By Michael Calderone michael Calderone – Thu Jan 27, 12:47 pm ET
Egyptian security forces have cracked down brutally on protesters since Tuesday, with more than 1,000 detained and six dead. But the government appears to be disrupting more than street demonstrations.
Over the past 48 hours, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have been intermittently blocked as Egyptians rise up against Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime, which has ruled the country for nearly three decades. The power of social media—for both disseminating news and organizing protests in an authoritarian country—first drew significant attention during the 2009 protests of Iran's disputed election. More recently, Tunisian protesters utilized social media during the successful ouster of a corrupt president.
So as the Tunisian revolt spreads to Egypt (and Yemen), it's understandable that the government would want to disrupt any tools that could possibly be used to challenge state power. But despite some disruptions, the Internet has proven vital in making images and videos of the protests available to the world.
Twitter confirmed Tuesday night that the micro-blogging platform was being blocked in Egypt. And there were similar reports of Facebook being blocked, according to Herdict, a Harvard University project that tracks web accessibility through crowdsourcing. (The situation remains fluid, and some users report the social media platforms working again Thursday morning, in parts of the country.)
But even as Twitter's service is spotty (or nonexistent) in Egypt, users around the world have been able to keep tabs on the latest news from the country by following the the hashtag #jan25. In addition to on-the-ground reports, Twitter users have also linked to YouTube clips from the demonstrations that capture a perspective that few major media correspondents would be likely to get.
A YouTube clip from Tuesday, showing a protester standing in the path of a mounted water cannon, is already being described as Egypt's Tiananmen Square moment, a reference to the lone protester who faced off against Chinese tanks in 1989. You can watch the encounter below:
Meanwhile, many Egyptian bloggers have found ways around Internet restrictions to continue posting reports and videos of what's happening on the streets. The New York Times' Lede blog rounded up several videos from this week's protests, including a chilling video of security forces chasing protesters Wednesday night in Cairo. See below:
Social media sites, when accessible, have been especially crucial in the Egypt crisis since a number of independent Egyptian newspapers have seen their websites shut down. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned these instances of media repression on Wednesday.
Still, some journalists have found ways around the media crackdown and produced compelling reports.The Guardian's Jack Shenker, one of several reporters beaten this week by Egyptian security services, managed to produce an audio recording while he was trapped with dozens of protesters in the back of a truck en route to an unknown destination. Listen to Shenker's incredible recording here. (Note: includes profanity)
(Photo of Egyptian anti-riot police confronting activists outside a journalists syndicate in downtown Cairo, Egypt on Jan. 26, 2011: (AP /Ben Curtis)
Egyptian Bloggers Report on New Unrest
By ROBERT MACKEYVideo of Egyptian security forces uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday night by a blogger who said that it was shot above Talaat Harb, a street in Cairo, at 9 p.m. local time.
As my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Mona El-Naggar report, “In front of Cairo’s press and lawyers’ syndicate buildings, more than 100 people shouted slogans, outnumbered by a force of security officers.”
From outside the press syndicate, an Egyptian blogger who writes as Sandmonkey posted text accounts on Twitter and photographs on Yfrog.
Sandmonkey/Yfrog Egyptian protesters and riot police outside the press syndicate in Cairo on Wednesday.
Sandmonkey/Yfrog Protesters are seen breaking through police barriers in Cairo on Wednesday.Another Egyptian blogger, Mostafa Mourad, posted a link on his Twitter feed to an Associated Press photograph of a man he identified as a senior figure in the journalists’ syndicate being dragged away by the authorities.
Sandmonkey also posted a link to photographs that appeared to show a large police presence on a street near Egypt’s high court and tear gas being used against protesters.
Later in the day, a video blogger uploaded several clips to YouTube which appeared to show protests outside the lawyers’ syndicate and tear gas being used against protesters near the city’s high court on Wednesday:
(It is difficult to verify when this video was shot, but if any reader has more information about these clips, please contact us by writing in the comment thread below.)
Later on Wednesday, this video of clashes on the streets of Cairo, posted online by the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, appeared to show some of the same scene near the high court:
This clip, also uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday, comes with a title that says it was shot at the Tahrir bus station in Cairo:
(A reader named Tim later contacted us to say that he shot this video of clashes “beneath the 6 of October Bridge around 4 p.m. yesterday.”)
Video uploaded to a YouTube channel called MrPeopleNews — which features dozens of clips of the far larger protests on Tuesday — shows what the video blogger describes as protesters on Abd al-Khaliq, a Cairo street, on Wednesday:
Later on Wednesday, Sandmonkey reported on Twitter that the authorities were slowly letting demonstrators out of a confined space outside the press syndicate (perhaps using the British police tactic known as “kettling”) and he intended to make his way to Tahrir Square, the site of the largest protest on Tuesday.
On Wednesday evening, an Egyptian-American blogger and activist, Gigi Ibrahim — who had used her phone to post several eyewitness photographs of Tuesday’s protests online — texted this report to Twitter:
Tahrir square has unbelievable amount of security I am worried to take out my phone to take a picture I would get arrested.Ms. Ibrahim later uploaded this photograph of protesters at another location, outside the lawyers’ syndicate:
Standing in Tahrir Square, though, the blogger had good reason to fear a violent reaction from Egypt’s security forces. Minutes earlier, she reported “beating and shootings on Ramses street” as police officers tried to enforce the ban on protests.
The night before, police had used tear gas and beatings to clear Tahrir (Liberation) Square of thousands of demonstrators, as seen in a YouTube clip and a video report from Egypt’s English-language Daily News shot late on Tuesday:
As Egyptian bloggers struggle with Internet restrictions, some video clips of Tuesday’s demonstrations outside Cairo continue to be posted online. Thanks to the reader who drew our attention to this video, said to show a march through the streets of Alexandria on Tuesday:
Another reader pointed to this clip, apparently showing security forces in Alexandria on Wednesday:
This clip is said to show protesters on the streets of Suez late on Tuesday night:
This video appears to have been filmed outide the morgue in Suez, where protesters, including relatives of a man reportedly killed by the police, attempted to retrieve his body. Reuters, citing medical sources, reported that the man, Gharib Abdelaziz Abdellatif, “died of internal bleeding after police shot him in the stomach on Wednesday.”
On Wednesday morning, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the Egyptian government had planned ahead of time to disrupt the Internet communications of its opponents:
Egyptian security authorities on Tuesday carried out a pre-planned block of Twitter, a social networking website, to impede wide-scale anti-regime protests across the country on 25 January, sources say.Late on Tuesday, Twitter posted a message on an official feed confirming that the service had been blocked from reaching at least some users in Egypt. The company wrote:
A Facebook invitation earlier this month called for major protests during Egypt’s Police Day over rising prices, unemployment and reform, under the slogan “Day of Anger.”
Twitter users said they were unable to access their personal pages until Wednesday morning.
We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications.Twitter also posted a link to a Web site that showed reports from Egypt documenting and complaining about the disruption to the service, which seemed to indicate that the problem continued for some users on Wednesday.
Re Egypt block: We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people.
The Egyptian newspaper also reported:
Months ago, Al-Masry Al-Youm published the details of a meeting between security officials, [the government's National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority] and internet providers to lay down plans to block those websites which activists use extensively to coordinate their efforts.
Participants at the meeting also discussed ways to make page failures appear unintentional. These plans, however, were not implemented before the 25 January protests.
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