A graphics overview of what has happened to the Internet in Mubarak's Egypt this evening. Apologies if not more substantive, but I must get to bed. I hope that I'm not taking away from the mothership diary, but this is important stuff, I believe.
Danny O'Brien tweeted this not too long ago and this graphic is making the rounds on Twitter and elsewhere:
@danny_at_cpj
Danny O'Brien
This is what Egypt's cutoff from the Net looks like: http://j.mp/... (HT @labovit - it's from a global set of traffic points)
UPDATE:
Another Relevant Tweet:
telecomix
Telecomix
by MiNimaliteter
RT @dekaminski: The Pirate Bay stats on #Egypt: Yesterday ~80k active connections at any given point. Today ~100. (100!) #Jan25
A war of words has flamed up as Wikileaks Tweeted that VP Biden was a "dangerous fool" for saying Assange like a terrorist, and Mubarak not a dictator. And the Million Man March Countdown has begun.
I located this blog and companion graphic earlier:
Egypt Leaves the Internet
By James Cowie on January 27, 2011 7:56 PM
Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But 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. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.
At 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 Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers.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.
This is a completely different situation from the modest Internet manipulation that took place in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked, or Iran, where the Internet stayed up in a rate-limited form designed to make Internet connectivity painfully slow. The Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.
What happens when you disconnect a modern economy and 80,000,000 people from the Internet? What will happen tomorrow, on the streets and in the credit markets? This has never happened before, and the unknowns are piling up. We will continue to dig into the event, and will update this story as we learn more. As Friday dawns in Cairo under this unprecedented communications blackout, keep the Egyptian people in your thoughts.
Turborama from Democratic Underground checked out SpeedTest.net for Egypt and it looks like this:
A FDL blogger chimes in on the Biden interview:
Internet Shut Down in Egypt But Biden Says Mubarak is No Dictator
By: Siun Thursday January 27, 2011 6:30 pm
The internet and all mobile communications from the people of Egypt have been shut down in what is clearly a key part of the Mubarak regime’s preparations to crack down on the democracy protesters. Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) has just sent:
RT @Dima_Khatib show this video to ur media & politicians http://apne.ws/... Internet in #Egypt cut 10 min after its transmission #jan25
The video referred to is from the AP and can be viewed here – it shows an unarmed protester being shot.
CNN just interviewed a protester who described how he was arrested and seriously beaten. “Ahmed” (not his real name) went on to say:
We can’t understand how the leader of the free world is looking the other way as we call for freedom”
Perhaps Ahmed was thinking of this comment by VP Joe Biden made on PBS Newshour this evening:
Ahead of a day that could prove decisive, NewsHour host Jim Lehrer asked Biden if the time has “come for President Mubarak of Egypt to go?” Biden answered: “No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that – to be more responsive to some… of the needs of the people out there.”
Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”
