#OpSyria: When the Internet does not let citizens down
We wrote a lot about Syria's Internet monitoring and censorship. We saw how the authorities, with the (possibly indirect) support of the BlueCoat manufacturer, spied on a vast majority of their population in order to arrest potential opponents. This notably led to some activists being tortured in order to obtain their Facebook or Gmail credentials, in turns allowing authorities to track down their friends and relatives.
Although it is still evolving and requires continuous attention, this dark situation has already been widely described and criticised, but very little attention has been paid to what could be done to improve people's communications condition. However, there exist people from here and there who have been trying to re-build secured communication channels. The underlying idea - maybe a bit idealistic - being that freedom of expression should be guaranteed for everybody, and that any person should have the ability to collect as many elements as they want in order to make up their mind on any topic. In the Syrian context, this somewhat simple consideration is a critical point for which human lives are at stake.
Once again, individuals gathered under the banner of Telecomix have been trying to provide Syrian citizens with tools to reduce the risk of physical retaliation when expressing their opinion on the Internet. This article tries to give a feedback on what has been done in this direction and how we have proceeded, without...