‘Spiderman’ Hacker Daniel Kaye Took Down Liberia’s Internet
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I'd like to introduce the term "neo-colonialism" to the discussion.
I am curious if you are aware of the context of colonialism with respect to Liberia.
Oddly, many aren't aware, but Liberia was founded as a colony by the American Colonization Society in an attempt to return freed slaves back to Africa.
Although the number of US slaves that colonized Liberia was pretty limited in number (and a minority compared to the number of natives) they took power, and the Country has essentially existed in a state of civil war between the freed slaves (colonists) as minority rulers and the natives who did not view the freed US slaves as Africans.
I checked out Dr. Levitt's website and it was listed for $45, but the buy link just redirects to Amazon where the book is listed used for $199 as you say.
Try contacting Dr. Levitt through his website http://drjeremylevitt.com/, let him know its a topic you are interested in and a former law student from FIU Law recommended the book, he may be able to assist.
Well I think there were both good and bad intentions.
For example, you have Lincoln who of course most would consider an advocate of the abolition of the practice of slavery in the US. And Lincoln supported the American Colonization Society initially, even into the War, but eventually changed his position after speaking with African-American soldiers in his Army (imagine that a politician changing their position on a matter without being ridiculed as a flip-flopper).
On its face without knowing more I think one might think establishing a colony in Africa for freed slaves may have been a noble cause, like Lincoln did at one time, and its not like there weren't a few thousand who took the offer.
Now in practice of course the Whites from the American Colonization Society were the rulers and then the power shifted to the freed US slaves, but of course to the local population they weren't fans of their colonizers white or black.
Is that why it is called Liberia?
Liberia's history is quite interesting indeed, and I actually like to compare it with the state of Israel -- both are the result of an unholy alliance of people wanting to help, on the one hand, and get rid of, on the other, another people in "their" land: African descendants in the USA, and Jewish people in Europe.
I went back to live in Liberia for three months earlier this year, to try and trace some ancestors of a family member. Things are dire, indeed, with an economy hit hard by the Ebola crisis, on top of years of military rule, civil war, corruption and abuse.
Apart from being used for resources, mainly by Firestone (now Bridgestone) for rubber, but also iron (Arcelor Mittal) and gold (large parts of which is being smuggled to UAE), it remains a strategic interest for the US (their presence is still huge, with CIA's only listening post in Africa), meanwhile trade is controlled by the Indian and Lebanese communities.
Also of interest is that some Cherokee opted to join the free African Americans, with one ending up a chief of the Vai tribe, and possibly inspiring the Vai script with knowledge of the Cherokee script, recently posted here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737230
Another project was to build a database of all local health facilities. That would have been quite easy--basically, an Excel sheet would have been good enough as far as I understand, but the problem was that the data didn't exist. Travelling around the country to see which facilities were still operating, and tracking new ones, would have been an amazing experience, but that wasn't in my job description. There was a guy tasked with that, and AFAIK nothing happened on that side of the project during the six months I was there.
On the whole, I got quite a bleak impression of NGO work. There were some seeming to do some good work, and other, more experienced and jaded, "expats" I met gave me the vibe of good luck with that, I guess. One problem is that many NGOs want to be "cool" and high tech, where what could actually help would be to basically be a smart, good spirited renegade hacker implementing as simple solutions as possible, and most importantly working directly with the health staff, lab technicians, and the people actually working the central systems. I was shielded from that, probably for small-scale organizational politic reasons, and was too inexperienced to begin with, to work around all that. It's a strange world in a strange land, and were I to do it again I would go about it quite differently. Basically commandeering what resources I could and not minding the organization I was contracted with.
Ever since, I've looked at solutions using drones, and I found a drone system which would fit the constraints (quite large distances, cooling necessary, fast, energy efficient) but that would take a cool $1M USD just to start. I'm still in touch with a couple of CDC guys who would also like to do that, closely monitoring zipline and other similar systems, but the constraints are different. The US money dried up quickly since--when Trump dropped his "shithole countries" schtick, a lot of Liberians took it as a personal insult, I think.
It's clear to me that the US has a huge part in the troubles of the country, not only it's founding but continuing to this day, but some Americans working for the embassy and other US institutions saw it quite differently.
My native Sweden also has a large presence in the country, having operated LAMCO, a huge iron mining operation as a joint venture between the Swedish government and US steel giant Bethlehem steel. They left as war was brooding, and the vast infrastructure is since taken over by Arcelor Mittal, their only mining operation, I think. The ore is extremely pure, 85-90% iron I think, so it's basically just digging up iron and carting it off by train to the port of Buchanan.
LAMCO built the railway, individual houses for thousands of people, free schools, hospital, free trade schools for adults, as well as a go cart track, five tennis courts, an 18 hole golf course and an Olympic size swimming pool, cooled by pumping water from a nearby river hundreds of feet into the ground. They did this in the 50s! It's unbelievable when you actually see it. People up there in Nimba are still waiting for the Swedes to come back, a persistent rumor, it seems. Mittal is disliked by the people.
> The attack against Liberia began in October 2016. More than a half-million security cameras around the world tried to connect to a handful of servers used by Lonestar Cell MTN, a local mobile phone operator, and Lonestar’s network was overwhelmed. Internet access for its 1.5 million customers slowed to a crawl, then stopped.
On a more serious note,this is seriously exaggerated. Internet penetration(mostly mobile broadband) was 21% during this period and was split between LoneStarCell, Cellcom, the govt carrier - Libtelco and smaller ISPs. For a population of 4.5m people, 21% meant each mobile operator had less than 500k Internet subscribers.
The post-apocalyptic description of the impact of the DDoS doesn't fit the feeling in that period ( Nov '16). Friends from outside Liberia reached out (ironically over WhatsApp) to ask whether Liberia's Internet was cut off. I checked and saw international media reporting an Internet shutdown which was even more confusing. After emailing a couple of friends at various ISPs and the regulator, I finally got confirmation that LoneStar was under attack. Apparently, they were keeping it a secret. It did not make national news for another 2 months until the formal complaint and lawsuits were filed. Mobile broadband was very patchy back then so perhaps people just assumed it was the usual state of affairs. Now, we have LTE on both operators and an upcoming pre-5G operator.
Source: I'm from and have been based in Liberia (2015-present) and used to manage services at the national Internet exchange during that period.
National Regulator: http://www.emansion.gov.lr/doc/CONSULTATION-DOCUMENT.pdf Export.Gov: https://www.export.gov/article?id=Liberia-Telecommunications... Twitter Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/tksiakor/status/79486360223055872...
https://www.binaryvision.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/to...
Your typical engineer with relevant education and 5 years of experience is probably about L4/5.
The difference: you have full control over your destiny, power that you don't have to spend a decade earning..you just take it, and you don't have ask for permission.
There's also a thrill to it. Something you really don't get from a boring desk job..even for the likes of google and Facebook.
It's very similar to those amateur pedo-busting groups on Youtube. Why not just become a detective? Because you then have to go through all kinds of red tape and answer to an asshole boss when things go wrong.
Instead, you can play super hero for views and subscription numbers.
The article says he applied to many companies, and they all turned him down because he was too suspicious.