Internet disrupted in Sudan amid reports of coup attempt | Hacker News Reader

Internet disrupted in Sudan amid reports of coup attempt

netblocks.org

Netblocks is not a reliable source:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netblocks-internet-shutdowns

The Wired did extensive reporting on them and their unethical practices and is worth a read.

Please be extremely careful with their reporting. They don't publish their data and it's a mystery on how they get access to it.

> Netblocks is not a reliable source

The Wired article definitely makes the case that Netblocks is shady and seems to suggest all sorts of malfeseance. But nowhere in there does the article allege that the graphs published by Netblocks are wrong.

The report contains practically no technical data. "Network data show connectivity flatlining at 24%".. 24% of what?

Reachable IPv4 addresses? Traffic volume? Client side HTTP/TLS requests? DNS queries?

Do they take whatever data they get, aggregate everything into one giant field called "connectivity", and evaluate the stability of a connection based on that success rate?

We don't know.

What? Netblocks is a relatively transparent organization and it's absolutely clear how data is collected: Volunteers runs their clients and reports the data back to them. Check out their GitHub organization: https://github.com/ntblk

Also, many people use https://api.webprobe.org/ which reports data too

Please read the article I linked. The GitHub repository doesn't have any of the code that is relevant. For example, the code on api.webprobe is obfuscated and is not open source. For a long time as the article notes, there was no warning before the tests ran and even now, the list of website the web probe scans is not shared anywhere, not even after you run the tests.

Again, please read the article as it covers all this and much more and why Netblocks is a problematic organization in this space. It's a detailed article.

The website on internet censorship/outage went after researcher Colin Anderson and censored him by taking over his domain netblocks.fyi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBlocks

I spent a month driving through Sudan just a few weeks before the coup in early/mid 2019 that finally removed the insane Al-Bashir from power. [1]

I learned a great deal in Sudan - about how the world works (international sanctions causing millions to live cut off from the world economy), how government warnings are more of a political tool than they are an indicator of how safe a visit will be for an ordinary traveller and about how it's often the case that those suffering under the worst dictators are actually the kindest people.

The Sudanese people are by far the friendliest and kindest I have ever met anywhere on the planet, and I hope their incredible spirit can endure this latest round. Also, the landscapes and ruins are simply breathtaking. [2]

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/ethiopia-ends-into-sudan

(Click 'Next Story' at the bottom to read through all my Sudan articles and see my photos)

[2] My landscape photos here: http://theroadchoseme.com/across-sudan

I can recommend “You will die at twenty”, a beautiful Sudanese movie. The one which you don’t watch for plot or story, but for insight into another culture. They don’t have computers or phones in that movie, but although story happens in a poor vilage, they are not hungry, they are not dirty, they are not unhappy. And you do get that feeling from parent comment about people being very friendly and kind.

Sudan has been attacked by the US since the 1970s and many proxy armies and militias were created to split up the country in good old fashioned white master colonial style.

Once the Sudan was split into two, and Obama birthed South Sudan into the world major genocides occurred in South Sudan. That is of course when there was a media (white world media) blackout:

https://democracyinafrica.org/washingtons-inconvenient-genoc...

The white Bill Clinton bombed pharmaceutical factories in black African Sudan to deflect attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair leading to 1000s of blacks dying in the Sudan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...

The first article you sent was chilling - it is important to mention for anyone doubting it's accuracy at I was that it was also published in Le Monde.

Why did you feel it necessary to describe Clinton's skin color but not Obama's?

Well... Sudan's treatment (at least under Bashir) of non-muslim tribes in the south was pretty close to genocide, too. Some of those are still in Sudan rather than South Sudan.

Whoa very interesting, thanks for sharing! And what do you think will be the future for the Sudan now that military has taken the power/nation?

Honestly I have no idea. The general population are incredibly kind and community-minded, but like so much of Africa it seems the 0.001% of horrible megalomaniacs get into power and go absolutely crazy turning countries into their own playgrounds.

I was really shocked when a Brazilian friend of mine was longing for the days of military dictatorship. Why on earth would he support a dictatorship? Because of crazy murder rates and crime. .001% of the population can destroy popular support for Democracy, if the democratic government isn't able to keep them in check.

And you see this pattern everywhere.

* A small number of anti-social homeless can destroy all the public spaces in a city.

* A small number of disruptive students in a class prevents everyone else from getting an education.

* A small number of vandals can destroy beautiful public spaces for everyone.

* A small number of shoplifters can shutdown stores all across a city

etc.

How society protects itself from the tail of anti-social behavior is going to determine in large part how successful the society will be. And unfortunately in the West we are focusing so much on whether the tail is being treated unfairly and how it can be reformed rather than whether the rest of society is being protected from the tail at all.

