Congo Shuts Down Internet Services 'Indefinitely' (nytimes.com) 88
On Saturday Engadget wrote:
Authoritarian leaders are fond of severing communications in a bid to hold on to power, and that tradition sadly isn't going away. The Democratic Republic of Congo's government has ordered telecoms to cut internet and SMS access ahead of planned mass protests against President Joseph Kabila, whose administration has continuously delayed elections to replace him. Telecom minister Emery Okundji told Reuters that it was a response to "violence that is being prepared," but people aren't buying that argument. Officials had already banned demonstrations, and the country has history of cutting communications and blocking social network access in a bid to quash dissent.
And today in the wake of deadly protests, Congo announced that the internet shutdown will continue "indefinitely." The New York Times reports: At least eight people were killed and a dozen altar boys arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday after security forces cracked down on planned church protests against President Joseph Kabila's refusal to leave office before coming elections... Congolese security forces set up checkpoints across Kinshasa, and the government issued an order to shut down text messaging and internet services indefinitely across the country for what it called "reasons of state security."
And today in the wake of deadly protests, Congo announced that the internet shutdown will continue "indefinitely." The New York Times reports: At least eight people were killed and a dozen altar boys arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday after security forces cracked down on planned church protests against President Joseph Kabila's refusal to leave office before coming elections... Congolese security forces set up checkpoints across Kinshasa, and the government issued an order to shut down text messaging and internet services indefinitely across the country for what it called "reasons of state security."
It's called "Rule of Law" (Score:1)
Look for it in your local 1st-World western society everywhere!
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ISIS destroyed. You're claiming that? LOL.
You really are just a bunch of stupid cunts, really. No curing that.
Anonymous Coward Law (Score:5, Insightful)
A country that includes the words "Democratic Republic" in its name is neither democratic nor a republic.
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I have always wonder why postings like this are acceptable on Slashdot. Most online communities have long embraced a "no personal insult" policy, and they are much better for it.
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The USA is a federation of independent states. The people don't elect POTUS and VPOTUS, the states do. The concept of a federation has been watered down considerably when we got popular election of US senators and a federal income tax. Since then the federal government can easily circumvent the states by appealing to the public at large with tax incentives, and coerce the states into compliance by withholding taxes they collected directly from the people.
There is a triad in the federal government to keep
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The states are the laboratories of democracy...and some of those laboratories are run by Walter White.
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Is that such a bad state to be in?
contingency question (Score:5, Interesting)
mesh wifi? blimps? ad hoc 3g network? femtocells? type beam microwaves? airdrops of Pringles? angel investor for TamTam? Bonus points for ideas that are bespoke to Africa itself.
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Re:contingency question (Score:5, Informative)
Re:contingency question (Score:5, Insightful)
https://slashdot.org/story/03/... [slashdot.org]
And remember the rules of country names: If it contains "Democratic" then it isn't, and if it says "People's" there's an implied "A Few Dozen" before it.
Re:contingency question (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm interested in any good ideas, countermeasures, rube goldberg devices that could be employed in or outside of a country like DRC that could restore, maintain, or circumvent a communications banhammer.
What do you hope to accomplish? Restored communications would empower the urban elite in Kinshasha, and further marginalize the rural people of the eastern Congo, who in some areas are already in open rebellion. The last thing the DRC needs is yet another full scale war.
For all his faults, Kabila has mostly avoided pandering to tribalism, unlike his "democratic" opponents. In the 1st World, we tend to view "Democracy" as an unqualified "Good Thing", but in tribal societies, it usually just leads to the dominant tribe getting even more power to crush the minorities.
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outdated electoral college system.
The word "outdated" implies that the system was once good in the past but is no longer good now. Did I interpret your statement correctly? If so, I'd love to know what you consider good about the system in the past that no longer applies today.
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Well it works at that. However it enables exactly the reverse to happen - a rural minority can impose its will on an urban majority.
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If so, I'd love to know what you consider good about the system in the past that no longer applies today.
The Electoral College system encourages candidates to focus on broadening their appeal rather than deepening it. In the past, these helped to reduce regionalism, which was a major problem up to and through the civil war.
Today, that doesn't help much, since the political divide is no longer between regions, but rather an urban/rural divide within regions.
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It was good for convincing less populous states that they weren't going to get steamrollered by the more populous states.
Personally I say let it stay, but make all electors proportional to the popular vote in their states. It would reduce the impact greatly, while not requiring a constitutional amendment to make such a change, and the rural states would still hold a slight edge in power, per capita.
At the same time, enlarge the House of Representatives to whatever degree is necessary to make each representa
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Personally I say let it stay, but make all electors proportional to the popular vote in their states.
Agreed. Fortunately, each state can do this by passing their own laws to do so. A few have. But not enough people understand the system well enough to advocate it or stand by it.
