On May 26, 2026, Ahmed Badawi, chair of the House of Representatives' Communications and Information Technology Committee, announced that the government would submit amendments to Egypt's Anti-Cyber and Information Technology Crimes Law (Law No. 175 of 2018) once Eid al-Adha recess ended. The package does three things at once: it explicitly criminalizes online betting applications, expands cyber-extortion provisions, and targets online "rumours" that create what Badawi called "a climate of despair" in the public sphere (Egyptian Streets). A separate, still-pending bill regulating children's social media use remains in committee after seven hearings, with no text yet submitted.
The defensible part: naming betting fraud explicitly
There is a real regulatory gap here, and it's worth stating the strongest case for closing it. Law 175/2018 criminalizes illegal electronic applications generally, but it does not name betting platforms specifically — leaving offshore and unlicensed betting apps to operate in a legal grey zone even as fraud complaints tied to them rose. Under the proposed amendments, platform operators and managers would face two to five years in prison plus fines of roughly EGP5–10 million (about $100,000–$200,000); payment intermediaries face shorter terms and smaller fines; and the most serious cases — organized criminal networks running large-scale fraud schemes — could draw life sentences, the maximum available under Egyptian cybercrime law (iGaming Business).
That structure is proportionate on its face: penalties scale with role and harm, and it converts a vague "illegal application" standard into a named, specific offense — the kind of statutory precision that actually helps due process rather than undermining it. Financial fraud conducted through unlicensed betting apps is a legitimate law-enforcement target, and Egypt is not unusual in eventually writing such platforms into statute by name rather than relying on general fraud provisions.
The part that should worry a free-expression-minded reader
The same amendment package folds in a second, much less defined target: content that spreads "false information" or creates "a climate of despair." Badawi did not offer a legal test for what counts — no threshold for intent, no requirement of demonstrable harm, no distinction between rumour and dissent. That matters because it is not being added to a blank slate. Law 175/2018 already gives Egyptian authorities broad content-blocking powers and requires service providers to retain user data, obligations that predate this amendment round (Andersen Egypt, translation of Law 175/2018). Freedom House's Freedom on the Net 2025 report scored Egypt 28 out of 100 — "Not Free" for the internet-freedom category — citing high levels of self-censorship driven by "the risk of criminal penalties, harassment, and surveillance" (Freedom House).
That is the environment the "despair" clause would operate in. On June 9, 2026, the Committee to Protect Journalists and 14 partner organizations sent a joint letter to the European Union — timed to an EU-Egypt Association Council meeting on June 15 — flagging 18 journalists imprisoned in 2025 and "systematic and widespread" use of arbitrary detention (JURIST). A statute that lets prosecutors treat an unfavorable economic forecast, a viral complaint about a public service failure, or an unverified but sincerely-held report as evidence of manufacturing "despair" doesn't need to be enforced often to have a chilling effect — the mere existence of the charge does the work, exactly the self-censorship dynamic Freedom House documents.
The honest reading of Badawi's own framing — fraud losses, extortion cases, a real uptick in scam complaints — supports the betting and extortion provisions. It does not support the rumours clause, which is a public-order concept dressed in cybercrime language. Egypt does not lack tools to prosecute genuine defamation or incitement; what the "despair" standard adds is discretion, not clarity.
The children's bill is moving the right way — slowly
By contrast, the pending child social-media legislation is being handled with more care. It follows seven parliamentary hearings and, as of this writing, still has no submitted text — a pace that allows for input from child-welfare bodies and specialists rather than a rushed floor vote. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's original call was framed around digital addiction and age-appropriate exposure, a legitimate child-safety concern shared by regulators from the EU to Australia. The risk to watch is not the deliberative pace but whether the eventual bill imports the same undefined-harm drafting style as the "despair" clause — vague content standards translate just as poorly when applied to protecting children as when applied to policing adult speech.
What good drafting would look like
Parliament should decouple these provisions rather than pass them as one bundle. The betting and extortion amendments are narrow, specific, and enforcement-focused — they can proceed on their own merits. The "climate of despair" language should be rewritten with an objective falsity standard, a demonstrable-harm threshold, and judicial sign-off before any blocking action, given that current law already permits blocking without one. Bundling a well-drafted fraud statute with an undefined speech offense invites exactly the kind of enforcement uncertainty proportionate regulation is supposed to eliminate.