Syria Vanishes from the Internet…Again

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Once again, internet traffic to and from Syria – a country ravaged by a two-year long civil war – has again come to a halt today – reports Internet monitoring company Renesy. So far, the data does not confirm a cause for the outage but there is speculation of different possible reasons behind Syria’s digital disappearance.

This is not the first time there has been a shut down of “all internet connections” inside the country. According to CNN, the internet in Syria was shut off for two days in late 2012. Just last week, Syria digital footprint vanished for more than 19 hours between May 7 and May 8.

One possible explanation for the outage could be that authorities ordered the Internet to be shut down, reports PC world. One way to do this could be done is by shutting off electricity to a critical switching facility, something that happened in Egypt last year. Authorities could have also shut down access administratively to the internet by “logging into routers and switching them off”.

In a blog post, Jim Cowie, CTO and co-founder of Renesy, speculated that the Syria’s internet disruption might be related to an expected United Nations General Assembly vote today to approve a resolution calling for a political transition in Syria and condemning President Bashar Assad’s regime for its brutal crack down and its use of “heavy weapons”.

Check out the live stream of U.N discussions below: