Moroccan Women’s Privacy Breached in Massive Social Media Hack

The Association of the Challenge for Equality and Citizenship condemns the dissemination of intimate and sometimes compromising photos of Moroccan and Algerian women and sometimes young adolescents on photo-sharing websites. In a press release, it calls on the Moroccan authorities to adopt legislation aimed at effectively controlling the privacy policy within social networks. "Privacy is sacred, which is confirmed by the Moroccan constitution and all the international conventions to which Morocco has adhered and ratified, and which are reflected in national legal legislation, in particular Law 103.13 on the fight against violence against women, Law 27.14 on the fight against human trafficking, and especially Law No. 09.08 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data," it recalled.

The association also calls on activists, social media users and the press to protect the privacy of the victims by not disseminating the images and videos, "because they constitute material elements of criminal acts that fall under criminal prosecution." It also mentions the impact of the dissemination of images and videos on Moroccan women and young adolescents. They could be driven to consider suicide due to the exposure and defamation that have violated their privacy, the association points out.

These calls from the Association follow a revelation made by the Moroccan computer expert, Amin Raghib. According to him, intimate and sometimes compromising photos of Moroccan and Algerian women and sometimes young adolescents have been disseminated on photo-sharing websites following the hacking by hackers of many social media accounts, notably Snapchat. He claims to have only mentioned the case of a Moroccan woman whose account had been hacked and her private photos had been published on other sites. He will also add that he was surprised to find that after an hour or two of his live on the subject, the various links that had published photos of Moroccan girls had been deleted. It could be, according to him, a hacking of accounts on the Snapchat application or a hacking of telephones.