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Egypt Cuts the Net, Net Fights Back
GMGruman writes "Egypt's cutoff of the Net enrages the Netizenry, who are finding a bunch of ways — high tech and low tech — to fight back, from dial-up to ham radio, from mesh networks to Twitter. Robert X. Cringely shows how the Net war is being waged, and asks, Could it happen at home, too?" Sure, it could.
On the same topic, reader dermiste writes
"In reaction to the Egyptian government crackdown on the Internet, the French non-profit ISP French Data Network set up a dial-up Internet access. This way, anyone in Egypt who has access to a analog phone line and can call France is able to connect to the network using the following number: +33 1 72 89 01 50 (login: toto, password: toto)."
Slashdot that number!
I didn't know that one existed...
Call me Paranoid, but an ISP based in France, that is Not for Profit, is offering Dial Up to anyone in Egypt? Is this out of the goodness of their hearts, or are they charging an arm and a leg? I mean, I know they're Not for Profit, but that doesn't always meant they offer all services free. If they ARE offering it for free... I can't help but wonder what their angle is. I mean, good on them but... why? Also, I wonder how this is going to affect relations between Egypt and France, if at all.
This way, anyone in Egypt who has access to a analog phone line and can call France is able to connect to the network [...]
I'm wondering for how long will the international phone lines work. The gvt. is most likely able to cut those too. Remaining options will then be HAM radio, GSM roaming, if you are close enough to a border and you are lucky to be in the range of a GSM base station from across (but I have no idea about the situation in Egypt), and satellite phone.
I'll wager the exchanges are being told to block it right about now
There is no shortage of international dial up numbers that can be called for the price of the phone call. The latter part is one problem: It's an expensive international call. Also, the phone system is restricted too, isn't it? The other problem is that if you didn't know the number before the network cutoff, there's hardly a way to find it now?
National communication "outages" are when satphones and radio amateurs come in handy.
Would that be a homage to the group Toto, "famous" for the song "Africa"?
It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never have
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Yesterday when I read that Egypt had pulled the plug on the internet the first thing that went through my mind was, 'the people will find a way.'. The second thing was, 'I can't wait to see how they do it. This is going to be fascinating.'. Since then I have been contemplating ad-hoc wireless networks and dialing into 56k modems thousands of miles away.
I have been chewing at the bit (haha! I made a pun!) for any information as to how this little project is proceeding.
The best Cringley's article can muster is a French company offering 56k access for free and the words, 'Wireless mesh network'. That is all fine and dandy.
I am happy and impressed that the French company is offering there resources to the Egyptian people. Big round of appluase for those guys. But the geek in me is not impressed. Dialing out of country to a 56k connection is just so bloody obvious. I want to know the bloody details of the wireless mesh. I want to know about the sap that has hacked his satelite dish to give internet access to his town.
I want more. It has to be out there.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/egypt-protests-residents-open-wifi-networks-protestors-2751360.html
I submitted a seperate story on this - before seeing this story.
Any ways - I think this gives greater significance to the WiFi p2p protocols - couple of links I can find in a rush:
http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/
http://sourceforge.net/p/widi/home/
I think it's extremely important that we all take notes here. Dial-up may be getting phased out, but keeping one kicking around might not be the worst idea. Probably learning how to set up an actual dial-in connection with ease would be good. Because it can and will happen here when the shit hits the fan, and, being a veteran of war, I can tell you that the best way to demobilize and weaken your enemy is to fuck his communications as hard as you possibly can. Indymedia, while relegated largely to the role of aging dinosaur, has still been on the cutting edge of this sort of thing for several years now. It wouldn't be hard for someone to set up a Twitter-like service akin to Identi.ca and use it as a way to disseminate information on streets to avoid and where certain types of aide are needed and what not, in the event of a national crisis like we're seeing in Egypt.
For a start, the greater the technological advancement, the more dependent it is on a larger number of underlying functions. That makes it vulnerable not only to someone hitting the kill switch, but to government agents (of whom we can safely assume there are many infiltrated amongst any overthrow plot) sending out false information under the guise of "the people" Whether that's reports saying things are different from what they really are, or sabotaging rallies by sending people tot he wrong place - the problem with believing an anonymous source (on twitter, say) is that they're anonymous: you can never be sure they truly represent who they say they do.
