Egypt in complete internet blackout

In the backdrop of the dramatic demonstrations sweeping Egypt, another battle is being fought for the control of internet and communication lines in the country as the government tries to prevent protesters from organising and the local media from distributing images and videos of the events to an eager international audience. In an unprecendented step, the government has gone as far as ordering ISPs to completely halt routing of all traffic, a move that draws Egypt into an exclusive club of censorship along with the likes of North Korea and Burma.

The communications crackdown seems to be a case of too little too late, however, as the government seemed unprepared to deal with protests largely organised and planned online. The ban was enforced merely 12 hours prior to the bloody Friday protests, and since then most media organisations have found some way of getting around jammed phone networks and blocked cables, whether it be relying on satellite connections or old-fashioned dial-up through the western world.

The heavy-handed Egyptian response to technology savvy citizens using the internet to plan demonstrations is a theme familiar to many Middle Eastern states; most countries in the region have highly filtered, slow and centralised services that are closely monitored by internal security services.

The knock-on effect of the Tunisian and Egyptian riots has caused governments in the area to tighten their own regulations, raising concerns of more blackouts to come.

The crackdown has cast serious questions over the Middle East’s ability to position itself as a credible and growing economic power. Purely from an economic perspective, a government which cannot maintain reliable communications networks will find it hard to sell their country to foreign investors, whatever their reasons may be.

From a human rights standpoint, the blackout has had surprisingly little effect on the spirit of the Egyptian people. Their presence in the streets more than a week after the turmoil began indicates that the information revolution has matured to the point where the power is now really in the hands of the people, whether they are reporters pushing photos to us via satellite or protesters struggling on dialup to get their stories told.