Internet traffic has come to a halt in Syria after the government blocked Internet services in an attempt to quell a growing revolt in the Middle Eastern nation.
“Starting at 3:35 UTC today, approximately two thirds of all Syrian networks became unreachable from the global Internet,” Internet intelligence firm Renesys reported on its blog today.
“Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table.”
Most mobile phone and Internet networks are affected by the blackout. According to The Wall Street Journal, government-run websites such as the Oil Ministry’s website are still operational.
Syria has been banning social media services in the last few months, but this is the full time there has been a widespread Internet outage.
The move comes as protests have intensified in the troubled nation. 34 people were killed Friday after security forces opened fire. The uprising, which began in late January, has been focused on ousting Bashar Al-Assad from his role as President of Syria. Al-Assad ascended to the presidency in 2000 after his father’s 29-year rule.
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shut down Internet services during the Egyptian revolution so protesters couldn’t easily organize. It didn’t quell the revolt though, and on February 11, Mubarak resigned.
More About: Bashar Al-Assad, Egypt, internet, Internet outage, Syria, Uprising
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In a speech early Thursday, President Barack Obama laid out the U.S.’s stance and outlook on the uprisings in the Middle East and Africa. He affirmed technology’s role in powering these movements and stressed the U.S.’s support of access to information and the Internet.
“In fact, real reform will not come at the ballot box alone. Through our efforts we must support those basic rights to speak your mind and access information,” he said. “We will support open access to the Internet, and the right of journalists to be heard — whether it’s a big news organization or a blogger. In the 21st century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.”
It was “active and informed citizens” who were able to topple a dictator in Egypt, and Obama suggested that others around the Middle East might also be able to accomplish similar outcomes.
“The greatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is the talent of its people. In the recent protests, we see that talent on display, as people harness technology to move the world,” he said. “It’s no coincidence that one of the leaders of Tahrir Square was an executive for Google. That energy now needs to be channeled, in country after country, so that economic growth can solidify the accomplishments of the street.”
That Google executive Obama mentioned is Wael Ghonim. He created the Facebook Page We Are All Khaled Said and has since been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.
In his closing remarks, Obama returned to the role of technology.
“We will help governments meet international obligations, and invest efforts anti-corruption; by working with parliamentarians who are developing reforms, and activists who use technology to hold government accountable,” he said.
More About: barack obama, Egypt, uprisings
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Susannah Vila directs content and outreach at Movements.org, an organization dedicated to identifying, connecting and supporting activists using technology to organize for social change. Connect with her on Twitter @susannahvila.
Egyptians’ effective use of Facebook has given life to a slew of hopeful pages and groups throughout the region. This makes sense: Facebook, if combined with the right message, the right environment and the right people can indeed help to spark massive crowds. New technologies make it easier to get more information out to more people, more quickly. The result? Town squares and plazas teeming with protesters. Two ousted dictators and two more on the brink.
Unfortunately, the quicker you mobilize, the less time there is to plan. The less the need for a traditional organization, the bigger the vacuum left after an initial big success. Whether it’s a huge protest, a victorious election, an ousted dictator or a momentous piece of breaking news, it’s more important than ever for movement builders and members to prepare for day two.
While it’s essential to reach goals, it’s even more important to build on that success and regroup. Act fast, capitalizing on increasing visibility and heightened awareness to get more resources for your campaign. Solicit strategic advice from outsiders with more experience and bring in new members and volunteers. If you need funding, now is the time to get it.
You activated lots of people that were not formerly activated, but that doesn’t mean they’re organized. It’s up to you to organize them. How can you get in touch with your new members today and, if need be, weeks down the line? Whenever possible, collect emails, mobile phone numbers, Twitter handles and Facebook URLs and store them in a document that’s saved in a few different places.
Of course, always make sure this data is secured, and that you’re abiding by all applicable privacy regulations when you start to utilize it.
Why’d you start this thing, anyway? Reconcile your original goal with recent events and identify a new long-term vision for change. Your new plan should include an understanding not simply of what you want to achieve but also how you will achieve it. Articulate a clear and defined timeline that includes your upcoming actions — for example, weekly protests — and how they will take you closer to your long-term goal.
