed a new law called the media regulations law (Law No. 180) that forces media outlets to obtain a license from the Supreme Council for Media Regulation. According to the law a media outlet includes any website or social media account with at least five thousand subscribers. Individuals behind such outlets could be subject to account deletion, fines, and even imprisonment if they are found to be distributing information deemed to threaten national security, disturb the public peace, spread fake news, promote discrimination, violence, racism, hatred or intolerance (TIMEP, 2019). The consequence of the new legislation is that any social media accounts or blogs with more than five thousand followers will be treated as media outlets. This makes them liable for publishing ‘false news,’ which remains undefined and subject to interpretation by the newly formed SCMR. According to Mohamed Abdel-Haiz, a board member of the journalists’ union in Egypt, the “vaguely defined national security violations, as well as vaguely defined political, social, or religious norms” allow for wide interpretation and threaten journalists’ freedom (Daugherty, 2019). In addition to the media regulations law, in August 2018, the president also signed the Law on Combating Cybercrimes (Law No. 175) which created a legal framework to block websites deemed a threat to national security or the economy, as well as criminalizing VPNs. Individuals who visit banned websites may be jailed for up to one year, and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are required to hold browsing data and disclose it to security forces upon request (AFTE, 2018). These efforts have been further reinforced by the creation of the government’s Media and Rumour Monitoring Unit, headed by Naaym Saad Zaghloul, and the creation of a hotline in March 2018 for citizens to report fake news (Magdy, 2018). The government begun to block a large number of websites in 2017, when twenty-one websites were blocked in a single day on the grounds of “supporting terrorism and lies”. Websites on this list included local and international news outlets such as Mada Masr and Al Jazeera (AFTE, 2018). According to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) at the end of the first quarter of 2019, 512 websites were reported blocked by the authorities (AFTE, 2019). Ahead of the April 2019 constitutional referendum, the monitoring group NetBlocks found that more than 34,000 websites were blocked in an alleged attempt to suppress opposition to the amendment (Freedom House, 2019). One of the websites that was blocked was Batel, a site launched to voice opposition to the proposed amendment and which asked Egyptians to declare the amendment void by signing their petition. After the first time website 122