The Internet is apparently available again in Egypt after the country cut access to the Web for a week amid mass unrest.
| Wonder if Mubarek is doing this to draw the various dissidents out, so that he can whack them, or whether someone inside the government wants to finish the job of driving Hosni out of town. |
After a long stretch of inactivity, RIPE NCC, which tracks Web traffic, recorded a sudden lurch in Egyptian Internet use starting just after 11 a.m. Thursday in Cairo. A similar tracking organization, Renesys Group, wrote in a blog post that access was restored to websites such as the Egyptian Stock Exchange, Commercial International Bank of Egypt and the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
The group also said that Facebook and Twitter were back up inside the country, adding that "no traffic blocks are in place Â… no funny business. For now."
Twitter was quickly awash in messages from Egypt after it was restored. Some of the messages asked for donations and medical supplies at hospitals.
Meanwhile, the international group of activist hackers known as Anonymous spent the day trying to bring down Egyptian government websites. The group, which recently attacked the websites of companies it considered opponents of WikiLeaks, targeted the Egyptian Ministry of Information's portal as well as the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's site. |