Your campaign didn’t succeed only because of the most involved people but rather because of everyone. That’s why it’s so important to ask the people who got involved what the next step should be. Don’t decide anything as one person or one small group of more involved participants.
Take a cue from Wael Ghonim, one of the administrators of the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook Page, who, when asked what was next for a post-Mubarak Egypt, said: “Ask Facebook.” This is easier said than done, but the sentiment is spot-on. When identifying a new vision for your campaign, make it as easy as possible for members to decide.
Asking Facebook is meaningless if no one knows what the response was. Draw up an internal document to circulate amongst organizers with the feedback that you’ve received. Share it with everyone involved. The process of sorting through feedback can be as transparent and public as any other aspect of your campaign.
When a decision has been made, post it everywhere — on Facebook, on your website, your Twitter feed and in an email blast — so that everyone can hold you to it.
Everyone can be a leader as long as they are all coordinated and operating with a shared purpose and strategy. Now that you have a new long-term goal, offer a toolkit for organizers throughout the country to take this vision of change and work toward it on their own.
As Egypt demonstrates, it’s a lot easier to complete the first day of a revolution than the second. Holding together a large coalition is simpler when everyone is on board and the goal, be it an election or an ouster, is obvious. It’s not as easy to come up with a new vision, especially when the changed landscape is marked by infighting, confusion and the same entrenched interests as before. But, if you support your movement building with strong strategy and long-term thinking, then the chances are a lot higher that all of your demands will be met — and will stay met.
Interested in more Social Good resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.Image courtesy of Flickr, nebedaay.
More About: causes, Egypt, List, Lists, non-profit, politics, protests, social good, social media
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This software, which allows for safe and anonymous web browsing, was given the FSF’s Award for Projects of Social Benefit. The award is intended to highlight “a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society through collaboration to accomplish an important social task.”
Without question, enabling the Internet’s role in political revolution has been an important social task, and one that the Tor Project has explicitly supported. In its section on activist users, Tor reps state that anonymous browsing is essential for reporting abuses of power and organizing protests, especially from behind government-sponsored firewalls and ISP blocks.
“Using free software,” the FSF writes, “Tor has enabled roughly 36 million people around the world to experience freedom of access and expression on the Internet while keeping them in control of their privacy and anonymity. Its network has proved pivotal in dissident movements in both Iran and more recently Egypt.”
In Iran, political dissent before, during and after the 2009 election caused a firestorm on Twitter and Facebook; as a result, the government began censoring many apps and sites. The Tor Project allowed users to bypass the blocks and access the web apps they needed to continue to organize.
And in Egypt and other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, a couple months of steady political unrest has been punctuated by periods of site-specific blocks and even total Internet blackouts. Once again, Tor was instrumental for continuing to allow many users to access the web, where they communicated internally and externally and rallied for change.
Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Project, was present to accept the award from the FSF and its founder and president Richard M. Stallman during a March 19 ceremony.
Previous winners of this award include such notable FOSS projects as the Internet Archive, Creative Commons and Wikipedia.
More About: award, Egypt, foss, free software, middle east, politics, tor
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The global organization Access has helped draft a new document designed to educate citizens in the Middle East and North Africa about how to communicate online and via mobile devices, while still protecting their identity.
As civil unrest continues to sweep across the Middle East and North Africa, citizens are turning to social media and the Internet to communicate, assemble and rally support. But this is riskier than it may seem, and has landed users in jail.
Access, which bills itself as a “new global movement for digital freedom,” wants to help educate citizens in the Middle East and North Africa about the realities and risks involved with online communication. We spoke with Brett Solomon, executive director at Access, about the new document and the organization’s goals.
The Mission: Educate“Citizens are evolving into activists,” says Solomon. Technology is driving that evolution, but has “a double edge. It offers extreme freedom for communication amongst activists, but it is also an extremely powerful tool for oppressors. Governments are being forced to recognize the extraordinary democratic power of new technologies and the threat their existence has on the leadership.”Because of this growing recognition, Solomon says that “governments are increasing resources dedicated to online censorship and security.” For citizens turned activists, understanding this reality becomes vital.
