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More Trouble Expected When Egypt Comes Back Online
schliz writes "Net activists at Telecomix are preparing darknets, encryption, proxies and VPNs to protect Egyptians' online freedom when the Government-imposed Internet blackout ends. Today, Telecomix regarded Egypt as being on "the same level as North Korea and Burma in internet censorship" amid rumours that Egyptian phone lines were to be shut down. Analysts and the Internet Society have also warned of technical and business difficulties to come — including BGP churn and commercial fears of doing business in Egypt."
Who's all in favor of modifying the constitutions of every Western country to read:
"Any attempt by government to in any way censor or limit or shut down the Internet will lead to immediate execution of said members of the Executive and Legislature by having their heads repeatedly smashed in by a circa-1995 Cisco router."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have a feeling we'll need one in the US very soon (sometime this decade).
TOR: Congress prepares to follow Egypt with internet kill switch
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/246707,egyptians-turn-to-tor-to-organise-dissent-online.aspx
"Appelbaum, a high-profile associate of the Wikileaks whistleblowers' site, said the "irony was rich" in how the US Government that supported the pro-democracy protesters treated him on his return to the country and the experiences of an Egyptian democracy activist who was harassed on his return to Egypt as revealed in a Wikileaks cable."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The more you tighten you grip, the more Star Systems, er, informed citizens will slip through your fingers.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
...is when they've got something they want to hide from the rest of the world.
I don't mind Frequency Assignments (like the US FCC does) or things like that; we wouldn't want phones interfering with TVs and microwaves, or microwaves exploding our phones! However, no one should be able to limit what we say or to whom we say it.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
I just one of our national stations have flow their news people to Egypt and set up a studio broadcasting live from the place and interviewing people on the street.
Seems any attempt at blocking anything has long since failed . And the military are just look on, they are on the side of the protesters.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
>>>I don't mind Frequency Assignments
Speaking of assignments: the FCC is planning to sell-off the Free TV frequencies sometime this decade (current date is 2015 but will probably be pushed back). What on earth would replace it, I wonder. Non-free cable tv I suppose.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No surprise here. The closer a goverment comes to losing power -- the first concern and top priority for any government -- the more they resort to coercion in their attempts to avoid the loss of power. Egypt is hardly unique in this respect. Every government has and will do this, because coercion is government's only tool in a situation like this. (Let's call a spade a spade here: coercion is government's ONLY tool, the one which they necessarily employ in every aspect of their business.) The elite at the top of the pyramid are terrified of losing power, and their reactions to protest illustrate this perfectly.
With that said, it's beyond me how and why people put a single ounce of trust in those who control them through force.
How can you possibly run a business in a place where the government might shut off a crucial resource at any time?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You say 'when', but perhaps what you mean is 'if'? Perhaps Egypt will simply slide back into the 'Dark' Ages again? Then the Amish could vacation there.
Telecomix also set up a dialup service and was in ham radio contact with the Egyptians during the processes. They did a mass faxing operation to get information about the services and ham radio freqs into Egypt.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/29/anonymous-internet-egypt_n_815889.html
Telecomix are pretty awesome
if they are so important, it makes you wonder how they managed to go countrywide during the french revolution, the english revolution, various independance... maybe the internet was invented earlier than we thought... or maybe the internet is only a high tech version of the natural power of gossip that has existed for centuries and things would have happened anyway even without the internet
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
seriously, as crazy as it sounds in Egypt, they are trying to set the same thing up here (USA).
It seems to me that setting up darknets, encryption and vpn's after a internet blackout is lifted is sort of like closing the barn door after the animals get out.
If you're going to be an organization that runs in to restore communication links when the people at the top turn the switch off, you're gonna need a little more coordination than taking the shotgun approach. You need to employ organized, practiced emergency communication practices. The same practices that you would employ during a natural disaster that knocks out communications. I don't really see that going on here.
Telecomix has a dialup pool of modems available for people to dial to "if" they can call out of the country.. never mind that it's their dime to make the international call. I guess in a place where the average wage is $2/day they could try and phreak it but then someone gets toss into a prison and that's pretty much the reason they're protesting in the first place...
Amateur Radio operators in Egypt may also be under the same blackout as the radio/internet people as well in fear of said prisons. It would explain why there is no APRS traffic coming from Egypt...
I'm of the opinion that if you're being suppressed/repressed by your government, you can either obey or go pirate. And if you're gonna go pirate, then you need to coordinate some... or get your own satellite phone like the news agencies have.
Organizations like this may be able to help this cause: http://buythissatellite.org/
boom goes the dynamite....
It would seem once all outside communication is cut off the time would be ripe to ramp up the violence and brutally crush this uprising.
They just used up their monthly data caps. They will be here in the next billing cycle.
An AT&T spokesman said.
is a large, voluntarily joined, (white) botnet.
Dear Egypt,
All IP addresses previously assigned to you have been revoked and given to others, since you apparently don't want them anymore.
