The Egyptian's decision to drastically cut off internet access is scary on several levels. But we can identify a more viscerally spooky aspect, observed from outside the shuttered nation, as a lesson in scary storytelling.
First, via IM:
"Just a second ago," he wrote, "about 10 contacts of mine all disappeared off instant messaging in unison. That cannot be a coincidence."
Then social media:
the Twitter streams and Facebook updates from Egyptian journalists, bloggers, and others, which had been overwhelming us since the protests on the 25th, had all suddenly gone quiet.
Then emails:
My colleague at CPJ, Mohamed Abdel Dayem, was the first to mail me....
That was yesterday, January 27, at 5:34 p.m. New York time. A stream of similar emails followed
Then the realization sinks in, via increments of scaled confirmation:
At first, the replies were equally anecdotal: someone with a server in Cairo could no longer access it; attempts to reach prominent Egyptian websites were failing. Finally, Andree Tonk at BGPMon, an Internet routing monitoring organization, provided the first concrete evidence of an Egypt-wide shutdown.
Like the lights going out, a radio program collapsing into static, a tv turned to a dead channel.
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