(Originally posted pseudonymously on Ultimi Barbarorum, January 28, 2011.)

Today’s lesson: The internet and mobile telephony are not robust technologies when it comes to withstanding state intervention. States can and do pull the plug on them when they sense an existential threat. China turned off the Internet in restless  Xinjiang for 9 months in 2009-2010, and Iran and other countries turn off sms and mobile internet use when it suits them. Today, Egypt’s authorities tried to dampen a popular uprising by shutting down both its Internet and mobile telephony.

This is sobering, but points the way to how such draconian measures can be circumvented by those intent on accessing independent news: By not relying at all on terrestrial infrastructure such as cell towers and Internet cabling, falling back instead on direct satellite communications.

By necessity, this set-up reverts to a broadcast/receiver relationship, with international broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera able to invest in satellite video phones as a back-up in case authorities turn off other means of broadcasting live. The Egyptian people, meanwhile, have ubiquitous access to satellite television — as anyone who’s been to Cairo can attest after just a brief glance across the rooftops:

There is no way to restrict the reception of such broadcasting — there is no way for Mubarak to prevent Egyptians from watching satellite broadcasts of Al Jazeera short of turning off the electricity. This fall-back on satellite reception is not something widely available in all countries. In China, for example, it is cable television that is ubiquitous, a terrestrial mode of communication, that can and is blacked out at will by the Chinese authorities — most recently whenever CNN broadcast news of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize.

While I am sure that much of Egypt’s older cohorts are glued to their televisions tonight, I wonder if turning off the Internet and mobile telephony earlier today didn’t have an effect opposite to what Mubarak’s regime intended: Egypt’s urban youth, suddenly without their main means of diversion or entertainment, had only the streets to go to. For once, there was no Twitter or Facebook or YouTube to distract them. All that was left to do was to go out and vent their rage.