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Two fiber optic cables that connect Middle Eastern countries to India were cut, leading to disruptions for many internet users in Egypt and India.
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The Egyptian government cut off Egypt's connections to the rest of the internet.
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A team of computer scientists at the University of Michigan had recently built ZMap, a tool that allowed them to scan every computer on the internet in less than an hour.
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In most Western countries, the internet is a free-speech zone where ordinary people can express themselves without fear of censorship. But that's not true everywhere. This map from Freedom House details which countries respect freedom of speech and which countries flout it.
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The social media sites Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are frequent targets for censorious governments. This map from Mother Jones shows which countries restrict their users from accessing these sites.
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The southern parts of Syria receive internet access from undersea fiber optic cables, but Aleppo accesses the internet via a land connection to Turkey. It's not clear if the outage was due to accidental damage from fighting in the area, or whether the regime of Bashar al-Assad had deliberately disrupted rebel-held Aleppo's internet access.