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Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

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Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#61

Starlink can’t come soon enough. Imagine internet beyond the grasp of control freak governments

Not to be too cute but by relying on corporations you're trading one dictatorship for another. Im not saying an oppressive government is the same as Comcast. Im just making the point that neither entity is accountabile to the people they 'serve.'

No one is wholly trustworthy. That's why every additional option is a good option.

Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#62

Starlink can’t come soon enough. Imagine internet beyond the grasp of control freak governments

You'd think a headline like the one we're posting under would stop techno-optimism dead in its tracks.

We got the news within 12 hours. Right now massive amounts of data is being collected, and eventually it will get out.

This seems like it'd all be a lot easier to control without technology.

Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#64

Starlink can’t come soon enough. Imagine internet beyond the grasp of control freak governments

> Imagine internet beyond the grasp of control freak governments Radio jammers. There are very few technological solutions to political problems.

LEO Ka band jamming is very hard

https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/pdf/10_2505.pdf

Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#65
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine internet beyond the grasp of control freak governments Radio jammers. There are very few technological solutions to political problems.

Aren't some of them planning to use lasers? They'd have a hard time blocking that.

Do you realise that most of satellite jamming is done on uplink, not downlink?

This is how Cubans jammed US milcom and few civilian satellites since nineties

Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#66
Well mission accomplished .. I guess. A great documentary if you haven't seen it is "Iraq: No End in Sight." It's pretty clear that the completely failed (non-existent) reconstruction efforts of the Bush administration would lead eventually to a failed state.

The same thing is happening in Libya after the Obama era bombings. These places weren't democratic paradises before or anything; I'm not saying that. They had corruption and human rights issues -- but they were stable. People who didn't protest against the government and weren't in poverty could usually live in relative peace. You can say the same thing about China to some extent as well.

Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#67
From a pragmatic perspective, what is the West and the US in particular supposed to do about this?

We shouldn't have gone into Iraq in 2003 in the first place, but we did, so what now?

Our government is going to keep its boot on the neck of Iraq and stay involved over there as long as Iraq still has oil, right? If the problem now is more that we have too little influence, so what? Are we supposed to try regime change again because it worked so well last time?

The current Iraqi regime may not be good, but neither was Saddam. We still should have left Saddam alone, excepting targeted strikes if we ever got good intelligence about WMD programs.

Re: Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, shuts down internet

#68
post #23

Iraqi here (But I live in Turkey), protests were raging yesterday and today, first social media was taken down now the whole internet from mid (Baghdad) to the rest of the south of the country Here is a local service monitor for all major ISPs in Iraq: http://akonet.info This is the usual procedure by the "freedom" government they do this every time, the only issue is this time the protestors are not carrying any fla…

> This is the usual procedure by the freedom government

The "freedom" government blocks the internet to censor people? I find that somewhat ironic...

(I presume that's the name of the party in power or something. It sure doesn't seem like it's a description of their behavior.)

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