If you live in Syria, well you might not be able to read this news post. As reported at ZDNet, the Middle Eastern country is suffering from some Internet connection issues. The Syria state media at first reported today that access to the Internet had been cut off by the country"s government. Later the same news agency reported that the Internet was simply "broken" in parts of the country.
Much like other Middle Eastern countries, the Internet in the state of Syria is indeed owned and operated by the government specifically the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment. Only 17.7 percent of all of the people in Syria have any kind of Internet access. Even with these stats, we have seen that when state-run Internet is disrupted it"s usually when the government want to suppress some news. In this case, it appears that Syria is dealing with protests after a video of a 13 year old boy being murdered in late April was uncovered.
It remains to be seen if this new move by the government to shut down Internet access will cause even more protests in that country. Certainly we have seen the Internet, especially access to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, generate what is being called the "Arab Spring" in the Middle East where long running dictatorships in countries like Egypt and Tunisia have been overthrown. The civil war in Libya is also a direct cause of "Arab Spring" along with mass protests in many other Middle Eastern countries including Syria.