US Has Secret Tools To Force Internet On Dictatorships 282
4phun found a Wired story that talks about the military options when a dictatorship decides to cut off internet access to its population.
"The American military does have a second set of options if it ever wants to force connectivity on a country against its ruler’s wishes. There’s just one wrinkle. 'It could be considered an act of war.'"
Hopefully the same options will be available for us when our government gets around to implementing our own kill switch.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Has the Voice of America gone dark? (Score:5, Informative)
I ask that rhetorically, but has VOA become so neutered and politically correct that it could not at least broadcast current events to the Egyptian people? It wasn't that long ago that VOA was jammed regularly in the former Soviet Union.
Carpet-bombing the country with 'cheap' sat phones or wireless routers for use with a foreign-sponsored offshore Internet service sounds like fun, though. All we need to do is figure out how to set up the link so aircraft don't need to overfly the target nation, and set these up as mesh nodes to extend the network into the interior. And keep the airborne links far enough outside the target's borders to pretend they are in 'international' airspace. Battery power is not a good idea, but it may be the simplest thing. Imagine a national ban on batteries... USB-powered devices would be ideal, but that's a tall order technilogically...
These flying access points better be remotely piloted, though. Hosni in particular knows his way around air defense, and has good equipment.
Re:We assume that... (Score:2, Informative)
I've seen US military propaganda all over the place, targeted at US citizens...
Re:Hashtags don't overthrow dictators. (Score:2, Informative)
That worked so well with Iran and the overthrow of the Shah. Sometimes it's better to stick with the devil you know.
Don't conveniently begin that story with the Shah. The Shah was our jackbooted thug who replaced the democratically elected government of Mossadegh, whom we overthrew in a CIA/MI6 coup in 1953 in Operation AJAX [wikipedia.org]. The Shah's SAVAK forces also regularly tortured and killed political dissidents for about thirty years before the revolution. The crime of that democratic government? It leaned left and wanted a fairer share of oil revenues.
So fuck your revisionist history, asshole. You can impress the rubes who ironically believe America is a defender of freedom and democracy, but the rest of the world knows the real story.