So, while there is/was obviously some use of the internet by some people in Egypt, I would think that its main effect has been to deliver part of the story to outsiders (whether news organisations or just people) rather than to get things going within the country itself. As such, if the only way we have of getting information is through the internet we naturally (and mistakenly) presume that is also how people inside are getting information, too. There appears to already have been quite enough groundswell without the need for smartphones or websites.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Luckily, Twitter doesn't take much bandwidth. YouTube won't be a good weapon at that rate, but 56K should be plenty for effective Twitter usage.
Sugapablo
I can't imagine that somebody who set up a wireless mesh network or hacked his satellite TV is going to be very focused on reporting the technical details of what he's doing to the foreign press. There's a revolution happening and the Egyptian government is cracking down hard on protesters.
When is someone going to invent a Wireless peer to peer messaging system? I know it will suck, and there's all kinds of security problems, but in situations like this it would be invaluable.
With apologies...
People revoltin' in the hot sun.
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
I dissolved the cabinet, I have none
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
I turned off the 'net and I don't feel bad
Twitter is just no fun
Well it used to rock, it makes me sad
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
Killin' people with a six gun
I fought the mob and the mob won.
I fought the mob and the mob won.
I miss my country and the good fun
I fought the 'net and the 'net won.
I fought the mob and the mob won.
I left my country and I feel so bad
I guess it's time to run
Cause the nation is so very mad
I fought the web and the web won.
I fought the mob and the mob won.
These are exciting times to be living in Egypt. I'm not an Egyptian myself having moved here a few years ago and the locals are usually wary of me but I have past experience of setting up ad-hoc internet connections and that has proven invaluable in the current crisis. I never travel anywhere without my trusty Commodore 64 and, combined with some string and sticky tape, I have set this up as an internet hub giving access to the rest of the world. Like people everywhere, the Egyptians just want to download Hollywood movies and Linux ISOs and to troll foreign journalists. Now I ahve restored that to them it is like a new age of peace and propserity. Best wishes - Junis.
Those bastards. They're probably too busy blogging/tweeting etc. about the triviality of their daily lives. Maybe when they can just about be bothered we can get the much needed details of how they're doing it in the form of a wordpress blog or a flickr stream.
Try googling it
If Google is too hard, try these
doesn't anyone want to talk about about the fact that the good old US of A is supporting a brutal regime that murders and tortures its own people?
If the USA didn't support any regime that murders and tortures its own people it would have very few relations to other countries. It's all a matter of proportion. Egypt is less brutal than other countries in that region, they have a relatively moderate stance regarding international relations, they try not to let Muslim radicals do too much harm.
Don't get me wrong, I think Mubarak should step down, but Obama is right in taking a cautious approach to that crisis.
Maybe we should start copying the Egyptians here in the U.S. I'm tired of being tied to the Comcast monopoly or Verizon monopoly, and would like alternatives.
What is this "mesh" network I keep hearing about?
What is WiFi p2p?
What is Netsukuku?
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Not much likelihood of GSM roaming. Take a look at a photo of Egypt at night from space.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/5146231463/
Egypt *is* the Nile. And not much near the borders...
There are other media sources to check: good coverage at the moment by AlJazeera.
Some more Reuters quality photos here (warning: some show injuries, not nice). Barak Obama should probably not view photo 80, the protestor doesn't look too happy with the 'made in USA' tear gas canister....
follow @telecomix on twitter for up to date news on the censorship and how it is being fought against. we have proxies, we share dial up, we have achieved ham radio comms with egypt.
> Dialing out of country to a 56k connection is just so bloody obvious.
Dialing out of country to a 56k connection is damn near impossible.
28.8? If the phone lines are good.
I wonder if there are any Egyptians left with USR HST modems, and if the dial-up concentrators even speak that any more..
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Does this mean we can get their IPV4 addresses back?
Just 'sayin
I wonder if they've physically shut down the networks (down, down) or if they just did something like kill the DNS servers? Even in a small network like what Egypt has it would still take a while to get all the network links, towers and DSLAMS, etc. completely off. Even if it would be a little more difficult there are plenty of resourceful people who could get IRC servers and other services up even without the links to the outside world. Most people would consider a DNS failure an outage and it's relatively quick and easy (and just the thing to be sneaky if you have a revolutionary mind).
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
you have been conditioned/used to/with capitalist brutalism SO much that, anything that i s not similarly capitalist or self centered is too hard to believe.
