If the opposition depends on the internet and text messages to organize against an illegitimate government, what can that government do? Clamp down on communication, hard.
That is just what Iran seems to have done, with widespread reports of problems with both the internet and SMS capabilities in the nation.
You don’t even have to hit anyone, making it all seem so pedestrian. “We’re sorry, but internet is slow for a bit. We are working on it.” International outrage is hard to come by when the tubes get clogged.
This internet slowdown and text messaging interruption comes before a week of planned demonstrations in the region. The government is officially blaming the internet crawl on normal wear and tear, the “fibre-optic network is damaged,” they said.
And as if in recompense, the “breakage will be repaired by next week and the Internet speed will be back to normal.” That came from Communications Minister Reza Taghipour on the state Iran channel.
Oh, and why are the text messages not being sent correctly? That’s a problem based on “changing software.”
So there you have it, the tools (social media, email, SMS) that were so well used in earlier protests are now being cut down by a government afraid of its people.
Image via PoliticsOnline, story via Yahoo.
How very convenient indeed. After seeing Ahmadinejad's goon-squads going through the streets on motorcycles and systematically battering those involved in the election protests, I don't really think that internet filtering or interruption is too big of an accusation.
Agreed.
Central control of communications networks like this is scary in any system. In a system like Iran's the despotic regime can easily slow communications to a trickle, or less. China can alienate Google with schemes for obtaining dissident's Gmail records.
I worry about similar things happening in capitalist systems, too. With corporations able to chill speech in specific situations (which admittedly haven't come up yet) in the future.
What about 4chan blocked by Verizon? Come on guys…I don't agree withthe Iranian government, but it happens on your door step too.
Verizon is not the US government.
True. But, the goverment is the puppet of the big corps!!!
At least in densely-populated urban areas, a community wifi network could be organized to circumvent this. Mesh networks without centralized infrastructure hamper attempts to filter traffic. Such a development would also makes the network harder to attack – in a one or two-node outage, the nearby nodes would pass the traffic instead.