Watan-A memo published by the US government online stated that the US Department of Commerce has added the companies “Chengdu Baihui Technology Co., Ltd.” and “Sandvine” to its entity list, meaning that trade restrictions have been imposed on them.

According to the Federal Register, Sandvine was listed for supplying the Egyptian government with technology used in collective monitoring of electronic websites and censorship to block news, as well as targeting political entities and human rights activists.

Sandvine, with headquarters in Canada, India, Japan, Malaysia, Sweden, and the UAE, will be affected by its inclusion on this list.

The memo stated that Chengdu was included for acquiring US-origin goods on behalf of the already-listed Electronic Science and Technology University, as reported by Bloomberg.

Sandvine sells what is known as deep packet inspection technology, which can be used to monitor the massive flows of internet traffic passing between networks.

The technology can be customized to block spam and viruses. However, it can also be deployed to block millions of websites and messaging applications and carry out secret monitoring of internet activity.

Two former Sandvine employees said the Commerce Department’s decision is likely to be a major blow to the company, which they said uses components in its technology from US companies like Dell Inc.

Egyptian authorities have been known to block independent news websites, a move described as one of the routine violations of press freedom.

Website blocking in Egypt began in May 2017 and has not stopped since then, with the majority of those sites still being blocked by an unknown government entity to this day.