Jamming of Al Jazeera's Egyptian satellite services geolocated near Cairo (July 2013 onward)
What happened
Al Jazeera said its Egyptian television service had been jammed daily since 3 July 2013, the day President Mohamed Morsi was deposed, and commissioned the satellite-interference investigator Integral Systems to find the source. Integral's president, Bruno Dupas, said the firm geolocated the origin to locations in Egypt around Cairo to an accuracy of less than 10 kilometres. Al Jazeera said the locations Integral provided are close to Egyptian military sites and that this led it to believe the jamming was carried out by the Egyptian government; it named a site on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Highway west of the capital near Wadi Natrun prison, a military zone along the Cairo-Suez highway, and a location in Heliopolis near the military intelligence headquarters, and said the jamming from one location began on 7 July and was focused on its Nilesat frequencies, forcing it to change frequencies so viewers could tune in. Dupas described the mechanism plainly: an antenna to provide an uplink, transmitting on the same frequency. Egyptian officials called Al Jazeera Mubasher's broadcasts a national security threat, said the channel operated without a permit and accused it of bias, which the broadcaster denied. Integral noted that this was not the first time Al Jazeera had been jammed: interference with its 2010 World Cup coverage, which hit the opening game on 12 June and recurred during seven more of the tournament's biggest games with blank screens, pixelated images and commentary in the wrong languages, was traced to Jordan.
The only incident in the batch where geolocation was performed by a third party in the business of it rather than by the victim or by the satellite operator, which is why confidence is high. The disclosure that Al Jazeera commissioned the investigation is made in the source and is repeated here: Integral located the emitters, and it was Al Jazeera, not Integral, that inferred Egyptian government responsibility from the proximity of those locations to military sites. The 2010 World Cup jamming traced to Jordan is a separate incident and is recorded here only as the context Integral gave; it is a candidate for its own record.
Attack vector
Ground antennas transmitting on the same frequencies as the target's satellite carriers, from several sites around Cairo, tracking the broadcaster's Nilesat frequency changes over a period of months.
Operational impact
Daily interference with Al Jazeera's Egyptian television service from 3 July 2013, forcing repeated frequency changes and impairing viewers' ability to receive the channel; the broadcaster was also blocked from sending raw feeds of the Egyptian crisis to other broadcasters.
Affected segments
link, space, user
Disclosed
2013-09-02
SPARTA techniques evidenced
Each row is a technique this record evidences, with the reasoning and the source that attests to it.
What relationship, confidence, and evidence mean on the rows below
- Relationship
What kind of link this is between the technique and the target.
Mitigates: the target actively prevents, detects, or recovers from the technique.
Addresses: the target governs the technique or is relevant to it, without interdicting it. Most governance and policy obligations sit here.
Triggers obligation: the technique occurring is what triggers the duty the target imposes.
Relates to: related to the technique, but the target neither interdicts nor governs it. Used sparingly.
- Confidence
How strongly the source supports this mapping, not how severe the technique is.
High: the source supports the mapping squarely.
Moderate: supported, with a qualification such as a cross-tactic reading that stays operationally sound.
Low: the source reaches the technique only in part.
- Evidence
How close to the source text the mapping was made.
Direct: a verbatim excerpt of the cited source was read against the technique, and the rationale argues from that excerpt.
Derived: the mapping follows from the source's scope or structure, with no on-point excerpt addressing the technique.
Inferred: reached by composition through another framework, or by domain reasoning the source does not support on its face.
A specialist interference-investigation firm geolocated an intentional interference source to within 10 kilometres and its president described the emission on the record. SPARTA's bibliography cites this incident at EX-0016.02; the parent is mapped here because it is what the evidence supports without qualification.
Bruno Dupas states the mechanism in one sentence: 'You need an antenna to provide you with an uplink and then transmit on the same frequency to jam.' That is EX-0016.01's behaviour named by a qualified investigator describing this event's mechanism. The scope caveat carried throughout this batch applies: the technique's effect clause names telecommand and ranging traffic, and what was jammed here was a payload carrier.
Several fixed transmitting sites operating outside the authorised ground architecture, located to within 10 kilometres by an independent investigator. That matches IA-0008.01's description of an actor fielding its own ground system to radiate mission-compatible signals. Derived because the tactic is denial rather than initial access. SPARTA's bibliography cites this incident at IA-0008.01.
Daily interference sustained over two months, with the broadcaster remaining on air by moving frequencies, is temporary impairment of the use of a service rather than its elimination.
Al Jazeera's account is that viewers could not tune in until frequencies were changed, so access was eliminated on each affected carrier until the broadcaster moved. Derived because that is the broadcaster's own framing and no independent source establishes a period of complete unavailability.
Dupas' description of what jamming requires, an antenna providing an uplink plus the ability to transmit on the target frequency, is a statement of the ground stack the actor had to assemble. SPARTA's bibliography also cites this incident at RD-0001.01. Derived: the requirement is described generically, the actor's actual equipment is not.
Al Jazeera states the jamming was focused on its Nilesat frequencies and that it was forced to change frequencies so viewers could tune in, over a campaign that ran daily for two months. Sustaining that requires enumerating and re-enumerating the broadcaster's carrier plan as it moved, which is REC-0003.03's subject: scanning mission-specific channels and characterising carrier plans. Derived because no source describes the scanning activity itself, only the pursuit that implies it.
Considered and not mapped
These techniques were considered for this record because a source, a related record or SPARTA's own catalogue pointed at them. Each was read against what the sources say and not mapped. The reason is given in full.
Cited by SPARTA at this incident. No source describes co-tenant channels being affected or the receiver-level loading EX-0013.02 details, which is a notable difference from the Ethiopia and Iran records, where that effect is explicitly reported. Rejected rather than assumed.
SPARTA's bibliography cites this incident here. The investigator who did the geolocation describes an uplink emission on the same frequency as the target carrier. See gap-analysis.md.
Sources
The published accounts this record rests on. The tier is SafeMode Space's own assessment of the source, and the reason for it is given beside it. What the tiers mean and how they are assigned: the source tiers.
A source is listed when a mapped technique rests on it, or when it disputes the account. One the curators read but neither cited nor recorded as disputing the record is not listed, so an absence here means neither is true rather than that nobody looked.
Tier 2: National newspaper reporting the findings of a named third-party geolocation firm, with its president quoted on the record.
Tier 2: First-party account by the affected broadcaster: authoritative on which of its own services and frequencies were affected, an interested party on attribution.
Every source SafeMode Space reproduces, and on what terms: sources and attribution.