Slashdot Mirror
Social Media As a Weapon In Egypt
oxide7 writes "The internet and social media sites have become a battlefield between the Egyptian government and protesters. From the article: 'Facebook has at least two pages, Operation Egypt and one titled Egypt's Protests. The former carries calls to arms, asking for volunteers to mount distributed denial of service attacks. The latter has posted messages and videos, such as one that said the Ministry of Awqaf which is in charge of religious endowments, might work with the Ministry of the Interior to stop Friday prayers.'"
your mummy?
You're tuning evermore into douchebag crappola.
And I'm not even a Copt.
Let me be clear.
Fuck you.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
basically, I want you to fuck-all and go to hell
I thought the slaughter of the first born was bad but now a plague of /b/tards??? You win, yahewh.
Pharoah
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
The Tunisian uprising was called Jasmine Revolution. If the Egyptian thing pans out they'll assign some new unrelated color.
Set the naming conventions according to the social media outlet which was instrumental in fomenting it. For example:
Twitter Revolution in Tunisia
Facebook Revolution in Egypt
Github Revolution in Jordan
What is the actual purpose on doing DDoS attacks on some rarely visited government web sites? If people want to actually change things, they should really go out and protest against the government rather than sitting behind the safety of their monitors clicking endlessly until some crappy configured server goes down.
There has been a lot of talk about the addition of an NFC (near field communication) chip to the next-gen iPhone. This will allow the phone to be used as a swipe-it-yourself credit card. I consider this technology to be the most onerous ever.
I first discussed the idea of your mobile phone becoming your credit card in the mid-1990s and was just biding my time before it came to pass. Bluetooth was invented in 1994 and gave rise to a lot of speculation regarding its usefulness. For a few years, all sorts of futuristic uses were imagined and a serious discussion of the so-called PAN (personal area network) began, but never went anywhere.
The PAN, spurred on by Bluetooth, would allow you to walk down the street and be told about sales, bargains, events and other nonsense from nearby stores and museums. You'd walk into Walmart and your name would be displayed a computerized sign to greet you as an old man pointed at the sign and then pointed at you in some creepy manner.
When you checked out, the Bluetooth device would take care of the payment accounting, and you'd never use cash again. This process could easily be mobile phone centric.
Over the years, through what I consider incompetent marketing, Bluetooth was relegated for use as a wireless earpiece technology and not much else. The PAN was dead as a doornail and my take on the phone as a credit card fell by the wayside. For the moment.
But good ideas can't be killed. But this "good idea" isn't about the convenience of paying with a phone swipe, but the idea of running your tab through the phone company. If you think your banker is a gouger with dubious fees and no-leeway, what do you think the phone company will be like? Yes, let AT&T handle all your money for you, and see how that works out in the end.
I'm immediately reminded of the online scams that took place during the modem era of communications. You'd be given a number to call, and it would actually be some sort of scam. The local number would connect to a BBS of some sort which would send a code back to the modem to turn off the speaker, so you couldn't hear the modem disconnect and then redial a number in Bulgaria or some obscure island. You'd then be connected to a phone service that charged $100/minute for the connection. After racking up thousands and thousand of dollars in phone costs, you'd get the bill from your phone company for $30,000.
You'd bitterly complain about the bill--these stories were all over the news during this era--but the phone companies said they couldn't do anything about the charges. The rates were protected by some U.S. treaty scammed together by the phone companies and signed into law. There was nothing they could do! So, you had to pay or lose your phone service and be sued in court.
This was unbelievable.
I've always been convinced this was test marketing to show the banks and everyone that the phone companies were the best collection agencies and should be in charge of your credit card and other transactions. After all, you can stall the bank, and what can they really do, anyway? You stall the phone company and you are disconnected from the world.
Do not let AT&T or Verizon or any phone company anywhere near your day-to-day financial transaction business!
You've been warned, Slashdot !!
You're tuning evermore into douchebag crappola.
And I'm not even a Copt.
Let me be clear.
Fuck you.
You should be modded informative. Not everyone in Egypt is a Muzzie who wants state imposition of sharia and the legalisation of pedophilia.
http://www.hongkongvacationsholidays.com/ -Thanks for giving such a nice info.
let us unite in our support of our starving brothers in Egypt!
I love the fact that the internet and mobile phones make things so much harder for totalitarian governments to stay in control.
These governments try to crack down, but there are just too many gaps for information to still get through.
No wonder Kim Jong-Il doesn't allow cellphones and the internet in North Korea.
We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
No promises - no demands
Love is a battlefield
We are strong, no one can tell us we're wrong
Searchin' our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love is a battlefield
You're beggin' me to go, you're makin' me stay
Why do you hurt me so bad
It would help me to know
Do I stand in your way, or am I the best thing you've had
Believe me, believe me, I can't tell you why
But I'm trapped by your love, and I'm chained to your side
We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
No promises - no demands
Love is a battlefield
We are strong, no one can tell us we're wrong
Searchin' our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love is a battlefield
We're losing control
Will you turn me away or touch me deep inside
And before this gets old, will it still feel the same
There's no way this will die
But if we get much closer, I could lose control
And if your heart surrenders, you'll need me to hold
We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
No promises - no demands
Love is a battlefield
We are strong, no one can tell us we're wrong
Searchin' our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love is a battlefield
And let me add this board software sux BIGTIME !!
I remember when worry about nuclear apocalypse was in vogue. It was often said that WWIII would be the last war.
However, it makes me think, if this is the new face of popular revolution, and it seems to work pretty well, quickly, and bloodlessly, well... maybe its time for WWIII. We could stand to reset the government here. Does anyone really think we wouldn't benefit from a total rewrite?
