Egyptians Turn To Tor To Organize Dissent Online 152
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.
I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a little confused. How does Tor work when they shut down the Internet?
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You seem to be new here.
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Oh, he's more than new here [cnet.com].
Don't care who proposes it, "internet kill switch" is bad legislation.
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Doesn't toe a party lie of an American political organization is now considered "nutty"?
What drugs have you been mainlining?
Re:I'm Confused (Score:4, Funny)
Don't let facts get in the way of a good story.
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Don't let research get in the way of a smart-ass comment.
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Are you talking about me?
(Seriously ... see username)
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You're not the only smart ass in the world, I'm not the only opportunist in the world. Get used to it, our names are being abused constantly.
Re:I'm Confused (Score:5, Funny)
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Simple. The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it.
The more time I spend online, the more I am beginning to believe that statement needs an addendum:
The internet sees stupidity as content and makes backup copies
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It can even route to your house if you don't have an ISP. All you have to do is BELIEVE!
Re:I'm Confused (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a little confused. How does Tor work when they shut down the Internet?
RFC 1149.
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Don't forget RFC 2549.
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What you consider droppings IS the packets.
You haven't been on the internet for long, have you? Else you'd know that this is what 99% of the packets you get is.
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I was going to moderate this story but already posted in it.
It's ok because I couldn't find the Motha fsck'n funny mod anyways and wanted you to know that deserved way more then just funny.
Of course there is be some out there wondering what is so funny about 2Pigeons1Packet. I suppose they should keep wondering.
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Urk... Ok, I brought this onto myself, but still... thanks for ruining my lunch.
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How far does the information have to travel, to get to the nearest border? About 250 miles. Less, if there's a point to point wireless relay. Sure, the "Internet" may be disabled. So all the fiber coming in country may be disabled. So all the ISP's may have downed their uplink interfaces. That doesn't mean an uplink isn't a tower climb away.
Then again, I wouldn't want to be the guy climbing a towe
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Nah, he tried an experiment with a bunch of guys and a plane. That had a catastrophic flaw, The transit method crashed. That's one of the best things that could have ever happened to the Internet.
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That's been replaced by LARP [totallycoolpix.com] Unfortunately, they're using real bullets, and respawning has been disabled.
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Well, compared to no connectivity, the "station wagon" is much better.
We were discussing an exercise on how the fastest way to move a terabyte of data would be. It could be sent over a T1 (the connectivity at the site). The better solution was FedEx. Copy it from the server to an external drive
Re:I'm Confused (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a little confused. How does Tor work when they shut down the Internet?
From the summary:
Egyptians were turning to the Tor anonymiser to organise their protests online.
I presume they meant prior to their loss of connection. Of course a headline of "Egyptians Were Using Tor to Organise Dissent Online" would be much less dramatic.
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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.
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Homing pigeons and vans filled with hard drives.
Except, on the tor network the van is swapped for a bus at its first node, a truck at the second, a fleet of yugo's at the third, etc, etc..
Similarly the homing pigeon is switched with a homing goat, homing otter, homing walking stick, etc.
It's really quite a fascinating process.
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Homing pigeons and vans filled with hard drives.
Except, on the tor network the van is swapped for a bus at its first node, a truck at the second, a fleet of yugo's at the third, etc, etc.. Similarly the homing pigeon is switched with a homing goat, homing otter, homing walking stick, etc. It's really quite a fascinating process.
Awww come on I thought it was tubes. Now it's trucks, vans and yugos? This is tricky.
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The summary actually says that:
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.
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True.
Re:I'm Confused (Score:5, Informative)
Your donation will go to providing satellite internet devices, other related equipment, to help with network access costs,and general support for Egyptians and people working with Egypt during this crisis and beyond.
Not very hard to find an answer.
Instead of an invoice for my 3 minutes of searching, may I kindly ask you to go to the posted link, fill in the form and hit the "Donate" button.
Thank you.
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may I kindly ask you to go to the posted link, fill in the form and hit the "Donate" button. Thank you.
no, no you certainly may not. seeing as the next regime will be worse than this one, probably with very strong islamic influences (sharia law) and even more persecution of coptic christians.
I for one welcome the old overlords of egypt.
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The govt initially just blocked Twitter and Facebook, that's when Tor usage spiked (in addition to the traffic from journalists). The net was cut by the time the streets was filled with people.
