In pre-Tiananmen China it was the fax machine. These days, in Cuba, it’s the cell phone and memory sticks.

The New York Times is reporting that despite heavy-handed attempts by the Cuban government to put an air gap between the Internet and its citizens – the better to cripple the crowd – technological disruption is winning again.

The front-page story by James C. McKinley Jr (datelined Havana, itself enough of a rarity in US papers to pique interest) reports that Havana is down to one, very expensive cyber café:

Hidden in a small room in the depths of the Capitol building, the state-owned cafe charges a third of the average Cuban’s monthly salary — about $5 — to use a computer for an hour. The other two former Internet cafes in central Havana have been converted into “postal services” that let Cubans send e-mail messages over a closed network on the island with no links to the Internet.

But, as Dr Malcolm [1] reminded us, “Nature finds a way.”

The Times reports that the president of Cuba’s National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcón, "seemed flummoxed” when students last month pummeled him with questions like why they couldn’t travel abroad, stay at hotels (which provide Internet access to tourists) and use search engines.

The cellphone video of this encounter “spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles,” the Times reports.

Cyber-rebels are exploiting weaknesses in the system to download US TV shows and videos critical of the government and pass them around from memory stick to memory stick. And captures like the Alarcón video get off the island somehow to get an international audience on the BBC and CNN.

Full story here [2].