“In the heightened moments of political crisis, the focus is on the goal instead of the process,” says Solomon. That means activists become more focused on getting the message and living in the moment rather than taking risks into account. Access aims to keep the process intact even at these heightened moments.
A Guide for Us AllThe relative lack of anonymity and privacy online — be it on public Wi-Fi networks or social networks — is starting to resonate with regular users. Firesheep was a wake-up call for lots of western Internet users. It underscored just how easy it can be for someone to gain access to private information.This recognition has led to more education about best practices in keeping communications more secure and more private online. Sites including Twitter, Facebook and Google have introduced options to let users login via HTTPS. This encrypts the data stream and can protect what interlopers are able to access.
The guide that Access helped put together is available in both English and Arabic, and the organization has received offers to translate it into eight other languages. The target audience may be in the Middle East and North Africa, but the document is also a good primer for general web users who want the most secure experience.
I asked Solomon about the risks involved in helping to spread the document. While Access and its contributors took great pains to make sure the document is educational and apolitical — it is not written with the stated goal of furthering a revolutionary ideology — dictators are hardly going to be pleased that this sort of education is getting out.
Solomon says that he doesn’t know of any place where mere possession of such a document is a punishable offense. Of course, that doesn’t mean possessing it is necessarily a good idea. So Access is using social media, mirrors and other back channels to disseminate the document to as many people as possible.
The DocumentsAccess.org has the English and Arabic versions of the documents hosted on its site and on other mirrors across the web. We’re going to do our part by embedding both versions of the PDF below.Guide Protecting Identity Security Online English
Guide Protecting Identity Security Online Arabic
More About: accessnow.org, bahrain, Egypt, facebook revolution, libya, mena, middle east, north africa, online security, Yemen
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Arresting images of newsworthy events are nothing new — the public has been captivated by such photos since the Hindenburg disaster. But modern technology has made such images more immediate and more likely to be captured by members of the public.
Citizen journalism has been responsible for many memorable photos from recent global events, and platforms like Twitter, and the Twitpic image sharing service, enable instant publication and reach. Mashable spoke with Rodrigo Aguiar, a journalist and one of the founders of @BreakingNews, about the rise of Twitter “citizen reports.”
“I think Twitter has been the perfect medium for breaking news. As a tool, it is real time, mobile and searchable. When a major story breaks, the easiest way for journalists to get firsthand information is by deploying two tools: What the people near the event are tweeting, and what photos are they posting. I have seen many times that the news media always try to contact eyewitnesses for comments or to get a license for their photos. Journalists can’t be everywhere, but people are always ‘live from the scene,’” Aguiar says.
We’ve taken a look at nine notable images that have emerged via Twitter, documenting front-page news events from all around the world. Take a look through the gallery and let us know which ones you find most memorable in the comments below.
1. Haitian EarthquakeHaitian radio and TV host Carel Pedre captured a series of memorable images during January 2010. Pedre was given a special "humanitarian" award at the second annual "Shorty Awards" for his communications via Twitter during the crisis.
2. Miracle on the Hudson"There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy." So read Janis Krums' Twitpic description, posted on January 15, 2009. Miraculously, all passengers onboard were rescued.
3. CCTV Tower Fire in BeijingTwitter user green67 was on hand to capture this dramatic photo as a notable business complex containing the celebrated CCTV tower in Beijing was burnt to the ground.
4. Turkish Airlines CrashThe news of a Turkish Airlines crash at an Amsterdam airport in February 2009 broke on Twitter. Twitter user Diederik uploaded the first image of the downed plane as official news outlets were still trying to confirm details of the incident. The image has nearly 100,000 views.
5. Schultz Pass FireThe Schultz Pass Fire in June 2010 spread across 5,000 acres and saw more than 750 homes evacuated. Lorraine B. Elder captured some striking panoramas of the fire, which she shared on Twitpic, giving those outside Arizona an amazing view of the catastrophe.
