Narus, Vodaphone, Freedom, Egypt & Internet Censorship

Vodaphone of the UK and Narus owned by Boeing were instrumental in the shutting down of the Egyptian internet.
It is ironic that a British and American companies, which are based in the two best known democratic countries, would be instrumental in the repression of free speech.

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According to a Democracy Now story, these two cyber security companies were involved in the shutdown of the Egyptian internet.  The company that used "deep packet inspection" to track dissidents in Egypt was Narus.  Vodaphone was the main company that shut down the cell phone service in Egypt.

Even in the United States, there will be mass expenditures on Deep Packet Inspection or DPI technology.  Market Research Media published a diagram of where the $7.2 billion dollars will go.

expenditures 2010-15 via Market Research

If you cannot see the embedded video here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/5uulz5r.

How The Internet Was Shutdown in Egypt

click to enlarge via: Renesys

An MSNC article explained how the Egyptian government shutdown their Internet.  MSNBC interviewed Professor David Clark from MIT, who stated that depending on how much control a government has over that country's ISPs, would determine the most efficient method of cutting the country off.  In Egypt's case, the government owns Telecom Egypt to which all ISPs have to submit for licensing.  Renesys, a IT website tracked the turning on of the 5 different ISPs that serve Egypt.  Here is a moving animation of how the Internet went off done by Renesys.  If you cannot see the embedded video here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/6kb74f9.


The way that the ISPs shut down seemed to point to the idea that there was no kill switch which would instantly shut down all the ISPs.  They went down in an order which would indicate notification by telephone to each of the ISPs to close.  The last ISP to close was the Noor Group, which remained open to supply some government agencies and the Egyptian stock exchange to communicate with the outside world.

Similar technology was used by Iran in the suppression of dissent on the Internet.  This is a video presented by Democracy Now on deep packet inspection.  If you cannot see the embedded video here is the link: http://youtu.be/ecPrPDQdK34.

Here are some more videos covering the issue of deep packet inspection in a technical and political sense.  If you cannot see the embedded video here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/5ssuztu.


If you wish to see the issue of deep packet inspection described in great detail in a congressional hearing, we include a C-SPAN video which does so.  If you cannot see the embedded video here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/4uzc3ne.

We will cover this issue further in future articles