Old Internet Getting You Down? Build Your Own!

The role of social networking in recent rebellions against repressive regimes may have been slightly overstated, but here’s the thing with repressive regimes: they sort of tend to overreact to any perceived threat at the best of times.

Also, repressive regimes watch CNN.

Going on and on about how helpful Twitter was to protesters in Iran or Egypt and even going so far as government requests for Twitter to postpone maintenance so that protesters can use it to communicate was eventually going to clue someone in.

There’s also the small matter of that pesky ideological influence the Internet keeps waving about that makes autocratic regimes nervous.

Honestly, we’re amazed some enterprising despot or theocrat hasn’t thought this one up sooner.

If the old Internet is infested with infidel, imperialist, capitalist propaganda just go ahead and make your own, just like Iran is planning on doing and China, as well as Cuba and, to a limited extent, North Korea have been doing for a while.

You might be thinking something along the lines of “oh, those wacky Iranians, let them have their own Internet, dissidents will just find ways of bypassing government networks like they always do”. That’s going to be rather more difficult, however, if the Iranian plan of completely disconnecting from the old Internet once their new one is up and running goes off. In any of the several Islamic countries that are currently considering joining the scheme.

Which is where the original inventor of the thing comes in, the US, who not only has a special one dedicated to information sharing between law enforcement agencies (which they created especially for security reasons and then handed access of to hundreds of thousands of low-ranking personnel like Bradley Manning, but that’s another story), but is planning on building a few new ones in hotspots of rebellion against repression around the globe.

And they’re not stopping there. Not only is the US State Department putting up $2 million towards financing the development of a so-called “Internet in a suitcase” solution for just such occasions, it’s doing one better.  Government funding to the tune of $50 million is being used to develop an independent cell phone network using protected military cell towers in Afghanistan, as well as “stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya”.

The irony is, of course, that once the technology becomes commonplace or falls into different hands, it can be used to communicate outside the reach of governments in Western countries like the US as well. Not that anyone would ever have reason to, of course. We are, however, looking forward to a renaissance in action movie-making, when every briefcase will contain, instead of bombs, drugs, or money, an Internet or two.

If your living in the US then unless you like a challenge there is no need to build your own internet, have a quick search for internet service providers in my area and our zip code checker will show you what’s available.