Periscope: The Blackouts Are Coming

The Blackouts Are Coming

The Burmese Junta, hardly known for its openness, inked a new chapter in the annals of repression during its crackdown of the Saffron Revolution: it shut down Internet access. All of it. Of course, information control in repressive regimes is nothing new, but this was a quantum leap forward—Burma is the first government to completely disable the Internet nationwide. And though it couldn't silence the smattering of journalists and diplomats who were able to send images via satellite, it handily quieted the monks.

The Burmese technique was disturbingly simple—all they had to do was shut down the country's two Internet service providers. When citizens started circulating digital photographs and videos of the September crackdown, the government ordered the ISPs (which it controls) to cut off every digital pathway into the country.

So, should we expect more such incidents globally? According to John Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor of Internet security, "Small, closed societies with heavy state ownership or control of the ISPs could do this easily." Think of Cuba, Belarus or Bhutan.

But in larger countries, particularly those with market economies, a total blackout is unlikely. For starters, there are many more ISPs not under state control. Secondly, even in countries like Russia, where the government theoretically could strong-arm companies, there is an economic impetus to lay off—after all, the Kremlin doesn't want to cut off homegrown firms from the global economy. Ditto Beijing. But perhaps most fundamentally, anyone with satellite technology (be it a rooftop dish or a phone) could still transmit images, bypassing local ISPs and downloading to outside providers. At least one Burmese blogger in London received images during the crackdown in this way. Given the number of satellite dishes in places like Russia and China, it's unlikely there would be a repeat of the Burmese incident there any time soon.

–Adam B. Kushner

Italian Jobs

The Italian mafia is an old hand at illegal toxic-waste dumping, drug smuggling and kidnapping, but prosecutors now say it's moved into sinister new lines of work providing services to foreign terrorists including Al Qaeda, and trafficking nuclear material. Francesco Basentini, head of anti-mafia police in Potenza, says his investigators have evidence that the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and Calabrian 'Ndrangheta have been dealing in radioactive nuclear waste, some imported from elsewhere in Europe and the United States. And, he says, they've also been dabbling in the "clandestine production of plutonium." While Basentini won't reveal the mob's customers for the nuclear materials, Nicola Gratteri, an anti-mafia prosecutor in Calabria, confirms that Italian mafiosi are increasingly working with foreign terrorists, and investigators have fingered the Naples Camorra mob as a conduit for fake documents and arms for Al Qaeda. Gratteri sees a perverse logic behind the mafia's cooperation with terrorists: to make Italy a valued part of their infrastructure rather a target of their attacks.