Entrapment Full Movie Watch Online
Aliza Pointon
Government officials across the Middle East and North Africa region are targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people based on their online activity on social media, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Security forces have entrapped LGBT people on social media and dating applications, subjected them to online extortion, online harassment, and outing, and relied on illegitimately obtained digital photos, chats, and similar information in prosecutions, in violation of the right to privacy and other human rights.
[The police] searched all our phones. They took my phone and started sending messages to each other from my phone, then they took screenshots of those conversations and screenshots from my photo gallery. They took photos and videos where I have makeup or a dress on, and they used them as evidence against me. They went through my WhatsApp chats and took contact details so they could entrap my friends as well.
State actors and private individuals across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have entrapped lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people on social media and dating applications, subjected them to online extortion, online harassment, and outing, and relied on illegitimately obtained digital photos, chats, and similar information in prosecutions, in violation of the right to privacy, due process, and other human rights. This report examines digital targeting in five countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia.
Security forces have added these digital targeting tactics to traditional methods of targeting LGBT people, such as street-level harassment, arrests, and crackdowns, to enable the arbitrary arrest and consequent prosecution of LGBT people.
Based on 120 interviews, including 90 with LGBT people affected by digital targeting and 30 with expert representatives, including lawyers and digital rights professionals, this report documents the use of digital targeting by security forces and private individuals against LGBT people, and their far-reaching offline consequences. It also exposes how security forces employ digital targeting as a means of gathering or creating digital evidence to support prosecutions against LGBT people. Research for the report was supported by members of the Coalition for Digital and LGBT Rights: in Egypt, Masaar and an LGBT rights organization in Cairo whose name is withheld for security reasons; In Iraq, IraQueer and the Iraqi Network for Social Media (INSM); in Jordan, Rainbow Street and the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA); in Lebanon, Helem and Social Media Exchange (SMEX); and in Tunisia, Damj Association.
I used to share my daily journals on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. I posted a live broadcast on Facebook where I spoke about LGBT rights. I was met with online hostility, and I became the target of a smear campaign where I was outed as gay which led to my arrest in Saudi Arabia.
What happened in January 2021, some of the [Tunisian] former parliamentarians published my photos and changed the public opinion against me, and also targeted many other activists through [social media] posts that incited violence and discrimination.
I went to the police station to file a complaint because I was accosted in the street by a police officer with verbal harassment. I told him I will complain to the police, and he said go ahead. The case soon changed against me. I was the victim and became the perpetrator.
The series of attacks that lasted for two years affected my mental health to a great extent. I attempted suicide 3 times in 2 years, one of which put me in a coma for 48 hours. I had to leave Tunisia.
I am still seeing a therapist to this day because of what I had been through. I feel very safe now in Sweden. The people here are very peaceful. I feel safe because now I have my rights. I am still an activist on social media and will continue to be so until I can change people online and in reality. Perhaps they will be able to accept those that are different.
Human Rights Watch documented 20 cases of online entrapment on Grindr and Facebook by security forces in Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. Sixteen of those entrapped were arrested by security forces and subsequently detained. In these cases, security forces apparently targeted LGBT people online for the purposes of arresting them. The immediate offline consequences of entrapment range from arbitrary arrest to torture and other ill-treatment, including sexual assault, in detention.
In most prosecution cases as a result of entrapment, individuals were acquitted. Authorities held sixteen LGBT people in pretrial detention pending investigation, ranging from four days to three months, then sentenced them to prison terms ranging from one month to two years. Appellate courts overturned the convictions and dismissed charges in fourteen cases and upheld the convictions of two people but reduced their sentences.
Extortion is another form of digital targeting that LGBT people are particularly vulnerable to because of the mostly hidden nature of LGBT identities and relationships across the region, due to social stigma and the criminalization of same-sex conduct. Across the five countries, individuals trick LGBT people on social media and dating applications and threaten to report them to the authorities or out them online if they do not pay a certain sum of money (at times more than once).
In 9 of the 26 online harassment cases, the victims appear to have been targeted due to their offline LGBT activism. In 17 of the cases, abuse by security forces or private individuals were followed by offline abuse, including arbitrary arrests and interrogations.
As a result of online harassment, LGBT people reported losing their jobs, suffering family violence, including physical abuse, threats to their lives, and conversion practices, being forced to change their residence and phone numbers, deleting their social media accounts, fleeing the country for risk of persecution, and suffering severe mental health consequences.
In most cases, LGBT individuals harassed with public social media posts reported the abusive content to the relevant digital platform. However, in all cases of reporting, platforms did not remove the content, claiming it did not violate company guidelines or standards.
Digital targeting has had a significant chilling effect on LGBT expression. All 90 LGBT people interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that after they were targeted, they began practicing self-censorship online, including whether they use certain digital platforms and how they use digital platforms and social media. Those who cannot or do not wish to hide their identities, or whose identities are revealed without their consent, reported suffering immediate consequences ranging from online harassment to arbitrary arrest and prosecution.
This report demonstrates that the digital targeting of LGBT people has far-reaching consequences. In Egypt, government digital targeting tactics have led to the arbitrary arrests and torture of LGBT people in detention by security forces. In Iraq, targeted LGBT people lived in constant fear of being set up by armed groups and reported being forced to change their residence (or, in some cases, even flee the country), delete all social media accounts, and change their phone numbers. In Jordan, LGBT people feel unable to safely express their sexual orientation or gender identity online, and LGBT rights activism has suffered as a result.
In Lebanon, LGBT people reported offline consequences of being outed online, including family violence, and arbitrary arrests by police based on unlawful phone searches and personal information found on devices. In Tunisia, the government has used digital targeting to crack down on LGBT organizing and to arrest and persecute individuals.
The accounts documented in this report demonstrate the severity of digital targeting of LGBT people in each country. The cases that are state-led apparently reflect government tactics to persecute LGBT people.
These five governments in the region are also failing to hold private actors to account for their digital targeting of LGBT people. Most LGBT people interviewed for this report said that they would not report a crime to the authorities, either because of previous attempts in which the complaint was dismissed or no action was taken or because they felt they would be blamed for the crime due to their non-conforming sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression. As mentioned above, six people who reported being extorted to the authorities ended up getting arrested themselves.
The lack of justice and impunity for abuses, coupled with the immediate harms from the digital targeting and impunity for those harms, have had long-term mental health impacts on LGBT victims of digital targeting. LGBT people recounted the isolation they experienced months and even years after the instance of targeting, as well as their constant fear, post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. Many LGBT people reported suicidal ideation as a result of their experiences with digital targeting, and some even reported attempting suicide. Most of the LGBT people targeted online said they stopped using digital platforms and deleted their social media accounts as a result of digital targeting, which only exacerbated their feeling of isolation.
- Exhibit full transparency regarding resources directed toward user safety and content moderation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including by publishing data on the number of staff or contractors tasked with moderating content originating from the MENA region, and the number of content moderators proficient in all dialects of the Arabic language.
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