2011-01-17
Operation Tunisia
Wow. What can I say, but "wow"?
Investigation of how this takedown took place showed that there was in fact another tool in the toolbox, previously unheard of in the history of liberation.
Normally these things follow a fairly unpredictable path that you can't really do anything to help. But in this case, hackers were able to take out Tunisian government websites at a crucial time, in Denial Of Service attacks. Obviously the Tunisians did the hard and brave part of taking to the streets, but thinking your government has fallen because the website is inaccessible apparently gives people confidence that the regime is unstable enough that you are now in with a sporting chance of winning. That's not a conclusion my logical brain would come to based on an annoying DOS attack, but sometimes it seems logic is not a useful trait. Someone once told me "logical people have shorter lifespans because they only look one way down one-way streets when crossing".
Anyway, I'll try to further absorb this new tool. Tunisia is in no way secured yet though. They've still got a single old-regime-related head of state. What they really need at the moment is for the army to appoint some technocrats along the lines of the Iraqi Governing Council. Once again, Iraq provides a model for a working sequence of steps. So many revolutions are squandered otherwise (like Iran 1979).
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Investigation of how this takedown took place showed that there was in fact another tool in the toolbox, previously unheard of in the history of liberation.
Normally these things follow a fairly unpredictable path that you can't really do anything to help. But in this case, hackers were able to take out Tunisian government websites at a crucial time, in Denial Of Service attacks. Obviously the Tunisians did the hard and brave part of taking to the streets, but thinking your government has fallen because the website is inaccessible apparently gives people confidence that the regime is unstable enough that you are now in with a sporting chance of winning. That's not a conclusion my logical brain would come to based on an annoying DOS attack, but sometimes it seems logic is not a useful trait. Someone once told me "logical people have shorter lifespans because they only look one way down one-way streets when crossing".
Anyway, I'll try to further absorb this new tool. Tunisia is in no way secured yet though. They've still got a single old-regime-related head of state. What they really need at the moment is for the army to appoint some technocrats along the lines of the Iraqi Governing Council. Once again, Iraq provides a model for a working sequence of steps. So many revolutions are squandered otherwise (like Iran 1979).
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 09:19 
