Uganda's internet Shutdown
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I lived there in '72 and '73. We had to leave in a hurry.
It's one of the most beautiful nations on Earth. Absolutely stunning.
Except for all the skulls.
Bad Things Happened there, and it has never recovered.
It has become a haven for religious crackpots. They had a Jonestown-type thing, a number of years ago, and it's a really, really bad place to be gay (even closeted).
At some point Bob Geldorf called on Musevini to resign. The Ugandan papers carried knee jerk headlines of "is Geldorf gay?". It would have been comical had they not reflected a grim pervasive homiphobia.
From what you saw, does this result in amplified masculinity, sexism, or gender roles?
In any case, it wasn't the issue, when I lived there. All that happened afterwards.
When I was there, this nice chap called Idi Amin was throwing a party, and we decided to tender our regrets.
Given that's where the "eat da poo poo" video originated, I'm not surprised.
It would be remiss to avoid mentioning that American Evangelical "Missionaries" were a (if not the) driving force[1] behind the clampdown on gay folk in Uganda - perhaps you were alluding to them when you said it's became a haven for them ;)
1. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/scott-lively-an...
All the skulls - That's not a thing, I can't recall seeing any growing up in Uganda. Sure there have been wars in the country but that was decades ago...
Bad things happened there and it has never recovered: The country has developed significantly since the 70s just like most other places in the world. That statement is so far from the truth
Homosexuality: Definitely a strong opposition to it in the country. However, the media representation is an extreme versus the day to day. If you are gay in Uganda, I do agree that it is probably best to stay in the shadows
I urge you to please think about what you are going to write before writing such a comment. You haven't lived in the country for 40 years. Can you really know anything about it's present state?
I loved the nation, when I lived there, and it had a profound impact on my life. Leaving was heartbreaking. I have "survivors' guilt" from that, as I suspect that all the kids I used to play with were probably killed. I still have items with bayonet holes in them, from when the soldiers were making sure that my father wasn't smuggling out his students (who were all killed). I sincerely wish you well in your continued growth and success. It has been worse.
Idi Amin and Milton Obote killed around a million folks; from the end of colonialism, through the mid 1970s. I remember -extremely well- public executions in the park in Kampala.
I also remember how rich, cosmopolitan and modern the nation was, in 1972, and how it collapsed -almost overnight- after Amin kicked out the Asians. From what I see, it has never regained that stature. It was in really good shape, pre-Amin. The income from tea, alone, made it the richest country in East Africa. The rich, volcanic soil, meant that you could grow almost anything there. It also has vast mineral wealth (my mother was a geologist, and I remember touring mines in the Southwestern part of the country). I still have samples of ore from those mines on my shelf.
The LRA has probably been the most horrifying thing for me.
You have my thanks and support. Good luck, and Godspeed.
I wasn't alive in the 70s so can't say exactly what Kampala was like then but my parents and grandparents say it's more modern now. And overall there are more people having better lives on average than the smaller group of well off people at that time.
From an economically standpoint I think a challenge we have is that we are landlocked and have to be dependent on our neighbors substantially amongst other challenges that delving into would turn into an essay. That said I see future promise and growth for the country
Thanks for bringing me up to date.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2021/jan/14/bobi-wine...
It's really really simple, as shown by Uganda, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, India and many more countries.
Of course, if you don't have a significant economy to begin with or something else has already disrupted it (riots, uprising, etc - which could also be what prompts you to shut down the internet) then it's not a problem.
In most cases you don't need to completely turn everything off, just shut down the mobile networks, and maybe the big domestic broadband networks, and that's good enough.
They're good for exfiltrating news.
There's two ways for internet to be shut down.
One is legal -- the government tells registered ISPs "stop forwarding packets". Doesn't matter how good your connectivity is when you simply have to turn it off. Your protection there are courts etc, but it's not technically difficult.
The other approach is extra-legal -- e.g a terrorist attack.
