Blackberries Down Plus News Today

Peoples ability to organize there and communicate. what ben is reporting seems to be another new and concerted effort to not get this story out of the country now. >> reporter: absolutely that seems to be the case. from bens experience his camera getting taken way. were monitoring social media here in egypt and heard from other camera crews they had similar experiences, that they had their tapes taken away, that theyve had their camera equipment taken away or broken, things of that nature. of co...

They would attend. we dont know if all of these people are inside egypt. they were accepting this invitation to attend the protest. the last post on this website was wednesday. let me take to you a twitter page for a user in cairo from last night 14 hours ago all internet is being cut in here. this may be a last tweet. were seeing tweets like this being echoed around twitter. were seeing a lot of people that were very active in the last few days. they quieted down since last night. let me take t...

Gather and protest because social media over there and the internet has played such a key role in getting people out on the streets they are concerned about that. thats one of the reasons this is trying to be blocked right now. >> all right. we appreciate you. great respect for people to understand whats happening. well continue to check in with you throughout the morning. thanks so much. up next on "american morning" former be south african president nelson mandela going home from the hospita...

Awkward truce with the police. very interesting developments but were definitely seeing it ramping up today. they will told us it would but were definitely seeing that happen throughout the country. we talk about cairo, the capital city but this is happening throughout the country. >> we talk about the internet service being shutdown. now its gone beyond that. if you will. i believe we are back to the picture of state run nile tv. its trying to shut down the internet or twitter or facebook. we a...

Set up there by the police force. clearly trying to keep these protesters from getting into something. well get more details of that four. these protests are passionate. you can even call some of them angry. but not necessarily overly violent. there have been clashes and some violence we can fwtell you abou. some protesters throwing rocks. police responding in kind with tear gas. were bringing these pictures and we bring them as we get them. sometimes we get them on the signal. again, its been a...

Alert, cell phone, blackberries down plus internet. this message is relayed by land line. what ben did used a very none traditional means to get this out on twitter. he called the national desk. he got his message out that way. others are trying relay their messages in these nontraditional means through social media. >> people will remember what we saw in iran a couple of summers ago, iran shut down essentially the press there. we couldnt get information out to the rest of the world. what they a...

Protests at all costs they have the orders to stop this from getting out to international audiences because otherwise they wouldnt attack you? >> they have been given the green light from somebody in the egyptian government to make coverage as difficult as possible. in addition to the violence that they are so liberally using, theres no cell phone service, theres no internet, you cant send an sms. its a total crackdown. >> reporter: thanks, ben. for the moment things already kicking off in the e...

This person said all internet is being cut in here. this may be the last tweet. that was about 15 hours ago. nothing more from him since then. a lot of the other twitter users in cairo same thing. let me take you to twitter trend out of cairo, egypt. these are topics trending out of cairo. we see there are words like cairo, we see mubarak, we see dictator. a lot of people who have been able to use social media or twitter in the last several hours only through alternate ways. one way is through a...

About how social media is playing a role in organizing these protests. we go live to the scene. mohamed, good morning to you. you were tasked this morning with keeping an eye on the updates from social immediate area on twitter, on facebook coming out of egypt. it was striking to talk to you this morning. theres not a whole lot you can report and theres a reason for that. >> reporter: thats right. social media has played such an integral role in getting protesters out into the street and demonst...

The country is on verge of revoluti revolution. we have a civil rights outreach director for islamic congress. joining me life from washington. youve been monitoring things in egypt. youve seen the amount of information coming out of there go down. how long before youre not able to get much of anything out of egypt. >> reporter: yes. thank you. short of pulling down the electricity, shutting down the internet and turning off the cell phones, mubarak will not deny the world the ability to know th...