Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere) | Hacker News Reader

Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

arabist.net

290 pointssteveklabnik139 comments

In Tunisia, it's not Internet that made the revolution success, but SMS. First, everyone has a mobile phone (even the poor). Second, you receive the message and read it instantly wherever you are. (You should guess it, few people here have smart phones). Third, there is more commitment that you go to the street.

For those interested in the Tunisian revolution: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12302232

I think that's quite an achievement. Because the Ministry of Interior is the hand of terror of the ancient regime and there should be no other armed forces.

The turning point didn't happen in 14 January when Ben Ali escaped, but is beginning today, when the government is losing its' power.

I'm, now, waiting for the election and I'm going to support my nominee may be by designing his website, through Facebook and some other influence.

If change has really come, and a new president was elected, I'm going to write a detailed report about the revolution. You can trust this one, because it has the truth. It's from someone that lived in this revolution, that knows the ins and outs of the country.

Most of the articles and reports that you'll find here and there are full of bullshit.

SMS were cut off prior to Internet. All Telecomm is expected to be down by tomorrow - coinciding with an expected 1M protesters on the streets. Crackdown will be violent.

I think the internet (and specially facebook) had a big role too. Facebook videos were crucial to show that the people were not giving up specially when the television was silent about the whole thing.

BTW who's your nominee?

I still not decided. I want someone secular, capitalist and liberal. Someone with a good history and background in economics and politics.

He'll get some good promotion, as I'll be dedicating all my summer for pushing his campaign forward :)

>I still not decided. I want someone secular, capitalist and liberal.

Good luck with finding someone like that. Contact me if you want some help.

So I assume you are following the Tunisian scene or living here?

* message could not be sent, are you sure your email is correct.

makes me wonder what an adhoc peer-to-peer sms system could do for the world.

I read this, and become more concerned about bills to give the US President an Internet kill-switch. They say it's to protect against cyber-warfare, but something makes me think it's just as likely to be applied to civil unrest, and civil unrest doesn't usually happen unless there's something pretty wrong with the government.

Right, what attack causes more of an outage than pulling the plug?

Well, then it will obviously never be used because nothing is wrong with the government. </sarcasm>

Well, good news, it doesn't matter. If the situation has deteriorated to that point, the government will just do it anyhow.

I don't support the bill anyhow, because I'm not really a "let's just give one central authority all the power because why not?" kind of guy, but honestly, there's not much point worrying about that particular kind of misuse of that particular power. Standard martial law concepts would probably be enough to take the necessary actions to shut down whatever networks you like; pointing guns at network admins can be pretty effective. You're actually not being cynical enough.

Passing a law like that means they'll put in the infrastructure to actually do it. If things deteriorate significantly in the US, it is likely that attempting to gain the ability to shut down the internet would directly trigger some sort of civil unrest while now it only triggers angry blog posts.

Don't trust me - but I would wager a bet that the US government already has such infrastructure. We trust them with the power to detonate 1,000's of thermonuclear warheads or study Ebola virus for weapnization at USAMRID - the internet kill switch is horrible, but it is nowhere near the top of my list.

One nuclear bomb, set off at the right location and altitude, could wipe out the Internet and most consumer electronics for most of the continental USA. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse. And this is with no direct physical injury.

When all you have is a hammer...

Shutting down all the cars, planes, and pacemakers in the US would mean lots of physical injury.

Interestingly enough, F. Paul Wilson used something along those lines as a big part of the plot of his latest novel Fatal Error. The "bad guys" need to take down the Internet as part of the story, and he lays out a pretty elaborate scheme that they use to do it. http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Error-Repairman-Jack-Wilson/dp/0...

Unfortunately this is the most recent of a pretty long series, so it probably would't be much fun to read unless you had read the series up to this point. But if anyone wants an interesting fictional scenario where the 'Net is knocked entirely (or almost entirely) offline, there ya go...

I am at a loss as to what this additional infrastructure really permits that having lots of armored men with guns does not. Armored men with guns are a flexible bunch, they can do lots of things. The marginal distinction to the person in power between pressing a button and ordering other people to go shut the net down is pretty minimal; it's not like without this switch, the President is going to actually have go out and point guns at the network admins himself, Independence Day-style.

My real worry, and the real reason this shouldn't be done, is that it shouldn't be made so easy that some clever hackers can do it, or gets accidentally triggered for some reason. But ye olde "shoot the place up" can take down the internet pretty effectively. "Stray backhoes" have done a decent job a couple of times within my experience as it is; the hard part is keeping the net running, not shutting it down.

The question is how many armed men with guns will it take. Armed men with guns are not an infinite supply, and during a massive unrest, presumably in high demand. Why make it easy?

I see this argument get a lot of play.

These sorts of things are important because ease dictates more of what happens in life than posibility. Make it easier to turn off the net, there is more chance of it happening, and it'll take less resources from the controlling party to do it.