Thank you for helping us with the dwindling supply of IPv4 addresses.
Sincerely,
ARIN
Why do we care what their opinion about other countries are? I don't get this. If I ask any asshole a question on the street, I am sure I will get an opinion. I am not sure why these guys matter.
I think i wont be alone, if i say that, you are really doing some good shit, with what you are doing, as of this moment. Tho i rarely show proper appreciation for things that are good in my life, i will take the time to say this : Well done, we appreciate that.
Read radical news here
If only we had the IP addresses to support them!
The flame war begins! Imagine the epicness of a flame war that's been suppressed for a week while people had legitimate cause to rant about! My God... Life on Earth might not survive...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"OK, now a lot of people have been wondering how Egypt managed to isolate itself on the Web. There are principally two ways this is done, first physically forcing the individual ISPs (ASN level) to halt all in and out-going IP traffic, but the second way is probably how they accomplished it. Let this be a warning to all who try.
They would have had the site which is their top-domain registry, or .eg registry, perform editing of their country's web sites by removing the terminating "." to DNS records in the .eg zone.
(That is, deleting the "." following the lower level sites, indicating no ".eg" was to follow.)
As an example, were one to evilly hack into Sweden's .se country registry (www.iis.se), and remove the terminating "." after the main ASN sites, no IP traffic would be incoming or outgoing for that country.
As an example, were one to evilly hack into the United Kingdom's .uk country registry (www.nominet.org.uk), and remove the terminating "." after the main ASN sites, no IP traffic would be incoming or outgoing for that country.
As an example, were one to evilly hack into Switzerland's .ch country registry (www.switch.ch/all), and remove the terminating "." after the main ASN sites, no IP traffic would be incoming or outgoing for that country.
Now, this is assuredly against the law, so be warned not do undertake any such operation --- even if the global banking elite manages to have Assange of Wikileaks illegally extradited to Sweden to be later removed to some extreme rendition site."
What more do I need to type? What a lame lameness filter.
Sounds like it's time to cut off Mubarak from *his* communication and see how he likes it. How hard would it be to cut off his TV, phone, etc links to the outside world?
Speaking of assignments: the FCC is planning to sell-off the Free TV frequencies sometime this decade (current date is 2015 but will probably be pushed back). What on earth would replace it, I wonder. Non-free cable tv I suppose.
Are you sure they aren't just auctioning off the part of the spectrum they freed up by pushing digital broadcasting?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Darknets, Tor, etc. won't do you any good if someone walks over to the distribution frame and does a physical media disconnect (literally pulls the plug) as has been said happened in Egypt.
When that happens, communication drops to sneaker-net (aka store & forward). Someone has to physically smuggle the bytes across the border. You can't beat the bandwidth of a couple of 2TB drives sitting in the business section of a British Airways flight.
If Joe Lieberman wants to help, instead of passing a law mandating a kill-switch {rolleyes}, pass a law mandating an air gap for all critical infrastructure IT systems.
This sounds a lot like a modern-day high-tech system of samizdat.
So then they will tax it to death. Recall that the power to tax is the power to destroy.
(I know the original was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the power-hungry politicians will find ways to get around it):
The politicians will just try to (a) tax it to death (either the companies or the subscribers), (b) regulate it "in order to make sure it is free and non-discriminatory," or (c) have "voluntary" codes that ensure that access by children (and other protected classes) aren't shown "inappropriate content."
The power to tax is the power to destroy and the power to regulate is the power to control. You don't need to shut down the Internet to have control over it. You just have to be the ONE to define "inappropriate" or the ONE to decide what the "voluntary" codes are or the ONE to set the tax rates. Or give "tax breaks" to companies that comply with the "suggestions" - kind of like the Federal Highway funds used to be tied to speed limits.
I can't tell if you're ridiculing the OP's argument by using the reductio ad absurdum method, or whether you are serious, but insane.
As this is slashdot, sadly the later is more likely.
I indeed desire the whole copyright, trademark and defamation laws to be gone. Political reality displays it is unrealistic to expect soon, but my opinions remain. Mentioned within an article to pass legislation favoring death penalties by cisco router beating seems entirely appropriate. If you disagree however, you can sue me on Cisco's behalf for making such statements, arguing unauthorized use of trademark. Perhaps they won't authorize the case out of concern for negative PR consequences, but the case would likely be successful. Perhaps Huawei would sponsor the cause, however.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
>>>I don't mind Frequency Assignments
Speaking of assignments: the FCC is planning to sell-off the Free TV frequencies sometime this decade (current date is 2015 but will probably be pushed back). What on earth would replace it, I wonder? Non-free cable tv I suppose.
>>>Are you sure they aren't just auctioning off the part of the spectrum they freed up by pushing digital broadcasting?
>>>
No those channels (52-to-69) were sold-off in 2008, before the transition was even complete, and then the money used to supply $40 coupons. This is a new plan to convert channels 14-to-51 into cellualr/internet usage.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall