

Internet Blocking Begins In Jordan - husam212
http://7iber.com/2013/06/internet-blocking-begins-in-jordan/

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salimmadjd
Jordanians[regime] are worried of spill-over from Syria and now Turkey. This
is compounded by number of Syrian refuge as well as the past Palestanian
refugees, not to mention common regional issues of youth unemployment and lack
of general opportunities. Jordan probably wants to preemptively downplay the
regional uprising lest it motivates internal uprisings.

Additionally, Potential uprising in Jordan will give second thoughts to global
players who have been wanting to arm the Syrian rebels (mainly to block Iran's
retaliation path from Lebanon against an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear
facility, now and in the future). Danger of Jordan falling and turning further
toward an Islamist regime could cause more problem for Israel than Iran's
influence in Lebonan via Syria. If we see uprising in Jordan, we'll soon
forget about Syrian rebels.

~~~
amasad
There has always been internet censorship in Jordan, I don't think this is
particularly motivated by a "potential uprising".

~~~
salimmadjd
Sure...but you want creat the illusion of free press. That said, the third-
world countries are not as suffesticated as western world when it comes to
controlling the media.

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gioele
What saddens me is that this kind of censorship (blocking news sites, making
them adhere to older stricter regulations for paper news, making site owners
responsible for comments, etc) is widespread in Europe as well and people
think this is how things should be.

«Censorship should exist in some form on the Internet: 71% somewhat or
strongly agree; 24% somewhat or strongly disagree; 5% don't know / not
applicable.» <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Censorship>

Poland: "Polish Courts Say Websites Should Be Registered As Press"
<http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/8306>

Italy: <http://censura.bofh.it/>

UK:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/12/dafamation_bill_huma...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/12/dafamation_bill_human_rights_joint_committee_report/)

~~~
lloeki
A month or two ago, my GF attended a lecture where everyone in the room
(except her, who stood aghast in astonishment) agreed that:

\- Twitter is too much freedom of speech and it should be censored.

\- freedom in general is going rampant these days in our societies, and should
be significantly reduced by coercion.

They literally advocated for Thought Police. We're talking about top of the
line students and professors, notably in Law.

I seriously don't know what the world will look like tomorrow, but I don't
like where I see it headed right now (lots of semi-isolated islands of
controlled GroupThink).

BTW, if anyone is versed in French, may I recommend reading "La Zone du
Dehors", a fantastic novel by Alain Damasio (a dystopian novel showcasing a
glimpse of the future, and a spiritual sequel to 1984)

~~~
gridmaths
Anecdotally.. were they afraid of terrorism attacks [ or eg. cybercrime ]?

~~~
andyhmltn
I think that threat is quite small and it shouldn't warrant blocking websites.
However, the media likes to make out that the internet is a breeding ground
for hundreds of thousands of terrorists and hackers, so probably.

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jayfuerstenberg
Censorship = Admission of Fear

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teeja
But... but ... I thought the Internet was supposed to route around damage.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, the Internet has continued to work for me even though whole countries
have implemented large scale filtering.

I'm not in any of those countries, but no-one ever claimed that the Internet
would continue to work in the areas that were damaged.

EDIT: Freedomhouse has an interesting article about the state of Jordanian
Internet censorship in 2011 and 2012.
(<http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012/jordan>)

As an aside: was robustness (routing around damage) ever an aim of the DARPA
project? I hear conflicting things, and it seems to be part of the folklore
now.

~~~
teeja
That's a really good question. The phrase is sometimes called [John] Gilmore's
Law. [http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-
article.h...](http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html)
It has certainly been said many times that DARPA was "researching a
decentralized system that would be robust enough to survive and function even
if most of the network were destroyed".

<http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.shtml>

<http://www.ciec.org/trial/complaint/facts1.html>

But that was in the event of a nuclear attack - presumably a bit more random
than governments with Big Switches. Of course, NO networks, NO re-routing.

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iuguy
If there are Jordanians reading this, could you spend some time testing out
Lahana[1] - both nodes and clients and see whether or not that helps?

[1] - <http://lahana.dreamcats.org/>

~~~
Wingman4l7
I'm sure you mean well, but dogfooding crypto software in this sort of
situation seems like a bad idea.

~~~
iuguy
You're right in that I do mean well and I think you have a very valid point
about dogfooding crypto. I'm aware of (and have tried to point out) the
limitations of the crypto in Lahana but others might not read it and I think I
jumped the gun in that respect. Thanks for making me think twice about it, I
appreciate it.

To Jordanians - I would ask that you try it out, but only on things that
wouldn't get you into trouble - i.e. things that are blocked but perhaps not
contentious. I accept that if Lahana and it's wider goals are successful that
maybe people will suffer for using it but I built this with the goal of
helping people in mind, not hurting them.

------
maeon3
The internet as we know it will one day be used to enslave large groups of
humans where it would be otherwise impossible to do so.