Just look at the effect from a car bomb in Nashville last month, I quote from a newspaper:
> The immediate repercussions were surprisingly widespread. AT&T customers lost service — phones, internet or video — across large parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. There were 911 centers in the region that couldn't take calls; others didn't receive crucial data associated with callers such as their locations. The Nashville police department's phones and internet failed. Stores went cash-only.
> At some hospitals, electronic medical records, internet service or phones stopped working. The Nashville airport halted flights for about three hours on Christmas. Rival carrier T-Mobile also had service issues as far away as Atlanta, 250 miles away, because the company uses AT&T equipment for moving customer data from towers to the T-Mobile network.
The area effected was about 100,000 square miles, roughly the same size as Uganda. From one carbomb outside one building.
I think there's only one major Internet Exchange point in Uganda (just like it seems there was one in the south east of the US), but there's certainly multiple fibres in and out. If you're in Mbarara and sending traffic to Rwanda it's unlikely to go via Kampala.
Here's a network map of one provider in Uganda: https://bcs-ea.com/service/uganda/
The UK has a few exchanges, but almost everything runs through Docklands in London - various Telehouse buildings within a mile of each other, Telecity etc. Almost all internet traffic in the UK runs through London, and the sites that aren't are owned by Linx (IXLeeds is the only one that isn't). A major flood breaching the Thames Barrier will cause chaos.
This only works as long as people respect the law. It wouldn't surprise me if in many countries they'd keep forwarding packets on the down-low. Black market internet access. At least for extended shutdowns. May not be any incentive if it lasts very short time.
Outside of a rogue president that convinces the military to act in illegal activity or a true government overthrow it won't happen.
No running or existing government in the USA will pull the plug because they know that would end their career. All their fundraising gone. Wall Street RIP. Riots all over the place.
here 500 days and counting of no high speed mobile internet for 8 million + souls. thats worlds biggest democracy for you /s
honestly i have seen how life crashes without internet, its not fun
Point is, we dont know when schools will open but students are being prevented from getting some semblance of an education. I have a 4 Yo kid in the extended family and he's been in school for 8 days only. Hits out at anyone who mentions school.
I'm curious, what business operates online but can't move? Is it a company with large manufacturing that can't pick up and move?
Sadly political mismanagement killed it.
Other than that the valley is too little for huge industries geographically.
We have dams built on either side of LOC but the governments take majority share of produce/revenue and locality is left with almost nothing so yeah
Mh client base is in the valley itself so my moving wouldnt help as my customers wouldnt reach me anyways
Any Blockchain operating in a small region would have no resiliency, be vulnerable to 51% attacks, and diverge significantly from the original internet ledger.
Locha.io
https://www.github.com/btcven/locha/tree/master/documentatio...
https://www.github.com/btcven/locha/tree/master/documentatio...
A Harpia node is a Locha Mesh standalone node which can provide services on the network such as an Internet gateway, Bitcoin transactions broadcast, latest blocks data, Electrum Server, a remote monerod, or any other. This device can have a larger antenna plugged, a power amplifier, or even a satellite dish, extending the transmission range in several kilometers
That would effectively stop ~99% of the affected populations from using it, no?
What's the counterargument to this possibility? It seems to hinge on getting too big to ban.
Also, drugs are illegal... and it hasn't stopped drugs from trading hands... drugs even manage to make their way into prisons.
Not all countries would need to sign on to essentially send it back to the stone age.
Ah yes, like how the US and Europe agreed to ban drugs? How's that working for them?
Bitcoin demand is driven mostly by speculative investors.
Maybe governments can't completely kill bitcoin, but they could certainly drive it back to fringe enthusiasts and criminal activity if they wanted.
[1] https://blockstream.com/satellite/#:~:text=Blockstream%20Sat....
[2] https://blockstream.com/2020/05/04/en-announcing-blockstream...
I'll bite.
It's not that we don't think it can happen, in fact those of us actually adept in financial censorship as well as physical censorship have actually advocated that we build additional infrastructure for just this occasion.
