By Peter Ferenczi | Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:37 pm |
Egypt's blockade of four primary Internet providers on Friday marks the first time a country has nearly disconnected from the Web, highlighting the peril of politically-motivated tampering.
"In an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet," said James Cowie of Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm. "This has never happened before, and the unknowns are piling up."
Government authorities severed most Internet ties with the rest of the world as widespread demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak gathered momentum. One ISP, Noor Group, remained online, possibly because its connection is used by the Egyptian stock exchange. Regulators have also taken steps to ensure that virtually all Egyptian websites are inaccessible, resulting in a near-total shutdown of the Internet in the Middle Eastern country.
International Internet connections transiting through Egypt currently remain unaffected, which includes the majority of traffic between Europe and Asia.
Some Egyptians have reportedly turned to dial-up to work around the blockage, but it's unlikely that ISPs have sufficient telephone capacity to service a meaningful portion of the estimated 23 million Internet users in the country.
Cellular service was also disrupted Friday, but networks are reportedly functioning now.
It seems likely that the government already had a plan in place to shutter the Web if it saw the need, and other authoritarian governments may have similar contingency plans. The world will be watching how Egypt's radical move influences the conflict, as well as the economic side effects, which could be devastating.
Recent, instability in Iran, Tunisia and now Egypt has sparked debate about social media as a tool for organizing political dissent. Both Iran and Tunisia tried to hamper protesters' Web usage by blocking specific sites or slowing traffic in general, but no country has attempted so complete a shutdown as Egypt.
Opposition leaders have called for a "march of a million" to take place in Cairo tomorrow, despite the ongoing Internet blockage and the cancellation of train service in the capital.
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