[LINK] Egypt shuts off Internet

[Roger Clarke]

At 18:16 +1100 28/1/11, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>The day part of the Internet died: Egypt goes dark
>http://news.theage.com.au/action/printArticle?id=2156780
>Experts say it's unlikely that what's happened in Egypt could happen
>in the United States because the U.S. has numerous Internet providers
>and ways of connecting to the Internet. Coordinating a simultaneous
>shutdown would be a massive undertaking.

What utter baloney.  Services providers have shown themselves on 
multiple occasions to be spineless, by complying with 'requests' from 
US government agencies that have no basis in law.


>"It can't happen here," said Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer
>and a co-founder of Renesys, a network security firm in Manchester,
>New Hampshire, that studies Internet disruptions. "How many people
>would you have to call to shut down the U.S. Internet? Hundreds,
>thousands maybe?

And there's a moderately-sized sub-unit of an agency whose job it is 
to maintain that list.  Wrong, given inter-agency jealousies, there 
are *several* moderately-sized sub-units of *several* agencies.


>If you cut it off, that leads to a philosophical
>question: Who got cut off from the Internet, us or the rest of the world?"

That's a more interesting observation, so I suggest he stick to philosophy.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University