New_Scientist_3_08_2019

20 | New Scientist | 3 August 2019

Internet blackouts

Estimates suggest the number of

internet shutdowns around the world

is on the rise. There have been 115

already in 2019

75

2016 2017 2018

108

196

SOURCE: ACCESSNOW.ORG

IN EARLY June, protesters

took to the streets of Sudan’s

capital, Khartoum, to demand a

civilian-led government. Shortly

afterwards, Sudan’s ruling military

junta turned off the internet.

This isn’t an isolated incident.

There have been more than 100

internet shutdowns around the

world this year already. Not a

month has gone by without one in

effect somewhere. And the tactic

seems to be growing in frequency.

Governments usually claim

the measure is taken to prevent

people from using social media

to coordinate violent protests

or riots. But growing evidence

suggests that shutdowns aren’t

effective for this and also have

other negative effects.

There are essentially two ways

to cut off the internet. The first

is a routing disruption, which

disconnects an entire network,

as used recently in Mauritania.

The second is packet filtering,

which blocks requests to access

certain websites – for example,

any address containing the word

“Facebook”. These selective

shutdowns are used to seal off

certain services, as happened in

Chad in 2018, after the president

recommended reforms that would

enable him to stay in power until

2033. Blocked platforms included
      Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp,
      which were only reinstated a few
      weeks ago after 16 months.
      Both these types of shutdowns
      involve internet service providers
      (ISPs) taking orders from a
      government. For this reason,
      they mostly occur in parts of
      Africa and Asia where government
      transparency is low.
      The first major episode came
      in 2011, when the Egyptian
      government cut off the internet
      and mobile networks for five
      days during the Arab Spring. But
      it wasn’t until 2016 that some

African governments began to

implement shutdowns regularly,

beginning when the Republic

of the Congo blocked all

telecommunications for a week

during its presidential election,

says Julie Owono at Internet

Without Borders in France. “It’s

even countries which have never

had censorship issues, like Benin

in West Africa,” she says.

Globally, there have been

115 shutdowns so far this year,

says Melody Patry at digital rights

advocacy group Access Now. The

organisation has been monitoring

shutdowns for several years. By its

count, there were 196 in 2018, up

from 75 in 2016 (see graph, right).

To understand shutdowns and

their impact, researchers need to

be able to detect and track them,

but this isn’t easy. Sometimes, all

it takes to turn off the internet is

a phone call, “so there is no paper

trail”, says Jan Rydzak at Stanford

University in California.

A routing disruption can be

spotted as a local drop in web

traffic. But detecting packet

filtering is more difficult, and

requires active probing, for

example sending information to a

network and seeing what happens.

Rydzak has studied India, which

has had more local shutdowns

than anywhere else in the world:

134 in 2018. The reasons for many

of these haven’t been explained,

but those that are officially

acknowledged are usually said to

be necessary for stifling violent

collective action, says Rydzak.

However, his research suggests

that blocking access to the

internet and social media seems

to achieve the opposite. Analysing

22,891 protests in India between

2016 and 2017, Rydzak found that

local internet shutdowns tended

to be associated with an escalation

of riots and protests. “Riots

disproportionately increased

in number in conditions of an

information vacuum,” he says.

Rydzak thinks this is because

shutdowns can push people

towards violent tactics that rely

less on coordination.

“Rumours don’t stop when

the internet is being cut off and

actually that can escalate conflicts

even further,” says Patry.

While many shutdowns

coincide with civil unrest, they are

also increasingly occurring during

elections. Both Patry and Owono

say they have noticed a recent rise

in officials saying that shutdowns

had been implemented as a way to

stop the spread of misinformation.

It is certainly true that hate

speech and fake news can circulate

on social media. Last year, a spate

of lynchings in India, for example,

was reportedly fuelled by false

rumours spread via WhatsApp.

Protests in Sudan against

the military junta led to it

switching off the internet

Internet restrictions

MOHAMED KHIDIR/XINHUA/EYEVINE

News Insight

The lowdown on shutdowns

Governments are increasingly cutting off the internet, saying this will

curb violence. It mostly does the opposite, reports Donna Lu