Activists are nervous about what an advanced American surveillance system could do to their already diminished freedoms.

The Prince Nasser ruling does not spell the end of the immunity system, but it curtails it. The government can still offer immunity to diplomats posted to embassies or to those on a "special mission" who come for official meetings.

I fear that, eventually, a vicious and bloody revolution will bring about an Iranian-style theocracy in Egypt. It is all too often forgotten that the CIA coup of the democratically elected Mosaddegh government in Iran led to the Iranian revolution twenty years later.