Like you said, 'they' could already turn off the internet. So why bother with the effort to make a killswitch? Because the resources it'd take to kill the internet manually matter.

~~~~~~~

An similar argument might be, "If someone can always find a flaw in crypto implementations, why bother with cryptography?" or "You can walk anywhere a car can go, what's the point of having a car?"

This point cannot be emphasized enough. Furthermore, it is certainly possible to imagine a scenario where ordering armored men to shut off the internet would be politically unfeasible, but spinning a story which necessitates of shutting off from the greater world internet might be within grasp.

     Because the resources it'd take to kill the internet manually matter

They only need to turn off one big ISP or 2 before the others are going to shut down themselves. Look at what happened with Wikileaks.

     If someone can always find a flaw in crypto implementations, 
     why bother with cryptography?

That's a pretty big IF, because it depends on finding flaws, and there is no recipe for that and you're also not certain if you're going to find any, regardless of the time/resources invested.

Also, crypto algorithms are public, peer reviewed and usually you're going to find out if a flaw exists sooner or later. And because there isn't any available method to make brute force attacks any easier or feasible if the key is large.

I am pretty sure the government can shut down the Internet, but I can bet they aren't able to decrypt my communications if I won't allow it ;-)

What did you think of my point:

'They' could already turn off the internet. So why bother with the effort to make a killswitch? Because the resources it'd take to kill the internet manually matter.

I think of that in terms of 1) simple manpower, 2) cooperation, and 3) perception.

It's a valid point.

The additional infrastructure would permit it to be used sooner than it would if they only had "armed men" to do the job. Strawmen aside, if it's available, it will be used. I don't think it should be easy to do something like this.

EDIT: removed Emergency Broadcast System analogy.

Because to have armed men shooting the place up, it actually takes loyal people, a functioning hierarchy, guns, and a lot of planning. However, if suitable infrastructure is in place, theoretically spoken, even a lone tyrant could push a button and make it happen. That's the danger...

Also, an 'internet switch' could selectively filter, it could allow the communication of one faction but not the other.

There is no such thing as a 'lone tyrant', typically tyrants are backed by large numbers of guys willing to do their bidding.

If it weren't for that North Korea and Myanmar wouldn't last for 5 minutes under their present leadership, the same goes for many other countries.

I'm aware that such a thing doesn't exist. Which is why I said "theoretically". Tyrants generally have a closely-knit circle of loyal supporters, and a lot of guys that follow because they believe they are on the winning side.

Anyway, that doesn't change my point, having control infrastructure already in place does make it a lot easier for them.

"I am at a loss as to what this additional infrastructure really permits that having lots of armored men with guns does not. Armored men with guns are a flexible bunch, they can do lots of things. The marginal distinction to the person in power between pressing a button and ordering other people to go shut the net down is pretty minimal"

Very easy to understand: they don't have lots of men with guns the moment they ask these men to point to their family members, to their community, in a wrong way . People will not obey things that go against the law, because they are not drones, and oppose firmly unless the law itself makes them comply(no exit).

If you have the force but not the authority law gives you, your force is briefly temporal.

E.g It was essential for Hitler to get a law that gave it full powers, using the excuse of punishing the communist for Reichstag fire, fire that could had been caused by Nazi supporters.

It absolutely does matter! The government "just doing it" as described is an extreme, reactionary measure comparable to all those authoritarian governments we criticize daily. Contrast this to a federal kill-switch policy, approved by elected officials who ostensibly represent their constituents. Though the end result is the same, the context is drastically different (which in turn will affect how many people interpret the action -- crazy civil liberty violation, or prudent and justified response).

So totalitarian is not totalitarian if willingly imposed? I respectfully disagree.

It does matter, because the government can kill dissent without declaring martial law and giving legitimacy to protests. It's a far more preferable option for them.

> Well, good news, it doesn't matter. If the situation has deteriorated to that point, the government will just do it anyhow.

I'm more worried about them using it selectively and routinely, rather than as an emergency measure.

Obama already claims to have the power to commandeer networks in the form of an obscure provision in a pre-WWII law relating to communications base stations.

People in the US government are becoming painfully aware though just how dependent every bit of our infrastructure is becoming on continued internet function. Nobody is really sure, for example, just how much of the phone and power networks would stay up if all IP routing is shut down.

So more than likely, any new laws passed are going to have the effect of giving the president the fine-tuned ability to tamper with specific websites, addresses, protocols, etc. even if that's not the how the bill is sold to the public.

I'm sorry to be picky, but The President of the United States of America has the power. That office currently resides with one Mr. B. Obama, but if it's an obscure provision in a pre-WWII law it's hardly a power he's introduced against the grain of history and so can be personally tied to and held against him.

They say it's to protect against cyber-warfare

And if it is?

The situation in america will not change until people stop supporting those who enact and propose legislation like this.

