Obama leads global efforts for shadow Internet

Many oppressive or dictatorial nations around the world like North Korea limit or severely censor its citizen’s access to the Internet, cell phone network or other telecommunications networks.

The New York Times (NYT) on June 12 revealed the Obama administration’s plan to push for the new age suitcase “nuke” known as the “shadow network.” The U.S. State Department was revealed to have funded millions of dollars in support of establishing telecommunication system that could be established independently from the state infrastructure.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak cut his entire nation’s access to the Internet and cell phone network in his last attempts to maintain control. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have been driving the “Twitter Revolution” around the world in helping rebels organize themselves and gain necessary publicity around the world.

Power to cut access to such a pivotal resource is a key means of media control in nations like North Korea or Afghanistan. In response to such censorship tactics, the NYT suggested that the department spent nearly $50 million in Afghanistan alone to provide a secure telecommunications network that could not be affected by the Taliban.

Some “shadow network” involves broadcasting towers distributed around secure U.S. military bases like the case in Afghanistan, but in other cases like the suitcase network involves the infrastructure as small as a regular suitcase to provide rebels with telecommunications network for the entire region.

Such tactics to provide “shadow network” through portable suitcases that could be smuggled and distributed have been determined to have potential threats like that of the notorious Cold War era suitcase “nukes” in destabilizing oppressive and dictatorial regimes. Rebels can now spread the words of their cause throughout the words through Facebook and Twitter, the Times reported.

Such telecommunications network independent from government control would prevent local governments from tracking the rebels or shutting down the access in hopes of thwarting the rebel movement. In essence, the access to Internet and cell phone would be a beacon of freedom and democracy, it reported.

The department hoped to spread such initiative throughout nations like Iran, Libya or other oppressive nations in hopes of assisting the rising tide of democracy remove decade old regimes from power, according to the paper.

Such program, though in a limited scale, has been working in nations like North Korea where cell phones were buried in Chinese-North Korean border to establish communication between the notoriously secluded Hermit Kingdom and the rest of the world.

It is now a pivotal part of our lives that leads the combat against oppression and tyranny. A cry for help on Facebook or on Twitter will last essentially forever open for the world to see. Internet and cell phones are no longer the blunt tools of communication ­ they are the tip of the spear in the renewed efforts to spread freedom.