In light of the ongoing battle of citizens against corrupt and unjust regimes throughout the Arab world (more on Wikipedia), protestors have been increasingly reliant on social media websites to rally their numbers and organize their meets.

Over the past two days, protests have flared up considerably in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain resulting in mass casualties at the hands of government security. We now have reports from friends of NeoSmart Technologies in Tripoli, Libya (stay safe, guys! Please!) that the government has ordered ISPs to block access to most websites. Currently, most websites are unavailable and internet access is, by and large, being blocked.

More importantly perhaps is the fact that the ISPs are actively blocking any attempts to bypass this filtering, with residents in Libya unable to even use the standard filtering bypass tools. We’ve been told that neither OperaTor, HideMyAss, nor HotSpotShield are working. Even standard PPTP VPN connections out of the country are being blocked.

It’s sad to see that fascist dictators can have this sort of control over our everyday freedoms in the online world. We hope that the people will persevere and that sanity will prevent police forces across the Middle East from killing more innocent lives in a desperate bid to stave off the inevitable wave of revolution that is sweeping across the region.

We’ll post updates as we get them.





Update:

While the HotSpot Shield website does not load, the software does in fact work from Libya at the moment. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the other VPN/proxy softwares. As such: a mirror for our Libyan friends: download here.

Update:

We’re now being told internet access has been restored. Seems to have been either a trial run or a failed experiment. Let’s hope for the best.

Update:

Nope. It’s being severely restricted once more.