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Egypt Shuts Off All Internet Access
h00manist writes "Several sources are reporting Egypt has shut off all Internet access. There is still no official confirmation. Blackberry, twitter and SMS seem confirmed off. So, if you were there, what would you do to get communications for everyone? Do you still have a POTS modem?"
According to the LA Times, they've blocked the Blackberries, too.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/blackberry-internet-blocked-in-egypt.html
There's a couple options here. POTS modem is a decent choice for data, until it gets blocked. Satellite internet should work also, but could be subject to jamming. Shortwave radio to listen to international broadcasts (BBC World Service, VOA, Deutsche Welle, etc.) is a good option for receiving information and news. They could still jam broadcasters that they don't like (but hard to get all of them).
Ham radio would be the best option, as it doesn't depend on anyone else's infrastructure, and equipment can be run from 12V batteries. Many frequency bands to choose from to avoid interference or jamming. Many digital modes can be used to relay articles, some with forward error correction. Voice modes are available for those without digital interfaces. Can be short range to arrange local protests if needed (VHF/UHF), possibly with a handheld transceiver. It can be long range on the HF bands (shortwave), potentially communicating over thousands of miles and across borders.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Here is the website for the amateur radio operators of Egypt organization
http://www.qsl.net/egyptham/
Their call signs are - SUA-SUZ, 6A-6B, SSA-SSM
And wikipedia says theres about 113, really easy for the police and security forces to lock down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_callsigns_of_the_Middle_East
It doesn't work like in the movies. Triangulating a transmitter takes time, coordination, and experience. (I consider myself one of the better foxhunters in my state) And if the person doesn't want to be found, they can make it extremely difficult to pin down.
Both german-controlled france and russia took the same novel approach trying to find spies transmitting in WW2... they'd cut power to parts of the city a chunk at a time until the signal went off the air, then tear apart that area. Shows just how difficult it can be. Nowadays though with dopplars and haddock arrays they don't have to shut down the grids, but finding the actual transmitter remains very difficult. (I've been foxhunting for just about 20 yrs)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The thing is that Turkey is not a Muslim state in the way that Saudi Arabia or even Egypt is. Its a state that is mostly Muslims, but even with their somewhat more religious leaning government recently, Turkey took its cues from France and under Mustapha Kemal Ataturk made the state a secular state with its own form of laicite.
It wasn't the West that abolished the Caliphate, it was the Turkish government that did that. Other initiatives included insisting on western apparel for everyone and even developing a Turkish alphabet based on Latin characters instead of using Arabic characters. A very big change for the state that used to be the center of the Ottoman Empire, and the Islamic Caliphate.
Turkey, of course, has its own issues with human rights, and no one wants to be in a Turkish prison, but religion isn't the largest, by far. Their bigger problems are more of the ethnic variety, like with the Greeks on Cyprus and the Kurds they have in their own country. When it comes to those issues, the Turkish do have a fairly big problem on their hands.
There are major outages, but the entire country of Egypt is not off line. Cairo is hard to reach, but Alexandria seems to be up via some routes. Delay on the last link to the Alexandria gateway is about 70ms.
There is a quick look BGP level analysis available from BGPMon. Except for Noor Data Networks, the number of announced address blocks is way down. This means that most Egyptian IP addresses are now not reachable from the rest of the world.
Here is BGPMon on the dating of the outage :
At this point egypt.gov.eg is offline. This network, 81.21.104.0/24 was withdrawn at January 27th at 22:28 UTC . Another example is www.ahram.org.eg an Egyptian news paper. This network 196.219.246.0/24, became unreachable at the exact same time, January 27th at 22:28 UTC.
I think that it is safe to assume that this outage is related to the big protests planned for tomorrow.
Snipers always shoot people who aren't a threat to the sniper themselves. That's what they are for.
Here is what I wrote earlier today Views from an Egyptian.
Mod it up if you think it is informative.
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I've always considered Egypt to be on of the more progressive muslim states
Whaaaaat? Egypt is ruled by a dictator that tolerates no dissent. There has been a state of emergency there for 44 years! Let's see, where to start. In 2009, the U.S. Department of State Human Rights report had this to say:
Police, security personnel, and prison guards often tortured and abused prisoners and detainees, sometimes in cases of detentions under the Emergency Law, which authorizes incommunicado detention indefinitely, subject to a judge's ruling.
and
Police and the SSIS reportedly employed torture methods such as stripping and blindfolding victims; suspending victims by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions or from a ceiling or door frame with feet just touching the floor; beating victims with fists, whips, metal rods, or other objects; using electric shocks; dousing victims with cold water; sleep deprivation; and sexual abuse, including sodomy. There was evidence that security officials sexually assaulted some victims or threatened to rape them or their family members. Human rights groups reported that the lack of legally required written police records often effectively blocked investigations.
It just goes on and on. And, keep in mind, the U.S. DOS reports tend to be very conservative, so when this stuff ends up in a DOS report, things on the ground are much, much worse.