Tunisia’s Minister of Communication Technologies Noomane Fehri speaks about his ministry’s role in fighting terrorism through internet monitoring and tracking suspected sites. The Minister also speaks about the role played by his ministry in addressing high unemployment, believed to be the major cause of the spread of terrorism.

The Tunisian government is fighting a war against terrorism. What is your ministry’s contribution to this effort?

Tunisia’s Minister of Communication Technologies Noomane Fehri speaks about his ministry’s role in fighting terrorism through internet monitoring and tracking suspected sites. The Minister also speaks about the role played by his ministry in addressing high unemployment, believed to be the major cause of the spread of terrorism.

The Tunisian government is fighting a war against terrorism. What is your ministry’s contribution to this effort?

Our ministry contributes to the war against terrorism through the technical authority for communications, which ensures that law is enforced in cyberspace. Whenever our ministry is informed by other ministries about websites with suspected links to terrorist groups, the technical authority provides all available information to the concerned judicial authorities to issue an order to track the suspected sites. To perform this duty, however, is never as easy a job as it requires the use of a lot of equipment and latest technologies within the existing parameters of the law.

Does this mean that the authority is obliged to resort to the judiciary to seek permission prior to tracking any suspected website?

The technical authority has the right to monitor the internet without prior judicial authorization. With the intervention and identification of accurate data related to the activity of certain suspected Takfiri sites and monitoring these sites, the authority is required to obtain judicial permission after submitting all the data relating to the identity of the party supervising these websites, in addition to identifying the network connection locations and other technical details.

How many websites were tracked in Tunisia for charges related to the involvement in terrorists’ recruitment and promotion?

There are over a thousand incidents and all implicated websites operate outside Tunisia. We monitor hundreds of suspected networks, websites and accounts every day on social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter that are involved in terrorism-related propaganda. Our job is to monitor and provide data to the security authorities about those sites to track them. However, it is all done within the confines of the law and in the framework of respecting the surfers’ personal data.

You are responsible for supervising the communications field. Do you also do other duties like telephone tapping?

Given that telephone services are covered by our ministry, we do not monitor telephone communication. Our role is limited to monitoring the internet and we do not track telephone communication since it will be an infringement on the duties assigned to the Interior Ministry as the sole authority responsible for telephone tapping, based on a prior court order.

Experts say the problem of terrorism is also linked to the spread of unemployment. What did your ministry do to provide employment opportunities for the youth?

First of all, I would like to mention that talking about youth employment in the government sector is totally out of the question. Tunisians must recognize that it is time we focus on private initiative and creativity. At present, we have a megaproject called ‘Tunisia’s Digital Project’. We have focused on one of its aspects namely ‘Smart Tunisia project’ under which we have provided 4,000 jobs at the start of the project’s first year. However, we aspire to secure 50,000 jobs for young men and women in 2017 through launching their own private businesses.

Has the private sector contributed to Smart Tunisia Project to cope with unemployment problem among marginalized youth?

Yes indeed. Seventeen private companies have so far contributed to this project including three new foreign companies investing in Tunisia, which have pledged to create 4,000 jobs in high-value-added technology projects.