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Internet Blackout in Myanmar Stalls Citizen Report
StonyandCher writes "The government in Myanmar has reportedly cut off Internet access in the troubled country.
The loss of Internet access in Myanmar has slowed the tide of photos and videos shared with the rest of the world but people outside of the troubled country continue to use new media sites and other technologies to protest military activity in the Southeast Asia country."
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... is exactly why you don't want to destroy the utility of the HF radio spectrum to sell it to broadband-over-power-line Internet providers.
You don't want to put all of your communication eggs in one government-controlled basket.
Time to start using pigeons (or smoke signals) to get information ...
I wonder what sort of compression would have to be used to get a fairly good speed connection?
Everything is subjective.
The first thing an oppressive government usually does when unrest is rising is to make sure independent news and reports can't escape, so the only source for information is the official one. They actually took their time to do that, given that the civil war has started almost half a month ago.
Well, maybe their astrologer said they should wait 2 more weeks 'cause then the stars are aligned or something.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess this goes back to the idea that if you can control the information going to and from people, you can control the people themselves. It is really a statement of where the internet is today in terms of importance around the world. I would like to see if anyone from this country manages to make an "underground" makeshift connection to the internet. Also, does any one else find it interesting that the group forming together to protest for the rights of the monks is on facebook?
Would it be possible for the open source community to launch a project to essentially make it impossible for a government to cut off its own people from the outside world? Not simply to overcome the great firewall of China, but a type of watchdog system that can spring into action at a time like this.
In other words, is there anything we in the open source community can do to tangibly help the monks in Burma, or any monks the future may bring?
I have never used a satellite internet provider, but I know that they do exist. Could someone on slashdot explain what is required for such service? I assume a modem which would be registered with a satellite provider. What is the feasibility of smuggling such things into Burma?
Myanmar == Burma
It has large quantities of oil and gas...
WTF do you think there are problems in the place all of a sudden? Do you think it's coincidence there are problems and unrest in oil producing countries now that world oil production has fallen for the last few years?
http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STATISTICS_DETAIL.asp?Statfile=_worldoilproduction
Deleted
the parent is packing heavy punch, and you all know it. use your mod points wisely instead of political nitpicking. or dont use them at all.
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What about phone lines? Surely I'm not the only one old enough to ask whether people can dial out to international dial-up lines. It'd only take a relative abroad to hook up their broadband-connected PC to their old phone modem and unless your line is tapped it'd be just another phone call to the family.
as someone mentioned before, call the country Burma. That's the name which signifies that you don't accept the legitimacy of the murders who have stolen the country and ruled over it for all these years.
Also, I don't get the anti-bush tag, he seems to be doing a lot more than most to help the situation...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Isn't this shit sad? I mean, a tyrannical military government that nobody wants in power, who's abusing that power by willfully shooting civilians. Of course, our leaders don't give a rats ass beyond talking about how "concerned" or "saddened" or "disappointed" because Myanmar doesn't have any oil, or strategic position we can use.
I'm not trying to say Iraq wasn't justified. It doesn't matter. Whether it was or not, I think Myanmar's military rulers need a good ass-kicking. And there's an ass we could kick overnight if we wanted to. Just bust in there to their headquarters and fire some automatic weapons at them just the same way they do to the innocent monks. That'll teach 'em. Throw in an election to put up a REAL government, and we'd be home by Christmas.
Burma DOES have oil. Chevron (US) and Total (French) are two of the biggest benefactors. China, Russia and India all have billions invested as well. So long as the money keeps coming, no one seems to care who is in power or how they exercise it...
there's really no need to worry about that.. Burma is a very poor country, and has no oil, so i see no reason why Bush would want to "liberate" the Burmese people.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
Burma is a very resource-rich country. The problem is that rather than the wealth going to the people, it is funneled into the pockets of the military generals (who then splurge on their daughters' weddings)
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Burma has tons of oil. Chevron and Total are the two Western companies profiting the most, but China, India and Russia all have significant (read multi-BILLION dollar) investments as well..
something being overused does not mean that it will be misused every time that it is used.
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I am certainly no fan of Dubya, however I heard today that the administration might see democracy for the Burmese people as their last chance to go down in the history books as something other than a laughing stock. If this is true and Bush keeps the world's attention focused on Burma for the next few weeks then that will be a positive development for the people there.
