Internet shutdown as a crackdown strategy

Last week, Iran’s government’s move to block the internet in the country was reported. The blockade began on Friday, November 15, after the government announced the rise in gas prices, which strained economic and social problems in the country and triggered street protests. This is not the first time this has been used as a strategy in Iran, nor in other countries around the world, however, this was the largest blockade in the country, lasting about a week and bringing the connectivity rate to low levels. In today’s artice we will discuss how countries have appropriated the blockade of the internet as a political control strategy and the threats to human and civil rights highlighted in this scenario.

Internet shutdown as a political strategy

In 2016, at a conference in Brussels for human rights on the internet, RigthsCon, a group of interested people, including policy makers, activists, civil society, technicians, among others, developed the concept of internet shutdown. It was understood that this phenomenon is characterized by the voluntary interruption of the internet and electronic media for a specific population or territory, making them inaccessible or inoperable. It can also be marked by the suspension of social networks and generally intends to control the flow of information.

The most recent case of Iran’s network lockout was accentuated on Saturday, November 16, and the country has been left with a 5% connectivity range for a few days, according to independent organization NetBlocks – mapping net freedom. On the 23rd the internet begins to be restored and reaches 64% of connectivity. According to the report on the interruption of the internet in Iran, the disconnections were initially segmented into different geographical areas, followed by an almost total internet block and partial shutdown of telephone services. This is the biggest block in complexity and breadth ever recorded by the NetBlocks Observatory.

Other cases have occurred around the world, especially in places with political instability. In Latin America we have seen the case of Venezuela, where on November 16 the Venezuelan state internet provider banned the use of social networks: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, on a day when street protests were planned. At the time, the services of Google, Youtube and Bing were also suspended for an hour, while Juan Guaidó, leader of the opposition to the government, made a statement via streaming.

These cases are not exclusive; on the contrary, internet shutdown by government authorities has become less and less punctual. According to the report prepared by the international coalition #Keepiton, in 2016 75 blockades were registered, for 2018 the number more than doubled, reaching 196 cases, with a remarkable geographical fact, as 67% of them occurred in India.

Why do they suspend the internet?

Turning off a country’s internet seems a bit extreme, and it is difficult for us citizens who are experiencing a routine strongly tied to the internet and the digital world to imagine what it would be like to live a few days of blackout. According to the survey by Access Now and #Keepiton, it is very rare for governments to recognize responsibility for the measure, and when they do, they generally do so with little precision about the cause of the disruption, with a normalized approach to explain what happened. In general, official justifications are about preventing fake news sharing, misinformation and hate speech, national security, or preventing fraud on national examinations. However, what is observed is that these arguments mask the true motivations that, in most cases, have a political and repressive nature, in situations of political instability, and violence.

Of the 196 cases in 2018, over 80% (91 cases) were officially justified as public safety reasons, 40 of them as national security measures and 33 as a mean for countering the spread of false news and hate speech. However, the report demonstrates that internet blocks are being used for times of crisis, official justifications recurrently hide the real motivation of the internet shutdown, of all the cases 53 of them registered political instability, 45 of them protests and 40 situations of violence.. In this sense, justifications based on containing false news often express action in response to protests, elections, among other public activities.

Internet blocks and the threat to human rights and fundamental freedoms

The internet permeates the way we communicate, organize, act, and ultimately changes the way we position ourselves in the world. The sudden disconnection of the Internet has very strong social, economic and political implications and compromises the fundamental freedoms and guarantees of individuals, such as the right to freedom of expression. Research has shown that this measure is often associated with authoritarian governments, and the intention is often to curtail freedom and to manage a situation of public disorder in undemocratic ways.

The #Keepiton report showed that “when governments turn off the Internet citing ‘public safety’, it is often evident to observers that in reality authorities may fear protests and disrupt Internet access to limit people’s ability to organize and express themselves, whether online or offline. In addition, mandated entities have control over the scope of the blockade and can isolate geographically located populations and territories and may aggravate contexts of vulnerability.

The head of cyber security expert NetFreedom Pioneers, a technology NGO, told The New York Times that the Iranian government’s act disconnected protesters from each other and from the rest of the world and thus “Oppression can then exist in a vacuum, without solidarity or responsibility on the ground”.The director of the Human Rights NGO in Iran (IHR) Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said that this blockade “may indicate the Iranian authorities plans to use even more violence against protesters” and urged the international community to respond. In 2018, at least 33 incidents of violence occurred during the Internet suspension period. In 2014 a article by researcher Anita R. Gohdes on the civil war context in Syria showed that there was a correlation between increased violence and the number of people killed in conflict and the blockade of the internet, which was used as a military tactic to ruin the opponents.

In addition, economic losses are heavily recorded at these times, according to Delloite’s report on economic impacts from network disruption, the damage grows the greater is the degree of connectivity and dependence of a society to the digital sphere. For mature digital ecosystem contexts, the impact is estimated to be $ 26.6 million each day for every 10 million inhabitants. For countries with medium level of internet access, $ 6.6 million and for countries with low degree, $ 0.6 million.

Conclusion

Thinking about blocking the internet as a political strategy for adverse contexts brings up the question of who the internet serves and who governs and operates it. At this point it should be emphasized the importance of ensuring a governance model that is decentralized and that encompass the multiple sectors involved and interested such as the government, civil society, the business and scientific community.

Last week the 14th Internet Governance Forum of 2019 took place in Berlin, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the opening ceremony that focused on the importance of a multi-sectoral internet that values ​​dialogue and is universal without borders. In her speech, she endorses the internet as a public good which should serve the population, not as a tool of censorship and arbitrary blocking.

The internet is a space of public life as it blends with our demands and our social activities, we need to be vigilant and ensure that we have our rights assured, online and offline, and that the internet does not become a control and censorship tool, but which serves citizen activity.