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US Has Secret Tools To Force Internet On Dictatorships
4phun found a Wired story that talks about the military options when a dictatorship decides to cut off internet access to its population.
"The American military does have a second set of options if it ever wants to force connectivity on a country against its ruler’s wishes. There’s just one wrinkle. 'It could be considered an act of war.'"
Hopefully the same options will be available for us when our government gets around to implementing our own kill switch.
Did you read the article? It discusses flying cellular towers and other such connectivity solutions. That's not shadily exploiting a back door. It's like walking to your house and noisily building you a new front door.
Not really backdoors, if you RTFA. They can broadcast network signal, give people satellite phones or other satellite transcievers. There's more stuff that the officer didn't want to discuss, because deployment of those is decided at the level of "commander-in-chief".
Why stop there? Why not seed blogs, twitter and facebook and initiate a misinformation campaign?
Patience, Grasshopper.
I am pretty suspicious of all the things that people claim as " inviolable human rights" now. Would the USA put its money where its mouth is and give money to foreign powers to give people internet access? Would they even pay for someone in part of the USA who can't afford access in a remote area?
If anything this dilutes the idea of real human rights - if every country in the world doesn't provide "human rights" to someone or other it becomes meaningless to criticise counties on this ground. Human rights should be confined to life, liberty, and essentials that we would all agree on.
People who want internet access write down the URL on a piece of paper, smuggle the piece of paper to a CIA operative, and the response is broadcast in the form of printouts of the requested web page dumped out of a Hercules C130.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Use drones to airdrop a small kit containing a satphones with free satellite access for a while and a solar charger. Make sure the satphone is by default enabled as an open wifi hotspot. Spread all over the country. Be sure to include free porn memberships in uptight countries. I mean, come on, this has got to be a lot more efficient for democracy than sending tanks (and cheaper to boot), and a lot safer than sending journalists.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
the american president is not going to cut off the internet and start goose stepping around the white house. this ranks right up there with other paranoid schizophrenic fantasies like rednecks with guns in the woods are going to save us from fascism. please stop mentioning the american internet kill switch in the same sentence as egypt, china, or iran. its just... dumb
we live in an abused, yes, compromised, yes, but still functioning democracy. meaning rule is by consent, not force and fear. any president who cuts off the internet is going to have to explain his or herself to the people who elected him or her. and the american people are still electing presidents (now comes the part where some genius complains about liberal media and propagandized morons or conservative media and propagandized morons... snore... thank you for thinking so lowly of your fellow citizens. oh where is your nonexistent utopia where every citizen is perfectly ideologically in tune with you as only an "educated" person would be?)
in egypt or china or iran the kill switch can be invoked, and then: you got a problem with that? there's no accountability to the people of those countries. if the people get angry, crack skulls until they cower again in fear (until blessedly, as the people in egypt show us, the people just aren't afraid anymore, and it is revealed to the world exactly why democracy, as messy as it is, is still so superior to despotism: its simply more stable because it manufactures legitimacy by consulting the people)
but fear is not how it works in the usa. really, mr. snarky teenager. do you feel afraid criticizing the us government on slashdot? oh, why not? maybe because you have that right AND THAT RIGHT IS RESPECTED. aka: you do not live in a society ruled by fear. want to test that? ok: try criticizing the chinese government in china or the iranian government in iran as vocally and as vociferously and as loudly and as repeatedly as some of you false equivalency geniuses, who think your democracy is just as bad as despotism. go ahead, go on with your bad self. what happens to squeaky wheels like you in iran, china, or egypt?
now that you understand the difference, please understand that the reasons for the use of an internet kill switch are for entirely different criteria in democracies versus despotic countries. a valid use: some armageddeon level ddos or a warhol virus, versus an invalid use: preventing the people from coordinating and rising up against their oppressors
look: there are many problems with the american government. i repeat: there are many problems with the american government. i am not an american apologist. but making snark about the american internet kill switch in the same breath as the policies of egypt, or iran, or china, governments clearly far, far worse in terms of the rights of its citizens, that doesn't advance any cause you believe in. it just makes you look stupid and either ungrateful for how well you have it, or simply naive and uneducated about how little rights people have in other countries
teenage level snark might get snickers from other snarky teenagers, but its not the path to valid commentary on your government or any other government in the world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So unilateral action and nation-building is ok when we use it to benefit the 'right' people?
Throwing Mubarek under the bus and openly supporting a revolution would have been disastrous for US relations with the middle east. It would have been perceived as yet another example of the US overthrowing an uncooperative government because that government was no longer convenient for us.
An act of war against a falling dictator that very well might have had a huge amount of pull with his very powerful military would have been extremely risky.
Aren't the Egyptians telling you guys to stay out!? Maybe it's better if you don't get involved for once.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I ask that rhetorically, but has VOA become so neutered and politically correct that it could not at least broadcast current events to the Egyptian people? It wasn't that long ago that VOA was jammed regularly in the former Soviet Union.
