In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has proved canny online. Blackouts have shut down the Internet at various moments in the past two years; according to the United States Institute of Peace, activists believe that the outages are perpetrated by the government to “thwart announcements about the international response to the ongoing conflict, or worse, to install sophisticated filter systems.” The state news agency blamed one blackout, in May, on “a malfunctioning fibre-optic cable,” but it was not lost on many that it was timed near a vote on a U.N. resolution on Syria.
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