Pakistan suspends mobile networks over fears of attacks | Hacker News Reader

Pakistan suspends mobile networks over fears of attacks

bbc.co.uk

11 pointsdanso6 comments

Today is the fourth time in 2 months this has happened. At first it was hard to imagine the government would go through with it but they did.

It's strange, the first time any such news get floated (blocking FB, YouTube, phones or Supreme Court rulings) it comes as a shocker, people huddle and complain and with some passing of time expectations are lowered across the nation. Complete mobile network blackout doesn't feel like a big deal now that it has become a regular occurrence.

People have been making plans ahead of the scheduled outage and some are even happy to be offline and free of interruptions.

I'm sure it would be nearly impossible to use a garage door opener instead.

Long term, it can be worked around. Short term, it's extremely effective. Did you read that all the bomb detonated in the last 15 days used cell phones?

This will stop people from detonating their bombs until they can design a detonator that doesn't rely on cell phones. I doubt it's just a 5 minute switch to use a different detonator and just have the bombs work as effectively as they do now.

It probably is a five minute switch if you know in advance that phones aren't going to be working. Blacking out the cell phone network is a short term strategy that, if used repeatedly, will just lead to different methods being employed. Phones are just cheap and effective, plus not very suspicious.

The problem here is that you won't be able to phone in a bomb sighting. You're basically screwed if you see someone setting up one.

Actually it turned out they just went lowtech. Al Quida has just taken 'honor' for a suicide attack at a funeral arrangement that left 20 dead.

And once again religion runs what science has built, and what people rely on.

Maybe instead of hurting those who are not violent, Pakistan should do something about the extremists?

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