Mubarak Shuts Down Social Media: Big Mistake

[Valin]

Heritage.org:

Helle Dale
2/4/11

The decision of the Egyptian authorities to turn on the Internet yesterday after a week of interruption reversed a massive, shortsighted mistake. While controlling the Internet may have seemed like an obvious solution to a situation rapidly spiraling out of control, the Internet actually provided an outlet for the pent-up rage of young Arabs. That rage quickly found expression on the streets instead.

(Snip)
And though the Mubarak regime cut off the Internet, information flows found ways around it. Google, for instance, created a voice-to-tweet service that allowed Egyptians to leave voicemail messages that were turned into tweets. Other Internet services allowed streaming audio clips from young Egyptians to be heard from anywhere on the world.

Egyptian bloggers contacted by CyberDissidents.org, an organization started by Nathan Sharansky in support of victims of authoritarian regimes, stated that the government’s move against the Internet was very “stupid.” Kareem Amer, a blogger who spent the last four years in Egyptian prison, stated that blocking the Internet actually made Mubarak weaker. It provoked a great outrage among Egyptians and helped fuel the desire to get rid of Mubarak. And indeed, it deprived the government itself of the ability to monitor the movements of the demonstrators, which it had been able to do on social media Web sites.

(Snip)

[Pepper]

NCTexan!

 

If you had a doubt as to where Fox News and Shep Smith AKA Baghdad Shep is on this, he is on the streets fighting for freedom.

 

From the mouth of Shepherd Smith on the loss of internet access and loss of news in Egypt and how WE might be hurt.

3:30 pm Friday February 4 From my TV just now. Excuse the typing:

 

"I have one thing though that I've been very curious about and quite frankly a little worried about...

our correspondents and technicians and all the rest from over there and my friends from other networks and newspapers are telling me that what happens is these people go home at night especially the middle class to the poor there.

there are a lot of poor people - about half of them live under the poverty level less than four dollars a day

they go home and all they get is Egyptian state television.

On the Fox report last night we were telling you what they were reporting there.

They were reporting that the Westerners have organized all of this

that these are traitors to the United States - that there were no people injured in Tahrir Square - there were no Egyptian on Egyptian violence - that none of it really happened - that Westerners have stirred this stuff up - that Hosni Mubarek has the best of the people at hand

 

In other words they are getting nothing but propaganda of the Baghdad Bob sort of version

 

And then the protesters - whose numbers have dwindled in recent days at least until today -

come home and they're having these arguments in their neighborhood about

why are you ruining our country we are watching the television we don't have access to the Internet or anything else

 

So I wonder if we are losing the battle for hearts and minds during this process

and that might hurt us

in a few weeks or months from now and we may not even realize what is going on."

[ErnstBlofeld]

Easy, Mubarak wanted to control the flow of information coming in and coming out of Egypt.