Egypt's Emerging Censorship

Egypt has recently become an area of increased government censorship, which is very interesting considering the countries historical promotion of computer technology. The under the current president Mohammad Hosni Mubarak, a new branch of the Department of Information was formed, called the Department for Combating Computer and Internet Crime. This branch is commonly referred to as the Internet Police. They censor and monitor many aspects of the internet within the country, including e-mail, dating websites, and recently blogs. Monitoring of these sites is cause for concern among human rights activists because Egypt is currently (and has been since the current president has been in charge) in a state of emergency, and as such the country has been under a form of martial law which allows the military to arrest anyone without trial for indefinite periods of time. Many are concerned that this power is being abused to arrest those who pose a threat to the current political power and social systems. The most extreme example mentioned was traps the Internet Police place among homosexual dating sites, where they convince people to meet in public and then arrest them for public indecency.

It is concerning to see Egypt (mis)use internet censorship in ways that other countries like China do because Egypt is still technically a democratic republic, just like the United States. Could government censorship in the US travel down a similar road?