Are Government Shutdowns of the Internet Becoming The World's New Normal? (cnn.com) 111
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
CNN reports that government shutdowns of the internet are becoming the new normal:
An ongoing internet blackout in Indian-controlled Kashmir is now the longest ever in a democracy -- at more than 135 days -- according to Access Now, an advocacy group that tracks internet freedom. Only the autocratic governments of China and junta-era Myanmar have cut off access for longer... Kashmiris have been without internet access for so long that WhatsApp has reportedly begun deleting their accounts for inaction... India's increased internet censorship has been greeted with delight in China, however, where state-run media pointed to it as an endorsement of Beijing's own authoritarian approach. The People's Daily said this week that India's example showed "shutting down the internet in a state of emergency should be standard practice for sovereign countries...."
African states have also embraced the tactic, with Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Ethiopia all cutting off internet access in an attempt to rein in anti-government protests. This is in line with a general pattern of increased online censorship. It's partly due to the spread of more sophisticated technology that makes it easier, and cheaper, to monitor and filter traffic online. It's also influenced by a shifting perception of internet censorship, which once used to be seen as something of a losing battle. China's Great Firewall, however, has proved beyond doubt that not only can the internet be controlled, but that doing so can help prop up the regime and prevent opposition movements from getting off the ground...
Shutdowns give police a freer hand to reign in unrest without the type of hyper-scrutiny on social media that has become common in highly-connected societies, and enable the government to ensure that its message is the only one heard on a particular topic. In 2018, there were 196 internet shutdowns globally -- mainly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East -- according to Access Now. In the first half of this year alone, there were 128, and 2019 looks to be the worst year on record. According to Freedom House, a Washington-based NGO, almost half of the world's population lives in a country "where authorities disconnected internet or mobile networks, often for political reasons."
African states have also embraced the tactic, with Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Ethiopia all cutting off internet access in an attempt to rein in anti-government protests. This is in line with a general pattern of increased online censorship. It's partly due to the spread of more sophisticated technology that makes it easier, and cheaper, to monitor and filter traffic online. It's also influenced by a shifting perception of internet censorship, which once used to be seen as something of a losing battle. China's Great Firewall, however, has proved beyond doubt that not only can the internet be controlled, but that doing so can help prop up the regime and prevent opposition movements from getting off the ground...
Shutdowns give police a freer hand to reign in unrest without the type of hyper-scrutiny on social media that has become common in highly-connected societies, and enable the government to ensure that its message is the only one heard on a particular topic. In 2018, there were 196 internet shutdowns globally -- mainly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East -- according to Access Now. In the first half of this year alone, there were 128, and 2019 looks to be the worst year on record. According to Freedom House, a Washington-based NGO, almost half of the world's population lives in a country "where authorities disconnected internet or mobile networks, often for political reasons."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Shithole detector. (Score:2)
At least said countries only affect their local people. Still far better than other shithole countries that delete/censor content which affects us globally. USA included.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Also, these pot smoking editors wouldn't know a democracy if one came up and offered them a referendum ballot.
Neither does the voting public.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering what happeed in Britain where we had 4 elections centered around a single issue (with the intention that each election was held in order to give the people gthe chance to vote the way our lords and "betters" wanted us to vote) that ended with the last one giving them a big fat finger .... the people know a lot better than the chattering media and political classes like to think we do.
Re:Shithole detector. (Score:5, Insightful)
As depressing as some of the inane uses of the internet are, all you need to know about its potential for good is that authoritarian governments despise it.
The free flow of information is the enemy of controlling one's citizens. This is especially evident in Western democracies; where outfight restrictions are difficult, there is a constant attempt to camouflage kernels of truth within maximum noise.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Shithole detector. (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is not to sensor it. People with half a brain are not going to believe it. The problem is so many fucking millennials have had such a shitty education that they lack ALL critical thinking. Look at the shit they watch on youtube. No wonder these dumbasses believe everything on the internet. Zero critical thinking is abundant. They write in broken English, they are not required to write essays in school, they cannot read cursive; Hell most of them do not know how to write a business letter or address an envelope. We have watered down our literacy to the extent we are now considering censorship to compensate for hiring shitty educators who still insist they are underpaid. Throwing money at the problem obviously did not fix the problem. No Child Left Behind caused this fuckup of epic proportions. These idiots are ripe for any and all types of marketing scams (including political/hate marketing).
Re: Shithole detector. (Score:3, Insightful)
"People with half a brain are not going to believe it."
Sadly, history doesn't support this proposition. Propaganda works, and it's been used since forever.