"About a half-hour past midnight on Friday in Egypt, the internet went dead." [aljazeera.net]
You win a years supply of yesterday's newspaper for the 'Reading News Fail' award.
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I dunno if I understand that government. Instead of handing the people their soma so they don't protest, they intentionally take it away, leaving them with nothing to do but to protest?
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The also had a lot less ways to coordinate the protests or hide from repercussions of doing so in the process.
It's a communications, command and control situation. Extra unorganized protesters are a lot less of a threat then a few well organized and motivated ones.
In the states, we use similar tactics. Except we don't deny access. Instead we infiltrate and provoke then take out the leadership to drop the organization and coordination.
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From the summary:
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.
I.e, the Egyptians used Tor a lot right before they shut down the Internet.
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Well, if I'd plan a revolution, I'd set up a few mobile satellite up-links and an ad-hock WiFi network through the major cities, establishing communication and organization cells with instructions how to operate them (protocol).
But then again, a revolution is mostly a pretty messy, so they were probably preoccupied with other things, like wild rage and stuff.
This reminds me (Score:3)
This reminds me a lot of that Corey Docterow novel about the kid who was blamed for being a terrorist in San Francisco.
Used TOR and xboxs to make an ad-hoc network. Was actually a bit of an interesting read, although a bit worded for younger people.
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Little Brother?
It was a cheap fantasy. You could tell throughout that the author desperately wanted to be that cool, anti-authoritarian kid, and set up a world specifically for him to do cool, anti-authoritarian stiff.
I'm against creeping government powers and the slow transformation into a police state as as the next guy (probably quite a lot more so), but "Little Brother" read like the author was whacking off all the way through.
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Was that the one where he spent a page making it brutally clear to the reader that he didn't have a clue about how networks work, by spouting things like 'DHCP' in completely inappropriate contexts. Even that wouldn't have been so bad, except that the entire discussion added absolutely nothing to the story - it was just a 'look reader, I know about tech!' aside that completely failed.
I've never noticed an author in more desperate need of a decent editor than Doctrow.
"US security services who routinely snatch his .." (Score:2)
no freedom is left there.
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He did.
He's been living in London for years.
Come to think of it though, that may have been a step backwards...
Net kill switch (Score:5, Interesting)
I see people always going on about that. I can't see how this would help in the US. If people were protesting or there was unrest in the US, hitting the net kill switch would be economic suicide. In Egypt and Tunisia, the net was used more for socializing than business. In the US, the bulk of net use (in pure data) is business related. Our entire economy runs off of the net now. Turning it off would shut down or severely hobble a large number of fortune 500 companies, not to mention thousands of small and medium sized businesses. Also, like in Egypt and Tunisia, it would just give people more reason to go out on the streets. Without the net to bitch about the state of the country/world on, they would turn to going outside and raising hell instead. So sure, the govt can build their kill switch, but only if they plan to jettison our economy with the push oa button.
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"In the US, the bulk of net use (in pure data) is business related"
Got any stats to back this up? I would have guessed that YouTube/NetFlix/piracy/porn..etc would be orders of magnitude greater than pure business traffic. Unless you mean YouTube is a business and therefore business related?
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YouTube, Netflix, porn... all businesses.
Re:Net kill switch (Score:5, Informative)
I can't see how this would help in the US
You're misunderstanding what the "kill switch" legislation is. It's not technical. It's a legal mechanism by which the administration can tell services (including operations like Twitter or Google, or just Google's Gmail service, or an entire ISP, or just one blog site), software vendors, or individual engineers that they must take a specific action as required during an emergency. It's no different that the government's already existing ability to commandeer ham radio equipment, or cruise ships, or food distribution companies. If they think that a dozen people are waiting for instructions via Twitter to time their dropping off of backpack bombs on subway trains all around the country, then the "kill switch" is invoked: federal power to tell Twitter to shut down or otherwise do what they say has to be done. The legislation lays out penalties for failure to comply with such orders.
This doesn't give the president a button to push. It gives him lawyers to push, in real time, on short notice.
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Regardless of the misunderstanding, just shutting down some sites like that can have the implications of getting several workers laid off because the company cannot generate revenue. Why didn't they just kill switch GM when they went toast, or the Investment Bankers, and all the rest of the diseased scumbags that help ruin the economy? Just kill switching a few website could result in the termination of a thousand jobs easily! If you piss of businesses enough don't forget that they can easily ruin an eco
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Not only that, but realize that globalisation works for internet companies more than for anyone else. You shut me down here? I open up in Australia. Or Hungary. Or India. Or Abu Dhabi, even Russia or Malaysia for all I'm concerned. For an internet business, it does not matter at all where they screw the racks into the walls.
