to give it's citizens restricted and controlled social networking access on other wise BLOCKED access to social networks TWITTER and FACEBOOK.
ACCESS NOW states that 78 % of routed networks in Syria went offline on Jan. 6, causing a nationwide outage, at the same time Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave his first televised speech since June.
FROM THINK PROGRESS SECURITY:
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/01/06/1403061/syria-internet-outage-assad-address/?mobile=nc