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Posted on 01/29/2011 12:50:24 PM PST by righttackle44
Egypt's shutdown of the Internet within its borders is an action unlike any other in the history of the World Wide Web and it might have only taken a few phone calls to do it.
"It's something I've never seen; it's totally unprecedented," said James Cowie, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Renesys, an IT company in New Hampshire that helps Internet service providers monitor the security of Web networks and infrastructure.
"Over a period a period of about 20 minutes, it's as if each of the primary service providers started pulling the routes that lead to them. It wasn't like a simultaneous withdrawal.
"Nobody flipped an off switch or hit a big red button. It was one by one until they were all gone."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
I wonder if the US military has the capability to provide satellite or UAV routers that would keep the internet open, despite the local government’s wishes.
..easy , peasy, japanesy!
Obama wants authority to do the same thing in the USA.
Can you hear me now?? NOPE!!
ISPs are the last leg of almost all Internet traffic. Stop them and you effectively shut down the Internet.
Not necessary. Tell the providers to turn off the service and . . . no more service.
To assist in toppling the government of a critically strategic ally?
These days if they stop the internet, they stop commerce. Gotta wonder how all the hotel rooms in the country were charged.
I’m just curious about the capability, not making a tactical suggestion.
He's using Egypt as an example and is taking notes on marital law and shutting down the web. Wake up folks, this is coming soon to a computer near you.
BTTT
I like what Leno said last night, “ They just switched everyone to T-Mobile.”
From the US:
Cisco. Nortel. Juniper. Secure Computing.
From Germany:
Siemens.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162781,00.html
http://en.rsf.org/egypt-internet-a-weapon-of-mass-06-04-2009,30765.html
European Parliament condemns ethical breaches by Internet sector companies
Published on Thursday 6 July 2006. Mis a jour le Thursday 25 January 2007.
http://en.rsf.org/european-union-european-parliament-condemns-06-07-2006,18223.html
Reporters Without Borders hailed a resolution on online free expression that was passed today by the European Parliament and said it hoped the European Commission and EU member states would heed its recommendations.
Reporters Without Borders hailed a resolution on online free expression that was passed today by the European Parliament and said it hoped the European Commission and EU member states would heed its recommendations.
The resolution criticises Internet sector companies that cooperate with repressive regimes and names several US companies (Yahoo !, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems) and European ones (Telecom Italia and France Telecom) that do so.
“I wonder if the US military has the capability to provide satellite or UAV routers that would keep the internet open, despite the local government’s wishes.”
Yes, the US Military has their own independent Internet infrastructure. However, to keep the civilian Internet infrastructure operating should U.S. authorities try to shut it down would require insurrection.
On the other hand, at this time, I don’t think the U.S. government could shutdown the civilian Internet because it is owned and operated by several private companies, and short of sending in the U.S. military to forceably take control, the Feds would have to try and seek court orders should said private companies not wish to cooperate.
Additionally, shutting down the U.S. Internet would bring the entire U.S. to a halt almost as effectively as if all electric power was shut off. Should the U.S. government succeed in shutting down the civilian Internet, the result would fundamentally be apocalyptic, most likely resulting in total chaos, including large numbers of large armed confrontations amongst various segments of U.S. society.
We all need to contact our ISPs and demand that they not obey an order to shut down.
Think Michelle needs to be worried?
You’re answering the opposite question to what I’m asking, which is, does the US military possess the capability to *sustain* the internet over a foreign country, when the government of that country seeks to cut it off from the local citizens. So the US military would be providing “ISPs in the sky” for the locals in the remote, foreign land. Not saying they should do it in Egypt, but just asking.
Sort of a Radio Free America for the Internet, then? I don’t really see how it would be possible, and even if it was, the US military wouldn’t have the capability of somehow providing Internet replacement for any given country from satellites.
It would be possible for small numbers of individuals in a country to stay connected to the international internet via satellite links, but they would already have to have their ground equipment available, and most likely even have the service in operation before the local national internet was taken down, since communications would have been cut off to the extent that they couldn’t set up a new international satellite internet access account and get it going.
This wouldn’t be a bad thing for a well organized opposition to have in place prior to an uprising that might lead to the national government to take down the communication infrastructure. In the olden days it was sufficient for the government or opposition to control the TV and radio stations, but now it would be much more important during an uprising to control the Internet, to either be able to turn it off if you were the government, or to keep connected if you were the opposition.
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