user: U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

Volunteers have built a wireless Internet around Jalalabad, Afghanistan, from off-the-shelf electronics and ordinary materials. More Photos »

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.

The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

In one of the most ambitious efforts, United States officials say, the State Department and Pentagon have spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will.

The effort has picked up momentum since the government of President Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet in the last days of his rule. In recent days, the Syrian government also temporarily disabled much of that country’s Internet, which had helped protesters mobilize.

The Obama administration’s initiative is in one sense a new front in a longstanding diplomatic push to defend free speech and nurture democracy. For decades, the United States has sent radio broadcasts into autocratic countries through Voice of America and other means. More recently, Washington has supported the development of software that preserves the anonymity of users in places like China, and training for citizens who want to pass information along the government-owned Internet without getting caught.

But the latest initiative depends on creating entirely separate pathways for communication. It has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler.

Sometimes the State Department is simply taking advantage of enterprising dissidents who have found ways to get around government censorship. American diplomats are meeting with operatives who have been burying Chinese cellphones in the hills near the border with North Korea, where they can be dug up and used to make furtive calls, according to interviews and the diplomatic cables.

The new initiatives have found a champion in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose department is spearheading the American effort. “We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Mrs. Clinton said in an e-mail response to a query on the topic. “There is a historic opportunity to effect positive change, change America supports,” she said. “So we’re focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world.”

Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Andrew W. Lehren from New York, and Alissa J. Rubin and Sangar Rahimi from Kabul, Afghanistan.

summary: The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy âshadowâ Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments.


McCain Abandons His Efforts to Win Michigan

The McCain campaign’s withdrawal will free the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, to redirect some of his resources from Michigan to several states that President Bush won in 2004 but where recent polls show Mr. Obama gaining ground, including Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

The McCain campaign still projected optimism in a conference call with reporters, as senior campaign officials argued that they were confident that the electoral map presented them with numerous paths to victory in November.

Mike DuHaime, the McCain campaign’s political director, said the campaign would send some of its Michigan workers and resources to other states that voted for Democrats in 2004 but that they hope to win in November.

He mentioned Pennsylvania, a state rich in electoral votes where Mr. Obama fared poorly in the Democratic primary; Wisconsin, which the Democrats have won narrowly in the last two presidential elections; and Maine, which divides its electoral votes.

And although the McCain campaign’s decision to accept public financing means that it faces spending limits that the Obama campaign does not face, there were indications that the campaign continues to be in strong shape on the money front. The campaign announced that the Republican National Committee, which can augment the $84 million in public money that the campaign had to spend on itself, raised nearly $66 million in September — well above what Republicans had initially said they hoped to raise.

Greg Strimple, a senior McCain campaign adviser, held open the possibility that the R.N.C. might continue to run some advertisements in Michigan to keep the state in play. “If we see a swing back in our favor, we will re-engage,” he said in the conference call.

The McCain campaign made the announcement as Mr. Obama campaigned in Michigan.

The Obama campaign reacted cautiously. “We’ll believe it when we see it,” said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, who noted that the McCain campaign could still return to the state, or that independent expenditure groups might step in to try to fill the vacuum. “We’re not going to take their word for it. We’re going to fight for every vote.”

But Mr. Plouffe said that if the McCain campaign really does withdraw from the state, it will make it more important for Mr. McCain to win all the states that President Bush carried in 2004, including some where they have seen an erosion of support in some recent polls. “It just makes their path more narrow,” he said.

Mr. McCain’s struggles in Michigan were clear at the campaign stop at a factory in Belleville in July, where he found himself peppered with questions about his support for free trade by workers who believe it has cost the state jobs.

His campaign officials made it clear that they intend to open an aggressive new campaign highlighting what they described as Mr. Obama’s liberal record.

Here in Denver, Mr. McCain was asked at a town-hall-style meeting when he intended to take the gloves off. “How about Tuesday night?” Mr. McCain responded, in a nod to his next scheduled debate with Mr. Obama.

Adam Nagourney and Michael Luo contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: McCain Abandons His Efforts to Win Michigan. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

summary:

assistant: The withdrawal is the latest sign that the faltering economy has reshaped the presidential race and cost John McCain support in crucial states.