Who wants to give the president the kill switch? It would be good to know a full list of all sponsors of such a bill and whether Obama has endorsed it or not. Regardless of party, these people who have not even read the US constitution (or comprehended it if they have) should not be re-elected.

What is this bill? Could you please link to the proposed legislation as I have not heard of this bill. I would like to know if my senator/representative is introducing or endorsing this bill.

This is the infowar at close range. Contrary to the gut reaction of most commenting on the unfolding of events in Egypt, the reason for the regime to shut down communications has little to do with stopping information to reach the outside world. It is information getting into the country that is of real danger to them, such as the AP video of a man getting shot today. They are shutting down the Internet (As confirmed by CNN. According to random people on Twitter...) because a video like that can be like pouring gasoline on a fire.

> because a video like that can be like pouring gasoline on a fire.

The question is who gave them the right to starve the fire? The internet is merely communication. If you can't deal with your populace communicating, even in a troubled time then you're already at your death-knell.

The danger here is that if the government steps in to tell me I'm not allowed to show someone a video of an abuse of power, then I'm going to be 10-times as pissed and 10-times as loud in the streets.

That's how dictatorship work and why they often fail. You just can't keep this stuff working for ever. Egypt's dictatorship gov has managed to last this long which is impressive.

It's amazing what US funding can do for a government, isn't it?

That is true. Not many people know that after Israel, Egypt is the second largest beneficiary of US foreign aid money.

But I find it hard to judge the decision of the US gov when that deal was cut considering it's been 40 years. And support for the Egyptian communist gov goes back to Eisenhower.

Egypt gets $1.5 Billion per year. No pocket change.

Egypt doesn't have a “communist government”, even in name.

I'd say Iran managed to show that brutal repression can be pretty damned effective at propping up a regime that couldn't survive the free flow of ideas.

For now.

One big difference is that Iran's Revolutionary Guard isn't directly financed by the US State Department to the tune of $1.6 billion. That dollar amount is becoming increasingly public here in the US.

If the Police in Egypt start running around with machetes and hunting down dissidents to murder them like they did in Iran, the American government is going to have a hard time maintaining the completely bullshit "Mubarak is our Partner in Peace" line.

That's doubly true when you consider the obscene amount of blood and treasure poured into Iraq under the premise that the US is "investing in Arab democracy."

The partner in peace line is appropriate.

Egypt is active in working towards regional peace.

Consider how Egypt could instead by run. It could be led by religious group and be something like Iran. Or it could be led by the stereotype arab despot - constantly picking fights with Israel to create a distraction and channel the country's hatred at somebody outside the borders.

Mubarak doesn't set a high bar, but if all the middle east leaders were merely as good as him, the region would be a much better place.

>if all the middle east leaders were merely as good as him, the region would be a much better place.

No it wouldn't. It might be a better place for Israel, but it would still be a terrible place for Arabs.

Egyptians are rebelling for a reason: They have no jobs, and no food. They are kept under the heel of a brutal dictatorship. So are Saudis and Yemenis and everyone else the West likes.

The US props up the Egyptian dictatorship because Mubarak is pro-west and willing to work with the international community re: Israel. That doesn't make him good. He's still a brutal dictator, in charge of a corrupt regime. It's no secret that Islamic fundamentalism originated in Egypt, and it's no wonder why.

Now, that's not to say the Lebanese or Syrians or Palestinians have it any better. The Iranians do, but that's a separate issue. The point is, the US needs to pull its head out of its ass in regards to foreign policy and stop propping up brutal dictators who happen to have a convergence of short-term interests with the west. From Hussein to Pinochet to Suharto to the Shah to the Sauds to Noriega to Pap & Baby Doc to Trujillo to Batista to at least a dozen others, the United States has, for the better part of a century, installed or backed countless brutal dictators the world round. First in the name of the fight against communism, then drugs, then oil, the US has always found a way to ensure people are tortured and murdered if it furthers their aims.

This might come across as an anti-American rant. It isn't. It is, however, a rant against the willful ignorance of those who think the United States acts in anything other than its own interests, or that it gives a rats ass about the suffering caused by its actions.

The Arab world, and the world as a whole, would be far better served if the US and Iran let the arab people determine their own future. Unfortunately, that would mean the end to cheap oil, so it won't happen.

    This might come across as an anti-American rant.

Well - a lot of your comment is worded as though it's a contradition to what I said, where it isn't. It's difficult to participate in a conversation where you're getting hit over the head with a world view like that.

I'm not trying to hit anyone over the head with a worldview, merely trying to dispel the notion that "friendly" governments in the middle east are somehow "good". Your assertion that Egypt is "committed to peace", and therefor good for the region, is mistaken. The government of Egypt is committed to peace inasmuch, and only inasmuch, as it is committed to self-preservation through currying Western (primarily US) favour. The same can be said for most of the other so-called "good" middle-eastern countries, with the possible exception of Turkey.

Your claim that I denied was that the middle east would be better with more Mubaraks. I claimed, I believe with good evidence, that the existence of Mubaraks in the middle east is precisely what prevents the region from being peaceful and prosperous.

