[Chapter-delegates] Egypt blocking Facebook & Twitter

[Christian de Larrinaga]

It is notable that the debate politically has moved since the banking crisis from an open Internet to domain name seizure and now physical and signalling disconnections and not just in Egypt, but in UK, USA, Europe and so on. 

The implications of damage to the economic, societal and political life in and between countries if such a policy were to be implemented are simply unfathomable. Perhaps the Egyptian situation may give cause for pause. I hope so. 

I see from the article that Lynn is in Davos. This gives an opportunity to press the point that such policies are liable to increase instabilities not just locally or regionally but in the case of US, UK and other highly connected countries globally. Egypt is not an example to follow. It is an important message.

Local disconnections imply global disconnections. It is a foreign policy and world trade issue not simply one of internal security.


Christian

On 29 Jan 2011, at 12:39, Franck Martin wrote:

> http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/01/how_governments_can_flip_the_i.html
> 
> Franck Martin
> http://www.avonsys.com/
> http://www.facebook.com/Avonsys
> twitter: FranckMartin Avonsys
> 
> Check your domain reputation: http://gurl.im/b69d4o
> 
> 
> From: "Christian de Larrinaga" <cdel at firsthand.net>
> To: patrick at vande-walle.eu
> Cc: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> Sent: Saturday, 29 January, 2011 11:38:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Egypt blocking Facebook & Twitter
> 
> The risk of engagement is misunderstanding
> Let's just hope that by disconnecting moderate communicators en masse it doesn't turn up the volume of others?
> 
> 
> Christian 
> 
> On 28 Jan 2011, at 08:13, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:16:10 +1200 (FJT), Franck Martin wrote:
> http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-internet.shtml
>  
> How sad and ironic is such a situation. I remember the Egyptian minister of telecoms, and former VP of chapters of ISOC, Tarek Kamel explaining to the audience at the ICANN meeting in Cairo how open the country's Internet was.
>  
> What could be the attitude of the I* community ? We have a track record showing complacency towards authoritarian regimes censoring the Internet. ICANN went to Tunisia, Egypt and China. The IETF went to China. WSIS went to Tunisia, where the I* community participated. Is the perspective of a paid-for meeting enough to have us accept such invitations and be used by the government propaganda as a example of their openess ?
>  
> When the I* community mentions "openess", it sounds like we mean "open your networks and your economy, but we don't want to know about the openess of your firewall".
>  
> Patrick Vande Walle
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