Jared Cohen - The New Digital Age

mobile-phone service was also suspended: Associated Press (AP), “Vodafone: Egypt Ordered Cell Phone Service Stopped,” Huffington Post, January 28, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/28/vodafone-egypt-service-dropped_n_815493.html.

Vodafone Egypt, issued a statement that morning: “Statements—Vodafone Egypt,” Vodafone, see January 28, 2011, http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/press_statements/statement_on_egypt.html.

fiber-optic cables housed in one building in Cairo: James Glanz and John Markoff, “Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet,” New York Times, February 15, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

through its state-owned company Telecom Egypt, physically cut their service: Ibid.

It was a move unprecedented in recent history: Parmy Olson, “Egypt Goes Dark, Cuts Off Internet and Mobile Networks,” Forbes, January 28, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/01/28/egypt-goes-dark/.

“Hitting one hundred percent of the population”: Vittorio Colao in discussion with the authors, August 2011.

“We might not have liked the request”: Ibid.; see also, “Statements—Vodafone Egypt,” Vodafone, see January 28, 2011–February 3, 2011, http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/press_statements/statement_on_egypt.html.

send out its messages over the companies’ short-message-service (SMS) platform: “Statements—Vodafone Egypt,” Vodafone, see February 3, 2011, http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/press_statements/statement_on_egypt.html; Jonathan Browning, “Vodafone Says It Was Instructed to Send Pro-Mubarak Messages to Customers,” Bloomberg, February 3, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-03/vodafone-ordered-to-send-egyptian-government-messages-update1-.html.

“But at a point it became incredibly political and one-sided”: Vittorio Colao in discussion with the authors, August 2011.

“Vodafone Group PLC”—the parent company—“put out a statement”: Ibid.

French Data Network, opened up Internet access: Jonathan Browning, “Google, Twitter Offer Egyptians Option to Tweet,” Bloomberg, February 1, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-31/egyptians-turn-to-dial-up-service-to-get-around-government-s-web-shutdown.html.

Google launched a tweet-by-phone service: Ujjwal Singh and AbdelKarim Mardini, “Some Weekend Work That Will (Hopefully) Enable More Egyptians to Be Heard,” Google Blog, January 31, 2011, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/some-weekend-work-that-will-hopefully.html.

“We decided that this has to be discussed”: Vittorio Colao in discussion with the authors, August 2011.

Egyptian police’s vice squad would troll chat rooms: In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct, Human Rights Watch (HRW): 2004, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2004/02/29/time-torture.

Cairo vice squad raided a floating nightclub: Ibid.; “Egypt: Egyptian Justice on Trial—The Case of the Cairo 52,” International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, October 15, 2001, http://www.iglhrc.org/cgi-bin/iowa/article/takeaction/partners/692.html.

a Chinese version of the protests: Andrew Jacobs, “Chinese Government Responds to Call for Protests,” New York Times, February 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/world/asia/21china.html?_r=1.

retaliated against a group of women: “Rights Group Decries Flogging Sentence for Female Saudi Driver,” CNN, September 27, 2011, http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-27/middleeast/world_meast_saudi-arabia-flogging_1_flogging-sentence-women2drive-saudi-woman?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST.

As news of her sentence spread: Ibid.; Amnesty International (AI), “Flogging Sentence for Saudi Arabian Woman After Driving ‘Beggars Belief,’ ” press release, September 27, 2011, https://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/flogging-sentence-saudi-arabian-woman-after-driving-%E2%80%9Cbeggars-belief%E2%80%9D-2011-0.

led the government to revoke the decision: “Saudi King Revokes Flogging of Female Driver,” CNN, September 29, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/28/world/meast/saudi-arabia-flogging/index.html.

a decision to ban a satirical short film: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud in discussion with the authors, February 2011; Faisal J. Abbas, “Monopoly: The Saudi Short-Film Which Went a Long Way,” Huffington Post, September 9, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/faisal-abbas/monopoly-the-saudi-shortf_b_969540.html.

The film, Monopoly, appeared on YouTube: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud in discussion with the authors, February 2011. The film appeared on both Facebook and YouTube. The prince discussed the Facebook appearance of the video.

accumulated more than a million views: Ibid.

one of the highest rates of YouTube playbacks: “Saudi Arabia Ranks First in YouTube Views,” Al Arabiya, May 22, 2012, http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/05/22/215774.html; Simon Owens, “Saudi Satire Ignites YouTube’s Massive Growth in Middle East,” U.S. News, May 30, 2012, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/05/30/saudi-satire-ignites-youtubes-massive-growth-in-middle-east.

fastest growing mobile market anywhere: African Mobile Observatory 2011 : Driving Economic and Social Development Through Mobile Services, Groupe Speciale Mobile (GSM), 9, accessed October 17, 2011, http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/africamobileobservatory2011-1.pdf.

“The Internet is good for letting off steam”: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in discussion with the authors, November 2011.

Young people everywhere: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s assertion that young people want to be cool is supported by Tina Rosenberg’s discussion of the need to be cool as a key part of Otpor’s strategy, which it has taught to opposition groups around the world. For examples of the “coolness factor” in Otpor, see Rosenberg, Join the Club , 223–224, 229, 256–58, 260, 276.

“Currygate”: Shamim Adam, “Singapore Curry Protest Heats Up Vote with Facebook Campaign,” Bloomberg, August 19, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/singapore-curry-protest-heats-up-vote.html; “Singaporeans to Launch Largest ‘Protest’ over ‘Currygate’ Incident,” TR Emeritus (blog), August 21, 2011, http://www.tremeritus.com/2011/08/21/singaporeans-to-launch-largest-protest-over-currygate-incident/.

“A Chinese immigrant and a Singaporean of Indian descent quarreled”: Lee Hsien Loong in discussion with the authors, November 2011.

almost a billion Chinese citizens: Michael Kan, International Data Group (IDG) News Service, “China’s Internet Population Reaches 538 Million,” July 19, 2012, PCWorld, http://www.pcworld.com/article/259482/chinas_internet_population_reaches_538_million.html; at the time of writing, China’s population exceeded 1.3 billion, so there were approximately 800 million Chinese citizens left to become connected. We factored in population increase projections over the next decade to estimate almost a billion. According to a 2012 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Eritrea was most censored, followed by North Korea.

“What happens in China is beyond anyone’s full control”: Lee Hsien Loong in discussion with the authors, November 2011.

“The history of revolutions is a confluence”: Henry Kissinger in discussion with the authors, December 2011.

CHAPTER 5

THE FUTURE OF TERRORISM

we’re acutely vulnerable to cyber terrorism: There is some overlap in tactics between cyber terrorism and criminal hacking, but generally the motivations distinguish the two. This is not unlike the distinction that is made between narco-trafficking and terrorism.