Social media curbs pose hurdle for U.S.

Egypt's decision to virtually shut down the nation's Internet access Friday marked an escalation in the growing battle between authoritarian governments and tech-savvy protesters, and posed a challenge to the Obama administration's policy of promoting Internet freedom.

Egypt's five main service providers halted Internet access early Friday, and cellphone service was disrupted.

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The government "essentially wiped their country from the global map," James Cowie of Renesys, a New Hampshire-based company that monitors Internet data, said on its Web site.

The move came a day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had urged Egypt not to silence the social media that were being used to organize massive demonstrations. On Friday evening, President Obama said Egypt should "reverse the actions that they've taken to interfere with access to the Internet, to cellphone service and to social networks."

U.S. officials concede that Twitter does not a revolution make. But they acknowledge that such platforms accelerate the formation of protest movements. Social media were used to organize the demonstrations that toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali this month, and to spread word on the Egyptian protests this week.

"From now on, any and all dissent movements will have technology as a core component," said Alec Ross, Clinton's senior adviser for innovation.

The Obama administration has elevated Internet freedom in U.S. diplomacy, with Clinton declaring in a major speech last year that it was "critical" that Internet users "are assured certain basic freedoms." The State Department is planning $30 million in Internet freedom projects worldwide.

The U.S. policy, however, has gotten mixed reviews from bloggers and analysts. Some warn that repressive governments will respond by intensifying their technological assaults on bloggers. Activists also worry that those receiving U.S. assistance could be tagged as Western puppets.

"Having the U.S. and other Western governments as major actors in the Internet freedom field could present a real threat to activists who accept their support," Sami Ben Gharbia, a prominent Tunisian blogger, wrote last fall.

Social media and hand-held communication devices are spreading so quickly that U.S. officials are struggling to keep up. In the past two years, the number of cellphones worldwide grew by about one-fifth, to more than 5 billion.

In Cairo this week, Mohammed Hassan, 20, described how he and his friends broke into cells of four or five and used mobile phones to communicate the presence of police. "We wanted to make sure they didn't stop our protest before it even started," he said.

Internet use in Egypt went from less than 1 percent to 21 percent of the population in the past decade, according to U.N. statistics. Usage is particularly high among the young, educated urban residents who have formed the core of the protests.

But if activists are recognizing the power of communications technology, so are governments.

Cowie said the Egyptian shutdown was far more dramatic than the Tunisian government's recent attacks on Internet sites, or the Iranian government's effort to slow down Internet connectivity during protests in 2009.