To the extent that I editorialized is simply the extent to which I felt it necessary to explain why the Mubaraks of the world exist. If my worldview, namely that the US acts in its own interests without regard to the wellbeing of the people its policies affect is one you have a problem with, then by all means tell me why. If, on the other hand, you take offense to my claim that the United States knowingly and willfully installs, props up, prolongs, and supports brutal, tortuous, and murderous dictatorships around the world, then you have a great deal of reality to conquer if you wish to dispute it.

    I'm not trying to hit anyone over the head with a
    worldview, merely trying to dispel the notion that
    "friendly" governments in the middle east are somehow
    "good". Your assertion that Egypt is "committed to
    peace", and therefor good for the region, is mistaken.

I didn't say committed to peace, so it's pretty low to quote me. I also didn't say friendly. I did say good, but not in the context you use.

    If, on the other hand, you take offense to my claim

I explained what offended me, but you charged through again.

Sorry, "committed to peace" came from elsewhere; your words were "active in working towards regional peace". I'm not sure how these differ, but given your opposition to my previous characterization, I would be interested in hearing your views on the matter. As for "good", you implied that a propagation of Mubaraks would be a good thing. If I'm reading that wrong, again, feel free to correct me.

"I explained what offended me, but you charged through again."

I'm not sure where your offense comes from. I specified which part of your claim I was attempting to refute; I took no stance on the "Mubarak is better than the alternative" side. Certainly, there are much worse options out there. I took issue, however, with your claim that a middle east of Mubaraks would be better than the current situation. While this may or may not be true, it should not be a goal of any thinking, compassionate individual.

Feel free to contradict that, as well.

On peace - the style of Egyptian diplomacy is a bit like a typical Western European country. They try to get their neighbours to get along with one another.

    As for "good", you implied that a propagation of
    Mubaraks would be a good thing. If I'm reading that
    wrong, again, feel free to correct me.

I don't agree with this idea you wrote about, "The Arab world, and the world as a whole, would be far better served if the US and Iran let the arab people determine their own future." You're describing there places as thought they're frustrated democracies. I don't see it - I see powder kegs.

When Eastern Europe broke up, the only significant school of thought against the current system was a western style parliamentary dictatorship. They were ethnically homogenous countries. There weren't strong crusade narratives amongst the people. Whereas in the middle east, there's a strong attraction towards religious dictatorship, plenty of ethnic diversity, and plenty of people willing to die for the cause.

    I'm not sure where your offense comes from.

It's the thing where I'm being attacked for things I didn't say.

    I took issue, however, with your claim that a
    middle east of Mubaraks would be better than the
    current situation.

OK. I'm not attached to it.

Over the short term, yes. But Iran has a history of revolutions: IIRC, a revolution in 1920s brought down an old monarchy, the Shahs went back and forth for a while (sometimes with US aid), and the "Islamic" revolution of 1979 that most Americans are used to. In other words, Iran is due for another revolution, which is one of the stronger arguments against bombing the country (and which we might have to do anyway, though I, like all sane people, hope not: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/08/the-poin... ).

Right now, the threat of US invasion (or at least attack) is keeping the opposition in check.

There is no threat.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/mullen-please-for-th...

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_why-the-us-can-...

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%...

There is certainly a lot of saber rattling. Also, the 'nuclear option' is 'on the table'. The Iranian government is justifiably playing the card of foreign interference.

It doesn't need to be a real threat to provide a plausible excuse for repression and deterrent from activism (even if the opposition are more afraid of being branded allies of Great Satan than they are of any American intervention)

Except now they pissed off all 20 million (the guardian has a nice chart at the end of their article that states this) internet users. We will have to see but I think tomorrow's planed move will just have gotten bigger because of this move.

Yeah, especially considering that the masses' opium used to be religion, but now it's Internet porn.

I wonder how many places of employment in Egypt require a internet connection to function. I wonder how many of these people now have absolutely nothing to do for work or entertainment tomorrow, who may not have joined the protest, now will be...

Really, this one is going to go down in history as one of the most boneheaded moves ever by decision makers out of touch with the basic realities of modern life.

Also, to keep the demonstrators from coordinating with each other. The late and unlamented Tunisian dictatorship was messing with Facebook because the Tunisian demonstrators (at least some of them) were using it. And at least one of the organizing factions behind the Egyptian demonstrations started out the same way, as a Facebook group: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12290167

I'm always a little skeptical of these reports (having spent time in China and having had the internet not go down when everyone claimed there was going to be TianAnMen 2 or something) so I tried to do a little digging and the following egyptian websites are completely blacked from outside of Egypt out as of 4PM PST:

http://www.cbe.org.eg/

http://www.toyotaegypt.com.eg/

http://www.egypo.gov.eg/

http://icdlegypt.gov.eg/

http://www.tpegypt.gov.eg/

http://www.egypt.gov.eg/

