http://www.komonews.com/news/tech/Internet-a-crucial-Venezuela-battleground--246610101.html
The current wave of anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela, the fiercest unrest since President Hugo Chavez died last March, began in early February in San Cristobal, home to four universities.
Soldiers patrol the streets at night as police fire tear gas to break up protests.
The battle is being fought as vigorously online as in the streets.
Venezuela's information war escalated last week as the government blocked images on Twitter after violence in Caracas claimed three lives amid protests over woes including rampant inflation, food shortages and one of the world's highest murder rates.
Since protests accelerated last week, activists have posted YouTube videos of riot police and National Guard breaking up demonstrations.
State-run telecoms company, CANTV, blocked access to the push-to-talk "walkie-talkie" app for smartphones and computers called Zello that has been a hugely popular organizing tool for protesters from Egypt to Ukraine. The app, for both the iOS and Android operating systems, supports up to 600 users on a single channel.
Net-savvy activists also reported a serious nationwide degradation Thursday in Internet service provided by CANTV, which handles about 90 percent of the country's traffic.
Venezuelans who want to reach certain sites are increasingly using proxy services, which have long been employed by people in China and Iran to circumvent government censors.
Nearly half of Venezuela's population relies on the Internet as their sole information source (the rest on government-controlled media). Thus cutting off Internet is not smart political strategy, said international director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Danny O'Brien.
"I think the important lesson people should learn from these Internet blackouts is that they just throw fuel on the flames of civil unrest."
Hacktivists have been attacking government websites from abroad, rendering many unreachable with denial-of-service attacks, or data-packet floods.
No comments:
Post a Comment