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Egyptians Turn To Tor To Organize Dissent Online
An anonymous reader writes "Even as President Obama prepares to follow Mubarak with his own 'internet kill switch', Egyptians were turning to the Tor anonymiser to organise their protests online. The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet. Information security researcher, Tor coder and writer of the bridge that allowed Egypt's citizens to short-circuit government filters, Jacob Appelbaum, told SC Magazine Egyptians were 'concerned and some understand the risk of network traffic analysis.' Appelbaum has himself been the subject of attention from US security services who routinely snatch his electronics and search his belongings when he re-enters the country and who subpoenaed his private Twitter account last December." Which helps explain why Appelbaum is helping to organize a small fundraiser to get more communications gear into Egypt.
Don't let facts get in the way of a good story.
Simple. The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it.
I'm a little confused. How does Tor work when they shut down the Internet?
RFC 1149.
Don't let research get in the way of a smart-ass comment.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
"Tor, it's not just for child pornographers and anti-Communist dissidents any more!"
Don't forget RFC 2549.