As Egypt Censors Internet, Anonymous Starts Attacks

Journalists Reported Beaten on Streets of Egypt as Protests Grow

As the protests across Egypt continue with the hopes of unseating the government of US-backed Hosni Mubarak, an information war mirroring the early days of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution seems to be breaking out.

The Mubarak government has ordered censorship of a number of websites, particularly the social media sites used by the groups to organize protests, and several reports have journalists covering the protests facing savage beatens at the hands of security forces.

And it just wouldn’t be a revolution without the Anonymous group, which announced an “Operation Egypt” which knocked down a number of Egyptian websites, including the cabinet, Interior Minister and the Ministry of Communications, with the same DDoS attacks they have repeatedly done.

Anonymous had likewise knocked down several Tunisian websites early this month, when the government reacted to the first of the protests with attempts at broad censorship. It seems that Egypt is going down the exact same road, complete with the bans on public meetings, but given the nature of such regimes it seems they have few answers for popular unrest except to crack down.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.