Vodafone in Egypt | beyondbrics – FT.com

“Vodafone, there’s blood on your handsets.” So says this petition set up by accessnow.org, currently gathering signatures at a rate of almost one a minute via Twitter in protest at pro-government text messages carried by Vodafone in Egypt.

As Edward Hadas and Sarah O’Connor argue in Lex live today, it is a lot easier to pass judgement from a safe distance than it is to make decisions on the ground. Vodafone’s choice – if it had one – was not only between doing the right thing and making profits, but also between doing the right thing and protecting the safety of its Egyptian employees.

Vodafone says it was “instructed” to send the messages and does “not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content”. To infer that Vodafone had no say in the matter may be stretching things. But the company is clearly unhappy and has protested to the Egyptian authorities.