Early yesterday evening internet traffic in and out of Syria suddenly stopped. “Routing on the Internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP),” explained Umbrella Security Labs yesterday. “BGP distributes routing information and makes sure all routers on the internet know how to get to a certain IP address. When an IP range becomes unreachable it will be withdrawn from BGP, this informs routers that the IP range is no longer reachable.” It would appear that this was a political intention, not an internet issue. “It’s akin to someone removing all the street signs into Syria,” said Matthew Prince, the founder of CloudFlare, in the New York Times.
The question is ‘why?’ “The details of the situation in Syria are still unknown,” comments the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), “but we’re deeply concerned that this blackout is a deliberate attempt to silence Syria's online communications and further draw a curtain over grave events currently unfolding on the ground in Syria.”
There will, of course, be accusations and counter-accusations from both the Syrian government and the Syrian rebels, each accusing the other. The same thing occurred last November, with the general conclusion that it was government action. Ironically, however, the rebels rather than government supporters are likely to have the best available internet connections. “A number of activists on the ground in Syria have access to Internet via satellite links,” explains the EFF, “which can connect them to the Internet but carries a high risk for detection, which can be life threatening.”
Meanwhile, Google has reminded people that the Speak2Tweet service is operational. First developed by Google and Twitter engineers in 2011 following a similar Egypt blackout, it allows people to tweet by voice telephone. “Those who still have a phone connection can still use Speak2Tweet by leaving a voicemail” on one of four international phone numbers, announced Google on its G+ account. No internet connection is required. The message has also been posted to Pastebin together with a few suggested hashtags to focus tweets and more detailed instructions on how to use the service.