Egypt goes dark as govt puts internet to death
SAN FRANCISCO: About a halfhour past midnight on Friday morning in Egypt, the internet went dead.
Almost simultaneously, the handful of companies that pipe the internet into and out of Egypt went dark as protesters were gearing up for a fresh round of demonstrations calling for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule, experts said.
Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the internet to try and silence dissent. Experts say it's unlikely that what's happened in Egypt could happen in the US as the US has numerous internet providers and ways of connecting to the internet. Coordinating a simultaneous shutdown would be a massive undertaking.
The Internet blackout in Egypt shows that a country with strong control over its Internet providers apparently can force all of them to pull their plugs at once, something that Cowie called "almost entirely unprecedented in Internet history." The outage sets a precedent for other countries grappling with paralyzing political protests.
Almost simultaneously, the handful of companies that pipe the internet into and out of Egypt went dark as protesters were gearing up for a fresh round of demonstrations calling for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule, experts said.
Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the internet to try and silence dissent. Experts say it's unlikely that what's happened in Egypt could happen in the US as the US has numerous internet providers and ways of connecting to the internet. Coordinating a simultaneous shutdown would be a massive undertaking.
The Internet blackout in Egypt shows that a country with strong control over its Internet providers apparently can force all of them to pull their plugs at once, something that Cowie called "almost entirely unprecedented in Internet history." The outage sets a precedent for other countries grappling with paralyzing political protests.
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