Sysadmins Restore Iraqi ISP

Hen3ry writes "Brian McWilliams of Wired News reports on the dedicated staff of Iraq's State Company for Internet Services, or SCIS, and how they built, maintained, and rebuilt Internet access before, during, and after the war. Ba'ath Party loyalists still run SCIS but their dedicated employees continue to press on. Fascinating stuff about how one sysadmin managed to keep the country online up until a US missle struck the roof of the Ministry of Information building."

Comments

yeah

[Michael's a Jerk!]

pity about law and order.

Great pirorities, guys.

Re:yeah

[sleeper0]

am i the only one reading between the lines here?

"To keep the service running, SCIS engineers fended off denial-of-service attacks, domain hijackings and other foreign hacker intrusions, not to mention regular investigations from suspicious Iraqi government officials. "

then later

"According to Harif, the delay in bringing the Uruklink website back online is due to security concerns. While the site's content has been ready for weeks, he said technicians needed extra time to harden the underlying server software against electronic attacks."

Didn't they probably have more trouble due to internet attacks before the fall rather than after? Also doesnt this quote seem odd, if you were explaining launching internet service you wouldnt say everything was ready to go to be turned on, except that you are still working on a big part of it.

It seems to me the article is saying that someone else like the US government is delaying the return to service based on their monitoring equipment being installed. Or am i just being paranoid? Oh well, i supose thats what they call victor's rights.

Re:Why'd they do that?

[Spruitje]

But Saddam's in Montreal, remember? Drinking martini's and laughing his arse off. Not in Good Old God Forsaken Family Values Walmart Censored America.


Yeah, and he just got his holiday payment from the CIA.
Wouldn't suprise me.

iq

[dtfinch]

As soon as they're available, I suspect that a lot of people will want to register numeric .iq domains. 180.IQ will probably be the first to go.

Re:How did they get the gear?

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in an embargo'd country doesn't mean you can't get restricted stuff. It only means it costs more. Embargo'd countries are a seller's market.

Same goes for illegal stuff.

Re:Not to treat the story seriously, or anything..

[Anonymous Coward]

way to never turn down a chance to show your contempt for conservatives

Re:How did they get the gear?

[Imperator]

True, but people broke the embargo because they know that an embargo almost never works against a dictator. Think about Cuba or North Korea, for example. The leadership stays strong and rich while the poor suffer. Breaking an embargo (which you have no legal necessity to follow) is hardly the same as starting a war aimed at conquering a country. I applaud the countries that shipped food, medicine, and consumer goods to Iraq. Yes, some may have been skimmed off the top by the government, but it gave to a brutally repressed people what they were too terrified to claim on their own.

And yes, I know that in the long run most Iraqis will be better off without Hussein. That doesn't mean the method and circumstances of his removal were wise or just.

The pens mightier than the plowshare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much electronic connectivity, but good old human communication. Iraq needs a free press among other things as well.

Re:yeah (MOD parent UP)

[Spyffe]

But that's a ridiculous idea; I'm an idiot.

Well, at least you have the courage to admit it.

So, how many sysadmins do you know that would be good riot cops?

Sending US soldiers to put up fiber would be a little weird if crime is rampant; however, if a bunch of specialists want to do their part, let 'em - that's what your parent is saying.

Re:How did they get the gear?

[Citizen of Earth]

Everyone bitches about the US.

That's because the US is everybody's favorite punching bag. There is little interest in criticizing anyone else.

Dissapointing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it very telling that an unprovoked attack on the USA that killed around 2,795 is a "tragedy" and a "slaughter" and justifies destroying all our rights and 2 foriegn countries. And yet, another unprovoked attack that kills at least 3,240 civilians is just a "few sandy buttholes."

Re:Dissapointing...

[borgasm]

The main difference between Iraq and the WTC was intent.

We have no problem with the Iraqi people...our problem was with the government...who in fact was killing its own people.

The WTC was intended to kill as many innocents as possible. Our military develops weapons that try to minimize that casuality rate, so innocents like the people living in Iraq are spared.

Nobody would like to use war as a tactic, but it happens....

Law and Order...

[MosesJones]

And PAYING for everything should be the responsibility of the occupying powers.

Unfortunately US Troops are shooting civilians so its still unclear who is upholding the Law.

I know I'm joing to take a Karma hit but honestly and moronic one-liner like that gets classified as Insightful days after US Troops fire into an unarmed crowd. If that happened in Zimbabwe everyone would condemn the goverment troops, but in Iraq its "reasonable force".

Re:Law and Order...

[Anonymous Coward]

there was an incident where US troops killed a carful of people who they thought were suicide terrorists.

You forget the other half of the story...conveniently. You know, the part about the vehicle that didn't stop on command, and was approaching a clearly marked checkpoint at high speed. You know, the one that ignored warning shots fired into the air and into the engine compartment. You know, the one that finally stopped when the driver was killed. You know, but yet you conveniently leave that part out.

I suppose you would have handled that situation much better than they did.

Re:Law and Order...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I like your thinking. I know where I can find a crowd of a couple of thousand people and there's only one of me. If I start shooting at them I'll be 40 times more justified than even those soldiers were.

Lets conduct a little thought experiment, shall we? And to keep it simple, lets just cut down the numbers a bit so the math doesn't trouble you. You go stand in a field, and we'll bring just 40 of those thousands you can find. You have two missions. 1. Stand where you are. 2. Keep the 40 people from crossing the line where you are standing so they don't go into the building behind you. We'll give each of those 40 people 2 rocks about the size of your fist and have them stand 30 feet away. What happens next is simple. You stand there, they throw their rocks at you. If you are still able to stand when they are done throwing, congratulations!! You've defied the odds. Now, just to liven things up a bit, lets say that they aren't just standing there throwing their peaceful rocks, but they are moving toward you. And better yet, we've given some knives or clubs to half of them, and may have randomly given some of them an AK-47 assault rifle. (Did we mention that almost all of them are former members of the Iraqi Army so they know both how to use the AK-47 and now to break your neck with their bare hands?) You still doing OK? Your body doesn't look so good. Oh, but even this is too simple. Lets also add in some agitators so that they are whipped up and chanting KILL AC! KILL AC! KILL AC! while they are coming at you. And did I mention that there is a slight possibility that one of them, but no more than one, might have 5 kilos of explosives strapped to his body so that if he can just get close enough, he can both kill you, and cause an incident when the Iraqi deaths from the bast are blamed on you? Ah, but this is still too sterile. Before they started coming at you, you've just watched them use their clubs and rocks to smash several cars and beat a driver or two. Well, that seems about right.

Now, multiply that whole thing by 40, have the mob rush a vehicle with a soldier in it, and the soldier fires something like 3 shots in self-defense. Frankly the restraint that the soldiers showed is amazing.

I can see how you might like my thinking since I'm not sure that you're doing any at all.

Buy a clue

[Brian Stretch]

So never mind that Saddam had WMDs, as the Kurdish and Iranian survivors of his WMD attacks will attest. Never mind that he never let your UN pals do their weapon inspections unobstructed. Sometime between the Iran-Iraq war and now those WMDs magically disappeared and we should all take Saddams word for it. After all, Iraq is only as big as California, where could he hide the things?

And the ~300,000 Iraqis Saddam's dictatorship murdered? No mass destruction there, no sir. No need to worry about such a dictatorship developing nukes.

I guess you Former Soviet Useful Idiots really were desperate for new employment.