Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout | Hacker News Reader

Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout

eff.org

119 points1zq65 comments

I think the internet is back up in most parts of the country, I have some friends in Tachira and it seems that things are back to normal, for now. The govt keeps running small tests like last week when they blocked twitter images for a couple of hours and last night in Tachira.

Meanwhile, there is a complete media blackout. Local TV channels are being censored and are not informing what is going on in the country. Our only means of information is the internet, mostly twitter. This causes a lot of misinformation unfortunately.

Last night , while there were protests everywhere in Caracas and the rest of the country the president went on TV live to talk (all the channels have to stop regular programming and have to transmit whatever he is saying), the National Guard with armed government supporters went out and cracked down hard on all the protestors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmzfwqczZw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbdzBYjAug

I have friends in other areas in Caracas that had to sleep on the floor because of constant shooting from the streets up to the apartments.

Lets help them be able to read free information with modem dial uplinks, satellite uplinks and mesh wireless networks.

http://www.meshnetworking.org/further-reading/current-projec... http://tidepools.co/ http://servalproject.org/

Mesh Firmware for Ubiquity network http://commotionwireless.net/download/routers

OpenBTS is a Unix application that uses a software radio to present a GSM Um interface to handsets and uses a SIP softswitch or PBX to connect calls http://openbts.org/

Elias Levy (Aleph One) is originally from Venezuela. I don't know if he is involved in politics there.

You'd think that after 10 or so such major protests in the past few years, the dictators would learn not to repeat the same mistakes everyone else did before them. Someone should write a "10 commandments" of sort for how dictators should react in case of major protest.

Maybe do what American presidents do: promise major changes and tell them everything they want to hear, and then do cosmetic changes at best over a long period of time, until people forget about it. That strategy seems to work pretty well in US, and it seems to pacify almost everyone.

It should certainly be much better than doing drastic stuff like shooting at protesters and cutting off their communications "to make them stop". That always makes the situation worse and forces the protest to escalate and even become violent.

And additionally, when you hear from your dictator something you've heard like ten times from other dictators in the last ten years - you become like really enraged. Don't you.

"What it claims as being foreign interference online", I'm speaking to you.

Maduro isn't a dictator, he's the democratically elected head of a weak government. The government had been run as a cult of personality, that personality died, and the professional class smelled blood.

These protesters are ultimately demanding that the police shoot more people, not fewer. They feel their country is spinning out of control, and needs a strongman to save it. Paging Dr. Pinochet?

I know nothing of the issue, so please educate me, but isn't Maduro the one who currently controls all media and just shut down his people's acces to the internet? Sounds pretty dictator-y to me.

As far as I understand it, he is democratically elected, but the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances. The stuff about the protesters wanting a military strongman sounds like biased propaganda.

What exactly do the protesters want, then? Other than Lopez to be president.

As far as I can tell, they want law and order because of the rising (and terrifying) levels of violence, and they don't want their Bolivars to lose all of their value.

Pretty traditional stuff. Foreign investors can't wait for Maduro to be toppled, because that means the shop is open again. The protesters are going to have an unlimited source of monetary support and friendly foreign press.

>the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances

Citation needed.

Controlling much of the media was already the case before Maduro. The ruling party does not nor did it control all of it though. And it's not Maduro directly deciding everything. Maybe those were not ideas you had, but they are common misconceptions to many, just wanted to clear those up first.

So the things that have happened for many years now in broad strokes are that the state sponsored media was political. Besides what you expect it wanted the mind share of the older more conservative folks and would promote ideas like there was too much obscenity etc. Another thing was that independent media was also political and so attacked by the state directly and by harassing employees and owners.

Well under that definition Castro was "elected" democratically... As far as I can tell, after you control all the powers in a country, elections don't say too much.

You know Hitler was also democratically elected, and do you know the Elections committee in Venezuela is practically ruled by the Government?, and did you know elections in Venezuela are electronically counted? and did you know that we all asked for the votes to be recounted manually and the boxes disappeared under government custody? And anyone who takes out all news channels and communication sources can pretty much be called a dictator. So read a bit more inform yourself and then you can make an accurate statement. Nothing personal, I'm just tired of people not knowing what's really happening and creating their own opinions because they "liked" Chavez because he was against Bush, used as a propaganda while selling a big chunk of Venezuela's oil to the US.Just saying. Anyway the discussion is if you take down news channels for no reasons and start blocking internet access to information sources you are a dictator, period. Protesters are demanding freedom of speech as they killed for the same reason.

Hitler lost the election. He used the political backing that he had to force the winner, incumbent Paul von Hindenberg, to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Hindenberg died in office, and Hitler seized the powers of the President and fused them with the powers of the Chancellor.

Hitler was not elected democratically. Please stop being wrong on the Internet.

