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.

Comments

I'm Confused

[MightyMartian]

I'm a little confused. How does Tor work when they shut down the Internet?

Partisan bullshit overtaking slashdot??? WTFF??!

[catmistake]

"Even as President Obama prepares to follow Mubarak with his own 'internet kill switch',

WTF??? I'm really getting sick and tired of this partisan garbage on slashdot. It's bad enough that it's in posters' comments, do we really have to have it force fed to us in the summaries? Hey lefties... fuck you... but you righties, a special "go fuck yourself" from me, mkay? Arrogant lying assholes... say anything to make the competition look bad, anything at all to win. Stupid, women-hating, fascist money lovers. Bite me.