{"id":18923,"date":"2011-01-29T08:39:44","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T08:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=18923"},"modified":"2011-02-01T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01T07:50:17","slug":"egyptian-internet-clampdown-and-its-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=18923","title":{"rendered":"Egyptian Internet Clampdown and its Implications"},"content":{"rendered":"

News Brief \u2013 January 28, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to firms that monitor Internet activity, Egyptian authorities cut off nearly all Internet communications into and out of the country Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Internet lockdown came after a wave of popular protests, which called for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years as premier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Egyptian authorities had been trying to contain mounting protests that were in part fuelled by videos and reports broadcast over the Internet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Renesys, a U.S. company that tracks Internet activity said that just after midnight local time on Friday, Egyptian authorities had succeeded in locking down the country\u2019s international access points.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost nobody in Egypt has Internet connectivity, and there are no workarounds,\u201d said Jim Cowie, the company\u2019s chief technology officer. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen it happen at this scale.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a fundamental sense, it\u2019s as if you rewrote the map and they are no longer a country,\u201d said Mr. Cowie. \u201cI never thought it would happen to a country the size and scale of Egypt.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In most countries, the points of access to the global Internet are wide and varied. But as Egypt was relatively late in adopting the Internet, so it has fewer access points. Meaning that Egyptian authorities can shut them down, says Mr Cowie with \u201csix, or even four phone calls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that such a coordinated and extensive lockdown was imposed is a measure of how much of a threat the Egyptian authorities see in the Internet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Egyptians are not the only ones to view the Internet in such terms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cass Sunstein, Obama\u2019s so-called \u201cInformation Czar\u201d, is also famous for wanting curbs imposed on the Internet. As one might expect, although Sunstein claimed this would be in the name of freedom he nonetheless urged curbs on the Internet to help curtail the spread of dangerous \u201c<\/span>conspiracy theories<\/span><\/a>\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

It might be a little too late for that in Egypt but the sudden shutdown there coupled with Sunstein\u2019s calls indicates just how the authorities now see the medium.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even as anti-government protestors took to the streets in Egypt, one of Britain\u2019s most senior civil servants was calling for more extensive surveillance of the Internet by Intelligence agencies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Appearing before the <\/span>Chilcot Inquiry<\/span><\/a> <\/span>into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sir Gus O\u2019Donnell said authorities needed \u201cto go a bit further\u201d to assess ongoing developments in public opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n

“When you look at what is happening, as we speak, in Egypt,\u201d he told the Inquiry … \u201cthe use of the Internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements develop, this is a different world\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We need to be tied in much more to that sort of world\u201d, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, Sir Gus is calling for more surveillance and more control to keep the lid on potential insurrection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor should it be overlooked that the Egyptian authorities first response to the protests \u2013 before they even deployed troops \u2013 was to shutdown the Internet.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of which gives new meaning to the old line about the pen being mightier than the sword. Or to put it in more modern terms, the computer keyboard being more powerful than the gun.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Proving just how important the Internet has become and how, in the event of conflict, it could just as easily become the front line<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18923"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19110,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923\/revisions\/19110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}