Read radical news here
What if suddenly the all of the internet connections in your country are shutdown by government order? The inception of the internet was to be able to resist such problems. But if all land lines with the corresponding DSL lines are unavailable? With the proliferation of Wifi enable DSL routers the answer could be that simple: let's go radio!! With no amazement I recently found that it's not easy to find tools to construct this idea. Freenet is great but it depends highly on the physical layer. Maybe the Egypt lesson will encourage someone to design some user friendly solution to this problem. Probably petes_PoV is right and in the case of Egypt there is no need for inside communication but it get's you thinking... what if it dit.
Is it so absurd to create a Wifi mesh network that would grow with the help of all the "not so savvy" internauts . The main obstacle would be precisely that: the generation of browser oriented internet users. How can you organize a city wide Wifi mesh network if the majority of users are only familiar with the wireless connection wizard and the web browser. The answer: a all-in-one ospf+dns+http server. Yes the fundamental protocols that sustain the internet installed with a few clicks.
We already have Freenet that gives us the communication layer for a private and DNS independent network. The goal would be to create the physical network. The idea would start withe a single open wireless network and some publicity (via graffiti/leaflets) in the surrounding geographical area. Spreading the words "Connect to the wifi network named FREENET" would suffice. The connecting client's http requests would be all redirected to a page with details on how to connect to the Freenet available in that subnet. The users would also be encouraged to expand the network by transforming their Wifi router to another cell/subnet by downloading and installing a single program (let's call it mesher). Since the majority of ISP stick to a hand full of router models and the same login and password for all installations it would be easy to design a script to change the routers configuration to create a new network cell. The user would be instructed to connect his computer to the Wifi router via ethernet and run the mesher program. This program would do the following tasks:
* Ask the Freenet for a free subnet
* Save the current router/AP configuration
* Disable the wireless security and DHCP server
* Change the SID to something like FREENET+random
* Enable OS routing, from and to the new subnet
* Pass the subnet to the the "uplink" to enable routing to and from all the other subnets
The program would then be running a DHCP directing DNS requests to him. All DNS requests would be directed to his IP address. A new cell/subnet, equal to the main one would have spawned. Iterate that and you get a nice star shaped network.
Besides political propaganda most of the contents of this independent Freenet would be how to create your home made radio antenna to boost your AP transmitting power. With a bit of luck, the network would grow enough to attract some savvy users before the main node was captured. This small group would use extra Wifi devices to connect 2 or more branches of the tree. That would "mesh" up the topology and make it resistant to the knockdown of the main node.
By now we have chat rooms bursting with people organizing raving demonstrations on free speech. Some geeks would also concentrate on the exponential growth of the network. If we still can depend on the land lines to make national calls, the network could become meshier and other cities could join the party. Any uplinks available to the "outside world" could be advertised via the dynamic routing protocol.
If we have that few router models to enables the mesher to configure them automatically and the main node doesn't go down before
Perhaps this suggests that some of that 'old tech' should be kept working and around just in case... I probably have a modem in a basement somewhere and I'm equally sure I've thrown a bunch out thinking that they'd never be need again
If we know about it, then the Egyptian government does too and is probably capturing all the packets AND the source phone number.
That source telephone number will make rounding up those who disagree easy. Eygpt is known to have nasty jails for people who disagree with others on all sorts of things.
Rather, people should take lots of photos, lots of video and communicate with each other using old fashioned methods until the internet is back up. Then they can post (over VPNs) all this data so the actions of the current government are known not just inside Eygpt, but around the world.
The will be happy to broadcast any videos, pictures and comments, and put them up on the internet as well. If you are familiar with Cairo, just look at the live coverage that they are broadcasting, and figure out where they are. If they have satellite video access, they certainly have satellite internet access as well. And they love to put up stuff where they can say, "CNN exclusive!"
Now, if the Egyptian starts blocking CNN . . . oh, well. Try Al Jazeera.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Yesterday when I read that Egypt had pulled the plug on the internet the first thing that went through my mind was, 'the people will find a way.'. The second thing was, 'I can't wait to see how they do it. This is going to be fascinating.'. Since then I have been contemplating ad-hoc wireless networks and dialing into 56k modems thousands of miles away.
Just as a hypothetical, perhaps not as a government action, but an act of sabotage, but what if it were to happen here? Suppose your internet went dark. What would you do? Do you have out-of-country dialup numbers handy? Do you even have a working modem? Do you even have a POTS phone line? Do you even have a terminal emulation program installed? In the before time we used to use bbs systems like fidonet; a series of nodes that connected via modem and swapped info periodically. Who's ready to deploy such a thing? uucp? Is it installed?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I heard Jennie runs her own ISP now too....
It is not only the Internet. The Mubarak dictatorship regime also halted mobile phone networks land lines (switchboard networks) and international phone lines to almost all Egypt except few, so those who are calling and speaking to TV and Sat networks are part of the Mubarak dictatorship regime. Opposition currently have only the Sat TV networks on the ground to talk to directly that if if the reporters have not been beaten up by security forces like what happened to many.
Look at a map of Egypt. Most of the population lives along the Nile river. To the west: the Sahara and then internet friendly Libya. To the east, the Red Sea, to the north the Mediterranean Sea, and to the south Sudan, another internet friendly country. Wireless meshes are not going to help much to cross hundred of kilometres of sand or sea
Could it happen here? I'm sure it could but if it did then i'd even get offa my ass and protest, because if my porn disappeared for a nano second i'd be out the door with my pitchfork looking to stick somebody.....................dammit!
Not much likelihood of GSM roaming. Take a look at a photo of Egypt at night from space.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/5146231463/
Egypt *is* the Nile. And not much near the borders...
Yeah, and then it it's most populated neighbouring areas are the Gaza strip and Libia. Not exactly places that have a lot of potential to get a signal out.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Well there's always Taba, where you can pick up an Israeli network or possibly even a Jordanian one.
According to an article appearing in the online technology journal MicroScope.co.uk, here:
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Since they're offline, can you use/steal their v4 Ip addresses?
I propose a new protocol: Internet Delivers Information Over Twitter, or I.D.I.O.T for short.
~X~
Detailed information for Egyptians seeking free dial-up: http://pastehtml.com/view/1czvwm2.html
Please Share!
That's at least one thing the French do right at the moment.
Mark Stephens and InfoWorld parted ways acrimoniously, and one of the results of that is that they both still use the Robert X. Cringely name. The InfoWorld Cringely is NOT the same author as this one.
Egypt turned off the internet by shutting down the DNS servers. It is extremely useful to have public DNS servers memorized. Google: 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
You have now seen an Internet Kill Switch in action. Anyone at all still think that it's a good idea to give this president one too?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I want to know the bloody details of the wireless mesh.
Here's a place to start: HSMM-MESH
When the Shah shut down the phones and radio at the start of the Revolution, and placed a curfew on the populace of Tehran and other major cities and towns in Iran, people started shouting from rooftops at each other encouraging the revolution.
There's a point when an uprising becomes a revolution, and a revolution is a helluva lot harder to stop. At that point the rulers begin to worry about the loyalty of the army, because if the army, either in total, or even sufficient units, refuse orders to reign in the uprising, it's all over. That's what happened in Tunisia. Ben Ali was no dummy, and as soon as the Army's reliability was called into question, he knew he had very little time to get the hell out.
While the police in Egypt seem to be wavering, and there has been some reports of individual army units refusing orders, thus far the army seems loyal to the regime. How long this will last is hard to say, but too many more days like this and I can't see how Mubarak will be able to count on the Army, and then he to will flee, leaving behind some poor lieutenant to try to maintain order.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You cannot stop Free Speech. After all, censorship is everywhere. The gov’t (and their big business cronies) censor free speech, shut down dissent and ban the book “America Deceived II”. Free speech for all.
Last link (before Google Books bans it also]:
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526
"In reaction to the Egyptian government crackdown on the Internet, the French non-profit ISP French Data Network set up a dial-up Internet access. This way, anyone in Egypt who has access to a analog phone line and can call France is able to connect to the network using the following number: +33 1 72 89 01 50 (login: toto, password: toto)."
I suppose that could work if they had anyway to get online and get that information. Although the Egyptian government can easily block access to that number.
I don't understand why "netizens" are so concerned about making certain that a bunch of Muslims in Egypt have access to the Internet. Granted, the regime in Egypt has its flaws, but considering the country is 90 percent Muslim, it's actions have been pretty benign. What happens if the moderates currently in power in Egypt are replaced by radical Islamics? Are we to fight reflexively for freedom of speech for those who hate freedom of speech? It seems a much better use of our energies would be to fight the Obama administration's current attempts to implement an "Internet kill switch" here in the United States.
Greg Raven
As long as there's any left, I'll take mine first.
