By Polly Johnson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
CAIRO, Egypt – On January 28, a week into Egypt’s ongoing protests, President Hosni Mubarak’s government ordered Internet service providers to sever all forms of communication, including Internet access, mobile networks and SMS. Though the Internet was restored as of last Wednesday, the blackout marked an unprecedented Internet milestone.
Egypt’s economy and society rely heavily on the Internet. A think-tank based in Paris, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, estimated that the Internet blackout cost Egypt’s economy about ninety million dollars.
More concerning, however, is the notion that a country as technologically advanced as Egypt was able to shut down all communications as quickly as it did. James Cowie, co-founder and chief technology officer of Renesys, an IT company in New Hampshire, told the Los Angeles Times, “Over a period of about 20 minutes, it’s as if each of the primary service providers started pulling the routes that lead to them. It wasn’t like a simultaneous withdrawal.
“There are private companies of varying sizes that own and operate their own infrastructure. But it seems they got a call so they turned it off,” Cowie said.
“What we are seeing in Egypt is a frightening example of how the power of technology can be abused,” said Timothy Karr, a campaign director for Free Press, an advocacy organization, said.
Such swift action brings to mind oppressive regimes such as that of North Korea, which forbids its citizens from accessing the Internet at all.
Even during the recent uprising in Tunisia, only specific services and websites were blocked.
And it seems that the United States aided with the shutdown. According to an article by Karr, a U.S. company based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Boeing-owned Narus, sold Telecom Egypt “real-time traffic intelligence” equipment, which may have been used by Mubarak’s regime to sever all communications. The equipment is more commonly known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), technology that allows network managers to track content from users of the Internet and mobile phones.
Most disturbing about DPI technology, according to Karr, is that “[c]ommercial operators trafficking in Deep Packet Inspection technology to violation Internet users’ privacy is bad enough; in government hands, that same invasion of privacy can quickly lead to stark human rights violations.”
For more information, please see:
Arutz Sheva – Egypt’s Internet Crackdown ‘Had US Help’ – 6 February 2011
Information Week – Egypt Takes $90 Million Hit From Internet Blackout – 3 February 2011
Los Angeles Times – Egypt may have turned off the Internet one phone call at a time – 29 January 2011
Huffington Post – One U.S. Corporation’s Role in Egypt’s Brutal Crackdown – 28 January 2011
Telegraph – How Egypt shut down the internet – 28 January 2011