Of course, this doesn't excuse any of their behaviour in other parts of the world *cough*iraq*cough*afghanistan*cough*
Because Myanmar is right in there with Vietnam.
The game.
Your understanding of the issues surrounding this situation seem to be extremely poor, and the observations made in the post you are defending are equally ignorant and childish.
The situation for the US, or any Western government which might want to get involved militarily in Myanmar today is simple - involve your military today in Myanmar, and you will almost certainly find yourself facing the very threatening military might of China, their strongest ally.
It would require you reading maybe half of one of the dozens of articles written about the Myanmar mess in the last week or so to understand this. I'm actually kind of disgusted with the laziness displayed in this forum, but I guess it's nothing new. Go back to digg or whatever, seriously.
Clearly, the situation in Myanmar is all America's fault. If they hadn't invented the Internet, then it couldn't be cut off.
If they've cut off every single international phone line you can still radio data in and out. People tend to think that going high tech is the way to break out of these kinds of situations - e.g. satellites etc. - when often going back to flashing light semaphore or carrier pigeon is more likely to succeed.
Losing the connection to Burma slightly, the Romans employed four flags on poles to communicate messages up and down Hadrian's Wall. In ideal conditions they could get a 4-bit message from one end to the other (70-something miles) in a matter of seconds - that's a pretty good bitrate for something with no electricity behind it. Granted you can't get streaming video of monks being beaten up at that kind of bandwidth but radio's a different story.
And setting up mobile radio stations is probably easier than installing a massive communications line of wooden poles without the military noticing. Many brave individuals carefully concealed both receivers and transmitters throughout occupied Europe often at great personal risk, for example. Communications routed around damage even back then. I'm sure there are people within that country right now beaming data out. I wonder where messages in bottles cast out on their beaches would wash ashore. You could squeeze quite a bit of memory into a bottle.
Anyway, I think what I'm rambling about is that there's always a way. I just hope there are enough people with the balls out there taking these risks and, much more importantly, I hope that their messages do not fall on deaf ears. Sadly I feel some of the more powerful countries, who might otherwise be in a position to levy some immense pressure on the Burmese junta, are somewhat under-staffed at the moment. Although it's fair to say that some other countries - that are most definitely not under-staffed - remain on the outside of this affair for rather more cryptic and apparently self-serving reasons.
All said with humble and awkward apologies for commenting on the topic while enjoying a comfortable yet-to-be-oppressed privileged lifestyle.
the American firm Fortinet, which runs the Myanmar Wide Web.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
It's a shame their internet's down because they won't be able to get access to this: http://paultan.org/archives/2004/11/29/rfc1149-cpip/
huh?
goading the chinese? wth would the chinese have any interest in helping the myanmar/burma democratic movement?
they would end up having the militray regime substituted with a communist leadership?
besides naming there isn't much of a difference. one has its dictator with a military rank the other has its dictator with the rank of leader of the communist party.
nothing that would do the people of myanmar any good. in fact it would get worse. so far the regime "just" sent soldiers to stop and shoot protestors while china typically sends tanks right away.
I'd gladly donate money for the equipment/bandwidth costs, but I don't even know where to begin looking. Perhaps a pro-democracy Burmese group or some such.
At any rate, thanks for your input.
If we start tunneling through the phone lines, governments can just cut the cables there too (except for "official" uses of course). Ground-based communication in general is trickier with Burma due to low resources and dense jungle. Satellites are a good idea, and they are already being used to document Myanmar atrocities. Tech isn't good enough to get detailed accounts of the protests (only stuff the people are actually *protesting* like the civilian relocations and shelling of villages), but it's a good start.
But see, going to war with Myanmar means going to war with China. No one wants that.
622677120
Oh, grow up.
Iran and Iranians are only too happy to aid the insurgents in Iraq for the very, very simple reason that a bunch of total cunts dropped weapons of mass destruction on them in the form of nerve gas and bio weapons. Who were these bastards that went beyond any acceptable limits of civilised behaviour? Well, goodness me! It seems that it was the good old US of fucking A and it's ongoing mission to bring democracy and strong IP laws to the world! And strangely, dropping plagues on Iran has led to anti-American feeling there?! They're just unreasonable, those ragheads.
