The Sudan Spring : A Call to Action
Hello World,
I wanted to talk to you about something today that is near and dear to my heart. First of, do you remember something called "The Arab Spring", back in 2011? You know when countries in North Africa started a revolution against their dictators, and many of them were talked about (some still bask in that glory today), well in 2012 a revolt happened in Sudan (and is still happening today), but no one brought any attention to it.
What does this have to do with technology? Everything.
You see the people who were (are) revolting, are the bright young women and men. So what they started doing is report on their own revolt. They would take their cell phones to these peaceful protests and stream them to YouTube. At one point I was in contact with someone there who sent me daily text message of images and reports from there, and I would post them on the Sudan Speaks blog. Then the contact wanted to update it directly from there, then they stopped updating.
The Sudanese government actually has a division with in their Secret Service called the "Cyber Jihadist Unit", its sole purpose is to hack the emails and social media accounts of the activists in Sudan to gather information. That is some Black Hat level stuff, they even go further as to detaining these activists, and that's how they are finding them. One of their techniques is creating fake Facebook account to become "friends" with these activists, so they can find out where they are gathering and arrest them.There is a really good article from DEBANGA about the Cyber Jihadist Unit here if your interested in learning more about it.
There is a PDF from Freedom House called Freedom On The Net 2016 which has statistics about the freedom status (or lack there of ) in Sudan. Dictator Omar Hassan Al-Bashir seems to not under estimate the power of the internet, I mean he created his own Black Hat team find the young activists. He supposedly also has a twitter account, but due to all the fake and parody accounts out there, its trickier to find the real one. But I think it might be @omaralbashir the @PresidentBashir one seems too eager to seem "official" in its description.
So, what can we do about it? Several things.
1* Bring awareness to this situation, why was everyone so happy to talk about Libya, Egypt, and Morocco, but suddenly lose interest or get "Revolution Fatigue" as they called it, when it came to Sudan? So if you can bring awareness.
2* If you have skills, use them. There is a hacktivist group which is an off-shoot of Anonymous called Anonymous Sudan, they have been trying to fight back against the Cyber Jihadist Unite, but they could be at a disadvantage. The government restricts sites and access to the internet to the public, but gives its self full access to it, so those groups can use all the help they can get.
3* Peaceful protest movements like Girifna could use your help. Sat Sentineled Project could use your help. Enough Project could use your help.
4* Remember that what's happening in Sudan is not a revolution, its a REVOLT. And its still happening, it hasn't stopped.
The Sudanese government is actively using technology to suppress the people from the world, so that they can't tell the world what's happening, so I believe that its up to us who have the ability TO speak out, to do so. Dictator Bashir called the protestors of the Civil Disobedience "Keyboard Activists".
Well, I will gladly take that label, lets show him what Keyboard Activists can really do.
Thank for your reading
Your, Keyboard Activist
Ash.
I wanted to talk to you about something today that is near and dear to my heart. First of, do you remember something called "The Arab Spring", back in 2011? You know when countries in North Africa started a revolution against their dictators, and many of them were talked about (some still bask in that glory today), well in 2012 a revolt happened in Sudan (and is still happening today), but no one brought any attention to it.
What does this have to do with technology? Everything.
You see the people who were (are) revolting, are the bright young women and men. So what they started doing is report on their own revolt. They would take their cell phones to these peaceful protests and stream them to YouTube. At one point I was in contact with someone there who sent me daily text message of images and reports from there, and I would post them on the Sudan Speaks blog. Then the contact wanted to update it directly from there, then they stopped updating.
The Sudanese government actually has a division with in their Secret Service called the "Cyber Jihadist Unit", its sole purpose is to hack the emails and social media accounts of the activists in Sudan to gather information. That is some Black Hat level stuff, they even go further as to detaining these activists, and that's how they are finding them. One of their techniques is creating fake Facebook account to become "friends" with these activists, so they can find out where they are gathering and arrest them.There is a really good article from DEBANGA about the Cyber Jihadist Unit here if your interested in learning more about it.
There is a PDF from Freedom House called Freedom On The Net 2016 which has statistics about the freedom status (or lack there of ) in Sudan. Dictator Omar Hassan Al-Bashir seems to not under estimate the power of the internet, I mean he created his own Black Hat team find the young activists. He supposedly also has a twitter account, but due to all the fake and parody accounts out there, its trickier to find the real one. But I think it might be @omaralbashir the @PresidentBashir one seems too eager to seem "official" in its description.
So, what can we do about it? Several things.
1* Bring awareness to this situation, why was everyone so happy to talk about Libya, Egypt, and Morocco, but suddenly lose interest or get "Revolution Fatigue" as they called it, when it came to Sudan? So if you can bring awareness.
2* If you have skills, use them. There is a hacktivist group which is an off-shoot of Anonymous called Anonymous Sudan, they have been trying to fight back against the Cyber Jihadist Unite, but they could be at a disadvantage. The government restricts sites and access to the internet to the public, but gives its self full access to it, so those groups can use all the help they can get.
3* Peaceful protest movements like Girifna could use your help. Sat Sentineled Project could use your help. Enough Project could use your help.
4* Remember that what's happening in Sudan is not a revolution, its a REVOLT. And its still happening, it hasn't stopped.
The Sudanese government is actively using technology to suppress the people from the world, so that they can't tell the world what's happening, so I believe that its up to us who have the ability TO speak out, to do so. Dictator Bashir called the protestors of the Civil Disobedience "Keyboard Activists".
Well, I will gladly take that label, lets show him what Keyboard Activists can really do.
Thank for your reading
Your, Keyboard Activist
Ash.
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