http://www.sis.gov.eg/

I was just googling "egypt eg" and so some of these are government sites but others are commercial sites.

With respect to access in a hotel - in a lot of these countries that have any sort of censorship, hotel's will have a separate line out of the country via fiber or maybe even satellite. That could be what is going on here too.

I had the same experience with hotels, internet in China: much better access from internet in a hotel than others were saying.

Any government currently in power will have an item in its playbook titled 'shut down public internet access', right next to a folder labeled 'island mode' and 'totally dark'.

Some will be upfront about it, some will be more circumspect but media control has long been one of the central points in crowd control and just like newspapers, radio and TV stations are with some regularity taken over by the government (Italy is a special case here I guess...) when it is in distress you can expect the internet as a major mass communications medium to be viewed much the same way.

Which makes me wonder, is there a way to make an ad-hoc, decentralized internet that a government could not shut down?

Yes. They're called mesh networks, and I think you've just described why they will never take off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking

Interesting. Are there any pieces of software that can transform ordinary laptops/phones into mesh networks?

A quick search shows B.A.T.M.A.N. (http://www.open-mesh.org/), but it looks a little tricky to setup. Are there any simple ways for non-technical users to run a mesh network node? A "click to install and run" solution would be ideal, but I'd be interested in hearing about other people's experiences with mesh networks.

Open wrt support mesh networking iirc.

There is also this:

http://www.wing-project.org/

And a bunch of others.

IIRC, OpenMesh actually sits on top of OpenWRT.

BATMAN, OSLR, and Open-Mesh are pretty slick. But, and a big but, we struggled running a network of ~500 of them in one medium-size Midwest city.

It's not targeted at laptops, but at embedded boards somewhat like you would find in a commodity Linksys home router.

The best help they can get is, IMO, coders and new hardware to develop for/test on.

I think this is linked from the wiki article, but it's a good read for various general info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Building_a_Rural_Wireless_...

I haven't set one up myself but if the government did kill the internet I'd take it as a good time to start creating a city-by-city mesh, hopefully hooking up with other people with the same idea. If the government leaves the regular lines off for too long, it may actually end up being a good thing. I don't think the kill-switch strategy would work so well in the US, so long as it's not short-term, but it's possible the people who want the ability of a kill-switch haven't thought it through.

The OLPC XO laptop has built-in mesh networking and is ruggedized, so it would be a great asset to have after a disaster of some kind. Maybe keep one stored in a Faraday cage to try to protect it against EMP ;).

I've always been under the impression the reason mesh networks haven't taken off is because of the cost & speed benefits of centralized colocation data centers and trans-continental backbones, but maybe I'm just not paranoid enough.

The paranoid conspiracy theorist in me also suspects that this is why the FCC fought against UWB approval.

http://stevencrowley.com/2010/09/02/ultra-wideband-how-regul...

There are many devices using UWB, but as far as I know, none of them allow long-range communication:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4318

Reading that article carefully, I think what happened is this:

- UWB failed because it was out-competed

- it was out-competed because it was using a new spectrum, while the competition was using the already existing 2.4GHz channel, so it had to deal with the FCC when the competition simply didn't.

i.e. it sounds like they just had an extra hurdle to jump (and a bureaucratic one at that) that made it hard to win, rather than the FCC actively attempting to prevent it's use.

It's arguable, but I'd say that the real Internet is like that, at least in well-connected places like the US. I cannot imagine the act of God necessary to stop Americans from accessing Google.

You know, it seems that way, but Americans might be the most docile population on earth. There's no way I'd believe they could get away with all the shit they have in the last decade with nothing but token complaints from the masses if it hadn't already happened. If the end of the internet in America was decreed tomorrow, sure it would be a monumental logistical challenge for the NSA, but there's always the Fed to provide them with whatever budget they need, and given what Americans are already perfectly willing to put up with, it isn't likely they'd do anything but roll over after a few sham demonstrations in designated sham demonstration areas.

It's depressing, but I think it's important for us to be realistic about how bad the situation really is if we're ever going to do something serious about fixing it. The reason we still have most of the privileges we do isn't because we're too powerful to have them taken away from us, it's because there hasn't yet been a need to take them away, or because we haven't (yet) elected someone with that sort of style (we certainly HAVE been too close for comfort).

I mean, America is effectively bankrolling the Egyptian censorship. There clearly aren't any qualms with the tactics.

Americans may be docile, but businesses and corporations are not. What do you think the proprietors of the thousands of POPs across America are going to tell the feds who come to shut them down? What do you think Google or Microsoft or Facebook are going to say when the government tries to cut off their primary source of income?

Do you really think the same corporations that extensively lobby the government now are going to sit idly by while the government shuts this Internet thing down?

"What do you think Google or Microsoft or Facebook are going to say when the government tries to cut off their primary source of income?"