Maduro was Chavez's chosen successor. Elections in Venezuela aren't "democratic" by any normal definition of the term: the government controls all media outlets and suppresses campaign ads from opposition parties, nationalizes huge chunks of the economy and turns employees working in those areas into public sector employees who are required to vote for the incumbent, further buys hundreds of thousands of votes with giveaways, and withholds police protection from areas that support opponents in what has become one of the most violent countries in the western hemisphere.

Maduro is a strongman out of central casting.

Not for nothing, but the notion that the opposition is calling for violence has been reported as Maduro propaganda:

A campaign started the day after the election to accuse members of the opposition of inciting violence. The word went out that nine people had been killed by opposition members on election day, and several voting stations set on fire. (There had in fact been angry confrontations between supporters of both sides, but the government has yet to provide evidence of politically-related arson or homicides in addition to the average of nine people who are murdered every day in Caracas.)

In any event, the new epithet for Capriles and his followers is “murderers,” a serious charge and a political mistake, considering that they represent half of the electorate.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/may/08/chavismo-af...

>the government controls all media outlets and suppresses campaign ads from opposition parties, nationalizes huge chunks of the economy and turns employees working in those areas into public sector employees who are required to vote for the incumbent, further buys hundreds of thousands of votes with giveaways

Citation needed. These are the same criticisms that Romney had about Obama, and for the majority of Chavez's presidency, the Venezuelan (and American) media was entirely and hysterically anti-Chavez.

>Not for nothing, but the notion that the opposition is calling for violence has been reported as Maduro propaganda:

I'm not referring to that criticism (why is all criticism propaganda when someone that one doesn't like is delivering it?) but just the fact that these are traditional upper-middle-class "law and order" protests.

If they win, the white terror will begin.

https://en.rsf.org/venezuela.html

http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/venezu...

Suggesting some sort of similarity between press freedom in the US and Venezuela seems pretty absurd.

This comment is embarrassing. Venezuela nationalized the country's largest television station. The media wasn't fervently pro-Chavez; it was pro-Chavez by government mandate.

Really? Which television station was that?

RCTV.

That's simply not true. You are propagating falsehoods.

The difference between a dictator and democrat isn't being elected democratically - the difference is seen when someone peacefully steps down after democratic elections.

If so, there's no reason to call Maduro a dictator until he fails to do that.

Beyond the issues of democracy, transparency, legality, etc. The government of Venezuela has a problem of stupidity. The economic policies have created a lot of damage to the economy. They were able to do it because of the huge amounts of oil that they have. But it is becoming harder and harder to sustain it.

The big question at this point is how far are they willing to go to stay in power?

I saw this post yesterday

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180977

It shows how leaders of opposition are using images from protests from Egypt, Bulgaria and other places as if they were from Venezuela

And what you are implying is "so let's just close internets"?

What are you trying to say? You can check more than one...

i) Maduro's government is right and the opposition wrong?

ii) The opposition is [even partially] right but they are using the wrong methods?

iii) Maduro's government is not using propaganda as a way to gain the favor of the people?

iv) Other. Please elaborate.

OP provides an interesting fact. There is no need to extrapolate more meaning than what's given: that there is media manipulation going on. To answer to your points more data points would be needed.

The fact is either irrelevant to discussion (in which case it is off-topic) or it isn't (in this case we have to extrapolate more meaning to link those two).

Or the listener can decide how relevant it is, because this thread is about Venezuela, the protests, and the internet, and the fact is about Venezuela, the protests, and the internet.

Every fact shared isn't required to be an explicit part of a marketing campaign, is it?

edit: it's depressing that this whine is floating above video of police actually kicking unarmed people in the head and (possibly) shooting at cameramen.

There are many interesting facts. i.e: you may look outside of your apartment window, and see thousands of folks protesting, closing roads, fighting the police, etc. Then turn on the TV for more info, and voila! no news, everything is fine according to local TV.

Yes, as your link very well shows, there are many occurrences of tweets with pictures from other places being used as if they were from Venezuelan protests. Unfortunately these often get retweeted unknowingly.

Here are some videos that can be verified from Venezuela:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdHv7watD24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZInPFcPYHMo

Actually the government has done this kind of practice before. They wait until an opposition's leader retweet those images and then they claim that is the opposition who is faking the news and that nothing is happening. After a while the opposition had learn to identify those things but unfortunately people still is retweeting those.

The conflict is real though: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/beauty-queen-genesis...

I saw her picture and I didn't believe it until broke the news.

There is no such thing as "leaders of opposition" right now (oppositors turned their back on formed leader capriles for being too mild and indulgent); just people that posts images and videos on twitter. I haven't seen those egypt and bulgaria pics and I have seen the events with my own eyes.

So.. <rolleyes> at international leftist propaganda.

