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Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

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Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#101

Post by iwwr »

redthrowaway wrote: post #100
iwwr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, the threat of US invasion (or at least attack) is keeping the opposition in check.

There is no threat. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/mullen-please-for-th... http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_why-the-us-can-... http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%...

There is certainly a lot of saber rattling. Also, the 'nuclear option' is 'on the table'. The Iranian government is justifiably playing the card of foreign interference.

Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#102

Post by csomar »

tfh wrote: post #71
csomar wrote: post #9

In Tunisia, it's not Internet that made the revolution success, but SMS. First, everyone has a mobile phone (even the poor). Second, you receive the message and read it instantly wherever you are. (You should guess it, few people here have smart phones). Third, there is more commitment that you go to the street. For those interested in the Tunisian revolution: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12302232 I think t…

I think the internet (and specially facebook) had a big role too. Facebook videos were crucial to show that the people were not giving up specially when the television was silent about the whole thing. BTW who's your nominee?

I still not decided. I want someone secular, capitalist and liberal. Someone with a good history and background in economics and politics.

He'll get some good promotion, as I'll be dedicating all my summer for pushing his campaign forward :)

Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#105

Post by cturner »

redthrowaway wrote: post #97
cturner wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The partner in peace line is appropriate. Egypt is active in working towards regional peace. Consider how Egypt could instead by run. It could be led by religious group and be something like Iran. Or it could be led by the stereotype arab despot - constantly picking fights with Israel to create a distraction and channel the country's hatred at somebody outside the borders. Mubarak doesn't set a high bar, but if all t…

>if all the middle east leaders were merely as good as him, the region would be a much better place. No it wouldn't. It might be a better place for Israel, but it would still be a terrible place for Arabs. Egyptians are rebelling for a reason: They have no jobs, and no food. They are kept under the heel of a brutal dictatorship. So are Saudis and Yemenis and everyone else the West likes. The US props up the Egyptian…

    This might come across as an anti-American rant.
Well - a lot of your comment is worded as though it's a contradition to what I said, where it isn't. It's difficult to participate in a conversation where you're getting hit over the head with a world view like that.

Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#106

Post by sans-serif »

seancron wrote: post #26
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Any government currently in power will have an item in its playbook titled 'shut down public internet access', right next to a folder labeled 'island mode' and 'totally dark'. Some will be upfront about it, some will be more circumspect but media control has long been one of the central points in crowd control and just like newspapers, radio and TV stations are with some regularity taken over by the government (Italy…

Which makes me wonder, is there a way to make an ad-hoc, decentralized internet that a government could not shut down?

Yes, it's called HAM radio.

Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#107

Post by eftpotrm »

marshray wrote: post #51
Zak wrote: post #18

I read this, and become more concerned about bills to give the US President an Internet kill-switch. They say it's to protect against cyber-warfare, but something makes me think it's just as likely to be applied to civil unrest, and civil unrest doesn't usually happen unless there's something pretty wrong with the government.

Obama already claims to have the power to commandeer networks in the form of an obscure provision in a pre-WWII law relating to communications base stations. People in the US government are becoming painfully aware though just how dependent every bit of our infrastructure is becoming on continued internet function. Nobody is really sure, for example, just how much of the phone and power networks would stay up if all…

I'm sorry to be picky, but The President of the United States of America has the power. That office currently resides with one Mr. B. Obama, but if it's an obscure provision in a pre-WWII law it's hardly a power he's introduced against the grain of history and so can be personally tied to and held against him.

Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#108

Post by notahacker »

redthrowaway wrote: post #100
iwwr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, the threat of US invasion (or at least attack) is keeping the opposition in check.

There is no threat. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/mullen-please-for-th... http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_why-the-us-can-... http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%...

It doesn't need to be a real threat to provide a plausible excuse for repression and deterrent from activism (even if the opposition are more afraid of being branded allies of Great Satan than they are of any American intervention)

Re: Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)

#110

Post by jacquesm »

jemfinch wrote: post #57
jacquesm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take out a few core locations and you'd have a very hard time getting to google, or most other sites for that matter. All it takes for the vast majority of the internet to become unusable for the larger fraction of the population is to take the .com, .net and .org TLDs down. Your packets will still route but where do you want them to go? It would take long enough for people to regroup and find work-arounds that more…

> Take out a few core locations and you'd have a very hard time getting to google, or most other sites for that matter. Definitely untrue. How familiar are you with how the Internet works? Google and other major websites are massively multihomed: they peer with tens or hundreds or perhaps thousands of other ISPs and backbones in as many different peering points around the world. > All it takes for the vast majority o…

> How familiar are you with how the Internet works?

Familiar enough with it to have written a TCP/IP stack. You?

> Google and other major websites are massively multihomed: they peer with tens or hundreds or perhaps thousands of other ISPs and backbones in as many different peering points around the world.

Yes, that was the point, the hosts are still up but you can't reach them. Kill port 53 and the net might as well be dead for 99.9% of all hosts. Most links in google point to other websites, not to google.

> 8.8.8.8 is an easy enough number to memorize. So is 8.8.4.4.

Yep, those would be first to go. Technically those are under the control of the US military anyway, they're on US soil and within 100 miles of an army base. Or did you think there would be a stand-off between a bunch of nerds and a bunch of military long enough to make a difference?

Take out a few key peering locations and the net is dark.

In North America I would say Mae-East, Mae-West and Front 151 in Toronto and that would be 70% of the work done, you can mop up after that.

> How long do you think it would DNS admins there or anywhere else to fix their servers not to flush their caches?

Ironically restarting bind with a new config clears the cache. I'm sure you could find a work-around for that but it might actually be an advantage to start thinking about this ahead of time and making sure that you can survive in 'island' mode without access to DNS.

Those DHS seizures targeted the domans for a good reason, people do not access the net through IP addresses conceptually, they use the DNS, the rest of the magic gets hidden under the hood. The HN crowd may be at an advantage in such a situation (it's just another challenge) but I think for the majority of the folks out there it would be curtains.

> Certainly less time than it would take the US government to shut down thousands of redundant peering points.

I think you're vastly underestimating the capabilities of the US army. There are active reserves in/around every major city, it wouldn't take more than a few hours. Extremely well organized guys with guns are a pretty effective means of shutting down technology.

How many sys admins do you know that will take a bullet to keep their router up after being commanded to shut it down?

That doesn't mean that I didn't wish you were right, but we can safely assume that if a government that (still) had control of its military decided that its citizens should not longer have internet access that they will not within a few hours of that decision being made.

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