If America had treated my country the way the US treated Iran, I'D be an insurgent too, and I suspect you would too, without any need to listen to anti-China fairy stories.
Apart from anything else, there's a mountain of reasons to hate China without having to make new ones up. Unless, of course, you are really just trying to justify some other totally unconnected policy.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What's interesting about Iran is that after 9/11 they seemed to be the only country in that part of the world that felt bad about what happened. I believe they were one of the few countries that held candlelight vigils that night and prayed for the victims of the attacks.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I seem to remember that Burma has somewhere around 0.7% of easily reclaimable oil. Cant find the figure at the moment. NB They also have a shitload of Opium.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
Yes, but that didn't fit Rumsfeld's self-justification so they had to be pushed and pushed into a corner so that they'd support I'madinnerjacket who would in turn spout the correct rhetoric to give a causus beli for an invasion. Which in turn is another reason for them to support the uprisings in Iraq - if the US sorts out Iraq then they'll get it next.
Iran has no reason to do anything except hurt the US where it can, and that's entirely of the US's own doing.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
i didnt see any hesitation from anybody on the face of the world on bush & co part when they decided to invade iraq.
no sir, methinks you need to read a lot of 'articles' and actual late politics history before putting out such brilliant theories belittling other arguments.
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If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
>why USA doesn't bring democracy also to Myanmar?
You know the reasons, but foremost among them is that military action against Burma is tantamount to a declaration of war against China. It also requires a land war in Asia. Burma today isn't a hell of a lot different from Vietnam in 1962. While we laugh off the capabilities of their military and the perceived intellectual capacity of their commanders, engaging them in a conflict does not likely end very well for anyone. You only *think* Iraq is "Vietnam part 2." Invade a Southeast Asian country again, and the problems represented by Iraq will fade to insignificance in comparison.
>sorry! not enough oil downthere... it belongs to China.
Burma has several things of interest to China: A large pool of unskilled labor, Forest resources and arable land, and abundant natural gas reserves.
Burma represents a significant stake in the energy sustainability of China and Thailand. China, Thailand, Russia, Korea, India all have oil business in Burma, despite the EU and US economic sanctions. Why haven't the EU and the US already cut off diplomatic relations with those countries over this alone?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>Myanmar doesn't have oil like Iraq?
Burma has more natural gas than Iraq has oil.
You might want to look into the countries that have natural gas business in Burma. Decide if it would be wise to declare war on those countries.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Does Burma have an amateur radio community? Packet radio would be great for transferring all types of information. So would 4gb flash drives attached to carrier pigeons.
But see, going to war with Myanmar means going to war with China. No one wants that.
So does going to war with Iran, but no one realizes that.
I mean... If someone shot up your largest foreign oil supplier you'd get pretty angry too. It would be as if China started bombing Saudi Arabia.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Actually, the government of Myanmar runs the Myanmar Wide Web. Software produced by Fortinet, but not administered, supervised or maintained by Fortinet, is used by the government of Myanmar to censor the MWW.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
ENTIRE world have opposed bush invasion of iraq, but blair. not only china.
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I realize that fully actually. Going to war with Iran would be the equivalent of the Nazi invasion of Poland.
622677120
What's interesting about Iran is that after 9/11 they seemed to be the only country in that part of the world that felt bad about what happened. I believe they were one of the few countries that held candlelight vigils that night and prayed for the victims of the attacks.
The people of Iran, yes. The government of Iran, not so much.
Wasn't the internet supposed to be able to survive a nuclear war? I know Burma is a poor country with few resources; still, this turn of events doesn't give much support to the notion that the 'net is nearly impossible to crash.
The 'internet' hasn't crashed. Any (small) part of it that may have gone through Burma is now simply going around it.
Routing around damage, as it were.
Wikipedia says
.mm websites down
According to the OpenNet Initiative [6], FortiGuard is used by the dictatorship of Myanmar (Burma) to block communications critical of the regime carried over the internet, a system known as the Myanmar Wide Web [7].
Meanwhile, the Myanmar government features its adoption of the Fortinet firewall on its official website [9] with other photos showing a Fortinet sales director presenting a gift to the Myanmar Prime Minister during a ceremony [10].