Re: (Score:2)
buit it doesn't - it works on a few morons (and that includes the politicians and their activists) but the people do tend to work out quite well what is being pushed at them. They may not be in any position to do anything about it, but the silent majority don't believe half of what they're told to believe. This applies today just as much as it used to in Soviet countries that used propaganda as part of daily life.
Re: Shithole detector. (Score:4, Insightful)
Propaganda works very well, especially with people who think they're immune. Examples include perhaps the most successfully propagandized people in history, the Americans or any religious group.
Success in propaganda results in people believing their believes are reality.
Re: (Score:2)
it works on a few moron
The problem is when you get a nation like the United States, where some votes count much more than others, those "few morons" can make a big difference. This was key to Russia's influence on the election - They only had to sway a small number of people to sway the election.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you might be one of them who have succumbed to the propaganda that "it was the russians" and not ordinary Americans who just made their own minds up.
Re: (Score:2)
Good analysis here, if you're actually interested in a discussion -
https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]
After reviewing the debate transcripts, scrutinizing press coverage, and eliminating other possibilities, Jamies
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Teach critical thinking. Teach how to learn.
I was taught critical thinking. I am now applying to the idea that humanism pushed for about 50 years, that every person can be taught to think logically. Considering the history of humanity, I'm really beginning to wonder if this is not just some fantasy we're clinging to, despite evidence to the contrary. I'm including myself in that list of people as well, I'm also susceptible to propaganda.
Re: (Score:2)
Sensor it?? I really hope you meant "censor it", because putting sensors all over the web would be...bad.
Re: (Score:2)
The goal amongst government and corporations has changed. They do not want to censor the whole internet just 'YOU'. Targeting the individual and censor them, via every element of the internet. Controlling what they can see and what communications are made to disappear. Twitter is leading the way in that kind of total control over how you as an individual, are targeted and monitored and any internet interactions controlled, censored incoming and outgoing, no matter the device you touch. They need the AI that
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is so many fucking millennials have had such a shitty education that they lack ALL critical thinking. Look at the shit they watch on youtube. No wonder these dumbasses believe everything on the internet
if you think it's only the scary millennials that are getting scammed on the Internet because they lack critical thinking, you are missing out on a big part of the news
Re: (Score:2)
As a thought exercise, should the Flat Earth Society be prevented from speaking?
Obviously false/fake news.
Re: (Score:2)
No, of course not. Comedy should never be silenced :)
Now, the better thought experiment for you - should a nazi party be prevented from speaking?
(the answer is no, if you ban them they will still speak to their idiot followers, if you let them speak as much as everyone else, everyone will see what fools they are).
Re: (Score:2)
(the answer is no, if you ban them they will still speak to their idiot followers, if you let them speak as much as everyone else, everyone will see what fools they are).
Sure worked well the first time...
Re: (Score:2)
History shows a good number of people will consider genocide (which I assume you meant by NAZI) to be a noble goal and support it.
Re: (Score:2)
few of them think that's what it is at the time though. even Nazi germany thought they were just deporting jews. If you went back to then, you'd probably find the language used not too different to what is being said by the left in many countries today - including the UK's Labour party.
Its only once they get power do they turn into the genocidal maniacs, and the best defence against that is not to try and shut them up, as you should know they will be the ones pretending they're the good guys and shutting do
Re:Shithole detector. (Score:5, Insightful)
Propaganda, fake news, and similar things that have enough deliberate false information to convey an overall false message cannot be protected, otherwise you will end up with 95% propaganda and 5% real speech and debate.
Propaganda, fake news, and similar things MUST be protected, because the alternative is worse. Any tools that can selectively suppress it can - and WILL - also be used to selectively suppress truth inconvenient to the rulers. The choice is not between a junk-laden open forum and a junk-free open forum. The choice is between a junk-laden open forum and a state-run propaganda machine.
It's much like the "fruit of the poisoned tree" principle in law, letting the guilty go if the police and prosecution didn't follow the rules. The choice is between a few retail-level thieves and murderers being released to prey again and a totalitarian police state. The latter is far worse.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
all legitimate speech should be protected
Who gets to decide what is "legitimate"?
Propaganda, fake news, and similar things
Who gets to decide what is "propaganda" and "fake"? Or "similar"?
This is probably the root problem of our time
Absolute bullcrap. You live in a very protected bubble if you think the root problem in the world is too much freedom and not enough censorship.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Shithole detector. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't mind shutting both Nazis and people who preach for the extermination of the white race. If not shutting down, then at least stop funding them from tax money.
