In the past month we’ve seen two countries try to “turn off” the Internet. On January 27, in Egypt, which had previously known few restrictions on Internet access (though, to be sure, intimidation of bloggers and activists was common), nearly all ISPs stopped delivering bits to their subscribers, even though data transiting Egypt from the outside world kept flowing normally. One Egyptian ISP, Noor, stayed up for a few days amidst speculation that it had been spared because major banks and the Egyptian stock exchange were subscribers; subsequently it went down, too. Internet access was then restored before the Mubarak government fell. In Libya, irregular nationwide outages lasting anywhere from a few minutes to seven hours have been occurring since the February 19.