Egyptians Find New Ways To Get Online

angry tapir writes "Groups like We Rebuild have scrambled to keep Egypt connected to the outside world, turning to landline telephones, fax machines and even ham radio to keep information flowing in and out of the country. Although one Internet service provider — Noor Group — remains in operation, Egypt's government abruptly ordered the rest of the country's ISPs to shut down their services just after midnight local time Thursday. Mobile networks have also been turned off in some areas."

Comments

Couple links

[Douglas Simmons]

Did my own piece on this this morning, got some links of interest in it. http://mobilitydigest.com/preventing-protester-communication-not-so-easy/

RFC1149

[Weaselmancer]

That's exactly what I thought too! Good ol' RFC1149.

Wired wiki

[De Lemming]

Wired also has a wiki titled "Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet." It has some interesting thoughts on things like ad-hoc networking, satelite, and even packet radio.

This bit I found interesting: "Apple computers tend to have very accessible Ad-Hoc functionality built in, including a pre-installed chat client (iChat) that will automatically set up an Ad-Hoc "Rendezvous" chatroom between anybody on the network, without the need for an external service like AIM or Skype. Ad-hoc network hosting functionality is built in to the Wifi menu." On Windows PCs, it's almost as easy, but it requires software which is not installed by default.

Re:Wired wiki

[Nemyst]

A widespread ad-hoc usage could cover entire cities, hopping between all nodes to communicate across kilometers. They can be a valuable tool.

Yes, I know the latency would probably be horrible and security would be almost nil. But in these situations, you don't care if you have 1500ms ping and 0.1mbit/s speed, so long as you can actually communicate.

Re:Wired wiki

[he-sk]

There are mesh networks covering entire cities build on Ad-Hoc mode. In the German speaking world, these are usually operated by Freifunk (free radio) groups and they even link major German-speaking cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Wien, Mainz, Leipzig, ...) in one network.

No Court Review

[soren100]

In that case, our government seems to be sending a mixed message by adding the internet kill-switch back into proposed legislation...

Sensationalist headlines aside, care to point out where the aforementioned bill says anything about shutting down communications? From my reading its about isolating the networks on which high value infrastructure is located, not shutting down anyone's communication. More reading, less rhetoric please.

What you don't seem to get that is that "isolating the networks" is exactly how you shut down communications. How else would you do it, besides pulling the plug entirely?

Also, the other important piece here is that according to the blll, Judicial Review is explicitly denied

A company that objects to being subject to the emergency regulations is permitted to appeal to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano. But her decision is final and courts are explicitly prohibited from reviewing it.

So if anything can be declared "critical infrastructure" and isolated without benefit of the courts, any communication can be shut down. The attempt to avoid judicial review is on page 403 of the bill, if you care to read it yourself.

Re:No Court Review

[Teancum]

The tapping of ISPs and other communications infrastructure goes back much more than just nine years. That has been happening almost continuously since the "emergency powers" under the Roosevelt Administration thought it necessary to censor civilian communications during World War II. That was continued during the "cold war" on an extensive basis and the post-9/11/2001 laws were pretty much a renewal of the earlier efforts that told those government agents involved to keep doing what they had been doing earlier.

Emergency authority, once granted, is rarely rescinded. Even if "authority" to act didn't exist under one particular piece of legislation like the "Patriot Act", there are literally hundreds of other laws, executive orders, and FCC regulations that apply as well to do most of the same thing if some federal agent wanted to act. At least it usually wasn't as brazen as it was under the Roosevelt administration when civilian postal communications (letters) were literally blacked out with felt markers redacting parts of the communication... if the letter was even permitted to be sent in the first place. I'm talking civilians sending letters to other civilians from ordinary towns and not even involving military personnel.

Re:Knee-Jerk Reaction

[c0lo]

In that case, our government seems to be sending a mixed message by adding the internet kill-switch back into proposed legislation...

Sensationalist headlines aside, care to point out where the aforementioned bill says anything about shutting down communications?

Why does it need to be a quotation from the bill? wikileaks.org suddenly not resolving at a certain moment isn't enough of an example?

Directional Wifi

[DanielRavenNest]

The distance record for directional wifi is over 300km. So the answer is to have Isp's fund a mobile relay station (land or sea) that sets up when the network goes down, outside the affected country/area, and then people can tune up their pringle's can antenna skills, or whatever to link up. This would be helpful with unintentional outages, like earthquakes or hurricanes, too. The mobile relay stations could be on call to get set up wherever they are needed rather than each Isp having to buy them.