Re: (Score:1)
That's what they said in Germany, until everyone believed it was the right thing, and ended up killing millions of Europeans & Asians. The same seems to be happening against the Middle East lately too. So.. yea, sticks and stones ?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer to live in a country with state sponsored healthcare than in a country with internet. Admittedly, I hope I'll never have to make this choice, but I'm trying to put things in proportion.
Make it a human right. (Score:3, Funny)
Time to change your government (Score:1)
Sometimes governments need to be aired out too.
I think we see that happening right now in some places. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen.
Re: (Score:1)
I think we see that happening right now in some places. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen.
What, Iran, etc?
Nay.
Keep your eyes on Virginia. Yes, Virginia.
California may not be too far behind Virginia.
Early Internet optimism (Score:2)
Dear Elin: new routes for around (Score:2)
The problem is that for the "and routes around it" part to work, that would require more than one single (and easily shut down) route to exist.
That's the case in developed countries with more or less democratish forms if government like most of the western world. But that's a bit more complicated in developing countries with dictatorships.
So:
Dear Mister Musk,
that would be the perfect time to chime in with that sattelite-to-settelite version of your Starlink constellation, and lower the price of the corresp
Re: (Score:2)
Dear Mister Musk, that would be the perfect time to chime in with that sattelite-to-settelite version of your Starlink constellation, and lower the price of the corresponding "pizza box" antennas. These could come pretty handy to route around censorship, if some dictator decides to cut the only network link availabe.
Hopefully Mister Musk doesn't want to do any business in China.
Fax machines in Soviet downfall (Score:3)
Maybe most people don't recall that the fax machine was credited with enabling the organized resistance to the Soviet union
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe most people don't recall that the fax machine was credited with enabling the organized resistance to the Soviet union
Also the briefcase full of unlabelled, advanced (for the time) modems that the guy with the Japanese accent, who only showed up once and didn't give a name, gifted to a meeting of a hacker club, which the members distributed to people running store-and-forward BBSes. The KGB didn't have the tech to tap or man-in-the-middle them and with Gorbachev's glasnost prescriptions in place they
Yes, and country intranets ... (Score:2)
... will abound.
Nationalism is amplified by national security and countries are closing the borders on the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., opting instead for homegrown replacements along with legislation requiring citizens to reject unpatriotic solutions (see ZTE, Huawei).
Hacking from the outside and payments to the insiders of American tech companies for IP, along with poaching of top US grads are aiding countries to DIY, decreasing the leverage of a data breach by permission.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not new in any historical sense. Nations and civilizations have previously censored what products, art, literature, and ideas are permitted from outside their borders. This is merely a new form of censorship to accompany these new forms of communication. Previous censorship includes the press, the telephone, the telegraph, and even books.
News from the North (Score:3)
Re:News from the North (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: News from the North (Score:2)
Clearly not (MAGA!!)
Re: (Score:3)
That's not American constitutional design. The design principle is government inevitably goes into the weeds and tyrant kings reappear, so do not authorize government the power to begin with.
There should be no "emergency internet kill switch" in the US for just that reason. It's the "emergency" powers the tyrants were given in ancient Rome and Greece.
And they never gave them up.
See also Russia, Turkey, Venezuela for post-Founding Fathers examples.
Language barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
It's genuinely interesting that most people seem to forget that language is the primary barrier for interborder internet interactions. It's pointless for an average Chinese citizen to have global internet. There's not much if anything on it he could use, and there's a plethora of services he can use in China. Because he doesn't speak any other languages.
Same applies to Indians, French, Americans and so on. There isn't anything useful for an average UK citizen on Chinese internet. You don't need some kind of a sophisticated firewall. Language barrier is more than sufficient.
What these barriers are intended to work against is communications among the select few in most of the world that are actually multilingual and can have useful interactions with internet services that exist in other countries, as well as to block foreign services offered in domestic languages that do not meet local security demands. Most people tend to also forget that WhatsApp is a service, and you're not interacting with your friends when you use it, you're interacting with WhatsApp, which is also interacting with your friend.
And that is why increasing divisions due to realities of multiculturalism's utter failure in so many places (Xinjiang and Kashmir come to mind as major examples) lead to controls on free internet availability. Services that connect people are of inherent usefulness to separatists, and separatism is a natural outcome of failure of multiculturalism. CCP doesn't care if you use Chinese services. What they care about is their citizens already on the brink of rebellion using services to connect with others abroad and at home and organising into effective force against established order. And in many of those cultures, pre-emption via tyrannical means is a social norm, rather than an anathema that it is to much of the Western cultures.
In essence, the problem isn't internet, or even technical. It's cultural and political. "Reduce most interstate interactions" need has always been in effect for overwhelming majority of people on the planet via language barriers. This is about reducing effect of foreign companies who do not fully toe the line of the rulers on domestic ability to organise.
