

The 61 Countries a Mad Despot Could Instantly Unplug From the Internet - cyphersanctus
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/12/internet_plug/

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runarb
Shouldn't having a "Mad Despot" also be a requirement? Both Island and
Greenland are on the list, but are both democratic.

They probably have few internet providers because they are so small.

Greenland has a population of 56K. Iceland 320K and almost all live in the
same city.

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Adirael
I don't think the map relates to the "Mad Despot", and I think it's only about
risk of disconnection (including accidental disconnection). I was shocked to
see Portugal there at first, but I guess they have transatlantic cables to USA
or maybe to UK and not much to mainland / Spain, and that's why they are low
risk.

Original's Renesys (the map creator) here:
[http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-
your-...](http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-your-
countr.shtml) (I don't have time to parse it now, my first paragraph is just
an idea)

~~~
pjmlp
Portuguese here.

I had a quick look at the link you provided, it has to do with the amount of
national communication providers really route the traffic across borders.

Since most of the traffic goes over Portugal Telecom, switching them off,
would already cut most of the traffic I imagine. Specially because they also
own most of the internal cabling, even when the service is offered by other
companies.

------
Someone
An other interesting question is: who is at the other end of those single
cables? Those parties can switch of the Internet in a neighboring country or,
(worse) eavesdrop on all unencrypted traffic or (worst) silently change data
(imagine modifying the contens of cnn.com or bbc.co.uk) going into and out of
that country.

For example, I would hope for Cuba that their connection is to Venezuela, and
not to Miami.

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adrian_pop
Glad I am not living in one of those countries :))

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berito
Surprising that china is low risk in their map. Their metric is clearly
flawed, for china already "blocks" off the whole Internet.

~~~
lumberjack
I would argue the exact contrary. China tried and failed to control their
internet. The famous virtual wall of china is very easily surmounted.

The metric isn't about who is more or less likely to try to isolate the
country from the internet but rather how hard is it to actually accomplish
such a feat?

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sandGorgon
what they need to be looking at are underwater cable landings [1] and not
"greater than 40 ISPs".

<http://www.cablemap.info/>

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barking
Do they even have the internet in N. Korea? I guess senegal in white means 'no
information available' rather than 100% safe from despots

~~~
runarb
Apparently they have internet in North Korea. Even have a single Internet cafe
in Pyongyang according to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea> .

However they could have a hundred internet providers there, but if Kim wanted
to collectively log off it wouldn't help much I suppose.

It's probably not the number of service providers that matters. It's the power
of the Mad Despot.

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spitx
How are India, Estonia and Latvia on the same rung as highly suppression-ist
China?

This is clearly facetious.

~~~
potatolicious
The same India that has been charging people with crimes for voicing criticism
of politicians on the internet?

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eshvk
I presume you are talking about the recent "facebook related arrests". Just so
you know, not every country outside the U.S., is a single monolithic block
where just because some asswipe cop(s) decides to hassle kids, it means that
the entire country has decided as an official policy to hassle people on that
charge. Some other examples of similar specious arguments:

1\. Austria is bad because a tor exit operator got raided.

2\. The MPAA/RIAA decides to sue a bunch of kids for music torrenting. Ergo
America is bad.

Also, presuming from the comment to the OP, I assume you are somehow leaping
from "Charge people for criticism" to "unplug the internet": I would really
love to hear your reasoning for this.

(FYI, this is not a defense of the Indian justice system or me "taking
offense" or even an attempt to assert that India is not at low risk of being
disconnected: I personally give 0 fucks. I just find these specious arguments
silly and have no idea why intelligent people make these arguments when it
comes to foreign countries. )

~~~
potatolicious
And you've gotten my exact point. It may also surprise you how local China's
suppression is.

I'm well aware that India isn't one monolithic government (nor any other
country) - I'm pointing out the exact point in OP.

For example, the many human rights abuses related to enforcing the one-child
policy - forced abortions, confiscation of property, etc. If you actually look
at them you will realize that the bulk of it originates in local government.
Much of China's most galling, shocking abuses come from the minds of local
politicians, rather than by central dictat.

The rampant nepotism and corruption in the Chinese government is largely an
expression of just how little control its central authorities have over their
localized branches.

Moral comparisons between countries is usually ill-advised for this exact
reason. This sort of baseless moral superiority bugs me - India is not nearly
as far from China as OP seems to think it is, at least when it comes to online
freedoms.

~~~
eshvk
> Moral comparisons between countries is usually ill-advised for this exact
> reason. This sort of baseless moral superiority bugs me - India is not
> nearly as far from China as OP seems to think it is, at least when it comes
> to online freedoms.

Completely agreed on making moral comparisons. I have noticed this in a few
threads involving developing countries where people emerge out of the woodwork
to rant about either A) How everyone is victimizing aforesaid developing
country and they should just stop. or B) Make a completely irrelevant argument
about how the developing country in question making progress in X is
irrelevant because of abuses or oppressions or whatever. Both of these are
from opposing camps but are founded on bad logic.

