Syria Drops Off the Internet As Turmoil Spikes

CWmike writes "In what appears to be the latest bid by a government to throttle access to news and information amid growing civil unrest, the Syrian government Friday shut down all Internet services. Internet monitoring firm Renesys reported that starting around 7 a.m. EDT today, close to two-thirds of all Syrian networks were suddenly unreachable from the global Internet. In just 30 minutes, routes to 40 of 59 Syrian networks were withdrawn from the global routing table, Reneys' chief technology officer James Cowie said in a blog post. The shutdown has affected all of SyriaTel's 3G mobile data networks as well as several of the country's ISPs, such as Sawa, INET and Runnet. Also down are the Damascus city government page and the customs web site. The only networks that appear to be somewhat reachable are a handful of government-owned networks such as one belonging to Syria's Oil Ministry, Cowie noted. 'We don't know yet how the outage was coordinated, or what specific regions or cities may be affected more than others,' Cowie wrote. 'If Egypt and Libya are any guide, one might conclude that events on the street in Syria are reaching a tipping point.'"

Protesters need a communications plan

[davidwr]

Part of any future protest movement is going to be managing international communication in the face of government-enforced information-blockades.

Part of any future totalitarian regime is going to be anticipating these and taking care of it.

--
On an unrelated topic, there are two ways to successfully run a totalitarian regime:
* Through fear and intimidation
* Through running it like a cult and silencing people at the slightest hint that they don't worship you.

Most regimes try use the first approach and some do so successfully. North Korea - the self-proclaimed 2nd happiest place on Earth [theweek.com] - approximates the second but I'm sure they use the first when needed and they've been successful at staying in power for decades.

Lesson for dictators everywhere

[Spy Handler]

If you are a dictator, reasonably smart and been paying attention to current events, the following points should be occuring to you:

1. Be like Mike... er, I mean China.... be proactive about the interwebs. Put in a nationwide firewall, slowly censor the net so that stuff like twitter, facebook, gmail, etc. are not accessible to most of the normal population (i.e. non-geeks). This helps you avoid having to shut off the whole thing off later when the riots in the street reach epic levels.

Encouraging domestic, tightly-regulated and spied upon alternative companies, like China's Baidu and Renren, to substitute for the blocked USAsian sites is a bonus.

2. Never relinquish power, and be ruthless. Your only other option is imprisonment or death.

Nice guys like Mubarak who voluntarily give up power and refuse to annihilate protesters with cluster bombs end up getting arrested for (insert reason here). Kadaffi seems to have learned this lesson well.

3. Get nukes, and get them fast. If you don't, you can be bombed, invaded and arrested by USA/NATO at their whim. North Koreans and Iranians know this. Saddam didn't, and look what happened to him. Kadaffi is finding out right now the hard way.

This last one is a shame, and wouldn't be necessary if our leaders took to heart the founding fathers' plea about avoiding entangling alliances, not getting involved in the territorial disputes of Europe (and by extension the Middle East which is like 18th century Europe squared), be a friend of liberty everywhere but guardians only of our own. But noooo, Dubya had to avenge his father's wimpy mistake and prove to the world his dick size, and Obama had to... well I have no idea what motivates him but he is diving headlong into the Mideast and proving himself a clone of Dubya.

Re:Calling for bets

[shutdown -r now]

The reason why the Libyan uprising failed was because it wasn't exactly a people's revolution, where elites are swiped away. It is an uprising against one faction of the Libyan society against another faction - a civil war - and it cuts across the social strata. There are plenty of genuine Qaddafi supporters in Libya, and not just in the army - early on they've been telling us that everyone is deserting him and he only has foreign mercs to fight for him, but by now it's obvious that it's not true. So the whole thing in Libya will drag on until either side will gain the upper hand, and make no mistake - either way it'll be a massacre for the other sides. Rebels aren't really any better than loyalists in that regard - we've already seen summary executions, public torture and mutilation documented on their side as well (plenty of vids on YouTube if you care to look). Not exactly surprising, given that the rebel faction is an unstable alliance of liberals, monarchists and Islamists, and liberals don't exactly have the upper hand. Then there are Black Libyans, who are between the rock and the hard place - loyalists want to conscript them to fight, and rebels (the majority of which are strongly racist) shoot them on sight when captured, as "mercs". Truly a mess.