Pirate Radio: The Cyber Edition

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by Zoe Pollock

Spencer Ackerman reports on how the US could have deployed mobile connectivity in Egypt:

When Hosni Mubarak shut down Egypt’s internet and cellphone communications, it seemed that all U.S. officials could do was ask him politely to change his mind. But the American military does have a second set of options, if it ever wants to force connectivity on a country against its ruler’s wishes.

There’s just one wrinkle. “It could be considered an act of war,” says John Arquilla, a leading military futurist.

The U.S. military has no shortage of devices many of them classified that could restore connectivity to a restive populace cut off from the outside world by its rulers.

(Photo: Egyptians take pictures with their cellphones of a burning police station set ablaze by rioters near the Sultan Hassan al-Rifai mosque in central Cairo on January 28, 2011. By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images.)

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan