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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)."
Yeah it is an association where members split the overall cost of the network.
I'll possibly go with them eventually because other ISPs in france insist on making you pay for services you do not want, like TV...
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
They ARE offfering it for free, it is an association, there is nothing in it for them. They are fierce defenders of net neutrality, they have been around for quite a while now.
The number to call is a normal landline, so the person in egypt would still have to pay the communication itself, but appart from that, it is free.
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
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.
Also, the number is probably already blocked.
If you read their comments there are links to other alternatives, including this interesting link that some how uses cellphones[1], and more people are pitching in.
Also, they have offered some statistics:
[1]: http://manalaa.net/dialup
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
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.
I guess you have noticed this thing called a "phone bill" that you pay. This is made from billing records and traditionally was directly related to the calls you made (nowaday's, with flat rate, it's more complex than that). Every telephone exchange in existence automatically records the outgoing calls you make. Even 99% of PBXs (with the exception of a few where the users deliberately throw away the information).
I wonder if volunteers messing around in this area are not generally doing lots of harm. At the very least try to give your users plausible deniability by offering your lines for use by both gamers and professionals or please warn them to try from somewhere they won't be traced to. E.g. warn your users to use a public connection or try to tap into the line of someone else who isn't willing to join the protests (best of all a security official's line - getting the suspicion spread around will help other people to get off by denying they knew about the calls). The same goes for all the stuff like ESR was doing in Iran. If it doesn't look like commercial HTTPS you shouldn't be using it without at least basic identity hiding measures. These measures are very difficult for non techical people, so just rushing in and providing support at the last moment is a disaster. Instead the safer way has to be to provide locals with training in advance.
I'm a bit loath to criticise here since I think it's very important that people do something and don't just sit on the sidelines, but I wish the people trying to organise communications were just a little more careful.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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.
Yeah, they have nothing better to do that finding who call a number in France. The riots are not more urgent, nor are the medias, the economy, and likely organizing the escape of Mubarack. Nor is more urgent to have a new governement...
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...
Ooops. Me not perfekt. ;-) (shrug) I hear the exact same thing from europeans all the time: "New Jersey... Virginia... eh, what's the difference? It's over there somewhere."
BTW there was no reason to mod -1 Troll on BOTH my messages, especially the second one about Dialup internet costing virtually nothing to provide.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Does this mean we can get their IPV4 addresses back?
Just 'sayin
>>>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 don't know why you're surprised. DIALUP internet only costs me $7/month. Netzero and Juno offer it for free (see links below). It's not that much of a burden for the Non-profit ISP to offer free access to egyptians.
And the datarate is only ~30 kbit/s via analog lines, so you could carry over 300 users in the space of one DSL or cable customer.
http://www.juno.com/start/landing.do?page=www/free/index
http://isp.netscape.com/
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
The government is bounded to doing one single thing at a time. They have, if they are skilled at it, the ability to multi-task like no other because they command a large army of civil servants.
When analysing a revolution there is rarely one single thing that determines the success or failure of overthrowing the seated power. A (current) government therefore has the interest in controlling the flow of information in the broadest sense of the word. If Muburak and his cohorts have paid attention to the role of internet in the flow of information to a new generation(with new predominantly people under 30 years), they will make damn sure that they restrict access to unfavourable information, in this case the french dial-in ISP. In fact, if I was an employee of the digital division of the government of Mubarak(and loyal), I would immediatly place a phonecall to the person who has the ability to monitor/block this address.
This factor might be one of them that determines whether this revolution will become like the one in Tunesia or the one in Iran.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
IIRC it's already been figured out - their top-tier ISPs (presumably under orders from the government) have stopped advertising the addresses they provide routes to at the border routers.
Being that the Czechoslovakian revolution was peaceful and led to a prosperous modern state, and the Romanian one was bloody and messy and led to a clusterfuck that persists to this day, I'd say you were flat-out wrong. I don't think pushing the Egyptians into a civil war is a great idea to be honest...
I propose a new protocol: Internet Delivers Information Over Twitter, or I.D.I.O.T for short.
~X~
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."