Friday, January 28, 2011

Egypt goes dark!

Here's what a "Presidential Internet Switch" looks like in the wild, my friends.
22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.
H/T to Mr. Marco for the heads up this morning.

CNN had this to say on the subject:
Hours ahead of what are expected to be massive displays of anti-government ferment across the world's most populous Arab nation, the internet went dark in parts of Egypt early Friday, and text messaging appeared to be blocked.
Noting that "parts of Egypt" is considerably different than " Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses" and moving on...

By the way, did you know that OnStar can turn your OnStar-equipped GM car on remotely?  It can also turn it -off- remotely. Did you know that California (and through them, all the USA) is trying to get remote-disable as a feature on the next generation of "pollution controls" for vehicles?  Uh huh, they are. This would give them the ability to turn off every properly equipped car in a neighborhood, or on a certain highway, or in a whole city, a whole state, or even the whole damn country and internationally as well. 

Not science fiction, nonono, it has already happened my friends.

That's one of the reasons why I have a 1964 car with a carburetor and points ignition as part of the Phantom vehicle fleet. Still need to get groceries during a "national emergency" y'know.  I recommend y'all look into it, or at least find out which wire to cut on your new vehicle.  Might save your bacon some day.

In the mean time, you might want to phone up your US Senator, as well as Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) and Susan Collins (Rino-Maine), and KICK THEIR ASSES for trying to turn the free nation of America into a third world tyranny like Egypt.

The Phantom

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some people out there still interpret censorship as damage and route around it.

And then there's this thing.

We may have dodged a bullet on this one. Mubarak's antics will now plant seed of doubt into our own lefties.

The Phantom said...

I was thinking packet radio, but you have inspired me to think bigger. WiMax! See the next post!

WiFi Lunchbox guy said...

Following up, Phantom Soapbox gets results...

By the end of 2011, the State Department will have spent some $70 million on circumvention efforts and related technologies, according to department figures.

The Phantom said...

Update, March 26 2015:

Some broken links from the comments fixed:

http://alt.survival.narkive.com/qBunPyZx/get-internet-access-when-your-government-shuts-it-down

Pirate Box has its own site: http://piratebox.cc/