How Egypt Shut Off The Internet And How To Get Around It
Written by Alan Saturday, 29 January 2011 11:02
We have come to expect censorship and general bad behavior from totalitarian regimes like those in Iran, China, and Burma. Last year we Iran attempt to block access during the protests against their crooked election. Burma blocked access in 2007. It came as somewhat of a shock this past week as we saw Egypt attempt to do the same. Unlike previous examples, Egypt is a US ally and I imagine this will put quite a strain on those relations.
In the past few days we saw Egypt first shut off access to Twitter and Facebook and then the broader internet. And when they did it they did quickly, almost instantly. If you want to read a full, in-depth explanation of it was carried out then check out Bobbie Johnson’s post on GigaOm. Here’s an excerpt.
“It looks like they’re taking action at two levels,” Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro told me. “First at the DNS level, so any attempt to resolve any address in .eg will fail — but also, in case you’re trying to get directly to an address, they are also using the Border Gateway Protocol, the system through which ISPs advertise their Internet protocol addresses to the network. Many ISPs have basically stopped advertising any internet addresses at all.”
So how are people getting around this restrictive behavior from their government? The only easy way is the old fashioned dial-up modem. No, there’s not many of them laying around these days, but some people do still have them. Some still even use them. Once you have the modem then you need access to an internet service provider (ISP) in another country. That’s the hard part – there has to be a way for a person inside of Egypt to receive a phone number and sign-on information for an outside ISP. Most are probably getting this from a phone call with friend or family member outside of the country.
Connection information is being spread across the internet, especially on Twitter, that can then be passed on to those in need.
There’s plenty of information to be found online about what is happening and what those outside of Egypt can do to help those inside. A surprising amount of information is getting out of the country. Or maybe it’s not entirely surprising – we have seen over and over again that information is almost impossible to suppress in the digital age. And Americans love to help an underdog.
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