At the same time, enlarge the House of Representatives to whatever degree is necessary to make each representative stand for the same number of people, as closely as practical while keeping the total under, say, 600.
Can you clarify? When you say "each representative stand for the same number of people" what are you asking for? Right now, it is approximately one representative for every 700,000 people. It can never be exactly the same number of people per representative, unless we chop representatives into bits and reassembly them in the c
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The population of Wyoming was estimated at 586,107 in 2015. If we were to re-allocate, then it would be done on the basis that each representative stands for 586,107 people as near as possible. The population of the country was 320 million at that time, so that would mean 546 representatives almost exactly (assuming DC gets one). Vermont's population was 626,042, so perhaps it would be more fair to set the population-per-representative to 605,000 or so. (Wyoming would still get one.)
That's the gist of the i
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How is that fundamentally different from what they do now?
United States congressional apportionment [wikipedia.org]
Currently, each representative represents, as close as possible without cutting off body parts, the same number of people. There are 2 ways to do this. One is what you suggested, which is to fix the number people value per representative, then calculate the resulting number of representatives. The way we do it now we fix the number of representatives, then calculate the number of people per representative.
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The problem with what we have now is that since no state can have less than one representative, a state with fewer residents than the average district nationwide has disproportionate power in the House. Also, increasing the number of representatives decreases the power advantage of the rural states because the electors that correspond to senators will be diluted.
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If the cell phone service as such isn't shut down a modem app would make uucp possible.
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Your first problem is ensuring trust of the information and that it isn't coopted by the regime (or an equally unsavory party). Once you do that, the need for external communication, or your communication perimeter, is established.
Then we have the question of what type of message would be trusted. Do we need 4K video, or just text? Do we need to be able to prove sender identity and chain of custody?
Any peer-to-peer communications system you build is unlikely to be effective at more than 6 hops, and you wo
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>I just puked in my mouth... but Blockchain?
That would, in theory, do what? The government could out-hash the citizens, and if the outside world provides enough hash power to 'outgun' them, how is that different from any other system? And you still need a traceable connection to spread your message... radio sources can be triangulated.
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It's called a gun, until the people stand up it's a worthless topic.
Wow. More Last Jedi Protests! (Score:1)
As this movie opens around the world, the protests rage.
My prediction (Score:1)
The media that screams the loudest about supposed tyranny and injustice will be the least interested in this story. It might get 30 seconds on the back end of the news, near the feel-good story of the dog who can walk on his hind legs.
Ahead of Violence? (Score:1)
That's most likely true, but in a page taken from the administration over in the USA, what they're up to is being projected as the "other side's".
Congo is shutting down internet services in preparation of the violence *the government* is preparing to unleash against those who would dare question their ruler. If the citizens of Congo have any wisdom or have ever read a history book, then they will strew their government's entrails across the capital before the military and "law-enforcement" forces have been
Back to the good old BBS days! (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to dust of these Fidonet Technical Standards printouts!
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BBSes were rad. ;)
So... (Score:2)
It's neither democratic, nor a republic.
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It's neither democratic, nor a republic.
As a general rule of thumb, if some person or group makes that sort of claim in their name then it's probably not true; see "family values" candidates, the Patriot Act, etc. etc.
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If affordability was the goal [of the misleadingly named US Affordable Care Act,] there would've been price caps.
The medical loss ratio (MLR) regulation in the ACA places a cap on costs related to administrative cost and shareholder profit at 20% of the premium. A hard price cap would imply a coverage cap.
The ACA also imposes a price cap of 8 percent of gross income. If no qualified plan for a particular person has a premium below that after applicable subsidy, he is exempt from the individual shared responsibility payment.
Wow! (Score:1)
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Look at the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. Now look at the Fifth Amendment. Understand those? The Fourth says the government can't just bust open your door and go looking for stuff, they need a warrant. The Fifth says they can take your stuff, but only after they've either determined you've had your day in court or they've compensated you for it.
Now, look at the Second Amendment. All that says is that the Fourth and Fifth Amendment applies to your weapons too. The Second Amendment can be rep
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No, the point of the Second Amendment was that the Founders did not want a standing army. It burned to the ground with the Capitol in 1814. Your guns are completely useless against any modern military.
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Really? Afghanistan has kept modern armies from invading with little more than riflemen on the backs of camels.
The United States got their freedom from a nation with the largest and most powerful military in the world at the time. They had farmers with turkey guns, on foot.
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Riflemen and funneled US and Soviet arms.
If you think that the American colonists defeated Britain by themselves you know nothing about the Revolution. To a first approximation they weren't even involved.
So they have anti-hate-speech laws in Congo, now (Score:2)
Is it efficient? (Score:2)
IIRC during Arab springs, blocking Internet caused more people to go outside, because they could not just watch anymore.
China and Russia taught us it is much more efficient for the government to keep internet online, and to inject propaganda into social medias.