So when is the US/EU/etc going to step in and liberate Egypt?
ham radios are the best rely the case with d-star models. they have full net ability via radiowave have a 150 mile range and unlimited range with a tower and are abought idsn speed. got a older ham your still not out of the loop being you can use sstv or slow scan tv to send pics and data over the radiowaves its even possible with some mods to a cb radio. example hear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2fa1WvjIvs but as i said d-star has full web.
By "at home" US is meant, I suppose, I expand to "Western world".
Anyhow - not just can it happen, it will. EOD.
As far as the prevailing US political-corporation merged monsters in power since forever, the prevailing policy is money. Money in the middle east means oil, means lining up cooperating governments to sell it cheap and consistently, means dominating or buying out the main military powers, egypt and israel. None of that is not what any democracy protecting their own country, resources and interests would want. They would sell it for the highest possible price, try to get military friends to defent them and their interessts, and would be playing the game in such a way as to drive prices up. For the US "national interests" that means supporting dictators that never leave, consistently cooperate, and sell the oil, cheap, in exchange for getting a fat illegal profit for themselves, personally, and little or almost nothing for the country. And as all international oil business is in dollars, it helps establish the dollar as a international currency, allowing the US to basically print as many dollars as it wants and export them, and some other stuff I dont quite understand.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
The RIAA and MPAA are basically censorship organizations. Copyright law is basically a form of censorship. Any restriction on copying and distribution of information basically is a form of censoring, with a legal support. The "uncensorable" internet, that we thought routed around all censorship, doesn't. It's immensely censorable. Any company with any copyright, plus any of the terrible and violent things that happen all over society, become reason for internet censorship. Plus, states that just outright censor, can do it easily. I remember discussing this back in the early 90's, that the internet, for all its potential, could in practice be censored, controlled, and inspected, as all the connections are centralized. What we need are p2p web servers, that are hosted off everyone's machines, serverless. Routing built into our connectivity solution. Wiring and wireless from neighbor to neighbor. An entirely different connectivity infrastructure. Hell, we're going back to the days of AOL with facebook and the like, where censorship becomes just corporate policies, with complete impunity. If you want to take freedom to the ultimate consequence, people have the right to sit at a bar or cafe or street corner, and talk about whatever they want. If they talk about illegal things, they can still talk about it. On the Internet however, conversation of illegal activity is grounds for censorship. And that opens the door wide open to all kinds of censorship. There are dozens of things you may not say on the net, because it's censored in this, that or the other way - it's all controlled. I have a lawsuit for thousands, for defamation, because someone used my connection to curse out their boss. Defamation, yet another law for censoring. There are dozens of reason to censor, and we just don't do anything about it, keep repeating the mantra "the internet routes around censorship". Well, maybe it can, but it's not doing it very well.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Have you considered that perhaps they know this, but are hoping that the current regime won't be in existence much longer. At that point it really doesn't matter what the powers that be would do as they will cease being the powers that, well, be. Regardless, it's their own call to provide the service and anyone else's call to take them up on the offer.
From a purely self-interested point of view, the company may believe they have more to benefit than to lose. From other views, they may believe that this is the right thing to do, even if it does cost a few extra bucks. Either way, motivations are complex.
I'm just starting to learn about this matter, I'll offer what I have. Anyone with better knowledge on the topic please don't spare your comments.
The basic idea is to have a network where there is no centralized or designated routing or name resolution nodes. Each node can act as a router and forward traffic along to other nodes.
The nodes can be fixed, or can be mobile, changing connectivity depending on mobility and proximity. There are different protocols/algorithms that focus on each case.
This is what Wikipedia says about Mobile Ad Hoc Networks:
“A mobile ad hoc network (MANET), sometimes called a mobile mesh network, is a self-configuring network of mobile devices connected by wireless links.[1]
Each device in a MANET is free to move independently in any direction, and will therefore change its links to other devices frequently. Each must forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and therefore be a router. The primary challenge in building a MANET is equipping each device to continuously maintain the information required to properly route traffic. Such networks may operate by themselves or may be connected to the larger Internet.”
There are lots of research projects going on evaluating performance of various algorithms. There are also few open source implementations.
Here are some starting pointers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ad_hoc_network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ad_hoc_routing_protocols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct
http://tuxmobil.org/manet_linux.html
http://p2pfoundation.net/Netsukuku
My own thoughts:
Many of the algorithms consider the generic case and naturally focus on performance issues such as latency, throughput and computing load at each node. However, the Egyptian case shows that there is a need for an extremely light weight protocol where many of these performance constraints can be eased – yet the network is still considered functional and usable.
