Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Internet users around the world are working on projects to help Egyptians bypass the government shutdown of Internet and cellular communications. You don't need to necessarily be a networking whiz or engineer to help, such as setting up an anonymized Tor server. Some of the projects on our radar:
#openmesh Egypt - Engineers brainstorming how to bring a mesh network to Egypt via the site forums and Twitter, using the hashtag #openmesh.
How to set up a Tor relay - Tor is a system that provides anonymized Internet access. According to ReadWriteWeb, use of Tor in Egypt has skyrocketed. You can donate bandwidth as a Tor relay using just about any operating system.
Wiki of resources, IRC chat rooms, and alternate communications platforms, such as ham radio.
Further reading:
How the Internet went out in Egypt (ZDNet)
Egypt Shut Down Its Net With a Series of Phone Calls (Wired Threat Level)
Tunisia, Egypt, Miami: The Importance of Internet Choke Points (The Atlantic)
How to foil a nationwide Internet shutdown (Lifehacker)
Alex Howard's Twitter feed is full of news about efforts to get Egyptians online
Douglas Rushkoff's The Next Net, which argues that we need to build a new Internet outside of government and corporate control
If you know about other projects, please share in the comments.
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This is supposedly also a way to do it, but I have no idea if it's legit or not. If anyone has any info on this, please let me know!
Here's a list of resources and related news from P2P Foundation:
http://www.delicious.com/mbauwens/P2P-Egypt+P2P-Infrastructure
Google has launched a "speak to tweet" service that allows Egyptians to call an international number and post a tweet by leaving a voicemail: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/some-weekend-work-that-will-hopef...
20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments' Internet Block, by Anonymous: http://pastebin.com/9jJUku77
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Anyone is free to implement this idea.
http://www.ideationizing.com/2009/07/intelligent-epidemic-routing.html