Re: (Score:3)
Language barrier is more than sufficient... has always been in effect for overwhelming majority of people on the planet via language barriers...
As long as translation services like Google Translate are available, this isn't an unconquerable barrier anymore.
the problem isn't internet, or even technical. It's cultural and political.
The last time I checked the worldwide internet still ran on 0s and 1s. The only reasons to block any internet connection from crossing human-made borders is human-made FUDl. Ev
Re: (Score:2)
Google translate is utterly useless for anything other than very cursory understanding of what it is you're actually looking it. It's utterly useless for interpersonal communication for example.
In my experience the only people who think google translate is of significant use to comprehend things like foreign sites or meaningful interpersonal communication beyond "where's the toilet" never actually tried to use it for that purpose. And most certainly didn't try to use it for any languages that belong in diff
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
>Granted that most of the people I interact with speak English
Honesty will get you everywhere.
>both times for much more complex topics than "where's the toilet"
It's not the topic. It's the content. Complex topics with simple content are easy. Complex content is hard.
Most discussion topics for normal people are simple. It's the content of the discussion that is hard. "Where do I have to go to do this thing" is an easy topic. Explaining the context for it on both ends on the other hand is what breaks au
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think that language is as much of a barrier as you think. One professor of psycholinguistics has estimated that more than half the Earth's population is bilingual. [psychologytoday.com] Even for those who are not bilingual, there are translation apps that are already quite good and are steadily improving.and becoming more ubiquitous.
Re: (Score:2)
His definition of "bilingual" supports my claim fully:
>more than half of the world's population uses two or more languages (or dialects) in everyday life
>How can one explain such large numbers of bilinguals? One reason is simply that many countries house numerous languages: 722 in Indonesia, 445 in India, 207 in Australia and so on. Contact between communities means learning other languages or, at the very least, acquiring a common language of communication and hence being bilingual.
Most of such langu
Re: (Score:1)
No, most people are not as absurdly unilingual as Americans. Widen your horizons a bit. Canadian Anglophones get taught some French in school. In Eastern Europe, Russian can be used to make yourself known. If you are schooled in India, you'll be taught English and Hindi, plus there's also whatever language is common in your state.
Yes, there are a few countries that are something of linguistic outliers. Hungary and Iceland come immediately to mind. And of course the countries of the African continent, which
Re: (Score:2)
How much are your French speaking anglophones are going to do on Russian internet? Chinese? Polish? Japanese? Indonesian? Brazilian?
The list is far longer than the parts of internet that are accessible. And if you think google translate is useful here, you never actually had to use it to communicate.
Language barriers are between countries (Score:2)
They all speak English (Score:2)
Certainly most Indians.
Most Europeans.
Most South Americans (I think, have not been there).
And most Educated Chinese. Maybe only a small proportion of the population, but influential.
And the free Chinese websites outside of China have real information in them.
Re: They all speak English (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Most South Americans have little to no grasp of English and trend is downwards, with young people having weaker control of English than middle aged and older people. They're still far ahead of everyone else on your list, but that's not because they're good at English. It's because everyone else you mention is utterly awful. Most estimates hang around 20% of people somewhat proficient in English, and trend is downward.
Most Indians do not speak a lick of English, and English speakers are at best around 10% of
Re: (Score:2)
Video of a one man standing in the path of a column of tanks... needs no translation.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. They're taught English for Gaokao. It's one of the subjects which is taught "for the test" with no actual proficiency in the language ever tested.
Which is why basically no one outside people interacting with English speaking foreigners and a tiny handful of globetrotting children of the very wealthy speak English. And notably, out of those rich kids, many have certificates, but don't actually have any meaningful control of the language because certificates are simply bought to study abroad. A problem t
Re: (Score:2)
You appear to think that knowing two or three languages somehow helps you understand them all. I'm trilingual myself (full fluency) with limited comprehension of two more languages.
Most of the world's internet is utterly impenetrable to me. I can't do anything with all of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian, Indonesian, Polish, French, Spanish etc internet.
We need a real Internet (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How do you think data will be transmitted to out-of-reach places?
How would a smartphone in California talk to a web server in New York, for example?
How about a computer in Canada asking for a web page on a server in Japan?
This is not simply "a software problem".
Re: (Score:2)
TOR (Score:2)
You do realize this is how and why TOR was invented. Not so you could swap kiddie porn or buy fentanyl. OpenWRT + WDS + TOR would allow a darkweb bulletin board and apps to communicate during a âshutdownâ(TM).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: TOR (Score:2)
I think you should look at WDS. You can create your own meshed wireless network even if they pull the plug. They would have to kill power and jam frequencies to kill it.