Just giving him a gift, hmm ?
Take these f*ckers
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/09/29/hackers-unite-for-burmese-freedom
Bloggers and other cyber activists within Burma risk their lives by publishing any information counter to the government line, but they still do it because they believe that freedom of expression is worth that sacrifice.
You don't have to make such a sacrifice, but if you have computer skills, can breach firewalls, routers and web site security then you could greatly assist the people of Burma. By taking down official Burmese government propaganda and posting pictures, information about the protests, information about the lies of the Burmese junta, and news of the huge support being offered by the rest of the world - preferably in Burmese - then you could help free the people from this terrible regime.
why USA doesn't bring democracy also to Myanmar?
And be accused again of causing death and destruction to innocent civilians? How about someone else do it this time. China, Russia, France...hell, Sweden, Hungary, Estonia, Peru...you guys go do it this time.
Burma *does* have oil, numbnuts. If you want Western countries to go in and fight for oil, why don't you start asking the Brits, the Canadians and the Australians?
"Myanmar currently has 19 oil deposits onshore and 3 others offshore, with total estimated crude oil reserves of 3.2 bn barrels.
Since Myanmar began allowing foreign investments in 1988, it has permitted foreign companies to conduct onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration. Its major partners include companies form the UK, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Canada."
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cns43800.htm
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
You can still upload a lot of photos over a 9600bps international-phone-call PPP connection.
I hope the Burma exile community is setting up modem pools worldwide for just this purpose and finding some way to get them to the Burma underground.
Does SkypeIn handle low-speed modem connections? Surely it can do 300bps but I doubt it can do 33.3K. With SkypeIn, it should be easy to get phone numbers that are a cheap call from Burma.
Color faxes also work wonders. Do they work over SkypeIn?
Methinks it's time to smuggle in some satellite phones just in case they close off that route.
You can't silence censorshi
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Software produced by Fortinet, but not administered, supervised or maintained by Fortinet, is used by the government of Myanmar to censor the MWW.
Yes, you're quite right. Fortinet are only making money out of the situation and therefore should be entirely excused of any suggestion of wrongdoing. Likewise anyone selling arms to the Burmese government should also be excused because they're not the ones actually shooting monks in the fucking head.
If you disagree with my comparison, please do feel free to let us know exactly where the difference lies.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortinet, they utilize a 100% indirect sales model. So how again can you actually demonize this company?
Karma: Positive. Mostly effected by cowbell.
Actually, many of those sites have already been hacked in the past...
http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/2000/08/01/www.myanmar.com/
A bunch of the government sites got defaced before that too, but i can't find the mirror sites.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The link is to a cache of the official www.myanmar.gov.mm site, which is now down and replaced with another one, cleansed of all refs to Fortinet.
I wonder why they have an indirect sales model and don't restrict the actions of their licensees? Perhaps they just don't care who uses their software, and to what ends. If their sales director was there actively selling the software, it looks to me like they don't care.
That's true but you grossly overstated it in your OP. China is not bleeding the US dry by supporting Iran. The US is losing some cannon fodder in return for huge stockpiles of oil and the chance to test new technology in actual combat situations. The aristocracy's view of that is that the cost is so low that isn't even worth noting. Iran is supplying a limited amount of physical support, probably most of it by unoffical volunteers who remember what the Americans did to them back in the Iran/Iraq war, and China is doing nothing much more than making supportive noises. When Israel finally blow the crap out of the Iranian nuke projects, China will not intervene.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Except that his skin color still determines how he will be treated. So the caste system still applies to him, especially if his skin is very dark.
This is oversimplified despite a kernel of truth. Some brahmins have fairly dark skin; other cues are used to indicate caste. India is a vast population with unbelievable variety. Please don't equate US and euro oppression with India's.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Don't look at me. I don't actually care that much about the issue. But if you're so convinced there is no difference, how about you explain why your computer is full of parts made in China, what with China being the Burmese dictatorship's major backer and arms supplier? Is there a difference, or have you convinced me that your hands are just as bloody as Fortinet's?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No, it won't. A renunciate is a renunciate.
I don't know where you get your ideas from, but please be more careful.