Carpet-bombing the country with 'cheap' sat phones or wireless routers for use with a foreign-sponsored offshore Internet service sounds like fun, though. All we need to do is figure out how to set up the link so aircraft don't need to overfly the target nation, and set these up as mesh nodes to extend the network into the interior. And keep the airborne links far enough outside the target's borders to pretend they are in 'international' airspace. Battery power is not a good idea, but it may be the simplest thing. Imagine a national ban on batteries... USB-powered devices would be ideal, but that's a tall order technilogically...
These flying access points better be remotely piloted, though. Hosni in particular knows his way around air defense, and has good equipment.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"may still has"
Ugh. Engrish fail. Need more caffeine.
English is a fault tolerant language, so don't sweat it. You can make all kinds of errors in English, and everyone will still understand what you meant to say, nonetheless. At a lab from my employer, in Austin, Texas, a guy from Taiwan was speaking English with a guy from India. Their English would have made my 7th grade English teacher commit Seppuku (aka, Harakiri), but they were able to communicate with it.
In my opinion this is why English is so dominant on the Internet: you don't need to know much to communicate. Unless some sesquipedalian like me starts using terms like obsequious and innocuous.
This is why dictators are scared of the Internet: Folks can get across what is going on in their country to a wide audience.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Why not seed blogs, twitter and facebook...
Because by Executive Order (http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-30.pdf, page 19), "U.S. PSYOP forces will not target U.S. citizens at any time, in any location globally, or under any circumstances"
The internet causes a problem in this regard, as obviously it's designed so that all of it accessible from everyplace else (generally speaking). So while it's possible to put a server someplace that is firewalled to only send/relay info from a range of IP addresses, the military can't do that with Twitter; if they started putting PSYOPS on Twitter, it'd be accessible to US citizens, would could then be considered 'targeted'.
Of course, these restrictions are by executive order, not US law, and they apply to the US Military only.
Side note: on the next page, it spells out copyright issues as an area of concern... don't want to get sued by the MPAA in the middle of WW III because you broadcast a video of Mickey Mouse without permission...
Throwing Mubarek under the bus and openly supporting a revolution would have been disastrous for US relations with the middle east. It would have been perceived as yet another example of the US overthrowing an uncooperative government because that government was no longer convenient for us.
What the fuck? Are you even reading the news?
We have given Mubarak and his jackbooted murderers 60 billion dollars over 30 years. We are one of the main reasons he's stayed in power. Helping to throw him out would have finally signaled that the United States gave a damn about democracy in the middle east, but it's the same old story that it's been for a hundred years: we don't want Arabs to be able to vote, because they might prefer using their resources for their own benefit instead of ours.
That's not meddling in the Middle East. It's stopping meddling in the Middle East.
That country has been a jack-booted dictatorship for 5,000+ years now. If you think it was the fault of the U.S. that they aren't a democracy, you don't know anything about history.
Would you have considered it "meddling" when the United States forced France and Britain to give the Suez Canal back to the Egyptians after Nassar nationalized it back in 1956?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Nope, that's still meddling.
The best the US can do is to simply leave Egypt alone. If they throw their weight on either side they are meddling with a country's internal affairs and simply planting the seed for the next revolution.
If the US drops support for Mubarak it will show to other supported dictators (Pakistan, SA etc) that US-support is limited when it comes to popular uprisings. Anti-government groups will use this weakness to topple their governments and dictators will have to choose between force or surrender.
If the US openly supports anti-government groups in Egypt this will bolster numerous groups even further and the US will be seen as a very untrustworthy ally at best. How would you see China if they openly backed revolutionary groups in the US? Even if those groups might be morally right, it still is meddling.
Alas, US interests are everywhere and not meddling will harm those interests. The reality is that Egypt is most likely a lose/lose/lose situation for the US.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Any support of people would be seen as US meddling. Under no circumstances should we say 'Yeah, this guy would be a nice leader', or supply any specific people support.
Providing internet and cell service probably would be okay, though. Pressuring Mubarak to step down would probably be okay too, as long as we aren't attempting to replace him. (Which, sadly, we are, with our very own torturer.)
We have threatened to cut off military aid if the military is used against protesters, which a) helps keep protesters from being killed,and b) keeps open the possibility of some sort of orderly transition under the military. No matter how much we dislike military coups, a military coup is nicer than one with violence against the military, and the military is amazingly professional and seems willing to make sure that democracy 'returns'. (Or, rather, shows up in fact and not just fiction.)
We cannot choose the people leading the middle east, period, and we need to stop. If we want middle east countries to like us, we have to, you know, do things they like.
Of course, the elephant in the room at this point is Israel.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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Good people go to bed earlier.
That country has been a jack-booted dictatorship for 5,000+ years now. If you think it was the fault of the U.S. that they aren't a democracy, you don't know anything about history.
Nice strawman herring.
Would you have considered it "meddling" when the United States forced France and Britain to give the Suez Canal back to the Egyptians after Nassar nationalized it back in 1956?
Oh, back in the day when the United States wasn't an entirely hypocritical pile of shit. It's cool though. We have been holding it down for US business interests since we bribed Sadat with enough cash in the 70s to keep the Suez in operation, while aiding Israel with destroying Palestinian nationalism. Brilliant geopolitics with zero moral value, as usual.