Here are some truncated snippets:
✓
Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns as a form of control
". . .From Ukraine to Myanmar, government-run internet outages are picking up pace around the world. In 2021, there were 182 shutdowns in 34 countries, according to Access Now, a non-government organisation that tracks connectivity around the world. Countries across Africa and Asia have turned to shutdowns in a bid to control behaviour, while India, largely in the conflict-ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, plunged into digital darkness more times than any other last year.
The increasing use of the kill switch underlines a deepening global trend towards digital authoritarianism, as governments use access to the internet as a weapon against their own people. Internet shutdowns have also become a modern canary in the coalmine.
.jpg)
“The internet going off is well known in many countries to be a sign or a signal that something bad is about to happen,” says Simon Angus, an economist from Monash University whose Monash Internet Observatory tracks global internet connectivity in real time. “That seems to be aligned closely with human rights abuses because it really is a cloak of darkness.”
The shutdowns disconnect emergency workers and hospitals and paralyse financial systems, yet governments are using them with ever more frequency. Figures from Access Now show outages increased globally 15% in 2021, compared with the year before. Such outages cause immense economic damage – an estimated $5.5bn last year – but go largely unnoticed by the outside world, because information flows in and out of the affected countries have been severed.
.jpg)
The UN Human Rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, in June condemned internet shutdowns: “Switching off the internet causes incalculable damage, both in material and human rights terms.”
‘There’s no freedom’
In Ukraine, that cloak of darkness fell one hour before Russia’s invasion in February,
when a massive state-sponsored cyber-attack on a key satellite internet
network knocked tens of thousands of Ukrainian modems offline, while
Sudan severed the internet after its military coup.
Civil unrest in Ethiopia and Kazakhstan has triggered internet
shutdowns as governments try to prevent political mobilisation and stop
news about military suppression from emerging. . .
Impact of shutdowns
Internet shutdowns are not just used by governments facing civil unrest. Every year millions of internet users from Sudan to Syria, Jordan to India also lose internet access during exam season as governments pull the plug in a bid to avoid hi-tech cheating. . . The economic costs – and other less obvious impacts – of shutdowns radiate across industries. Sudanese architect Tagreed Ahdin remembers the difficulties of surviving for a month with no online banking when the new military junta shut down the internet in 2021.. ."
✓ RELATED CONTENT
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment