As the Libyan uprising continues, reports last week indicated that Gadaffi has removed any links to Libya on the Internet. According to reports, Net monitoring and security firms reported that no net traffic was entering or leaving Libyan net space.

The BBC says that during the early days of the rebellion in Libya, net access was restricted but in early March net traffic started to pick up in areas no longer under the control of Gaddafi’s government. This for me is another futile attempt by a desperate dictator. Restricting Internet access only adds fuel to the fire. Gadaffi obviously realises the power of the Internet and that controlling access is in itself a powerful war tactic because you are able to restrict the free flow information. But then what he doesn’t know is that there are always ways to get around the restrictions, he only has to ask his friend Hosni.

Speaking to the BBC last week, Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro, said the approach to cutting net links was different to that taken by Egypt. He said while all routers reported that lines to Libya were live, any traffic sent was not reaching its destination and was probably being “blackholed”, said Ferguson.

Attempts to trace the routes that traffic could take into the country ended a hop short of official Libyan net space. “This meant that not only was Libya cut off from the net, but those inside the country would not be able to send messages or browse sites either.” Ferguson said.

Libyans have been primarily using YouTube to post videos of the violence in that country and now that their access to the Internet has been somewhat curtailed there is a danger that their stories will go untold. One only hopes that some geek out there finds a quick solution to the Libyan Net problem.