1. Government Internet Shutdowns Are Changing. How Should Citizens and Democracies Respond?
- Author:
- Steven Feldstein
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Governments worldwide continue to deploy internet shutdowns and network disruptions to quell mass protests, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, or cut off conflict areas from the outside world. Data from the past few years show that incidences of global shutdowns have remained steadily high: 196 documented incidents in 2018, 213 incidents in 2019, and 155 in 2020. The first five months of 2021 recorded fifty shutdown incidents.1 Government-instigated internet shutdowns largely took place in relation to five event types: mass demonstrations, military operations and coups, elections, communal violence and religious holidays, and school exams. As Clément Voule, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, pointedly observes: “Shutdowns are lasting longer, becoming harder to detect and targeting particular social media and messaging applications and specific localities and communities.”2 Events in Russia have put a finer point on internet shutdown trends. On March 4, 2022, Roskomnadzor, the Russian internet regulator, announced that it would block Facebook and Twitter and would ban new uploads to TikTok.3 On March 14, it added Instagram to the banned list.4 Russian authorities have also restricted access to a slew of news websites, including the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America. Roskomnadzor claimed these measures were enacted in response to new limits imposed by platforms on Russian propaganda outlets—accusing Facebook of “discrimination.”5 The Kremlin’s crackdown is an ominous signal about where the shutdown struggle is headed in authoritarian countries. Despite these bleak trends, there is a growing international consensus—at least among liberal democracies—that protecting internet access is integrally linked to freedoms of expression and association and forms a crucial part of the global democracy and human rights agenda. This paper picks up on this emerging norm and probes several key questions: What can citizens do to evade authoritarian controls and regain internet access? How can democratic governments support these efforts and push back against governments that shut down and block the internet? The short answer is that there is a multitude of responses available to democracies and civil society organizations to push back against internet blackouts and network disruptions. Democracies can exert meaningful pressure against repressive governments to ease internet blocks, and citizens are able to exercise creative options to circumvent internet controls. The paper walks through different tools available to citizens to evade internet controls. It examines where internet shutdown trends are headed and incentives for particular regimes to adopt new modes of censorship. It then presents a multifaceted strategy for democracies, civil society organizations, and technology developers and companies to counter internet shutdowns.
- Topic:
- Government, Science and Technology, Democracy, and Internet
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Global Focus