6. Mexicali EarthquakeBeto Peralta's image of a Mexicali house damaged by the 7.2 earthquake in April 2010 has been viewed more than 35,000 times -- a stat that shows the power of the platform.
7. Civil Unrest in EgyptArchitect Mahmoud El-Nahas says "[I] just found myself in #Jan25." This image shows the sheer size of the crowd, especially when compared to the small group of officers amongst them.
8. Christchurch EarthquakeWe have seen many images via Twitter of the terrible devastation in Christchurch following the recent earthquake, but TVNZ's Charlotte Bellis captured this moment just after the quake struck. The dust is still settling in the wake of the disaster.
9. Port-au-Prince
Saad Khan is a hacktivist and Partner at CMEA Capital. He’s a seed and early stage investor in companies like Blekko, Pixazza, Jobvite, and Evolution Robotics. He blogs at SaadWired and conversates on Twitter @saadventures. If you’re a hacktivist, reach out to him — he wants to connect with you.
A young hacker is holed up alone in his apartment. His face is lit by a laptop screen, monitor split between a live video stream and a text editor filled with code. Fueled by Ramen Noodles and caffeine, he codes away through the night, monitoring the latest hashtags on Twitter, never a few seconds behind the newest exploding meme, instantly transmitting the latest news to others in his social graph.
This is a scene that is played out in the rooms of countless hackers and their “lean startups” around the world. Only for the past few weeks, it could have just as easily described an entirely new, organic, philanthropic phenomenon: Hacktivism.
Hacktivism is the use of hacking and the startup mentality to tackle and support social good causes. Here’s a look at some of the minds behind hacktivism and ways that it is helping charities worldwide.
Welcome to the Hacktivism Era
I was invited to Washington, D.C. for the Tech@State: Open Source event hosted by the Office of e-Diplomacy at the State Department. Rather than besuited C-SPANers, geeks from around the world had descended on D.C. to intermingle with practitioners of statecraft. It was also unusual for another reason — a hemisphere away, a million Egyptians had descended on a main square in Egypt and demanded of their government and the world that their voices be heard. A couple of hours into that Friday morning, they got just that when Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down after 30 years.
In a cosmic coincidence (the event had been planned for weeks), I was on a panel two hours later discussing the political implications of new media with people like Habib Haddad, one of the many volunteers involved with the AliveInEgypt initiative and recently vindicated friend of Wael Ghaneim (the Google employee who had, until very recently, been incarcerated). The panel also included Katherine Maher, ICT program officer at the National Democratic Institute, and Mark Toner, deputy spokesperson for the State Department.
Consider the propagation of organic efforts like AliveInEgypt. When Internet activity had been shut down in Egypt, volunteers from Google and Twitter launched international lines that one could call to leave voicemails that would then be tweeted out with location hashtags. The creators of AliveInEgypt set up a crowdsourced translation service to take those mostly Arabic voicemails and convert them to text in as many languages as possible in the Twittersphere. Loosely organized, geographically dispersed, and entirely volunteer-driven, hundreds of people contributed.
This Visualization of the Egyptian Twitter Sphere helps put into context the various efforts. Its designer, Kovas Boguta, called me a few days before I went to D.C. saying he wanted to do something useful for the Egyptian cause. We discussed what was possible over the phone, and three days later I was showcasing his #Egypt visualization on a big screen at the State Department.
Another interesting example is the OpenMesh project. It’s a virtual collaboration with the objective of developing a communication solution for when Internet and/or mobile communications are shut down as they were in Egypt recently. Among the many options being explored are ad hoc mesh networking solutions that enable peer-to-peer communications.
These are just a few examples of how entrepreneurial creativity has been unlocked over the past few weeks to respond to a higher cause. Others are creating Gov 2.0 apps. I suspect countless ideas and plans are hatching in cubicles everywhere.
A New Kind of ActivismThe events of the last few weeks have clearly galvanized a new kind of lean entrepreneurial activism. It’s enabled by the same drivers as lean startups: Free software, pay-as-you-go data centers and social distribution channels. But these entrepreneurs aren’t trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. What drives them is the desire to effect change, a sense of digital empowerment and an intuition that we are at a unique moment in history, one where generational transfers of leadership are at stake and increasingly possible.
Underlying much of this energy is an unprecedented global solidarity among people traditionally separated by thousands of miles of physical space and cultural artifacts. It’s forged by a very visceral empathy that comes with directly shared images and personal connections that today’s technology enables. Tens of thousands of people followed the unfolding saga of Ghonim’s capture and redemption on Twitter and Facebook. They saw what he saw and read what he was thinking. They watch. They connect. And then they want to do something about it.
Make no mistake, these people are entrepreneurs. They are agitators, opportunists, and catalysts for change. They measure success one follower at a time. I for one, think it’s time to get behind them. Let’s start activist hackathons, organize StartupWeekend “.gov Edition,” and engineer for a higher cause. We just might start a new kind of revolution.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ssstep
Interested in more Social Good resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.More About: charity, Egypt, hacktivism, non-profit, social good, twitter
For more Social Good coverage:Follow Mashable Social Good on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Good channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Saad Khan is a hacktivist and Partner at CMEA Capital. He’s a seed and early stage investor in companies like Blekko, Pixazza, Jobvite, and Evolution Robotics. He blogs at SaadWired and conversates on Twitter @saadventures. If you’re a hacktivist, reach out to him — he wants to connect with you.
A young hacker is holed up alone in his apartment. His face is lit by a laptop screen, monitor split between a live video stream and a text editor filled with code. Fueled by Ramen Noodles and caffeine, he codes away through the night, monitoring the latest hashtags on Twitter, never a few seconds behind the newest exploding meme, instantly transmitting the latest news to others in his social graph.
This is a scene that is played out in the rooms of countless hackers and their “lean startups” around the world. Only for the past few weeks, it could have just as easily described an entirely new, organic, philanthropic phenomenon: Hacktivism.
Hacktivism is the use of hacking and the startup mentality to tackle and support social good causes. Here’s a look at some of the minds behind hacktivism and ways that it is helping charities worldwide.
Welcome to the Hacktivism Era
I was invited to Washington, D.C. for the Tech@State: Open Source event hosted by the Office of e-Diplomacy at the State Department. Rather than besuited C-SPANers, geeks from around the world had descended on D.C. to intermingle with practitioners of statecraft. It was also unusual for another reason — a hemisphere away, a million Egyptians had descended on a main square in Egypt and demanded of their government and the world that their voices be heard. A couple of hours into that Friday morning, they got just that when Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down after 30 years.
In a cosmic coincidence (the event had been planned for weeks), I was on a panel two hours later discussing the political implications of new media with people like Habib Haddad, one of the many volunteers involved with the AliveInEgypt initiative and recently vindicated friend of Wael Ghaneim (the Google employee who had, until very recently, been incarcerated). The panel also included Katherine Maher, ICT program officer at the National Democratic Institute, and Mark Toner, deputy spokesperson for the State Department.
Consider the propagation of organic efforts like AliveInEgypt. When Internet activity had been shut down in Egypt, volunteers from Google and Twitter launched international lines that one could call to leave voicemails that would then be tweeted out with location hashtags. The creators of AliveInEgypt set up a crowdsourced translation service to take those mostly Arabic voicemails and convert them to text in as many languages as possible in the Twittersphere. Loosely organized, geographically dispersed, and entirely volunteer-driven, hundreds of people contributed.
This Visualization of the Egyptian Twitter Sphere helps put into context the various efforts. Its designer, Kovas Boguta, called me a few days before I went to D.C. saying he wanted to do something useful for the Egyptian cause. We discussed what was possible over the phone, and three days later I was showcasing his #Egypt visualization on a big screen at the State Department.
Another interesting example is the OpenMesh project. It’s a virtual collaboration with the objective of developing a communication solution for when Internet and/or mobile communications are shut down as they were in Egypt recently. Among the many options being explored are ad hoc mesh networking solutions that enable peer-to-peer communications.