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> This doesn't give the president a button to push. It gives him lawyers to push, in real time, on short notice.
wow, those are nicely smith'd words. I may use that phrase if you don't mind; it really captures the essence of what our Fearless Leader(tm) has up his sleeves.
(I don't doubt the next FL will up the antie, too; they always do)
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The legislation lays out penalties for failure to comply with such orders.
Does it lay out penalties for misuse of such powers?
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Does it lay out penalties for misuse of such powers?
It's the same as mis-using the long-standing executive powers to stockpile bauxite in the strategic reserve, or mis-using powers to take over city bus fleets in an emergency, or mis-using powers to do anything else. It's called not getting re-elected, usually. And if it's criminal (we have tens of thousands of laws already spelling that out), then it's called getting impeached.
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paraniod_mode
In case you havn't noticed Mubarak didn't need any special law or a big red button to shut off internat access state-wide, just a few well placed phone calls to the the major ISPs.
I wonder if that could ever happen here in the 'civilized' west (in London they chirurgically shut off mobile comunication during the student riots, remember?) and what counter measures would we have.
Could we use the good old phone network to cohordinate? How many of you still remember their home phone number? you mot
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It wouldn't help a thing. This is politician solution to a problem that's not even a problem. If I were a foreign country I would be cheering the kill switch on, and when it passes, I would try every living thing I could in CyberAssualt to make them throw the kill switch. We will cause far more damage to ourselves than any cyber attack if we turn ourselves off.
but we just keep voting these ass clowns into power. the problem is not our elected corrupt officials, its the people stuck in some ridiculous id
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Did you vote Democrat? Then you are part of the problem!
Did you vote Republican? Then you are part of the problem!
Did you vote 3rd party? Then you are some sort of weirdo or mutant!
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Voting doesn't change a thing. Else it would have been outlawed long, long ago.
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Did you vote 3rd party? Then you are some sort of weirdo or mutant!
Mutation is what provides change for evolution. ;)
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agreed. D's are part of the problem. R's are part of the problem. the party system gives false dichotomy and solves NOTHING but gives us a fake kang/kodos that we can rally around one while hating the other.
nice circus for us to 'participate' in.
we need a reboot. a 2.0 level system that was rebuilt and kept no sacred cows. all should be revisited.
will it happen? not peacefully. that means it will happen elsewhere since I'm 100% confident that americans are too fat and lazy and mostly happy with their
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Wow, talk about being part of the problem. Many of the responses to this article, above and below, are the problem.
The internet kill switch is not there to prevent political dissent, it's a reaction to terrorist attack at that hotel in Mumbai a couple years ago, where the terrorists used cel phones and text messaging to coordinate the attacks. Pretty much every government in the world is looking into something like this. The kill switch won't work (because no one will know how they're coordinating until it'
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We need more people to think like you: Logically!
It will not help against a cyber attack, really. That is just an excuse for the Govt to lobby this 'kill switch' into action.
To me, logically, it seems more like a 'censorship kill switch', I may be wrong, but think about it for a minute:
The Govt sees now what can happen if people coordinate via the net.
Suddenly, what they feared could happen to them, is happening in Egypt.
_Note I talk about the Govt, not the U.S., who are the people_
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Gov calls, sends, codes all the 'big' isp's a message. Smaller isp's, private groups get a DHS visit.
You wake up, turn on your adsl modem, cable, optical device ect no lights for you today.
Ring the telco, at best a recored message, or nothing.
Dust off your sat phone or phone an isp outside the USA with your CC.
Can that US sat phone running in the US on a US CC be turned off or tracked http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078689 [msn.com] as in Iraq?. Can inte
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ham radio WOULD work. there's no license requirement to turn the switch on and start modulating.
in time of crisis, who the hell would care if I made up my ham callsign or not!
they can find you as you transmit but if enough people did it, there's not enough cops in the world to stop half or quater of the population using radios.
problem is - ham radio is mostly dead (I used to be involved in 70's, fwiw) and its hard as hell to find LOCAL shops that carry the gear. its not hard to operate but you do need to
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Tor's new slogan (Score:2, Funny)
"Tor, it's not just for child pornographers and anti-Communist dissidents any more!"
they've learned nothing (Score:1)
Is Tor another name (Score:1)
Done (Score:1)
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Your donation will go to providing satellite internet devices, other related equipment, to help with network access costs, and general support for Egyptians and people working with Egypt during this crisis and beyond.