They're going to say: "how much will you pay us to help you do it?" The answer will be "a lot" as it's always been. And the answer if they don't comply will be "you're finished". Standard mafioso tactics. Are you really expecting giant corporations to have principles at all, not to mention principles they are willing to sacrifice themselves for? Anyone within who suggests they should will hastily be shown the door. That's how the modern corporation is structured. The filthily rich throughout history haven't exactly been the harbingers of revolution.

> The filthily rich throughout history haven't exactly been the harbingers of revolution.

Actually, more than one revolution was an attempt by the rich to overthrow the powerful.

Of course they will try to manipulate the situation, but will you see them on the street?

It's not really the point though. Perhaps I'm wrong about the importance of the wealthy in revolutions throughout history. The point is it's naive to expect giant corporations to take enormous risks in defying government power. Wealthy individuals? Perhaps. Perhaps small businesses or startups. But not big corporations--they are too profit-centered and conservative and they have too much to lose. Just look at Vodafone's complicit behavior in Egypt. It's a direct parallel.

Agreed. Given a way to frame it so that it seems like it's working in the interest of "the people", they'll be happy to lay down on their swords. Really, this kind of things happens all the time. Corporations are happy to be handicapped when the same handicap presents an even greater barrier to competition. Economists even have a term for this: "rent seeking" (see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rent_seeking )

The regulations that hobble the pharmaceutical industry today (you can debate about whether they're good or not; this isn't the point) were initially sought by the industry, in order to weed out snake oil charlatans. A significant early backer of gun control regulation was the Ruger corporation, because the regulations were structured in a way that affected imports (like Beretta) much more severely.

> The filthily rich throughout history haven't exactly been the harbingers of revolution.

Most of the founding fathers of the United States were rich, you know.

Considering that a good portion of the money that you're suggesting the gov't would pay those companies to shut down their internet facing services comes in part from those same companies' internet revenues(as taxes), I don't know how this would work. It would be an economical disaster for the gov't to shut down the one thing that's propped up our economy so well in the last 20 years. You seem to forget the gov't has money because of taxes, they don't just pull it out of their ass(es).

Take out a few core locations and you'd have a very hard time getting to google, or most other sites for that matter.

All it takes for the vast majority of the internet to become unusable for the larger fraction of the population is to take the .com, .net and .org TLDs down. Your packets will still route but where do you want them to go? It would take long enough for people to regroup and find work-arounds that more permanent ways of blocking access could be rolled out.

> Take out a few core locations and you'd have a very hard time getting to google, or most other sites for that matter.

Definitely untrue. How familiar are you with how the Internet works? Google and other major websites are massively multihomed: they peer with tens or hundreds or perhaps thousands of other ISPs and backbones in as many different peering points around the world.

> All it takes for the vast majority of the internet to become unusable for the larger fraction of the population is to take the .com, .net and .org TLDs down.

8.8.8.8 is an easy enough number to memorize. So is 8.8.4.4. How long do you think it would DNS admins there or anywhere else to fix their servers not to flush their caches? Certainly less time than it would take the US government to shut down thousands of redundant peering points.

How familiar are you with how the Internet works? If you read any recent DS papers you'd notice that Tier-1 ASes follow a power law distribution. You'd only have to shut down a handful of peering ASes to cripple BGP routing in the US.

The thing that makes those ASes Tier-1 is that they have so many peering points. You seem to be presuming that they're as easy to shut down as cutting the power to a few POPs, but they're not. How many POPs would you have to take out to stop Americans from getting to Google?

You don't need to kill PoPs. ASes are run by companies. Force those companies to shut down the PoPs themselves.

> How familiar are you with how the Internet works?

Familiar enough with it to have written a TCP/IP stack. You?

> Google and other major websites are massively multihomed: they peer with tens or hundreds or perhaps thousands of other ISPs and backbones in as many different peering points around the world.

Yes, that was the point, the hosts are still up but you can't reach them. Kill port 53 and the net might as well be dead for 99.9% of all hosts. Most links in google point to other websites, not to google.

> 8.8.8.8 is an easy enough number to memorize. So is 8.8.4.4.

Yep, those would be first to go. Technically those are under the control of the US military anyway, they're on US soil and within 100 miles of an army base. Or did you think there would be a stand-off between a bunch of nerds and a bunch of military long enough to make a difference?

Take out a few key peering locations and the net is dark.

In North America I would say Mae-East, Mae-West and Front 151 in Toronto and that would be 70% of the work done, you can mop up after that.

> How long do you think it would DNS admins there or anywhere else to fix their servers not to flush their caches?

Ironically restarting bind with a new config clears the cache. I'm sure you could find a work-around for that but it might actually be an advantage to start thinking about this ahead of time and making sure that you can survive in 'island' mode without access to DNS.

Those DHS seizures targeted the domans for a good reason, people do not access the net through IP addresses conceptually, they use the DNS, the rest of the magic gets hidden under the hood. The HN crowd may be at an advantage in such a situation (it's just another challenge) but I think for the majority of the folks out there it would be curtains.

