Thursday, August 14, 2014

The NSA Took Down Syria's Internet for Two Days?

By now I think most Americans know who Edward Snowden is. His most recent revelation about the NSA actually had me laughing when I first heard it (I can see what he said as plausible and it's kind of hilarious.)



In 2012, Syria's internet went down for two days. Syria's president blamed "terrorists." Others blamed the Syrian government. 92% of the internet providers in the country went down. Snowden is claiming that what actually happened was that the NSA accidentally shut down Syria's internet while attempting to infiltrate it.

This article in The Guardian states "The unit allegedly attempted to install an exploit in the hardware of Syria’s main internet service provider that would have provided NSA with mass access to internet usage, communications and patterns in Syria, where a civil war was developing into an Islamist insurgency, destabilizing the Middle East."

Apparently the NSA covered it's tracks pretty well, because we're just finding out about this now. Everyone in Syria was blaming the government, the terrorists, or a botched router update from the country's largest internet provider. No one accused the NSA. Well played NSA. I feel like there should be a meme with that Dos Equis guy:


So there you go. I went and made a meme for it. I can't think of much else to talk about today, so I hope this story made you chuckle. Now I'm starting to wonder what will happen when the hacker group Anonymous messes up...

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