Syria’s electronic army - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181191530456997.html
Tunisia’s Ben Ali promised a more open internet just one day before he was ousted. In Egypt, Mubarak sought a different strategy, shutting down the majority of the internet for a week in the hopes of disabling activist networks. Syria has taken a different approach to the internet altogether, first unblocking popular social networking sites, then throwing support to pro-regime hackers in the hopes of countering opposition forces online.
As Helmi Noman has documented, the Syrian Electronic Army - a cabal of hackers, acknowledged as a positive force by Assad himself in a June 20 speech - has overtaken certain #Facebook pages, such as those belonging to French and US presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, and the page for ABC News and flooding them with comments like “we love Bashar al-Assad” and “I live in Syria, stop lying, nothing is happening in Syria”.