> Certainly less time than it would take the US government to shut down thousands of redundant peering points.

I think you're vastly underestimating the capabilities of the US army. There are active reserves in/around every major city, it wouldn't take more than a few hours. Extremely well organized guys with guns are a pretty effective means of shutting down technology.

How many sys admins do you know that will take a bullet to keep their router up after being commanded to shut it down?

That doesn't mean that I didn't wish you were right, but we can safely assume that if a government that (still) had control of its military decided that its citizens should not longer have internet access that they will not within a few hours of that decision being made.

> Familiar enough with it to have written a TCP/IP stack. You?

I work directly with it on one of the world's busiest destination ASes on a daily basis.

> Yep, those would be first to go. Technically those are under the control of the US military anyway, they're on US soil and within 100 miles of an army base.

I'm not quite sure what to do with such a glaringly incorrect statement. 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are anycast-routed ips with multiple servers in places across the globe. Here's a list of the servers that host those ips:

64.233.162.0/24 gru

64.233.168.0/24 iad

66.102.12.0/24 grq

72.14.202.0/24 tpe

72.14.212.0/24 dls

74.125.112.0/24 chs

74.125.114.0/24 chs

74.125.126.0/24 dls

74.125.152.0/24 tpe

74.125.154.0/24 dls

74.125.156.0/24 atl

74.125.158.0/24 atl

74.125.38.0/24 fra

74.125.42.0/24 ber

74.125.44.0/24 atl

74.125.46.0/24 atl

74.125.52.0/24 dls

74.125.64.0/24 atl

74.125.66.0/24 atl

74.125.76.0/24 grq

74.125.78.0/24 grq

74.125.86.0/24 bud

74.125.90.0/24 mrn

74.125.92.0/24 mrn

74.125.94.0/24 cbf

208.117.247.0/24 pao

209.85.142.0/24 dub

209.85.174.0/24 kul

209.85.224.0/24 cbf

209.85.226.0/24 bru

209.85.228.0/24 bru

How many of those do you think the US government can shutdown? It would have to find some way to blackhole Google's AS entirely to do so. Do you think that's within its capabilities?

> I think you're vastly underestimating the capabilities of the US army...How many sys admins do you know that will take a bullet to keep their router up after being commanded to shut it down?

I think you're vastly underestimating the autonomy of individual soldiers in the Army. I know a lot of soldiers--my wife's an active duty O-3--and I don't know a single one who would actually shoot a person for refusing to shut down a router, especially in the context of an attempted government shutdown of the Internet.

The US government would not have to shut down the rest of the world, it would just have to shut down it's portion of it. All the resources that matter for that purpose are directly under it's control.

> I don't know a single one who would actually shoot a person for refusing to shut down a router, especially in the context of an attempted government shutdown of the Internet.

That's called desertion.

Would they also refuse to take foreigners hostage and place them in confinement outside of US soil to stop them from having access to the courts?

Typically when people with guns show up the options are 'do this or else', where or else can be anything from we'll take you prisoner to we'll put holes in you where they do not belong. And you will end up doing what you're told.

Really this is an insane discussion, no ISP would hold out for more than 15 minutes to the moment of shutdown, you can choose it to be an orderly one with a chance of getting stuff back up once the order is lifted to one where stuff will be shut down by major force. Shutdown the power (and the generators) and it's curtains anyway.

I understand that you'd like it to be otherwise. Let's hope we'll never find out who was right ;)

The government needs the internet for its own internal communications. Also, the banking system or any electronic commerce can't function. Just imagine the world going back to 1980. A parasite can't risk outright killing its host.

Tell that to the Egyptians.

The government there strategically left the one provider up that they themselves use and all others are down.

I'd imagine that if a relatively low-tech country like Egypt can pull off a sophisticated partitioning like that on a moments notice that most other countries would be able to do so as well but probably in a more precise manner.

> A parasite can't risk outright killing its host.

Beware of people with nothing to lose.

Yes, it's called HAM radio.

Agreed, the HAM radio and HAM packet network will outlast all other means of communication and then there is CW.

Unfortunately, a determined governing body with the resources to back it could still track HAM operators down.

They wouldn't have to do much tracking, there is a public registry.

On another note, during WWII the mere possession of a radio was grounds for execution in plenty of places, let alone a transmitter, but that didn't stop people from having radios concealed in the most ingenious ways.

True enough. My point was, a governing body with the right resources could track down -anyone- transmitting, HAM or not. Those concealing radios to listen, however, are a whole other ballgame.

The way it was done was like this: information was smuggled out of Belgium, France and the Netherlands by any conceivable means in a slow but fairly steady drip, then broadcast back to the occupied territories from UK soil.

So that's why the radios were so important, and that's why they were illegal.

There is also the Netsukkuku project. http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/ However, it requires other nodes around you to have the software installed as well, which would require planning prior to a significant enough communications outage that would warrant its use.

What's interesting to me is that we're in a constant war between the technologies used by governments to control their people and the technologies used by people to uproot their governments. There's a post below about mesh networking, I can see in a few years cell phones being powerful enough to broadcast network over a large enough area that they'll be ad hoc networks without a central kill switch.