TOR was designed explicitly to setup a private network in an oppressive country. It doesnt require the internet to do this, it just has more coverage if it does. It was designed by a US Navy Captain. Believe me, the only thing people need to be working on are the apps and getting ahold of a bunch of lastGen samsung android phones they can si
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly. This is what Mesh networks are all about. But given the ubiquity of the Internet, only the paranoid will bother to figure out how it works and try it out. I'm a lifelong geek, and I don't have a clue.
The advent of inexpensive SBCs is a great opportunity to explore this. Where's good info?
Re: (Score:1)
You have intranet - not internet! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
By definition if you can disconnect your country - you do not have internet you have intranet.
By definition, if you have no hosts off-planet - you do not have internet you have intranet
I appreciate your sentiment, but you're quite arbitrarily defining the "country" as the organizational scope. That's not only not a settled definition, it's not one that the original creators of the Internet would have agreed with. The first incarnation of the Internet included only a handful of US universities, for example.
Social Media Internet (Score:2)
Shutting down the Internet completely includes e-commerce, e-mail, traditional news media, etc. The bread and butter Internet is economically important and politically relatively innocuous. Social media (Facebook, messaging, etc.) are much more worrisome and dynamic and subject to all kinds of abuse.
I might be open to shutting down social media -- in the weeks before an election, for example. We have seen tremendous abuse, both foreign and domestic.
Shutting down SM in case of civil strife is a harder cas
Re: (Score:2)
The government shutting down social media would be censorship and infringement of free speech of the citizens. that's wrong.
how is it... (Score:1)
sensational news (Score:2)
Just another form of censorship (Score:2)
March of technology (Score:2)
UUCP Mailnet and Netnews still work. (Score:2)
UUCP does store-and-forward message passing over dialup OR fake-dialup-over-TCP, with periodic conection and trying a list of connection methods to a next-hop target until one works. Email, file transfer, flooding-protocol bulletingboards, remote procedure execution (from a target-server-defined list of applications),
I note that UUCP Mailnet is still up and running (or was the last time I checked - a couple months ago).
If you use at-ist addressing it will still try to drop the mail into the nearest Interne
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Great news for geeks, but not helpful for the kind of person that puts on a mask and riots in the streets. Better write clear instructions on how to do this and get them printed on the backs of cereal boxes, or something,
Step 1: Recruit a local geek.
Setting up uucp and its clients is involved - and varied - enough that it's not amenable to being turned into a crib sheet for NON-geeks.
You also want the comm arrangements varied, not standardized: Doing them each the same way gives the authorities signatures
Utter Bullshit! (Score:1)
They are not "Shutting down the Internet". The Internet is composed of thousands if not millions of independently operated networks all "Inter" connected. Thus you have the name Internet (there are many internets -- any two or more independent networks "intering" with each other are an internet -- the Big I Internet is just a large agglomeration of networks that have decided to "Inter" in a specific way such that there is only one Internet which "inters" in that manner).
Just because some network operator
Re: (Score:1)
Um (Score:2)
So far we're talking third world, and dictatorships.
This is ... not unexpected. So far it's dog bites man, not man bites dog.
(Granted, there are some Western people who want to censor the internet to suppress views that they don't like. So far they've had to work through collusion with big social media providers, domain name registrars, and so forth.)
Internet from space (Score:2)
When the current low orbit internet satellites initiatives start to provide fast and ubiquitous internet connection, would these be subject to shutdowns by governments too? What if the companies refuse to comply to a internet shutdown, will it be considered a sovereignty attack? If so, it'll be a just matter of time for these satellites begin to be destroyed by authoritarian governments... would that be considered an act of war or a sovereignty defense? After all, space belongs to a country?
Re: (Score:2)
Who gives a flying fuck about the internet. I think this discussion is about the Internet (note the capital I because it is a proper noun).
To answer your questions in order:
1. Yes.
2. The refuseniks will be rounded up and (shot, detained, tortured) until compliance is achieved.
3. Abaiting up a nuisance.
4. No.
US & EU event based regional net shutdowns (Score:1)
The Gentleman Hacker: Episode 1 - Internet Shutdowns [mict-international.org]
Shine
Nothing new here (Score:1)
Key step for dictatorships, authoritarian governments, revolutions, or invasions is physically control the media. Before the internet, seizing and holding television stations, radio stations, telephone exchanges and newspapers was a first day objective, The next objective was replacing uncooperative staff with regime supporters, Once that was done, go after and seize privately held tools like ham radios, printing presses, and typewriters. At the extreme end: control the supply of paper and writing instrume