By Danny O'Brien/CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator
The Syrian Internet, like the country, appears to have beencollapsing into a patchwork of unconnected systems for some time. I spent time talking to Syrians tech activists this week in Tunisia before Thursday's shutdown, and their reports from the front painted a picture of two different networks.
In government-controlled regions, they said, the Internet was available, but heavily controlled. Cybercafés had mandatory ID requirements, video cameras trained on screens and visitors, and keystroke loggers whose contents were collected daily by security personnel. At checkpoints, Assad forces were said to be visually checking laptops for programs like Tor and TrueCrypt that would allow users to get around the government controls.
In the rebel-controlled areas, Internet connectivity wasshut down, and almost all external digital communication was via satellitephone. Rebels have seized cell towers, the activists told us, but arestruggling to establish their own communications services.
Nonetheless, there's a profound difference between the Assadregime's previous policy of attempting to control the flow of news andinformation from Syrians to the outside world, and within rebel controlledregions, and Thursday's mass shutdown, which was still in effect Friday. Theevidence from companies like Cloudflareand Renesysshows that Syria followed the same kill switch procedure as Egypt--an orderly shutdownof almost routes within the country, managed by the government's continuingcontrol over the edge routers that announce those pathways to the outsideworld.
As it was in Egypt, this is a desperateact. Killing the entire Internet stops Assad's allies from using it--asthey have with some effect, intercepting unencrypted communications anddistributing malware to opposition activists. It prevents not just anti-Assadpropaganda from leaving the country, but any information at all. It suspendsmodern business communication, and any reporting.
No news, they say, is good news. But if a regime has so lostcontrol of its country that suspending any and all communications is betterthan permitting even the smallest peep of objective reporting to escape itsgrip: well, as Egypt showed, that has to be bad news for that regime.
And even such drastic steps are not going to prevent thenews from escaping Syria.
Even before the cut-off, there were plenty of witnessessmuggling video and reports out of Syria using USB sticks. The jamming ofsatellite phones is used but not ubiquitous, activists say. The reception areasof mobile phone networks in Syria's neighboring countries reach past theirborders. Syria's technical community inside and outside the country werealready working on alternatives to the state Internet infrastructure, and thatwork goes on--mesh networks, dial-up systems, and satellite phone mediacenters. None of these will be able to replace the economic and socialfunctions of a fully-functioning Internet. But they will be used by reportersand citizen journalists to uncover the truth. That function of an open society,at least, will not be stopped by an Internet kill switch.
San Francisco-based CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator Danny O'Brien has worked globally as a journalist and activist covering technology and digital rights.
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