

Tech That Helped Turkish Protesters Save Taksim Square - iProject
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/07/03/the-tech-that-helped-turkish-protesters/

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ChuckMcM
This is an interesting article, it pretty clearly illustrates the threat
dispersed messaging systems are to organizations attempting to exert control.
And it was one of the reasons I was pretty incensed when BART pre-emptively
shut down the cell network prior to an #occupy protest (essentially jamming
the digital airwaves).

That said, it is useful to develop technologies that make these systems more
robust in the presence of a determined adversary. When I read the article on
turning the Raspberry Pi into a micro-cell-site using the SDR kit from Attus I
felt like here is a way you could spontaneously replace a cell network "on the
fly" as it were. That stuff is still pretty expensive, a recent addon board
for the Zedboard (which has an FPGA fabric already) is $3,000.

~~~
dllthomas
_" BART pre-emptively shut down the cell network prior to an #occupy protest"_

This is not quite false, but potentially misleading for those uninformed. They
turned off repeaters they owned; the ground blocked the signals. There was no
active interference.

Anyone can, of course, draw whatever conclusions they want given the facts,
but (as I understand things) those are they, and hopefully we won't get off on
"BUT JAMMING CELL PHONES IS ILLEGAL" tangents.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Interesting comment. They explicitly disabled equipment that provided access
to the network which they expected to be used by #occupy protesters in the
organization of their protest.

They certainly had the 'right' to shut down their own equipment. Their stated
intent was to disrupt protests.

Egypt turned off the Internet during the Arab spring by turning off their own
routers (which they owned and was their right) with the explicit goal of
disrupting the protesters ability to organize and communicate.

The common theme here is the use of existing infrastructure in the
organization and coordination of protests. In both Egypt and BART and Turkey's
case the infrastructure had a designed non-protest-organizing modality. When
the infrastructure gets shut down to cut off protesters it also impacts non-
protesters in a potentially severe way.

The lesson here is that it is possible to create infrastructure on demand
which does not require all of your participants to be self identifying by
carrying some sort of specialized equipment. Had the protesters been using the
'family radio' frequencies, the ones that are so often abused at DisneyLand,
searching and removing radios from people allow them to disrupt their
organization. Whereas everyone has a phone, so it is impractical to confiscate
all phones in order to prevent lawful demonstrations.

~~~
dllthomas
Yes. I am not saying "therefore it was okay", just pre-empting certain
unproductive lines of discussion and outrage. If you feel the actions were
nonetheless inappropriate, you (and others) have every right to be outraged
for real reasons; in fact, I encourage it.

------
mtgx
> "A survey of 3,000 protesters found that while 70% had no political
> affiliation and a majority had not protested before, _nine out of ten_
> participated due to the behavior of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
> the police."

Future dictators should pay attention.

~~~
digz
The problem is that they are not dictators... They were democratically
elected. Morsi may have lost popular support, but is democracy served by a
coup every time a country's leadership's approval numbers drop below 50%? In
the case of Turkey, Erdogan still enjoys majority support, and would likely
win an election held today.

Calling these protests democratic is incorrect. Instead they point to a larger
problem: that majorities of these countries support hard-line Islamist
governments. The protesters are merely a reflection that fundamentalists
(perhaps of any religion) are incompatible with a free and secular society.

~~~
iuguy
Erdogan was democratically elected but so was putin and so was saddam hussein.
The problem (and the primary cause of the dictator slur) is that Erdogan sees
elections as a one shot thing - you elect me, then you get out of my way.

From day one the protests were not about democracy, but about civil
engagement, something that doesn't really exist in Turkey. It is this lack of
accountability, a fundamental part of democracy that makes Turkey's political
system undemocratic.

Erdogan believes that "democracy is a bus, you hop on, go to the destination
and get off". Democracy without engagement in a broken electoral system isn't
democracy, it's a rigged game. That's the problem the Turks have, and that's
why they're calling him a dictator (which in the view of some may be right or
wrong).

~~~
tokenadult
I think it is factually incorrect to say that the late Saddam Hussein was
democratically elected. You are correct that Putin was. (Hitler is another
example of an elected dictator, although the thuggery of his National
Socialist German Workers [Nazi] Party before the election meant that the
election cannot really be called free and fair.)

"In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless but successful Ba'athist coup
that resulted in Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr becoming Iraq's president and Saddam his
deputy. During al-Bakr’s presidency, Saddam proved himself to be an effective
and progressive politician, albeit a decidedly ruthless one."

. . . .

"In 1979, when al-Bakr attempted to unite Iraq and Syria, in a move that would
have left Saddam effectively powerless, Saddam forced al-Bakr to resign, and
on July 16, 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. Less than a week
later, he called an assembly of the Ba'ath Party. During the meeting, a list
of 68 names was read out loud, and each person on the list was promptly
arrested and removed from the room. Of those 68, all were tried and found
guilty of treason and 22 were sentenced to death. By early August 1979,
hundreds of Saddam's political foes had been executed."

[http://www.biography.com/people/saddam-
hussein-9347918](http://www.biography.com/people/saddam-hussein-9347918)

~~~
iuguy
I was actually referring to this[1], which of course was a complete sham.

[1] -
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2331951.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2331951.stm)

