Comment le quai d’Orsay considère Internet… Addendum du 29 janvier, 20h15 : les brèves du 26 27 28 janvier sont enfin disponibles sur le site de l’ambassade. Ceci dit, chaque brève contient deux liens qui ne sont pas clicables, et d’ailleurs l’un d’entre eux contient un espace de trop qui le rend inutilisable… Je les reproduis ici après correction : Nous sommes le vendredi 28 janvier 2011. Il est 23h27. La situation en Egypte est tendue. J’ai twitté quelques sites, dont celui qui montrait les rares vidéos qui passaient le filtre, où l’on voit manifestement les forces de l’ordre reculer devant la force des foules. Tout le monde se souvient de l’attitude récente de l’ambassadeur de France en Tunisie, qui déclarait que la situation était sous contrôle. Ceci dit, à quelques jours d’intervalles, on pouvait espérer faire mieux. Voici la home page, ce soir à 23h26. Comme si rien ne se passait en Egypte. On voit bien un lien à droite, « Brèves », et quand on clique sur manifestations du 25 janvier, on obtient ceci :
Egypt's Internet Crackdown The Mubarak regime shut down Internet and cell phone communications before launching a violent crackdown against political protesters (watch Free Press' Timothy Karr discuss the use of technology in Egypt in the video to the right). Free Press has discovered that an American company — Boeing-owned Narus of Sunnyvale, CA — had sold Egypt "Deep Packet Inspection" (DPI) equipment that can be used to help the regime track, target and crush political dissent over the Internet and mobile phones. Narus is selling this spying technology to other regimes with deplorable human rights records. The power to control the Internet and the resulting harm to democracy are so disturbing that the threshold for using DPI must be very high. Free Press is calling for Congress to investigate the use and sale of DPI technology by American companies. Dear Member of Congress, I am writing you with grave concerns about the sale of spying technology to repressive regimes overseas.
In Egypt, should Internet access be an inalienable right? Riots and unrest in Egypt have been ongoing all week, but the Internet only seemed to take notice when it affected the Internet. On Friday, news reports revealed that the government had shut down Internet access to its 80 million citizens, also blocking text messaging and mobile services. Access to the outside world was gone, as was the ability to organize protests from within. Tech blog Mashable.com quickly put up a graphic to help readers visualize the blockage. Online vigilante group Anonymous - most recently in the news for its WikiLeaks hacktivism - threatened to attack the government's portals, anonymously. No Internet? Online communities had similar reactions of revulsion in 2007 when the government of Burma (also known as Myanmar) closed off Internet access - images of protesting monks had begun to leak to the outside world; it didn't look good. Only in a land of First World concerns could the lack of Internet access be considered a violation of basic rights.
Egypt Shut Down Its Net With a Series of Phone Calls | Threat Level Traffic to Egypt fell to a trickle, after the country's decision to shut off the net on Thursday, according to this graphic from Arbor Network. Reprinted with permission from Arbor Network Egypt’s largest ISPs shut off their networks Thursday, making it impossible for traffic to get to websites hosted in Egypt or for Egyptians to use e-mail, Twitter or Facebook. The regime of President Hosni Mubarak also ordered the shut down of mobile phone networks, including one run by the U.K.-based Vodafone, all in an attempt to undermine the growing protests over Mubarak’s autocratic rule of the country. While the world has seen net filtering and disruption in places like Burma and Iran following social and political unrests, Egypt’s decision to shutter it is different, according to Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist at Arbor Networks, a computer security firm that has nearly unequaled real data on international internet traffic. “What’s different with Egypt is the scale,” Labovitz told Wired.com.
Egypt instigates media blackout, police target journalists Plainclothes police chase what Reuters says is unidentified foreign journalist today in Cairo. (Reuters /Goran Tomasevic ) New York, January 28, 2011--Egyptian authorities have taken unprecedented measures to block media coverage of widespread protests against the government, which are on their fourth day. CPJ condemns Cairo's news blackout and calls for authorities to immediately restore Internet and mobile phone services, end the targeting of the press, and allow media to conduct their work freely. Since Tuesday, Egypt has witnessed widespread protests against poverty and corruption, and calls for democratic changes. "We are deeply disturbed by the government's efforts to impose a media blackout in ," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's and program coordinator. CPJ is tracking how the Egyptian government is shutting down Internet access and SMS service. Below is a list of attacks in which security forces have targeted journalists:
Egyptian Authorities Asked Vodafone to Cut Off Network - Davos Live By WSJ Staff European Pressphoto Agency Vittorio Colao, Vodafone Group chief executive officer. Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao said “Egyptian authorities” had asked the company to “turn down the network totally.” Mr. Colao said Vodafone determined that the request was legitimate under Egyptian law, and therefore complied with the request. Earlier Friday, U.K. The move came as the Eygptian government’s crackdown on protesters intensified with access to most forms of mass communication, including the Internet, mobile and SMS shut down. Follow the latest news from Egypt and the region in our Dispatch blog.
Watching Egypt disappear from the Internet - Internet Could it be a coincidence? Internet connectivity disappears all the time, for many reasons, almost always accidental. Sometimes, it's a cut optical fiber. A ship might drag its anchor over a submarine cable. It can be very difficult to determine the true extent or origins of any online disruption. To find out what was really going on, I posted a message to a mailing list where many of administrators of the American corner of the Internet discuss day-to-day operations. At first, the replies were equally anecdotal: someone with a server in Cairo could no longer access it; attempts to reach prominent Egyptian websites were failing. Tonk's article is somewhat technical, so let me explain the background. At around 5:28 p.m. Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist of Arbor Networks, a company that makes some of the Internet's most widely-used traffic-monitoring software, quickly added this more dramatic visualization of what his engineers were seeing (complete with typo):
Protests in Egypt continue despite government shut down of Internet | Science & Technology | Deutsche Welle | 28.01.2011 On Friday, Egyptians woke up to discover that they no longer had access to the Internet, thanks to the government which had apparently ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to cease international connections. Though one ISP was left operating on Friday, James Cowie of the US-based Internet analysis firm Renesys reported on its blog that "virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide." However, by Tuesday morning, February 1, the remaining ISP, Noor, went offline as well. While there have been Internet slowdowns, and the temporary removal of a China province from the Internet, only on a few occasions has a country been temporarily taken completely offline - Nepal in 2005 and Burma in 2007. "What happens when you disconnect a modern economy and 80 million people from the Internet?" Cowie wrote. No dialtone Additionally, the government has ordered mobile phone providers to cease operation, as Vodaphone Egypt reported in a statement on its website.
Les internautes se mobilisent pour le Jour de la Colère égyptien · Global Voices Ce billet fait partie de notre page spéciale sur les manifestations 2011 en Egypte. Le compte à rebours des manifestations massives à travers l'Egypte a commencé, avec très peu d'information qui transpire du terrain depuis que les autorités égyptiennes ont coupé l'accès à Internet et pratiquement toute autre communication avec le monde extérieur. Ceci dans le but d'étouffer les contestataires, et les internautes craignent le pire. De très importantes manifestations sont prévues dans tout le pays après les prières de ce Vendredi, dans ce qui a été surnommé la Marche du Million d'Egyptiens, pour réclamer des réformes politiques et économiques, et la fin du régime trentenaire de Hosni Moubarak. Le Jour de la Colère marquera le début du quatrième jour d'une contestation qui a vu la mort, les blessures et l'arrestation de centaines de militants contre le régime et de simple passants. Le graphique montre comment Internet a été étranglé, largement diffusé sur Twitter Kate Doak propose :