If you've read any coverage of the anti-government protests in Egypt over the past week, then you'll likely know that social media has played a vital role in the uprising. Pro-democracy campaigners have used sites such as Twitter and Facebook to organize rallies and share cell phone video footage of their often-violent clashes with police.
But that online activism all stopped at 12:30 a.m. today,
when President Hosni Mubarak's regime abruptly switched off the country's main
Internet and cell phone networks.
As of this afternoon, "88 percent of Egypt's
Internet is effectively not there anymore," Rik Ferguson, a senior
adviser at computer security firm Trend Micro, told AOL News.
The only major Internet service provider that's still connected
to the outside world is operated by Noor Data Network, which carries traffic
for the Egyptian Stock Exchange.
This isn't the first time that a repressive regime has
sought to dampen dissent by interfering with the Internet. When Iranians took
to the streets following the disputed 2009 elections, authorities tried to deny
access to Facebook, Twitter and foreign news sites. But those Net barricades
proved largely ineffective as foreign activists provided Iranians with
anti-censorship tools such as Tor, a program that cloaks users' identities and
allows them to access blocked sites.
Egyptian authorities appear to have learned from Iran's
flawed attempt at online censorship. Realizing that targeting individual sites
was ineffective, the government opted to carry out an "unprecedented
shutdown of all modern communication channels," Brett Solomon, executive
director of Web freedom group AccessNow.org, told AOL News.
So how did Mubarak and Co. kill the Internet? The fact
that Noor Data Network is still up and running suggests the regime hasn't cut
or unplugged the data cables that link Egypt to the rest of the world. (That's
what Myanmar's military junta did in 2007, when it wanted to stop news of its
murderous crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks from leaking
out).
Instead, Ferguson says it's likely that someone in the
government simply called up each of the country's 10 or so ISPs and told them
to turn off their service. Engineers at each provider would then change the way
their traffic flows in and out of Egypt, and any cafes, schools, embassies or
homes that relied on those ISPs would suddenly find themselves living in a
Web-less world.
Ferguson adds that this tactic works well in developing
countries like Egypt where there are relatively few ISPs.
"But it'd very difficult to do this kind of thing in
any well-developed Internet economy, such as the U.K. or U.S.," he said.
"We have far more service providers, so you'd need the cooperation of
hundreds or possibly thousands of people."
Such an act of Net censorship might be almost impossible
in the West, but Web activist Solomon notes that Western companies have played
a key part in Egypt's communications breakdown. Local cell phone operators
Vodafone Egypt (which is 55 percent owned by British telecom giant Vodafone)
and Mobinil (71 percent owned by France Telecom) both obeyed a government
demand and suspended their service in parts of Egypt today.
Vodafone said in a statement that "under
Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and
we are obliged to comply with it." France Telecom said, "The Egyptian
authorities have taken technical measures which prevent Mobinil from serving
its customers. We apologize to our customers for this."
Solomon argues it is "outrageous" for these
companies to claim that they are simply complying with Egyptian law.
"This is clearly in contravention of all
international standards and the standards of their home countries, such as the
freedoms of expression and association guaranteed under the European
Convention of Human Rights," he said.
Mubarak's phone and Internet clampdown will clearly
hamper Egyptian activists' ability to organize and spread their message. But
Ferguson says this authoritarian move highlights the need for protest movements
to use more than one method of communication.
"We extol the virtues of the Internet and new media,
saying they make it easier for people in repressive regimes to access
information more freely," he said. "But if that regime has control
over the Internet, then maybe we're relying on the Web at the expense of more
traditional and resilient forms of offline communication."
Protesters are already starting to turn to older, less
centralized communication systems. Some activists reportedly are sending
messages over shortwave radio, while others are distributing photocopied
pamphletsexplaining what gear protesters need to bring to demonstrations.
Necessary items include goggles -- to protect eyes from tear gas -- and cans of
spray paint, which can be used on police officers' visors.
Egypt's Internet may be dead, but its uprising is still
very much alive.