These are just a few examples of how entrepreneurial creativity has been unlocked over the past few weeks to respond to a higher cause. Others are creating Gov 2.0 apps. I suspect countless ideas and plans are hatching in cubicles everywhere.
A New Kind of ActivismThe events of the last few weeks have clearly galvanized a new kind of lean entrepreneurial activism. It’s enabled by the same drivers as lean startups: Free software, pay-as-you-go data centers and social distribution channels. But these entrepreneurs aren’t trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. What drives them is the desire to effect change, a sense of digital empowerment and an intuition that we are at a unique moment in history, one where generational transfers of leadership are at stake and increasingly possible.
Underlying much of this energy is an unprecedented global solidarity among people traditionally separated by thousands of miles of physical space and cultural artifacts. It’s forged by a very visceral empathy that comes with directly shared images and personal connections that today’s technology enables. Tens of thousands of people followed the unfolding saga of Ghonim’s capture and redemption on Twitter and Facebook. They saw what he saw and read what he was thinking. They watch. They connect. And then they want to do something about it.
Make no mistake, these people are entrepreneurs. They are agitators, opportunists, and catalysts for change. They measure success one follower at a time. I for one, think it’s time to get behind them. Let’s start activist hackathons, organize StartupWeekend “.gov Edition,” and engineer for a higher cause. We just might start a new kind of revolution.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ssstep
Interested in more Social Good resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.More About: charity, Egypt, hacktivism, non-profit, social good, twitter
For more Social Good coverage:Follow Mashable Social Good on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Good channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Qatar-based news outlet Al Jazeera has launched a Twitter dashboard to illustrate tweets about uprisings and revolutions around the world.
The dashboard tallies the daily number of tweets about developments in each listed country (the site is currently tracking Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain) and shows the average number of such tweets per minute for each country. It also graphs the number of such tweets from each country over time and shows a visual representation of the “hashtag distribution for each country getting the most attention in the Twittersphere.”
Al Jazeera has led the world’s media coverage of protests and revolutions throughout the Middle East and Africa. Some have called the uprisings the news network’s “CNN moment.” (CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War is largely responsible for launching its current popularity, much the same way current events have catapulted Al Jazeera’s standing.)
But considering other projects such as Iamjan25.com, real-time tweet visualizer HyperCities Egypt and other news organizations’ interactive maps of real-time tweets from the same areas, it seems as though Al Jazeera was uncharacteristically late to this idea.
Even so, the dashboard provides a handy, at-a-glance gauge of where and how people are using Twitter to discuss uprisings in the Middle East and the Arab world.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Maggie Osama
More About: al jazeera, bahrain, dashboard, Egypt, libya, twitter, Yemen
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Twitter’s role in the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is disputed. But nobody disputes that the microblogging platform helped tell the story of the revolution as it unfolded.
Now, OR Books plans to use tweets posted during the protests to create a 160-page history of the event. Tweets from Tahrir, which is set to hit bookshelves April 21, will compile tweets and photos linked to in tweets to walk readers through every day of the revolution in 140-character-or-less snippets.
“Raw emotion bursts from their messages, whether frantic alarm at attacks from pro-government thugs or delirious happiness at the fall of the dictator,” reads a description of the book. “To read these tweets is to embark a rollercoaster ride, from the surprise and excitement of the first demonstration, to the horror of the violence that claimed hundreds of lives, to the final ecstasy of victory.”
This is quite a departure from existing tweet anthologies — like Sh*t My Dad Says — which tend to cover less serious topics. As The New York Times points out, the editors might run into some interesting legal questions with the new approach, in particular the question of who owns the rights for others’ tweets. OR Books is in the process of contacting authors to get their permission.
Whether the format will indeed capture the raw emotion, frantic alarm and timeline of the demonstrations is an another matter. An excerpt of the book is posted below; let us know what you think the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock
More About: Egypt, Revolution, Tweets from Tahrir, twitter
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