Protesters have flooded the streets of Alexandria and Suez. In Cairo, they’re publicly praying in the thoroughfare. And the Egyptian government can’t seem to stop them, despite the crackdown on internet access and cellular communications.
The past four days’ worth of protests in Egypt, spurred by those that dethroned the Tunisian government on Jan. 14, have been accelerated by social media. The #Jan25 hashtag gave the leaderless revolt an internal organizing tool and global communications reach. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the Mubarak regime responded by ordering the withdrawal of over 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol routes by Egyptian service providers, shutting down approximately 88 percent of the country’s Internet access, according to networking firm BGPMon.
But the so-called “Day of Wrath” is uninterrupted. On al-Jazeera a few minutes ago, a functionary from Mubarak’s National Democratic Party called the uprising “unprecedented” and conceded that the government needs a “non-traditional way of dealing with this,” including “action against corruption, against poverty… [giving] more freedoms.” He said all this while police and the Army are firing tear gas at the demonstrators.
Egyptian anti-riot policemen clash with protesters in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Jan. 28, 2011. The Egyptian capital Cairo was the scene of violent chaos Friday, when tens of thousands of anti-government protesters stoned and confronted police, who fired back with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons. It was a major escalation in what was already the biggest challenge to authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak's 30 year-rule. (AP Photo/TaraTodras-Whitehill)
Of course, the demonstrators have an offline networking tool: the mosques. Protests were scheduled all over Egypt for Friday in order to capitalize on the ability of the religious establishment to gather, organize, inspire and deploy large groups of people, with all the legitimacy that the mosques command. If the government continues the communications shutdown, it’s an open question whether the protesters can sustain their analog organizational momentum.
But that might not be something the government can afford. “It’s a matter of time before the Internet returns to Egypt,” says Sherif Mansour of Freedom Watch. “The government needs it for [the economy], for investment, to operate. But this needs to be taken seriously so that it doesn’t happen again.”
Update 9:40 am: In a Thursday interview, President Obama said that “there are certain core values that… we believe are universal: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, people being able to use social networking.”
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