One thing I fear is that eventually we'll reach a point where a dictatorship will establish itself and be so cruel and effective that it'll represent a permanent power which will dictate until it's own will to govern expires. North Korea seems like a close enough approximation but with the weapons and technology of the modern world it doesn't take that much creativity for a psychopath to imagine a world where that can occur.

Perhaps it's time I re-read Cryptonomicon.

> I can see in a few years cell phones being powerful enough to broadcast network over a large enough area that they'll be ad hoc networks without a central kill switch.

Cell phones have actually lost power, not gained power over the last two decades. Likely they'll lose more power still as the push to increase battery life continues and coverage increases.

That's true, but it all comes down to the use cases. With the awful AT&T coverage and carriers actively refusing to provide more bandwidth, wouldn't it be nice to have a phone that had WiMax?

Power constraints are very real right now, but with growing bandwidth needs and none of the other variables changing very quickly, it's at least a possibility that someone could figure out how to put something like WiMax into a phone.

> Power constraints are very real right now

Because batteries don't scale according to Moore's law.

Apparently a large number of autonomous systems are not announcing their prefixes[1], so there's no route for some Egyptian networks.

There's also a small thread on NANOG mailing list in which a user acknowledges the fact that he cannot access a server in Cairo[2].

[1]: http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=450 (by @atoonk on twitter)

[2]: http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-January/031315...

EDIT: formating

EDIT2: grammar, I think everything is passable now

Does anyone have a mirror of the site? It's unexpectedly dropping the connection for me.

It's been #1 top story on Reddit for some time. There's rorr.im mirror[1] and some old version without images in CoralCDN[2].

Perhaps most up-to-date and reliable alternative at the moment is actually their Twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/arabist

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2151054

[2] http://www.arabist.net.nyud.net/blog/2011/1/28/urgent-egypt-...

   Update: It's not everywhere. A foreign journalist at the Semiramis 
   Intercontinental hotel says he has internet access.

It doesn't need to be everywhere, because protests happens like waves. So they cut the Internet (and probably SMS) for a particular region, so that information can't spread to other locations of Egypt.

And even better if some people don't notice the regional outage.

AS20928 (Noor Data Networks) is still advertising all their prefixes. Maybe this hotel is served by them.

A mirror of the original post (rorr.im): http://bit.ly/fCDyP4

Sees like somebody IS actually trying to establish HAM radio contact: http://piratepad.net/ep/pad/view/ro.k4uJ80-xNWBHj8bQ-Nvlh/la...

Also phones, SMS and Blackberry, http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/1/28/phones-disrupted-sms-a...

Shutting off the large majority of the internet is a dumb move, because all those people who weren't especially interested in politics and who were just doing their own thing are suddenly politicised and angry at the government for cutting them off without (from their point of view) any justification. It's pretty much a recipe for a riot.

Communication is so central to modern life (especially for businesses) that When people are cut off from their communications they get very angry very rapidly.

link is dead as of at least 01/28/11, 12:45 AM (EST)

Dang, just missed it! Anyone got a cached copy?

Unfortunately, no. However these two articles (taken from Techmeme) are very interesting as they are basing their observations on the number of affected BGP routes:

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-interne...

List of all affected networks -- seems like a very few are still holding up (Noor's name comes up again and again... for now) http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=450

Renesys' network sensors showed that Egypt's four primary Internet providers — Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr — and all went dark at 12:34 a.m.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5heO3VMhFHp...

Frightening.

Looks like Egypt shut off arabist.net for me. Kind of strange that the site is down now.

arabist.net has a NYC-based IP address, looks like it's hosted on squarespace. I don't want to get all conspiracy-theorist, but is it possible that SS got pressured into shutting it down?

Nope they're just swamped by traffic. Check their Twitter for info: http://twitter.com/#!/arabist

For more technical details, see http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-interne...

The link to the Egypt SE is also not connecting now. Scares me to what might be happening there.

Here is a new site by the arabist for updates on what's happening in Egypt http://tallestpine.squarespace.com/

I wonder if bit.ly will go down when this happens in Libya?

It's time to implement RFC 1149. :-)

Actually, they did. http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/writeup.html

They should use staffcollege.com since fb,twitter and likes have already been blocked

Just a friendly heads-up that everyone should help spread the word for people in Egypt (and anywhere else with blocked/censored Internet) to download and start using AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield as soon as possible. I've even started using it here in the States for maximum online security.

No ISP connectivity isn't blocked/censored internet, the ISP links are down completely. There isn't a possible way to get through something that isn't even connected. Ham radio is funnily enough a better solution.

I guess we should all figure out how to broadcast over ham radio again =)

Thank you for the clarification: I must have read too quickly, I didn't realize ISPs were down entirely at the time that I posted this. My mistake.

Is there a halal alternative to ham radio?

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