When the Web Goes Dark: State Control & the Internet
3:58PM Mar 9, +0000
Speakers:
Vivian Schiller
Adrian Shahbaz
Sophie Schmidt
Shayna Bauchner
Felicia Anthonio
Keywords:
shutdowns
internet
government
people
myanmar
adrian
felicia
access
vpn
country
places
world
sophie
question
internet access
human rights
technology
disinformation
happening
panel
welcome to our program. My name is Vivian Schiller and I'm the executive director of Aspen digital. We are a program at the Aspen Institute that focuses on all things at the intersection of media, the internet and technology. We are so glad that you're joining us today. year the international human rights organization Freedom House puts out an annual report on global internet freedom. The most recent data from Freedom House confirms what many of us in tech and media have been observing that internet access not only continues to decline as it has for the last 10 years, but has dropped even more steeply in the last year in the middle of a pandemic. Turns out that the covid 19 pandemic is a very convenient pretext for autocrats to take more control under the guise of protecting their populations. to state the blindingly obvious access to the internet is critical to the ability of citizens to participate in society. And losing it means vastly reduced access to economic and social progress. But in this year, it takes an even more deadly turn, cutting off access to critical public health information, not only within the within your own country, but from around the world. We've long seen limits on internet access in places like China and Iran, we are now seeing restrictions or threats, new restrictions or threats of restrictions in places like Myanmar, Hong Kong, Turkey, Vietnam, and Russia. So that's what we're going to unpack today. Luckily, we have an all star panel who's going to help us make sense of this. And then we want to hear from you. So here's our plan. I'm going to introduce each of our panelists, one at a time and ask them to speak they all bring different sets of expertise to the topic. And in the meantime, we're going to be collecting your questions, because in the second half of the hour, we are going to we will take their questions, and we will direct them to the panelists. So at any time starting right now, if you want to ask a question later, which we'll get to later, just click depending on what part of zoom you're on, if you click on the q&a button, I'm sorry, not that if you click on the Add, what am I doing? Oh, if you click on the q&a button, yeah, sorry, zoom keeps changing things. So it's a little confusing, but you can submit your question at the bottom of the screen. So again, you can put those in anytime, and we will get to them in a little bit later. Okay, let's get going with our conversation. Our first speaker today is Adrian Shahbaz. He is the director for technology and democracy at Freedom House, as I previously mentioned, the organization where he heads research and policy on human rights in the digital age. He is the lead author for freedom on the net and annual report on global Internet freedom, as well as the founder of election watch for the digital age, a data driven initiative, tracking the rise of censorship, disinformation, and violence ahead of national elections. I've asked him to speak first, today, because we want to get sort of a general overview in terms of what we're seeing in terms of Internet freedom around the world. So over to you Adrian.
Thank you so much, Vivian. And thank you, all of you who are attending thank you to my fellow panelists and to the Aspen Institute for organizing this this great panel. So as Vivian mentioned, I'm going to start us off just with a global overview of what we're seeing through our reports. And unfortunately, COVID-19 has really accelerated society's reliance on digital technologies at a time when the internet is becoming less and less free. We have tracked a 10 year decline in internet freedom. This goes across all categories that we look at from obstacles to accessing the internet, limits on content once people actually get online, as well as violations of user rights. And we have seen internet shutdowns being normalized as a policy tool for dealing with a lot of the externalities of the internet, whether that is the way it can contribute to disinformation, the way that it can be used by a democratic activists to contest the results of a flawed election or to protest against dictatorship. Just Just to define this term, so internet shutdown is an intentional disruption of internet service by the state. And due to the significant influence in the role played by social media, and messaging apps, many digital rights activists, I've actually extended that to also incorporate those apps and cases where governments will just have a blanket restriction on let's say, Facebook or WhatsApp. They do take place at either a national or regional or city level. One interesting thing that we have seen is that they often are concentrated in within territories that are home to marginalized ethnic and religious communities. And that brings me to the the first reported incident of an internet shutdown, which took place in China's shinjang region, which is home to the the weaker minority population and the Internet was actually cut for 10 months to the local population, as sort of a almost as a form of collective punishment against the population there. And unfortunately, that's a trend that we have seen extended to many countries that I'm sure will come up today, whether that's Cameroon, Ethiopia, or Myanmar, why are these taking place, we generally see them around times of political unrest, such as elections or protests, there have been a few occasions where the internet was cut off to in the aftermath or to prevent a terrorist attack, or at least the justification. The justification was, we also see these strange incidents of the internet being shut down, or certain social media platforms being blocked wholesale to prevent high school students from cheating on their exams. And that brings me to sort of the the impact that these have, which is that, you know, obviously, there's the Human Rights impact, which is cutting off people from their friends and family. Oftentimes, people don't know how to protect themselves during a crisis, they can't share info with the outside world cannot hold authorities accountable for human rights abuses that are often taking place at the same time. And then there's also significant collateral damage. So when this happens, oftentimes, you know, it's not only about people losing access to Instagram, or Tiktok. It's also losing access to ATMs to educational materials, certain phone services that run over the internet, businesses lose the ability to communicate with their customers or their suppliers. And it even affects hospitals, banks in the hospitality industry. So this is really a growing problem that touches on so many issues around internet freedom today. And it comes core to this question about the internet being or this concept of the internet being a human rights. And thankfully, the United Nations has come out to say internet shutdowns are a disproportionate restriction on human rights, regardless of the circumstances around what's happening in that particular country. And there's now been so much great efforts, including by access now and the cubit online coalition to track these incidents, which are unfortunately, only happening more and more today.
