Well this is interesting from a civil/corporate disobedience viewpoint, and an interesting way of looking at flash mobbing a place/product/service to see what the upward limits are. Fake Steve Jobs has proposed that IPhone users try to bring the AT&T 3G network to its knees and is asking everyone who has an IPhone to launch a data intensive application for 1 hour starting Noon Pacific Standard Time, 3PM Eastern on Friday.
All of this centers around AT&T wanting to educate users on what is and what is not a Megabyte of data, or that heavy users of the unlimited plan should pay more money to use the data plan that they purchased for their IPhone. All of this centers on the idea that Ralph De La Vega says that customers are responsible for the bad service they get on the AT&T Network. I am absolutely positive that Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are going to watch and see what happens on Friday and how well AT&T responds to “operation chokehold”.
It has been a long time since there has been an act of any disobedience about much of anything lately. Tea Baggers (snicker) aside (I it hard to say Tea baggers with a straight face, I know it is a sexual euphemism, but they don’t seem to get that), Glenn Beck aside, and the occasional football riot when was the last time there was a public coordinated act of civil disobedience against a company? While Fake Steve Jobs is running a very dangerous game by calling for this, (I can see the lawsuit forming already if the AT&T network crashes), it is good to see that at least there is some spunk in the old blood again. The bad part about Americans is that we just don’t know how to riot well. Check out France or Britain, check out the Parliament in Taiwan, these people know how to get down, dirty and bloody. Americans, not so much.
All eyes are going to be on the AT&T Network on Friday at Noon Seattle time, 3PM Easter. The question is how many people will actually participate, and what is the ability of the AT&T network to survive this kind of Denial of Service? I know AT&T has a very good security suite on the TCP/IP backbone, the question is did they put this on their cell network, and can they deal with it like any other DDOS attack? I wish I worked at AT&T, at least on Friday the 18th of December 2009.
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- Operation Chokehold will blow up AT&T on Friday (crunchgear.com)
(Cross-posted @ TechWag)
I agree about the ineptitude and audacity of the AT&T executive to blame customers is beyond ludicrous and offensive as an AT&T customer. He should get off stage or be asked by the board to be successful elsewhere with such a mindset. I am struggling with your own comments however and bringing such a tasteless and offensive word in an otherwise successful blog about the AT&T situation. I don’t see much difference between you two. Call me a prude, but when pulling together to bring about change I agree with, I am not going to be lead by one who is equally offensive.