I've been involved in the HK protests since the inception of the Yellow Movement, where we saw the CCP making its heavy handed presence felt and then had the local police shut down the internet in protest zones. This lead to the use of a bluetooth based app Fire Chat [0], which had also been used in Iraq when governments decided to crack down on 'dissidents' online. I personally never stopped advocatin for them to build meshnets and become familiar with p2p solutions as the financial censorship was soon to follow, and did not long after and still remains to this day: Jimmy Lai's charges is based on Money laundering something they do not have to prove simply claim and they can get away with it.
What came after that, especially for me as a I was involved in the CJDNS project in Switzerland and dabbled with hyperboria as well as Zeronet in the US for a short period, saw the need for the creation of an entirely new Internet.
Meshnets could serve only a limited capability for a short period of time, guifi is a cool project, but it cannot support the types of infrastructure we've all been reliant on for most of modern existence. I hold a lot of hope for Starlink becoming that after it becomes profitable and recovers its investments as we are in dire need of a new system. Or at least leases out some of its satelites for private use to help build something like it.
Thus, we have made progress towards that end in the Bitcoin community, though in my opinion not enough as we've spent countless hours debating BS topics about people and things who don't matter rather on solving some of the more glaring issues.
But Blockstream, even for all their misgivings and are far from perfect, are still moving toward the desirable end of having non-internet based transactions a priority to propagate on the mainchain-layer 1 protocol with their satellite [1]. There are other solutions as well, ham radio based tx etc... but I'll spare you the details of that for now as this is getting long.
In short, you're talking about some of the most paranoid people in tech with an understanding of cryptography based tools and OPSEC who understand the implications of what you've described as a hypothetical situation while some of us have actually lived through this and used this technology to solve some of the most pressing issues in massive Humanitarian crises in the 21st century (Maidan Revolution in Kiev, Venzuela hyper inflation etc...).
We're not all 'moonbois' and scammers though that gets the most headlines (I'm looking at you Micheal Saylor), and our tech, unlike even the stuff you overly compensated guys in FAANG aimlessly build and maintain to the detriment of much of Humanity, has this weird habit of working even when everyone else says it's dead: to this day nothing even comes close to Bitcoin's (the Network) reliability. Nothing.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat 1: https://blockstream.com/satellite/
How would people with satellite internet connectivity be impacted (I assume there is some government entity able to turn off a satellite, but that probably only applies to a few countries in the world?)?
EDIT: I should have thought about this for a few more minutes before posting the original question - the shutting down ISPs is glaringly obvious in hindsight... I am still interested in hearing people's thoughts on satellite internet, though. HN occasionally talks about initiatives to have LEO satellites provide internet access. If the people running the satellite were outside of your jurisdiction, it would seem like these instances would be mitigated for many places in the world?
> there is some government entity able to turn off a satellite, but that probably only applies to a few countries in the world
A satellite internet provider can’t provide service to a country without the complying with its government rules (assuming there is any kind of trade relationship between the country and the country of the satellite internet provider).
Assuming the other country has something worth trading for. I imagine Uganda wouldn’t really have anything to bargain with the US if a US satellite internet company rejected Uganda’s request.
In case anyone else is interested in the actual data for that.
I could just see them continuing to provide service at no cost as a gesture of goodwill (particularly if their satellite covers another country), but only so long as limited customers use it that way. They won't be doing upgrades though. And it isn't hard to figure out who is getting internet in this way and physically confiscate their equipment.
DNS lookups still rely on your ability to route traffic outside your country anyways.
Neither of the above points even matter if your government can control the ISPs operating in its border. Government says to ISPs: "cease operation or well put you all in prison"
Google.com returns an ip of your favored in country search engine - most likely people get a https error when trying to go there, but those that ignore the error find search works for allowed things and the rest learn to use the favored search engine.
You - as a national actor - can easily cut your country off from the internet while still getting many of the benefits of the internet.
The cached version is still on Google...
If there was a ground station outside of the country the shutdown wouldn't have had an affect unless they tried to police each person running the dish during the ban.
Is that only government-sanctioned networks/stations? Or perhaps, people who don't go through the large ISPs?