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The Internet's Prague Spring

Update: An editorial has recently popped up on CNN that overlaps with this post.

When Egypt shut down the internet, the blogosphere reacted with surprise and indignation. Why so? Did they think the internet was sacred or untouchable?

Forget about Egypt for a minute and think of the stereotypical cartoon of a revolution in a South American kleptocracy. When the junta finally reaches the tipping point, they send troops to the national radio or TV station and proclaim victory. Then they send troops to the presidential palace where they kill anybody still there. In all likelihood the deposed dictator absconded in a private jet, a few hours earlier, with a suitcase full of gold bars and his beautiful wife, 28 years his junior.

But it isn't just dictatorships. Freedom-praising democracies have controlled radio and television for many decades, in the name of the "people" of course. The most egregious example is the BBC in England. I used to think this was such a contradiction in the English tradition of liberty. Actually, the BBC is to the Information Age what the established Church of England was to the Reformation. There are other examples that contradict the vaunted liberal traditions of the West, such as the speech codes at universities, or movie censorship.

It is so easy for governments to claim temporary emergency powers; then the "temporary" becomes permanent merely by quantitatively easing the definition of "crisis." That is why it is pure hypocrisy for neo-con super-patriots to utter a word of praise about freedom and democracy.

People were living in a fool's paradise if they thought the same patterns weren't going to occur on the internet, just because it's newer. Some day these first few years of the internet will be looked back on as we today look back nostalgically on the Wild West.

But back to the Egyptian internet shutdown: it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the technology used was, not only paid for by American taxpayers, but was purchased from technology companies who make a living on contracts from the American departments of Defense or Homeland Defense.



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