No more Facebook in Egypt crackdown

A few minutes past midnight on Friday, the Egyptian Government “killed” the Internet.

The action that plunged the country back to the 1980s was aimed at quelling the Facebook and Twitter-driven revolution that spread into the country from Tunisia, where it toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime weeks earlier.

Algeria, Jordan and Yemen have also been affected by the unprecedented revolt in the Arab world.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule is facing its greatest challenge with a succession of rallies and demonstrations in the most powerful and strategic Arab military power turning increasingly bloody.

The unprecedented action of cutting all the digital nerves that connect Egyptians to each other and the rest of the world demonstrates that Mubarak will use every trick in the book to stem the revolt.

“Turn down the network totally,” Vittorio Colao, Vodafone Group CEO, which owns 55 per cent of Egypt’s largest carrier, Vodafone Egypt, was quoted as saying on the order that came from the government.

Shortly after 10pm on January 27, the first company closed down, then there was simultaneous withdrawal of services by other operators.

Egypt is served by dozens of Internet providers, who depend on four large carriers for Internet connectivity. After the shutdown, the whole country went into the dark.

“…every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world,” Renesys, an Internet intelligence authority firm based in the UK that studies Internet disruptions wrote in its website.

“Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air,” Renesys reported.

Other countries facing turmoil have placed curbs on Internet activity, but the move by the Egyptian government was unprecedented in scale. It sets an example for other countries intending to silence protesting citizens.

In 2009, Iran crippled Internet service as a move to quell street protests after disputed elections. The Iranian government allowed the Internet to run but very slowly, while it filtered and censored the content.

In the same year, Chinese authorities unplugged the Internet amidst riots (in only one province) and censored Facebook and Twitter.

In 2007, authorities clamped down on Internet access and cell phone to contain political uprisings. Military leaders physically disconnected primary communications in main cities. Protesters were still able to get photos out of the country using cell phones.

At first, the Egyptian government blocked social sites like Twitter and Facebook, but users were able to use proxy servers to circumvent the censorship.

A proxy server acts as a middleman between one computer and another and remains anonymous. With the current shutdown, the proxies cannot work since there is no Internet.

And yesterday, two mummies from the Pharaonic era exhibited at the Cairo Museum were badly damaged during a robbery attempt staged during street protests, the head of the museum’s antiquities department said.

“But demonstrators in collaboration with security forces stopped the thieves and returned the relics to the museum,” Zahi Hawass said.