Internet shut down in Lybia

The Libyan government controls the country’s primary internet service provider. Al Jazeera report on Al Jazeera blog that internet services in Libya have been completely halted in what analysts consider an attempt to stifle information about the insurrection. But the blackout will affect even those who are not politically active.  We can see that shutting down the internet is a standard practice in the Middle East and in Africa. Websites blocked are particularly social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Here we can find Google Transparency Report the YouTube trafic: Transparency Report.

TechCrunch shown an internet trafic graph in which we can see the clear shut down. This graph was made by EffectiveMeasure.

EffectiveMeasure CEO Scott Julian said:

“At around 10pm local time, Internet traffic dramatically dropped across the board. Whilst not completely cut off it’s clear it’s a pretty concentrated effort, which in my opinion is unlikely to be the result of a random failure.”

“The profile of the change in traffic is very similar to what we saw in Egypt, and leads one to conclude that this isn’t the result of a group of random, unconnected events. It seems some ISP’s are still up and running, which follows the same pattern as the first shutdown in Egypt.”

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