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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

#91
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And prosecuting people with the relevant transceivers.

Then Iraq would have to make it illegal to own this sort of internet connection. A country like North Korea could do that, but not a country like Iraq or Cameroon that has some degree of normal freedom but intermittently shuts off the internet.

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

#92

And Europe has to pick up the pieces in terms of refugees while the US & Five Eyes sit back, popcorn in hand, and watch the mess they've made from a safe distance.

> And Europe has to pick up the pieces in terms of refugees

For us (Europe) this is essentially dress rehearsal for upcoming climate-related migrations, and it turns out we're not handling it well.

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

#93

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…

If they had the ability to make a functional government, they'd have done it already.

People seem to be largely kicking the can down the road until someone else is in office.

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

#94
post #71

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

A Starlink dish is a transmitter, which is a beacon that says "come arrest me!" or "drop bomb here." Seriously though: as bad as Trump is, I still think Bush II was by far the worst president of the past 100 years. Trump would have to do something much worse than he's already done to match Bush's accomplishments.

Iraq, Syria, yes. Agreed. Though it feels like Trump is one false move from something just as bad or worse.

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

#95
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put quotation marks around the "freedom" looks better now? xD

Yes, though I wasn't questioning the way you put it. Why "freedom"? Is it the name of a political party?

Hahaha are you serious? the government and all the political parties involved wew installed and formed by the US as a "freedom" after Saddam.

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

#96
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lasers between them in orbit is what I've heard, nothing about ground stations, AFAIK.

Yeah, probably not much point in making an internet connection that only works without cloud cover.

I'd imagine a laser at typical radio wavelengths would be just as susceptible to cloud-cover-induced interference as a non-laser at typical radio wavelengths, no? Not that even lasers would be necessary to mitigate jamming; ordinary beam-forming / directional antennas should be enough (barring some really sophisticated jamming technology of which I'm not aware, or the Iraqi government putting up and maintaining permanent chaff clouds or something similarly outlandish).

Jammers (to my knowledge) operate by actively producing an inverted copy of the signals it actually sees. That is: it'd be reliant on non-directional signals. Any directionality / beam-forming would make jamming a lot harder, since it makes it a lot harder for the jammers to actually see the signal in the first place (let alone produce an inverted-waveform copy of it).

Jamming also tends to get in the way of other radio communications, so even if it was actually effective against satellite communications, it'd be a last resort and would likely cause all sorts of other issues.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Deploying and maintaining radio jamming devices is _way_ more difficult and expensive than telling an ISP to shut down service.

Way more difficult maybe than running a bash script but in real terms it's very doable.

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

#98
post #4

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

It will still be owned by a private company you have no control over, which isn't necessarily better

That seems much better to me. Comcast only shuts off my internet occasionally, through incompetence. They could censor customers who criticize Comcast, but that isn't maximizing their profits, so they don't.

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

#99

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…

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?

It doesn't seem like it, no. If the US was still controlling Iraq, we wouldn't be permitting their current government, which is more or less controlled by Iran.

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

#100
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…

Wow this is a great website. Thank you for sharing.
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