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Egyptians Find New Ways To Get Online

Posted by timothy on from the all-this-stuff-makes-me-want-to-visit dept.

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."

18 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Knee-Jerk Reaction by bgfay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A regime that tries to shut down all means for its population to communicate is one that does not deserve to continue.

    --
    Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
    1. Re:Knee-Jerk Reaction by XiaoMing · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Knee-Jerk Reaction by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Knee-Jerk Reaction by jcwayne · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Emergency powers always sound reasonable, even prudent, when the laws enabling them are written prior to an actual emergency. What really matters is who's in power when the Reichstag goes up in flames.

      --
      Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
    4. Re:Knee-Jerk Reaction by formfeed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What really matters is who's in power when the Reichstag goes up in flames.

      Or a plane hits a building.

  2. It would... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Be nice if the united states supported the egyptian people.

    Seems we're not really all that big on the whole 'freedom' thing after all... We're still hoping our bff stays in charge of egypt.

    If egypt does get their freedom... I hope they remember we sold the egyptian goverment the weapons being used on civilians right now.

    Sometimes the usa deserves the hate it gets. Ok.. most times... the us goverment anyway.

    1. Re:It would... by FoolishOwl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For there to be a democratic outcome in Egypt, it will have to be implemented by the people of Egyptian people, democratically.

      Should the US government intervene on behalf of a political faction in Egypt, it would raise questions about the legitimacy of that faction -- even if the US government intervened with the best of intentions. The world in general, and the Middle East in particular, has far too much experience with foreign countries intervening in internal struggles for their own interests, and the US has been the most notorious for doing so in the region since the end of World War II, so suspicions of US government intervention would not be unfounded.

      That's not to say that expressions of popular support by the US people for the Egyptian people is out of line.

    2. Re:It would... by Teancum · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am appalled and perhaps even a touch angry with some of the political pundits in America, particularly those who made commentary on the Sunday talk show circuit over this weekend. Those commentators seem to be completely out of touch with what is going on, yet their "spin" on things is what the American people are getting fed in terms of what is happening in Egypt.

      Sometimes Slashdot is ahead of the curve on geek news compared to the mainstream outlets, but I've never seen a political event where what I've been reading on this site is so far ahead of these mainstream reporters that it seems like two completely different events have been going on.

      I understand that the U.S. government is in a tricky situation where support for the existing government seems to be the implied course of action. One of the things that is of particular note is that the U.S. government is directly financing and supporting the Mubarak government, including the direct training and equipping of the Egyptian Army. It is for that reason especially that the opinion of the U.S. government matters, where switching support to another faction in the Egyptian society can have a huge impact even if the Mubarak government refuses to go away. Some of the direct cash payments come from the Camp David Peace Accords where both Israel and Egypt were given direct cash payments to essentially "pay off" both countries if they agreed to a peace treaty. It was a good deal for America too as it prevented World War III from starting in that part of the world (a long, long story there).

      The problem with the Mubarak government is that they have no mechanism for people dissatisfied with the government to be able to express themselves, or to establish a political faction contrary to the prevailing ones. Essentially the only option available to change the government is violent overthrow of that government. The protesters know that their voice can only be heard in the fashion they are protesting right now, and the "changes" in the government doesn't resolve their grievances.

      While not a perfect analogy, the Tea Party protests in America represented a similar dissatisfaction with the way things were being run, but the net result of those protests is that many of the "leaders" of that movement now sit in positions of real political power and are proposing legislation and making a real difference. That is the benefit of at least some sort of democratic method for change to exist, particularly in an era of modern communications to tie together different isolated groups into something much larger. I'm not saying that Egypt needs to use an identical process, but they need to come up with something, perhaps uniquely Egyptian, for their problems.

  3. Re:carrier pigeons! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apparently, all the carrier pigeons have been reporting a Coo

  4. RFC1149 by Weaselmancer · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  5. Wired wiki by De+Lemming · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Wired wiki by Nemyst · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Wired wiki by he-sk · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Free Manning, jail Obama.
  6. Erm...there's another way... by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 3, Funny

    So why aren't we all phoning a random number in Egypt once a day and asking if there's anything they want us to put on the interwebs for them?

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    Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
    1. Re:Erm...there's another way... by icebraining · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because most of us don't speak Arabic, and (probably) most of them don't speak English?

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      Dilbert RSS feed
  7. No Court Review by soren100 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:No Court Review by Teancum · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  8. Directional Wifi by DanielRavenNest · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.