News I woke up to this morning. The #ugandadecides hashtag is still quite active, but only because resourceful Ugandans are using VPNs to bypass the blockade. I’m hearing that the restrictions are happening only in Kampala where 7 million people (there are 16 million voters) reside…people on the outskirts seem to have no trouble. If that is true, that is even more worrisome, because it means that the powers that be in UG have rather fine-grained censorship abilities.
This is really disturbing for African Democracy. Other countries may copy same.
Nope. It just means that they have some cash to throw around for a Application Level Firewall which you can pick up from computer village for next to nothing. Unfortunately like everything else African, they are paying the wrong guy to operate the right machinery. If they were really intrested in Censorship, they should have done it China style…
But… but… a government can easily talk to the sole provider of internet connectivity into the country to block at network level. Uganda is landlocked and I am fairly certain none of the undersea cable companies serve it directly.
Actually, we are served by the undersea cables directly via Seacom. And the regulator spoke to the individual ISPs to block. Apparently the network engineers are either not up to snuff cause we can still get through or they are defying the government on some level. I think it’s the latter.
Lol @ defying the government. I’m sure at this point, it’s the least of the government’s worries really. Thanks for the Seacom pointer.
Nah it has to be blocked at application level because at network level it’s all about IP addresses and guys have mastered the art proxies and VPN services. If it’s the sending of specially trained Sharks to eat the undersea cable, then that’s at the physical level…
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