It's further proof. (Score:4, Informative)
Proof that anyone using a Tor is a criminal with something to hide. They just happen to be breaking Egyption laws instead of US ones. The scumbags. [/end sarcasm]
More of the same, move along... (Score:1)
Nothing is going to happen. The punks in power will make just enough changes to make the protesters happy. Then the protesters go home thinking they did something special and nothing really gets changed. Governments are professionals at theater like this. Obama just needs to STFU. He has the audacity to comment on what they need to do for democracy when he is trying to remove it over here. As TFA states Obama wants a kill switch for our USA Net. And with the TSA going "total sack adjustment' on every
That's true in America... (Score:1, Interesting)
Basically, it's only dumb, Fox news lovin' Americans that can be fooled so easily. Mostly because Americans have had 60+ years of indoctrination that's crushed any sense of entitlement and turned us into a nation of abused housewives that always blame ourselves ("The reason I
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...nation of abused housewives that always blame ourselves ("The reason I lost my job, car, home, everything was I just didn't work hard enough, it's got nothing to do with H1-B visas, whatever those are!").
Actually they are right. People with H1-B visas agree to work harder for less money than Americans. You can only blame yourself for no job offers.
Should you mention outsourceing to oversea country you would have a point.
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The real problem here is we're fanatically adhering to a system (capitalism) that doesn't work in a global economy with fast shipping, fast transportatio
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China keeps their populace in line with shear brutality,
What? If you disagree with the government, they shave your head?
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The persistence of FUD over this is amazing. The proposal in question would limit a power that the President has had since 1934. [talkingpointsmemo.com] The "OMG Obama wants an internet kill switch!" meme is a lie.
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FUD exists everywhere. Kill switch just happens to be its common name, so get over it already. The simple fact is this! Someone is seeking a way to get more power than what they already have over the internet. And just because there will be some limits in place does not mean anything. The real end is increasing power or relocating it for a political gain. You need to remember that while yes a lot of FUD rolls with a lot of things the basic principles usually remain the same. Why would they need this
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>Nothing is going to happen.
I'm taking a long position on natural resources. It might be a mistake but I'm willing to risk it.
Obama is now a Republican? (Score:2, Informative)
Um...how does Senator Susan Collins, Republican from Main, putting forward a beyond-all-reason-lame bill, somehow equal Obama following Mubarak? Yes, the bill is to give the president the time power to kill the Internet in various poorly defined ways, but that's one amazingly long politically reaching spin if I ever heard one.
Partisan bullshit overtaking slashdot??? WTFF??! (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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I sense tension. Are you hiding your true feelings?
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Wait isn't your side the one's saying love the muslims who don't mind killing their women and daughters? Seems you have some hypocrisy to work out before you start assisting others with theirs!
The people usually talking about partisan problems are the most partisan of all! And by the way. Partisan is GOOD! The more time they spend fighting on capital hill they less time they spend taking freedom away.
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The first sentence of the summary isn't merely inaccurate. It's a lie, and a dirty trick.
Explain this to me. Not only is the first sentence of this summary accurate, it's the only way a reasonable person could construe the situation. How can you look at the "kill switch" proposal and think that it's for anything other than what Mubarak has just done? What other possible use is there?
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I'm just going to quote the comment above my OP to show you what a silly person you are.
Um...how does Senator Susan Collins, Republican from Main, putting forward a beyond-all-reason-lame bill, somehow equal Obama following Mubarak?
Let me help you understand this a bit... liberals would never propose a kill switch. Obama is a liberal. The idea comes, for a second time, from the ranks of the REPUBLICAN party. FYI Obama is a DEMOCRAT.
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The bill is also sponsored by Sen Lieberman (I formerly D), and Sen Carper (D). A similar bill in the past was sponsored by Sens. Rockefellar (D) and Snow (R). This bill was unanimously passed by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, a body with the same number of Democrats as Republican. (more D if you count Lieberman). This bill is as bipartisan as it gets.
