Use Skype In Ethiopia And Face 15 Years In Prison
When it comes to making VoIP (Voice Over IP) calls Skype is the main go to application used by people around the world, especially those in countries with repressive regimes.
It is because of its ease of use and difficulty of monitoring that governments like that of Ethiopia are doing whatever they can to make it difficult for their citizens to use things like Skype.
In the case of Ethiopia however the government has gone one step further and made it illegal to use Skype for any reason. This came about after the government closed a loophole that enabled the state run telecommunication company, Ethio Teleco, to prohibit the use of VoIP services, video chatting, social media services, email, and just about any other type of data transfer that allowed their citizens to communicate with the outside world.
Not only that but the law allows the government to inspect any imported telecommunication device and inspect; and ban, any packages coming into the country that don’t have permission from the state.
So what happens to anyone caught using Skype, or any illegal phone service?
They will find themselves spending 15 years in jail.
Also, according to Reporters Without Borders, the government teleco has also installed a system that will block the access to anonymizing services like the Tor Network.
via VentureBeat
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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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