Actually many of these images are being planted by venezuelan intelligence services to discredit the protests. We have no need to post fake protest images, we have plenty of violent images, no need to make them up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmzfwqczZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbdzBYjAug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw9sAxy-fQY

There's a very black-ops feel to the Venezuela protests…

if anyone is still reading this thread, i found this link had a pretty good description of what i happening (i don't live in venezuela, but i do live in chile and the link below sounds reasonably consistent with the kind of thing i have heard about the unrest here - it sounds believable to me).

http://feministing.com/2014/02/20/toward-a-nuanced-feminist-...

ps despite the title it doesn't have much to do with feminism - it's a pretty general article.

Interestingly my girlfriend has been using What's App to communicate with her family in Venezuela cheaply throughout the last week since they've been unable to get any news. It's really sad to see the government act this way and hopefully the realize that they're causing a lot of unrest in their citizens. It's always inspiring to see citizens standing up to the government in all these other countries. you see some protests in the States but it never feels near the scale.

Let's hope Whatsapp doesn't have a deal with the Venezuelan government for access to its data, too, then?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/messaging-apps-gove...

If I were them I wouldn't take the risk, and use something more secure. Here's a list of open source secure messaging apps she or others could use:

http://missingm.co/2014/02/fighting-dishfire-the-state-of-mo...

From my experience, I can tell that they have irrestricted access to whatsapp and facebook.

When you're under full assault from the US intelligence agencies, sometimes you overreact.

I doubt the US is involved. What would be the point? It's been obvious for years eventually the government would run out of other peoples' money and fail to deliver basic services. Once you start in with price controls the end is near.

They've been involved for years… they're going to sit this one out?

What evidence do you have the US intelligence agencies are involved in Venezuela?

Are or were? Were, there's plenty. Are -- well we're talking about a covert agency, no?

What is the latest incident you can document involving US intelligence agencies and Venezuela?

Document? Going by Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pliers. Venezuela.info has quite a bit of info going back a decade or so.

The point of the comment is not to definitively state anything, merely conjecture. If you'd like to debunk said conjecture, feel free; but asking for documentation seems beside the point.

Invoke the boogie-man of "US spies" and open fire on your own people. FTFY.

But Venezuela is a democracy and Hugo Chavez was a democrat and man of peace!

I can't tell if you are being ironic or not, but just to remind the people who can take your post seriously, that Chavez and his group commanded two unsuccessful coup d'etat attempts, that is hardly something that a "man of peace" would do.

I am being ironic. He was lionised in the left-wing press in the UK when he died, and was a friend of our ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone. In reality, he is no better than Castro.

You can also toss in Michael Moore and Hollywood:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130308/hollywood...

"Sean Penn sat grim-faced at Hugo Chavez's funeral Friday -- one of a clutch of Hollywood stars who lionized the late Venezuelan leader, in defiance of America's fierce antipathy to his regime.

Following a long tradition of Hollywood liberals, Penn was joined by Oliver Stone, Danny Glover and documentary maker Michael Moore in lauding the charismatic Venezuelan president after his death this week."

This is the Sean Penn that tied his then wife (Madonna) to a chair and beat her. What a prince.

It is definitely sarcasm. (Or irony, probably I don't even know the difference)

You forgot the sarcasm tag.

If your government shuts down the internet

Keep calm

And shutdown your government

Remove the keep calm bit and you're there.

Yeah, there's probably no calm way to stage a coup.

Syria, Sudan, google bus stop, Ukraine, Venezuela, ... who's next?

Brazil is a bet

You dream. There are elections this year and current president Dilma is a strong favorite.

The protests in Brazil are fizzling. The poor never took part on them and the middle class left them because radicals (black-blocs) turned it too violent.

Protests on that scale only happen when the economy goes downhill like it did in Venezuela, because the igniter of those kind of protests is, usually, the middle class.

Last year's protests didn't escalated into impeachment because despite blatant corruption and bad government spending, the current government represents the left and that means any movement against it doesn't have the support from the intellectual elite or the media. In fact, the protests started largely as a left movement, asking for more government (lower/free bus fares means more taxation elsewhere), and gathered more support after the clashes with the military police (which is still seen as a product of the authoritarian conservative right of the 60's).

Unless the economy in Brazil tanks and the insatisfaction increases massively, protests against the government will be limited to anarcho-extremists. Until then this incompetent bolivarian left will keep brainwashing the population, invoking the shadow of the authoritarian right to stay in power.

Argentina.

Don't forget Thailand.

What we are seeing in all those countries is representation crisis.

Based on the last ten years of coverage of Venezuela in the US media, I no longer believe the hype.

i am baffled by the faith most people here have about electronic elections.

this being hacker news and all there is too many people claiming "democratically elected"

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