What can an undemocratic government to do to control its people? If tear gas and rubber bullets don't work, take away their Twitter and Facebook access, of course. And if the people still don't fall into line, cut off their Internet and mobile phone access entirely. That's exactly what the Egyptian government did today when confronted with citizenry taking to the streets and demanding regime change. The surprising thing isn't that a corrupt, authoritarian regime would launch this kind of state-sponsored denial of service attack on its own citizens. Nor that it is willing to jeopardize its economy by cutting its businesses off from world markets. No, the thing that surprises me is that the U.S. government has plans for its own Internet Kill Switch.
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