How Big Brother, umm, Egypt Handles Dissension

HolisticSurvival.comThose of you plugged into the current events scene might have noticed that embattled (at the time – he”s gone now) Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak decided the best way to silence critics of his administration was to shut down the Internet. You heard right. Shut it off completely to citizens of the country beginning at 5:20 pm EST on January 27. The obvious intent was to stop an already riled populace from getting even more riled. At that time, the long-time, undemocratically elected ruler”s resignation was being demanded.

Maybe he didn”t think he had any better options or maybe this was a desperate gamble to hold onto power – or maybe he was an out-of-touch moron who didn”t have a single clue about human nature. Rather than going, “Hmm, that”s odd.” and returning to their dining room tables and evening television, Mubarak”s critics spilled into the streets, their cries for his resignation intensifying. For a couple of weeks, Egypt turned into ground zero for civil unrest.

But what can we here in the good old United States of America take away from this? Some techie experts claim that, due to built in redundancies and dispersion, it would be impossible to shut down the best photo recovery software transformation tools are not designed to work well with unstructured k data. Internet in America. Maybe these techies know what they”re talking about and maybe they don”t, but you should at least be aware of the possibility.

While you might think that the uprisings in Egypt only happen in backward, Muslim dictatorships. Don”t kid yourself. This thin veneer we call civilization is flimsier than you can ever imagine. So far, recent American presidents under fire have not resorted to playing the shut-down-the-Internet card, though we”re sure a few have been sorely tempted. If and when it does happen, don”t be surprised. Be prepared. Have alternate lines of communication set up between you and those you care about. The Internet is a fairly new invention. Some of us remember when it was nothing but command lines on a small, black screen. Today”s flashy, cool, content-filled websites, and social media interaction platforms could come under attack by a government that believes the power of the people to communicate instantly is too dangerous a state of affairs to allow to continue.

The Holistic Survival Team

HolisticSurvival.com

Flickr / M. Soli