page_title: State Security Investigations Service
section_title: 2011 revolution and after
hierarchical_section_title: State Security Investigations Service / History / 2011 revolution and after
caption_attribution_description: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKh4C0ilFnE للمتحدثين بالغة العربية هام هام هام www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvZgTUvOTV4
context_page_description: The State Security Investigations Service was the highest national internal security authority in Egypt. Estimated to employ 100,000 personnel, the SSI was the main security and intelligence apparatus of Egypt's Ministry of Interior. The SSI focused on monitoring underground networks of radical Islamists and probably planted agents in those organizations and had the role of controlling opposition groups, both armed groups and those engaged in peaceful opposition to the government. It has been described as "detested" and "widely hated".
  Following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the head of the SSI was arrested under suspicion of ordering the killings of demonstrators. On March 15, 2011, the Ministry of the Interior announced the dissolution of the agency. The service was replaced by the Egyptian Homeland Security after the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.
context_section_description: One of the major demands of protesters during the Egyptian revolution was the abolition of the State Security Investigations.
  Following the 25th of January 2011 Revolution, on the 4th & 5 March 2011, several SSI buildings were raided across Egypt by protesters. Protesters state they raided in the buildings to secure documents they believed to show various crimes committed by the SSI against the people of Egypt during Mubarak's rule. 
  On the night of 5 March in Cairo, "the sight of a dump truck emerging from the Cairo compound laden with shredded paper sent protesters into a fury, creating the momentum that drove the crowd past the army soldiers outside and into the hastily abandoned main building."
  Most notably at the Nasr City HQ in Cairo were many acquired documents which seemed to prove mass surveillance of citizens as well as torturing tools and secret cells. Protesters broke into the building in Alexandria on March 4, after clashing with security forces, and on March 5 others entered the headquarters in the central city of Assiut. In Cairo, another building breached was in 6th of October City, where "some of the most incriminating documents have already been destroyed." 
  McClatchy Newspapers reported that, when there was much uncertainty about the validity of documents which emerged, "[p]erhaps the most controversial document to ricochet around Internet message boards was one that purport[ed] to lay out State Security's involvement in [the] deadly church bombing on New Year's Day in the port city of Alexandria. ... The legitimacy of the document hasn't been determined, but its distribution touched off protests Sunday in Cairo by hundreds of Coptic Christians."
  Other documents uncovered included names of judges involved in fixing elections and those of a small number of Egyptians who were informants. The publishing of these names posed a moral dilemma for some of the protesters, balancing the danger the informants would be put under against anger at having been spied on.
  On 15 March 2011, SSIS was dissolved by Interior Minister Mansour el-Essawy in response to the revelations of the previous weeks. He also announced plans for the establishment of a new "National Security Sector" to take over SSIS's counter-terrorism and other domestic-security responsibilities.
  Officials from the service complained that  during Mohamed Morsi's year in office, the Muslim Brotherhood had access to its files and created security breaches.  Due to its efforts of bringing back the security during the Islamist unrest, the agency has gained much of the previous agency's lost respect in Egypt according to Sarah El Deeb of the Associated Press.
caption: Storming State Security building, 2011
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