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First it was Egypt, at the height of the protest against the Mubarak regime in 2011, authorities shut the Internet down.

This week, it was Syria. Just as rebel forces there were making big gains, someone pulled the plug on the Internet and Syria went dark.

Andrew McLaughlin, who until last year a White House adviser on technology policy, expects we'll see more of this.

"The pattern seems to be that governments that fear mass movements on the street have realized that they might want to be able to shut off all Internet communications in the country, and have started building the infrastructure that enables them to do that," McLaughlin says.

The key to shutting down the Internet is building that infrastructure in such a way that the Internet service is provided by a government company subject to government orders. You could also have the service providers housed in facilities where the government could shut off the power. Technically, it's not hard.

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