Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

also complicated, involving a complex manipulation of telecommunications
infrastructure in cooperation with the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI by its French title).
The equipment used in this operation is still in place and it is not yet clear what will be
done with it (Silver 2011).
At its most basic, the program would simply block certain websites; at its most
deviant, the program would filter private e-mails en route, replacing them with nonsense,
phony advertising, or in the worst cases, with sexually explicit material. In some cases, e-
mails would simply not arrive. The result was an increasingly intimidating and unreliable
electronic communications environment in an era when commerce, administration, and
simple social interaction relies ever more heavily on digital correspondence. The
indiscriminate application of politically-sensitive “flag words” that would appear in
otherwise innocuous e-mails led to an exaggerated effect of the security program beyond
those it intended to censor.
The second key issue with security forces during the revolution was a structural
problem in the administrative police force. Although it is not possible to prove one way
or the other, the Tunisian people might have been more tolerant of limitations on their
political freedoms if it had not been accompanied by a corresponding assault on their
daily welfare, including the cyber-assaults described above. Being a police officer in
Tunisia before the revolution in most cases meant a free license to abuse or profit from
civilians. However, the situation was more complex than a simple will to malice and
extortion, which it must be noted did not affect all police officers, but was widespread
enough to seriously taint their reputation as a professional corps.
In fact, a major part of the issue was that police officers were simply underpaid.
This is, of course, not to condone their behavior, but rather to explain why it was so
pervasive and how the regime had a hand in its perpetuation. The problem was not simply
a matter of a preponderance of malicious individuals, it was the result of a deep-seated
institutional problem, one that has yet to be adequately resolved (Arieff 2011).
If Ben Ali had been concerned only with repression, the situation might not have
been so dire. It was his desire to maintain the facade of pluralism and civil society that
required the employment of such a bloated security force. To force the closure of
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