Egyptians Find New Ways To Get Online 202
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."
Re:Erm...there's another way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because most of us don't speak Arabic, and (probably) most of them don't speak English?
Re:No Court Review (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Isolating the networks of critical infrastructure doesn't disrupt communications in general and the people working at nuclear plants on secure networks can go tot he public network or home or to a coffee shop or use their phone. It doesn't hinder communication significantly for the country. The idea that such a thing is a goal is simply unsupported and unsupportable.
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.
I didn't see that in the bill either and how exactly does a law prohibit the courts from reviewing it? They're the courts, if a court refuses you appeal to a higher court and supreme court is not answerable to the legislature aside from a constitutional amendment.
So if anything can be declared "critical infrastructure" and isolated without benefit of the courts, any communication can be shut down.
In an emergency, yes, but the executive already has the power to do that two other ways. They aren't interested in this for shutting down communications because they don't need it, it would require them to make ludicrous claims about what is critical infrastructure, and shutting down communications would be political suicide. This is about creating a group to look at the problems and make a nice list of what needs to be protected and how and then let the executive have a less extreme option when they need to protect something specific.
It takes a pretty convoluted and unreasonable conspiracy theory or some inexplicable chain of events to see how this bill would be used for censorship.
Re:It would... (Score:5, 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.