Spotlight Again Falls on Web Tools and Change
By SCOTT SHANE January 29, 2011
WASHINGTON - Fear is the dictator's traditional tool for keeping the people in check. But by cutting off Egypt's Internet and wireless service late last week in the face of huge street protests, President Hosni Mubarak betrayed his own fear - that Facebook, Twitter, laptops and smartphones could empower his opponents, expose his weakness to the world and topple his regime.
There was reason for Mr. Mubarak to be shaken. By many accounts, the new arsenal of social networking helped accelerate Tunisia's revolution, driving the country's ruler of 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, into ignominious exile and igniting a conflagration that has spread across the Arab world at breathtaking speed. It was an apt symbol that a dissident blogger with thousands of followers on Twitter, Slim Amamou, was catapulted in a matter of days from the interrogation chambers of Mr. Ben Ali's regime to a new government post as minister for youth and sports. It was a marker of the uncertainty in Tunis that he had stepped down from the government by Thursday.
Tunisia's uprising offers the latest encouragement for a comforting notion: that the same Web tools that so many Americans use to keep up with college pals and post passing thoughts have a more noble role as well, as a scourge of despotism. It was just 18 months ago, after all, that the same technologies were hailed as a factor in Iran's Green Revolution, the stirring street protests that followed the disputed presidential election.
But since that revolt collapsed, Iran has become a cautionary tale. The Iranian police eagerly followed the electronic trails left by activists, which assisted them in making thousands of arrests in the crackdown that followed. The government even crowd-sourced its hunt for enemies, posting on the Web the photos of unidentified demonstrators and inviting Iranians to identify them.
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