
A Skype call in Ethiopia will now get you 15 years in prison - bane
http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/14/ethiopia-skype-illegal/
======
joelhaasnoot
Releveant speech from the Oslo Freedom Forum by exiled journalist:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pECH8Co_oxE> (also provides some background -
40 000 put in camps during 2005 elections)

Having lived in Ethiopia for almost 10 years, this is has been systematically
going on for years. It ofcourse started as a way to keep revenue coming in
from long distance phone calls, blocking services like net2phone. I've also
been told that the whole country had a 2Mb satellite connection and everything
was dialup. Traceroutes left Ethiopia and came back 750ms later in New York,
but they now have fiber connections and seem to be connected through Djibouti.

Now they're blocking Tor and snooping on opposition parties (what's left) and
bloggers. SMS traffic also can be shutdown whenever they want.

~~~
vecinu
I had no idea Djibouti was an independent state. Thank you for teaching me
geography.

------
raganwald
You can say what you like about the Constitution, but my tin foil hat says
that the reason you don’t have laws like this in North America is because we
have the technology and can afford to snoop on Skype, email, and so forth at
scale. Ethiopia simply doesn’t have the money and/or know-how to monitor VoIP
and Email at scale. There’s no salient difference in policy between them and
us.

If we rewrite the law to say, “Thou shalt not use a communication mechanism we
can’t monitor,” the behaviours of Ethiopia and US/Canada aren’t all that
different.

~~~
briandear
The Ethiopian decision isn't about monitoring, it's about protecting a
monopoly. It's the same sort of thinking that has a certain political party
opposing free trade agreements out of a fear that it will bankrupt
manufacturers using inefficient processes. It's a classic case of violating
Henry Hazlitt's economics lesson: "The art of economics consists in looking
not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it
consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group
but for all groups."

While this prohibition has the immediate (apparent) consequence of 'saving'
the state-controlled telephone industry and ostensibly the jobs of its
workers, it has a long run consequence of raising telecom costs for the rest
of the country which results in less money available for other investment,
resulting in a net-loss for the economy. This will also result in an expansion
of the "industry" of catching illegal Skypers and prosecuting and
incarcerating same -- thus magnifying the net economic loss. Instead of
diverting government and/or private resources into innovation, those resources
will instead be consumed by reactionism.

The Ethiopian policy is entirely about protectionism and has nothing to do
with communications security.

~~~
patdennis
_It's the same sort of thinking that has a certain political party opposing
free trade agreements out of a fear that it will bankrupt manufacturers using
inefficient processes._

If by 'inefficient processes' you mean 'workers who are paid a living wage',
then yes.

As a general rule I support free trade, but I think you're misrepresenting the
concerns coming from the left about free trade.

~~~
cglace
As with most things a 'living wage' is context dependent and changes as
society changes their ideas of what people need to 'live'.

~~~
batista
And as other things, substinence wages are not context dependent, and are very
common in places which "free trade" proponents tout.

Plus, their arguments which amount to "working in a sweatshop for our cheap
shoes is doing them a favor, because otherwise they'd have no jobs at all" I
always found as mere justification for the continuation of slavery and
colonization in modern terms.

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danso
This Venture Beat piece is a riff of a TechCrunch article which is a riff off
of a Al-Jazeera aggregation...the source article, I assume, is in Arabic:
[http://www.addisadmassnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://www.addisadmassnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2328%3A2012-05-26-13-33-26&catid=1%3Alatest-
news&Itemid=513)

Here is a blogger (a lecturer at Arba Minch University) who the Al-Jazeera
aggregation links to; he has some interesting insights on what it means for
the average Ethiopian:

[https://endalk.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/the-new-ethiopian-
te...](https://endalk.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/the-new-ethiopian-telecom-
service-infringements-law-is-it-the-most-creative-way-copying-sopa-and-pipa/)

~~~
wave
It is in Amharic language written in Ge'ez script known as Fidel. Since you
don't have the font installed, you weren't able to see it.

For those who are not familiar with the alphabet, it looks like this:
<http://www.amharicmachine.com/alphabet.gif>

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mkhattab
Something similar, to a lesser extreme, exists in Egypt. I believe this isn't
an issue of security but an issue with the profits telecoms make on
international calls. Telecom Egypt is sustaining significant losses due to
VOIP and I assume it must be the same with Ethio Telco.

~~~
mjwalshe
Yep that is why in third world coutries the PTT minister is a highly
desireable job - lots of opertunities for diverting cash to ones swiss bank
account.

~~~
yread
Thank God it only happens in third world countries! We sure know better than
these savages

~~~
rfrey
Cleptocracies exist. Systematic diversion of state and aid resources to
personal accounts is a real and persistent problem in many parts of the world.
To not acknowledge that out of fear of appearing neo-colonialist is, I think,
misguided.

Certainly North America and Europe (I assume that's what you meant by "we")
have corruption issues, especially with deferred bribes in the form of
industry appointments, and contract money flowing to well-connected companies.
But that's decidedly different than seeing large percentages of tax revenue
ending up as personal property, or state industries like telecoms being
awarded as personal fiefdoms to cronies, who then use revenues like a piggy
bank.

"Political correctness" is not a dirty word in my vocabulary -- I usually see
it as sensitivity or tact -- but censoring our appraisal of corrupt
governments because there are elements of corruption in the west, out of fear
we'll be accused of hypocrisy or colonialism, is not helpful.

~~~
mjwalshe
well shall we say south of the border there was lots of Qustionable conduct
"Hem Hem" - though Argentina expropraiting Telefonicas assets gave me a good
laugh.

