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With recent political upheaval in Egypt this week another issue has arisen. In response to the riots, the Egyptian government has cut off internet access to its people while the riots continue. I can only assume that the entire country is not revolting and there are many people who just want to use the internet that are being negatively affected by this move. This leads to a question about how much control over information, especially the internet; a government should have in their jurisdiction.
Let us go back a bit further to inspect another government abusing their powers over their local slice of the internet. During the Christmas season of 2010 Facebook noticed a strange occurrence with their Tunisian users. It seemed as though their accounts were being hacked and censored at an alarming rate. After investigation, it was found that the Tunisian government was forcing the local ISPs to inject malicious code onto their users’ PCs to steal their social network passwords. This came about during a period of political unrest in the country and the government did not want people talking about it. They found that many of the country’s populace were talking on Facebook and Twitter about the situation, and they just could not let that continue. Soon after finding this out, Facebook moved quickly to prevent their users’ passwords from being snatched like that and foiled the Tunisian government’s plot.
On Friday January 28, 2011 the internet went dark going into and out of Egypt. There have been widespread riots and protests in the country denouncing the 30 year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Experts believe the government turned off the internet to help silence dissent on the World Wide Web. This tactic is nothing new; in 2009 Iran did a similar thing when disputes arose over elections there. What sets Egypt’s action apart from the others is it has taken down all internet traffic, including mobile phones. Even Iran did not take down their whole network; they realized that many of its businesses depend on the internet.
Doing something similar here in the United States would be nigh impossible as we have so many Internet Service Providers (ISP) and coordinating them all would be a huge undertaking. However, law makers have been toying with legislation that could give the president a “kill switch” for our internet backbone. This is especially disturbing in light of the abuses in Tunisia and Egypt. Do we really want our government to be able to shut off our digital communications?
Aside from the obvious moral question of censoring or cutting off private communications, this question has an economic side too. Egypt has a strong internet business economy which right now cannot function with this blackout. If something like this happened here, the economy would collapse as it is tied very tightly to our internet. Doing something like this seems to be a way for a government to shoot itself in the foot; it may remain in power, but may not have much left to be in control of if too many businesses are affected.
I feel that this was a horrible move on Egypt’s part. Not only is information still getting out, but it also affects people who were not protesting against them. It also sets a dangerous precedent for other nations, and we may start seeing this tactic deployed amongst other politically unstable countries in the future. I just pray this never happens to us and gives our congress an example of why the internet “kill switch” legislation should never be passed in this country. What do you think about this? Feel free to discuss this in the comments section below.
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