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Ten years ago, a desperate Egyptian government, led by then-President Hosni Mubarak, ordered the country’s internet shutdown, a ploy to thwart pro-democracy protests.
The movement turned against him. The nationwide outage, ironically, drew more people outside to find out what was going on. As more and more crowds took to the city’s streets, the so-called Arab Spring uprising gathered momentum, eventually forcing Mubarak to resign. (Nothing else in Egypt and the region amended, sadly.)
Egypt’s extraordinary maneuver, while not unprecedented, has become the most visible example of a political leader flipping the “kill switch” and plunging a population into digital oblivion. The tactic has been taken up zealously – and with much more success –by other repressive regimes sinceSays Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at the Kentic Computer Network Observatory, which has been studying these failures for years.
Government-led Internet shutdowns are worryingly on the rise. These failures have occurred 213 times in 2019, instead of 196 instances in 2018, the latest years for which data is available, by Access Now, a nonprofit group that campaigns against Internet shutdowns. (The group says its report covering 2020 is expected to be released later this month.)
Uganda is one of the recent Internet cutoffs. Last month, the country implemented a five day break on the eve of a hotly contested presidential election. The United States, an important military ally, would be considering censoring the alleged winner, incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, over allegations of violence and electoral fraud.
Uganda’s action is not even the latest example of a blackout. Myanmar pulled the plug in a military coup over the weekend, as Aaron noted in yesterday’s newsletter. The country has a long history of such a chicane– including a incident in 2007 this predates the major disruption of services in Egypt.
The Internet is not pure and simple, of course. Two years ago, Facebook – a company whose services are essentially synonymous with the internet in Myanmar –recognized that he was “not doing enough to prevent his platform” from being abused to contribute to a genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic minority.
But as damaging as the Internet can be when it’s on, it can be more so when it’s down. Since Facebook’s admission, the Myanmar government has taken enveloping its regions torn by conflict in the darkness of disconnection to cover up his atrocities and persecution campaigns. “Every stop is a massive human rights violation,” says Peter Micek, general counsel at Access Now.
Internet shutdowns “hurt ordinary people by depriving us of our basic rights to access information, to connect with family members, and they also endanger our physical security,” says Micek. The COVID-19 pandemic is raising the stakes as blackouts make emergency services and health, safety and travel information inaccessible.
A few weeks ago, as the United States battled its own insurgency, I discussed the nature of coups d’etat and how, in the last century, the usurpers tended to seize the television stations before storming the presidential palaces. The examples of Egypt, Uganda and Myanmar signal an evolution of the playbook of empowerment. Media formats have changed, but the strategy remains the same: restrict the free flow of information.
Tyranny loves emptiness.
Robert hackett
Twitter: @rhhackett
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