* Some latency in new nodes joining the network is acceptable.
* Latency and low throughput in passing information between nodes is acceptable. High capacity is not required, what is required is the ability to pass short messages or tweets around.
* The protocol has to be light weight so it can be run on any basic device.
* However, resilience to sabotage should be built into the protocol. For example, one concern is having a large number of malicious nodes joining the network and attempting to disrupt the network. Is such a scenario considered when designing p2p routing protocols?!
Regards.
I too have been waiting to see what will come up, ever since they cut it off. But honestly I nowadays feel very consored in the regular Net already. There's a huge battle going on internationally to control and censor the net using all sorts of ways. Defamation, copyright, lawsuits, police needs, and regular commercial interests are slowly steadily increasing the vigilance and liable actions and content. IP number logging has become the universal ID that is recorded at every doorway automatically. And a totally decentralized network, with no servers or cables run be corporations, is the only way I see out.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
http://www.open-mesh.com/
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
"USA supporting a brutal regime ..." is far more the norm rather than the exception. In fact, I would go a step further and state that the USA supporting a brutal regime is SOP, and has been so almost since we began our American Exceptionalism "Age of Empire" that started with the Spanish-American War. The USA engaged in the brutal suppression of entire villages in the Philippines to capture|kill a few freedom fighters -- a tactic we learned from the British Empire. A brutal dictator is easier to control than a democracy, right up to the point that that we lose control of the dictator (i.e. Saddam Hussein) or that dictator loses control of the country (i.e. General Pinochet, or the Shah of Iran).
Since the USA fought the fascists in WW2, we have become that enemy of democracy ourselves -- Operations Paperclip, Gladio, Ajax, MK-Ultra, Condor, Northwoods, Mockingbird, COINTELPRO, and more. Between the intelligence agencies formed after WW2 (CIA & NSA) and military programs like School of the Americas, the USA has been the world's premier promulgator of brutal secret police, death squads, and torture the world has ever seen. All this in the name of Empire, also known as colonial mercantilism.
Post 9/11/2001, the USA has directed the 2nd unending war, the War on|of Terror -- the 1st being the War on|of Drugs. Today, those two wars are directed against countries abroad (especially those with oil) as well as against the American people themselves. The chickens (fascism) has come home to roost, in the form of the Orwellian named USA Patriot Act(s), the Help America Vote (Our Way) Act, the FISA|Telecom (Immunity) act, the Military Commissions Act, and a smorgasbord of POTUS Executive Orders, including the power of extrajudicial assassination of USA citizens, extrajudicial stripping of USA citizenship, detention of citizens for indeterminate length without habeous corpus or due process. And now there is legislation pending to cut off the internet here in the USA by the Unitary Executive, just like what was done in Egypt, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
"War is to neither be won nor lost, but to be continuous." George Orwell, from "Nineteen Eighty Four"
Sic semper tyrannis.
Me too. I've been thinking about ad-hoc for a couple of years. Perhaps it's time to establish an ad-hoc protocol that can work over any means. This will only get worse until government gets out of the way instead of trying to fix everything.
Why are satellite not used for Internet access. Send a satellite up over Egypt, or use some other satellite over Europe to give the people access to Internet
That concurs with my experience when I have to dial-up around the Great Firewall (which is blocking news from Egypt these days...don't want to give the natives any restless ideas...). I typically have to fall back to 9600 or 2400 bps, which is good enough to make an independent check on SSH key MD5 sums, at least. Modems signals are pretty standard down to 2400 bps, but the slower 1200 and 300bps standards are different between Europe and North America. Russia used North American standards, because the Soviets of the 80's were more accustomed to stealing American technology.
And I wish dial-up were more obvious to the Ubuntu packagers. Recent versions of Network Manager won't recognize Gnome PPP as a network connection and Evolution refuses to fetch mail, thinking it is offline. Arrrgh!
I have to say, for the first time, I am impressed with the french, extending their services to allow egyptians to use the internet even if their own government does not want them to. I would want to know why a government would completely block the internet off from people, what is the reasoning, but I guess when you see something that just ain't right, it is nice to see another country doing what they can to help out.
Note: It's not a French company, It's a French non-profit organization.
FDN is the oldest French ISP (since 1992, few are older but closed since). And probably the smallest national wide french ISP (a bit less than 200 ADSL line in activity).
Where there's a wing, there's a way. :-)