This type of tail mismanagement is a good way to lose popular support not only for democracy but for many other institutions (e.g. schools, local governments). This is how people turn to private security, vigilante groups, gated communities, private schools, and in general lose a sense of solidarity and social cohesion.

Aren't coups commons in Sudan? Maybe the country with most number of coups is Sudan.

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_coups_in_Sud...

Not really, Bolivia has seen the highest number of coups or attempted coups. Sudan is the country with highest number of coups in Africa.

The US has been organized in over 600 coup d'etats/regime change operations around the world since WWII. A good book on that is Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer:

https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Cha...

A book on the CIA regime change attempts in Angola:

In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story

https://www.amazon.com/Search-Enemies-CIA-Story/dp/039300926...

600 sounds a bit high. That's about one US supported coup/regime change every 6 weeks.

Majority fail. It's like the number of failed attempts at assassinating Castro. You only need one to succeed. Even if it's an exploding cigar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

Do 2 exploding cigars count as 2 coup attempts?

You only need one successful exploding cigar to succeed at overthrowing Castro. The burden of success in thwarting a coup attempt is always on the recipient.

If you pass your saving throw, add +1 to CHAR, as few things are as cool as surviving an exploding cigar!

Tell that to Daffy Duck.

If I had a nickel every time someone posted on a random internet forum id have a lot of nickels

Coups d'état.

> Total and near-total network disruptions, manifesting in a telecommunications blackout for most users, are among the most severe restrictive options available to authorities.

So those in power are blocking Internet to prove that they are the good guys?

At the best of times the internet allows lies to spread quicker than the truth gets its shoes on, we see this is stable western countries. Those lies will often come from external enemies too.

It's no wonder than a country with a tenuous control over a delicate situation would prevent internet access to stop that from spreading. Had the internet existed in WW2, I suspect things would have been very different

Censoring lies is one step closer to censoring truth.

> Had the internet existed in WW2, I suspect things would have been very different.

Yes, the Nazis would have censored the Internet and said they are the good guys trying to prevent a coup.

And the UK would have too, just like they censored the press and controlled the radio

EDIT: I'm not making a judgement about whether it's right or wrong, but it's quite clear that the internet can be used as a weapon, and a government (be that Hitler's, Churchill's, Kennedy's, or Khrushchev's) wanting to control that weapon is understandable.

What I will say is that it seems to me that the damage to the average population that the internet can cause in these situations is far higher than the gain. It's not 1776 any more.

The UK has operated a system for enforcing censorship for a long time. Formerly known as the D-Notice, later DA-Notice and now DSMA-Notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) [1].

The Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee responsible for the system has a website explaining its operations and history [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSMA-Notice

[2] https://www.dsma.uk/

During World War II, we had radio and television broadcast. The fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany brought both under state control.

... but so did every Allied nation, to a greater or lesser degree. The US press worked hand-in-glove with the federal government on message-shaping and propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship

As a general rule of thumb, the state will regulate the media during wartime. That's pretty standard.

First the TV stations, then radio stations, then newspapers. And then the Internet.

I highly suspect French involvement in propping the coup plotters.

Any reason for that suspicion? Better, any evidence?

I see an analogy: Macron has been courting Sudanese military, just like he did with Libya, and Egypy with Sisi.

In both of them, it was revealed French involvement spanned far more than just feeding intel to the renegades: see my other post.

The French government treats Africa like the US treats South America and Russia treats the Caucasus. It is disgusting.

Al Bashir is back, literally.

You have to ask the man on the right https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/french-president-emmanu...

What do you mean, why would there be a link between Macron and Internet in Sudan?

> What do you mean, why would there be a link between Macron and Internet in Sudan?

Macron wants to instate French domination over North Africa using corrupt rouge regimes France props.

He has sponsored Sisi, Hafter, and god knows how many other harebrained regimes in Africa.

French spies were caught red handed providing intelligence to LNA coup plotters in Libya a few years ago, as well as French made weapons fresh from factory lines which was found to be provided to them.

French spyware is subverting democracy in North Africa, paid in part by French taxpayers with blessings from Macron's cabinet: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210622-french-executives-face...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the sort of thing that France has been doing for decades? Is Macron any different?

Sadly you are correct, French policies towards Africa have been stuck in "colonial mode" since forever.

That article does not support your claims.

> corrupt rouge regimes France props.

I don't think France is trying to install more communist regimes in Africa :).

I'd be interested in a source for the weapons story.

And the various sides in the Lybian conflict aren't already supported by Russia and Turkey?

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