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Heliosmaster
The sentence " The new legislation empowers the state-owned telecom to
prohibit the use not only of VoIP services, but also of video chatting, social
media, e-mail, and any other data transfer service capable of communicating
information. So that encompass pretty much all communication except for
speaking aloud and talking within your own mind." scares the shit out of me...

------
terhechte
The sad part is that they're crippling innovation and thus, in the long run,
crippling their and all their people's economic prospect. The digital industry
is a lot like the invention of the steam machine. Ethiopia will feel, in
several years to come, what it would have been like for an early European
country, to back out of the industrial revolution. Once again, politicians are
trading the long term for short term monetary gains. (by gains I mean probably
the ability to snoop on citicens and to make more money).

------
azarias
We deploy many research projects in Ethiopia, and the situation has always
been murky. For example, it has been long outlawed to provide calling services
for others over VOIP. So, if you run an internet café, and provide a calling
service charging people, you faced jail. Private use of internet has been
mostly unmonitored so far---but far too many people are now using their home
internet for calling other people it appears. Given its very big diaspora
population, communication is a very lucrative business in Ethiopia, and the
government has made it clear in the past that the monopoly is going to
continue this way because "it is one of the major sources of funds for
development". This sounds like the next step in that approach.

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philhippus
The only reason they get away with this is that it makes no difference to the
day to day lives of the average Ethiopean. It's a bit like us in the west
having legislation passed that says you are not allowed to go over Mach 2 in
your private jet. I wouldn't expend energy fighting that, but take away my
comms rights, and I'll burn your mansions to ashes.

~~~
bradleyland
Not digging the analogy. The Arab Spring reinforced the role of free
communication in the process of overturning tyrannical regimes. All analogies
are broken at some level, but the discord in relevance here is too much.

It may not be the case for the people of Ethiopia today, but mobile phones
have proven to be a powerful disrupter in similar countries. Skype acts as a
conceptual anchor for the reader in the article, but the law is not limited to
Skype.

You can't downplay this legislation. It is an assault on the very foundation
of freedom. Make no mistake about it.

~~~
philhippus
I agree that this is a very serious assault. My intention was not to downplay
this legislation but to point out how it passed so easily in a population of
85 million. Their priorities are fending off starvation. i.e. they are being
kicked while they are down.

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jackcviers3
There was a time when U.S. Americans would have condemned any attempt by the
government to inject itself into their lives. However, that time has long
since passed, and with very little effect on the way most Americans live their
lives.

Though the government is surely monitoring internet communications, at least
people aren't being disappeared. I'd like to see an amendment to the
constitution that protects the citizens' right to privacy for all forms of
electronic communications and personal digital storage. I think your online
identity should fall under the same right of non-self-discrimination that
spouses and accused persons have.

------
technology
Just saw this on the comments on VB:

"Can't imagine why they are one of the poorest countries on earth."

Agreed !

I would add this relevant idea by Matt Ridley from The Rational optimist
(<http://amzn.to/KvuK4S>) :-

As long as human exchange and specialization are allowed to thrive somewhere,
then culture evolves whether leaders help it or hinder it, and the result is
that prosperity spreads,technology progresses, poverty declines, disease
retreats, fertility falls, happiness increases, freedom grows, knowledge
flourishes and the environment improves.

------
josscrowcroft
This is a lot more serious that just Skype calls... they also make using email
and any form of non-State-owned communication illegal, too.

Amazing to think somebody making an unsnooped call would get longer in prison
than some murderers!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's like copyright infringement against billionaire corporations in The West
...

------
toyg
If this sort of trend continues unabated (see also UK "snooper's charter"
etc), VPN companies will soon make more money than Apple.

(unless VPN software is also covered by this legislation, which the article
doesn't say).

~~~
noarchy
I have to think that VPNs will be targeted soon enough, along with any other
solution that obfuscates/encrypts/etc the details of your Internet traffic.
We've already seen China's firewall being tweaked to counter such measures. In
the West, we'll probably see the usual suspects, like the UK, cracking down
first.

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goombastic
Technology and information is on the verge of bringing disruptively empowering
change to people and societies everywhere. Politicians have lately realized
how dangerous that can be to their entrenched positions in power. Even places
like India, America and many other supposedly democratic countries are now
clamping down hard on the Internet using various excuses. All of this is
disheartening to say the least. China seems to be the role model for where we
are headed.

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guard-of-terra
That's why state monopolies are bad. It's not state that owns the monopoly,
it's the other way around.

~~~
jhaglund
Dictators and corrupt governments are bad.

State monopolies can be bad.

IMHO.

~~~
jsilence
May I be so bold to throw in the theory that states are bad?

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leeoniya
sounds like they're taking all measures so their people can't organize an
uprising and overthrow the government.

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its_so_on
amateurs. you know you can just "ask" skype to let you in on all your
subjects' conversations and they'll do it?

~~~
vixen99
No,I didn't know that. Can you give chapter and verse?

~~~
its_so_on
here's one [http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2010/02/the-skype-
conspiracy...](http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2010/02/the-skype-conspiracy-
and-american-intelligence/) \- not hard to find

~~~
barik
Just curious, but are you actually using a conspiracy theory site as evidence
of "not hard to find"? My favorite part of the article was perhaps this line:

"The evidence comes from events that revealed the NSA’s true motives from 2005
through 2009."

It sure is a shame that the author forgot to link to such evidence and
actually present it; someone should notify the webmaster.

------
alan_cx
I cant help thinking that while there are so many issues like this in the EU
and US, having a pop at Ethiopia is a bit ridiculous. If _we_ cant get privacy
and freedom sussed out, why on Earth should Ethiopia be held up as some sort
of evil?

~~~
Flimm
Can't both Western laws and Ethiopian laws be bad? Why is it a must that the
West fix their laws before Ethiopia consider fixing theirs? Isn't Hacker News
for everyone, not just western readers?