You know, sometimes you have to give up on version 1.112 and start working on a clean 2.0.
We have enough people out of work now to get it started here, I hope to see this trend catch on.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"(the story of US defeat in Vietnam" - by DNS-and-BIND (461968) on Thursday January 27, @04:36AM (#35017738) Homepage
Everytime I see that statement, I have to ask anyone stating it a simple question:
DO YOU SEE ANY OF THE US CITIES OR COUNTRYSIDE BOMBED INTO SHAMBLES AS VIETNAM WAS? No!
If the US leaving is a "defeat"? I'd take it, anytime, over what happened in Vietnam afterwards, as their "victory" (lol, not).
(Some defeat of the US (NOT)).
You misspelled the Internet as social media.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
- Inigo Montoya
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Egyptians can be right cunts.
But agents provocateurs are nothing new. They've been around since the beginning of the world too. Co-conspirators who encourage idealists to carry out an act and they all sign their vows of allegiance to the glorious people's revolution, and next find it being waved at them by the government's chief minister when they are hauled off to the dungeons the next day... nothing new here. Too many examples from history.
Agent provocateurs didn't start with the internet.
In every war, it's been a major tactics to cut off your enemy's ability to communicate with outside resources. There has been no change.
Killing messengers
Destroying railroads
Severing telegraph lines
Destroying printing shops
Severing phone lines
Destroying radio towers
Putting noise out on all channels
And now... turning off Twitter (OMGLOL!) and using Facebook for propaganda.
Conspicuously absent from the mainstream media is any discussion of our support for these brutal and oppressive regimes. The use of social media in these revolts has provided a safe angle for journalists. Journalists are now able to spend most of an article talking about how amazing Facebook and Twitter are rather than note that the US has funded the oppressive security apparatus of Egypt for decades. Tacit support for a dictator is one thing, but massive material support to the tune of billions of dollars is quite another. The very least the US could do to help the Egyptian people is to stop actively helping their oppressor.
Rather than moderating, I'd rather write what I know.
There is a lot of misinformation here, and mainstream media coverage in the USA seems not up to par. Europe's coverage is much better, and Canada somewhere in between. The church bombing on New Year's Eve got more coverage than this history in the making period.
First, I am Egyptian, born and raised there, but living outside of Egypt for the last 2 decades. I was personally affected by the regime there for decades, but that is a story for a future blog post. I have family there, and was in Egypt for all of December 2010.
The whole region is run by military dictators, after the post-World War II upheaval. The colonial rule by European powers, or local monarchies, were ousted in military coupe d'etats. Many of the dictators were idealistic at first, and took a socialist or communist slant initially, only to become totalitarian despots, fascists, or something else other than socialist. Now the trend is to make it a dynastic rule, with Syria the first to have a nominal republic convert into a dynastic one. Tunisia's ex-despot had a son in law (Sakher El-Materi, only 30 years old) who was into politics big time and poised to take over the reigns of the country. In Algiers, the president is set to install his brother to succeed him. In Libya, a son seems earmarked for that. In Egypt it is also a son as well. I think Yemen.
Look at the statistics and cringe in horror at how long these despots are in power:
- Libya: Qaddafi - 41 years.
- Yemen: Saleh - 32 years.
- Egypt: Mubarak - 29 years.
- Tunisia: Ben Ali - 23 years.
Let us ignore the monarchies in the region for a bit, since they are not a republic and can nominally remain in power for that long.
Mubarak has been in power FOR MORE THAN ANY EGYPTIAN RULER IN MODERN HISTORY. That is since 1847 or so, NO ONE has ruled as long as Mubarak did.
All of them have had a sham parliament amend the nominal constitution to make it possible for them to run for more than the maximum of 2 or 3 terms, and then make it a lifetime thing as well.
All of them have parliaments that consist exclusively of those from the ruling party which gets 90% or more of seats via intimidation and exclusion of the opposition.
Now, the Operation Egypt thing is relatively new. I saw it today in the morning only. So it remains to be seen if they are helpful or not.
What I can say is that on Jan 25, the Egyptian Presidency web site was showing "under development and construction". I was checking it for a page for the list of modern rulers of Egypt and their time in power. Today, the web site seems to be under a DoS attack.
However, the stars of the show are first Kolena Khaled Saeed (We are all Khaled Saeed). It is a Facebook group that is named after a 20-something youth tortured and killed by the police last year. Police brutality is one of the top demands of those who are protesting. Last I checked, they had 413,000 "likes".
The second star is the Rassd News Network. This is a grassroots citizen news organization that is very mature, professional and objective. They verify sources and rate items as either "unconfirmed" or "confirmed". They have both Arabic and English updates from various sources, including eyewitnesses from action. You can "Like" them in Facebook, ignore the Arabic messages, and read the English ones to see updates.
The path to where we are today with protests was a long one.
The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and 2006 show a lot of courage from a very small number of people. They were mainly middle class or intellectuals. The rest of the public did not catch on. Those who opposed the president got the heavy hand of the regime on them. For example, Saad El Din Ibrahim (an academic, and a bit eccentric) got imprisoned on false charges, Ayman Nour (another opposition figure) was impriso
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Your right, the media here does a horrible job of covering what is going on in. Hopefully this younger wired generation can accomplish something their parents couldn't.
Here is raw video of the protesters http://tiltview.com/#ytFzMOkrfv0uQ
The Rassd Facebook page you linked to seems to be Arabic-only now. Here's an English page of theirs: http://www.facebook.com/RNN.World
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