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The level of Internet censorship in the Arab Spring was escalated. Lack of Internet freedom was a tactic employed by authorities to quell protests. Rulers and governments across the Arab world utilized the law, technology, and violence to control what was being posted on and disseminated through the Internet. The peoples of Egypt, Libya, and Syria witnessed full Internet shutdowns as their respective governments attempted to quell protests. In Tunisia, the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali hacked into and stole passwords from citizens’ Facebook accounts. In Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, bloggers and “netizens” were arrested and some are alleged to have been killed. The developments since the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010 have raised the issue of Internet access as a human right and have revealed the type of power certain authoritarian governments retain over the people and the Internet. ==Egypt== In the days leading up to 27 January 2011, an increasing number of websites were blocked. On 25 January 2011, the State Security Investigations Service, Amn El Dawla, ordered Twitter to be blocked. The following day, Facebook was shut down. On the night of 27 January 2011 the Egyptian government shut down the Internet in Egypt. SMS (Short Message Service) was also blocked. Renesys, a firm that monitors the Internet, reported that nearly all routes to Egyptian networks were taken down at the same time. It was also reported that the Egyptian government shut down official Domain Name Servers (DNS). At the time the Egyptian government essentially controlled what information traveled across the country as well as in and out of the country via the Internet. To connect to foreign countries by way of the Internet, Egyptian information had to go through a small number of international portals. Mubarak and the government maintained tight control over these. While access to domestic Internet was still available this too suffered as a result of the shutdown as Egyptian networks were heavily dependent upon systems based outside of the country such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The entire internal system was crippled. Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer of Renesys, remarked, “With the scope of their shutdown and the size of their online population, it is an unprecedented event”. In Egypt at the time, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were authorized by the government. There existed only four ISPs: Link Egypt, Vodafone Egypt/Raya, Telecom Egypt, and Etisalat Misr. The government is thought to have ordered these shut down through phone calls. Vodafone is based in London. The company stated on its website that mobile operators in Egypt had been forced to cut off service in certain areas and had no choice in the matter. American company Narus, a subsidiary of Boeing Corporation, sold the Mubarak government surveillance equipment that helped identify dissidents. Most affected by the Internet blackout were middle-class Egyptians as they no longer had Internet access in their homes. In response to the lack of information, many took to the streets to find out what was going on. Some have argued that the shutdown’s impact was therefore counter to the government’s intention as many left their homes to acquire information and subsequently joined the protests. One building on Ramses Street in Cairo was specifically targeted. It houses a connection point used by five major network companies in Egypt that provide much of the Internet flow going in and out of the country. It has been debated whether the government surgically tampered with the software that facilitates communication between Internet networks or whether they simply cut off the power to the routers. On 2 February 2011, BBC reported that Facebook and Twitter were once again available online and that the four major Internet Service Providers in Egypt were back up and running. Renesys reported that there were no longer any traffic blocks in place. Arbor Networks also confirmed that Egypt had regained Internet access at around 5:30 a.m. on the morning of February 2. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimated the cost of the Internet outage to have been around 90 million US dollars – this number captures the revenue lost from blocked telecommunication and Internet services.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.oecd.org/document/19/0,3746,en_2649_34223_47056659_1_1_1_1,00.html )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Internet censorship in the Arab Spring」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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