I agree, that liberals would never pass such a bill. However, there are no liberals in the US government. Obama is a center-r
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Also, notice this article [thehill.com].
So you see, Obama's position is even worse than that put forth in the bill. This bill would explicitly authorize
Re:Partisan bullshit overtaking slashdot??? WTFF?? (Score:4, Interesting)
For a European like me, the difference between Democratic and Republican presidents seems minimal with regards to electronic surveillance and censorship.
In my own country, Sweden, the parties conveniently switch to criticising surveillance and censorship when they're out of power, only to conveniently switch back when they're in power again.
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We do the same. During the Bush years, the GOP meme was "trust the government. It's unpatriotic to stand in the president's way". After Obama's election, but before he took office, that meme changed to "The president is out to push a socialist agenda and I hope the president fails", and these same people who were decrying dissent took a tactic of filibustering and obstructing every attempt at legislation, because they didn't want to give the other guy any victories.
Fuck partisanship. (Score:2)
Fuck partisanship. This is objective evil, free of dem/gop bias. Yes, the "internet kill switch" is designed to do what Mubarak did. In fact, this is it's ONLY use.
It does not have any parallel in any other communication medium: not TV, not the telephone networks, etc. Why? Because our forebears would have sniffed the fascist, totalitarian bent of it and would have shouted "NAZI, STALIN!". Now most of the US is constituted of pussies: "oooh, please save me from the teeeeeeerrorists! please! put ev
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That was what I meant by partisan BS. Summary Poster is obviously a Republican birther, or some such nonsense. The game is "hate the other side no matter what," and it's garbage.
You're playing the same game here. Anyone who calls Obama out over his obvious hard-on for authoritarianism is a teabagger? That's partisan bullshit.
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You're playing the same game here. Anyone who calls Obama out over his obvious hard-on for authoritarianism is a teabagger? That's partisan bullshit.
I don't see how falsly attributing something to Obama is "calling him out over his obvious hard-on for authoritarianism," nor how correcting this, for accuracy, is partisan. Maybe Obama is authoritarian, but lying about him isn't evidence of it. This has old-school conservative tactics written all over it... these days, that's the Tea Party's modus operandi.
Find anything anywhere that says Obama, or any liberal, thinks an internet kill switch is a good idea. You will fail. The proposal came from a Republi
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I already quoted you a bit in another post. The official stance of the Obama administration, given as testimony to Congress by DHS Undersecretary Philip Reitinger is that the authority to implement a kill switch already exists. Since Obama has done nothing to change that, he must believe that it is a good thing.
Also, I said it before, and I'll say it again. Obama is no liberal. There are no liberals in the US government. Both Democrats and Republicans are rank authoritarians.
Revolution Radio (Score:4, Informative)
Get some 100 watt FM transmitters make a afsk broadcast(Setting up Soundmodem on Linux). Next plug headphone jack from fm radio into laptop use multimon or windows equivalent. Just have to coordinate freq maybe could try encrypting it with open-ssh and sharing certs
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Do you know if this has actually be tried? I just happened to have spent the evening reading up on packet radio and routing topologies; making a list of things to try out. I've been focusing on 2-way comms, but your idea has some interesting 'last-mile' benefits.
Have you been watching the live feed? (Score:3)
2 *million* people are marching for their freedom. In passerby interviews they keep repeating that they want a peaceful protest, as they want the rest of the world to stand behind them and see they really want this change.
Despite that, people got killed from police gunfire, live rounds and rubber bullets included.
Sure there are a few looters, some suspected of being undercover police to instill FUD in the crowds, a tactic not beyond the past 30 years of tyranny.
The army publicly announced they will _not_ fire on the people as long as the protest stays peaceful.
Google's official blog [blogspot.com] explains a new technology developed by a group of tech geeks who wanted to contribute positively to the current situation in Egypt.
This is not just middle east anymore, this is humanity coming together.
Check it out :-) http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ [aljazeera.net]
And http://stop404.org/682 [stop404.org] :-)
WTF this is an obvious troll (Score:5, Informative)
When has president Obama suggested an Internet kill switch? This is the idea of a Republican senator and has not been endorsed or supported by Obama, afaik. This should have never made it to the front page, it is an obvious troll.
Holy alliteration Batman (Score:2)
Holy alliteration Batman! What a headline. Did Susy sell sea shells by the seashore also? The rule is do not follow with the same starting consonant more than twice. I'm a troll and even I stick to that rule.