Thank you so much, Adrian for for giving us that that big picture and disturbing big picture it is. We're going to go next, we actually have a representative from Access Now, but we're gonna save her for a little bit. And we're gonna go next to Sophie Schmidt. Sophie is the founder and CEO of Rest of Wworld which is a global, nonprofit news publication covering the impact of technology beyond the western bubble. If you have not checked out rest of world, I would encourage you to do so. And let's we should drop the link to them in the chat momentarily. She founded rest of world in 2019, after decades of living and working in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and witnessing firsthand how little coverage in the West at least those that technology and entrepreneurship gets in in many places outside of of the usual suspects. So we're really happy to have you with us, Sophie. So Sophie, let's let's just drill down a little bit in terms of what Adrian was speaking about, in terms of the methods that governments are using shoot to shut down the internet or access to certain parts of the internet and and what are the How are you seeing this play out in terms of your reporting at rest of world?
Thank you for having me. So to answer your first question, you know, as Adrian mentioned, the decline of the last 10 years has only made the practice more widespread and governments have more tools than ever at their disposal. It's no longer a single on Which, in fact, you have ways of geo targeting, you have very specific application and content blocking, you have something called throttling, which is incredibly popular, I think, maybe because it seems to get them out of the shutdown bucket, but in fact, has more. In fact, I have essentially three observations that I think I could make, both as a tech person and now I'm working immediate that might help frame our discussion. So the normalization that Adrian mentioned, is spot on. You know, a lot of attention, I think is given in reporting now to protesters and civilians who fight back with new tools and new creative strategies. The multi line support is the best known one of this. Those are incredibly exciting and encouraging. But our reporting shows again and again, that the imbalance of power here is really important. You know, unfortunately, there are the hard truths of internet infrastructure. We like to think that the internet exists above us in some sort of magical realm. But there are physical entry and exit points. There are physical telecom towers run by companies that operate under the blessing of governments. There are landing points for some submarine cables. You know, this matters because the places where internet shutdowns are increasingly happening are places that are still cutting online. And tech literacy is a challenge. You can be an incredibly digitally savvy young person, but you may not have been chance yet to really know what encryption means. Journalism plays a role here, I think, because there's a certain kind of breathless coverage that platforms like telegram or signal tend to get when in reality, all platforms are hackable. So it's important, I think, for civilians everywhere, especially as this type of behavior creeps into more democratic states, for people to really understand what they're up against. The second observation is that the search for a sufficient deterrent for state seems as far off as ever. The more widespread, the more normalized, it becomes. Just speaking from the media side, five, six years ago, you've had almost no coverage of internet shutdowns. Now, you have some which is great. But it tends to be pretty paint by numbers. You know, government shuts down this for this reason. And I think journalists struggle to find new angles to the stories, we have to know because you'll start to desensitize more of the global community than more common it becomes. The third observation that I think doesn't get enough attention is essentially a third actor in this dynamic, which is the rise of private cybersecurity companies that are operating a booming market for their services and for their toolkits. Just this morning, we published a story about the pipeline from the famous 8200 technical unit of the IDF into Israel's enormously successful cybersecurity industry, which I think has something like a billion dollars in annualized sales. They can sell essentially commodified hacking services all around the world, sometimes openly, sometimes through third party brokers to maintain some deniability. And they further complicate the effort to fight for free access to information.
Thank you, Sophie. And of course, there's also the flip side on the cybersecurity issue, which is maybe a subject for another panel, but the fact that cybersecurity hacks themselves, denial of service attacks, can also infringe on people's you know, access access to the internet, so it's very complicated. Thank you. Um, we're now going to turn to Shayna Bauchner. And Shayna is a researcher in the Asian division of the Human Rights Watch. Her work focuses on issues including refugees and migrants, women's rights and threats to human rights defenders. She has a specialty around Myanmar which, of course, is one of the more recent sovereign nations to to really significantly curtail access to the internet in our country. So Shayna, tell us a little bit just drilling down into Myanmar as a case study. Tell us what's happening there.
Sure, yeah. Thank you for having me during this panel. So um, I mean, one thing to note with regard to Myanmar is that cutting access to the internet as sort of a measure of repression and control isn't something that just began since the coup last month. This is a tool that the previous government had been using over the past few years, to block Internet in ethnic minority regions where there was ongoing conflicts. So this sort of, ironically, was a tactic that was established by the administration led by Aung San Suu Kyi and is now being employed by the military junta. One of the first things that the junta did on February 1, after it arrested
Aung San Suu Kyi and the president and other civilian leaders and basically began this coup was to shut the internet down across the country. This obviously, you know, immediately stalled the spread of information about what was happening in Myanmar to the outside worlds. What we've seen over the past five weeks, in addition to brutal crackdowns on protesters, and mass arrest is the use of internet restrictions, as really a hallmark of, of the who does regime. They started right off the bat by banning various websites, they blocked Facebook, and then immediately after called on telecoms companies to block Instagram and Twitter as well, people have, for the most part been able to get around this through the use of VPN, about two weeks in so for the past three weeks, they began these coordinated nightly internet shutdown. So every night when at 1am, the internet is completely shut down, essentially across across the country, and remain shut down until the morning. There have been sort of a lot of rumors around the rationale for these, these nightly blackouts. What we know is that authorities use these hours at night to conduct raids. So they've been showing up at the houses of different targets of activists of journalists, of government officials to threaten them to arrest them. This weekend, there was an official from Suu Kyi's party, the NLD was picked up at night and tortured and killed by security forces. Over 1600 people have been arrested in total over the past the past five weeks of this coup. So these shutdowns are really providing some cover for abuses. And this is like, like Adrian mentioned, very much a form of collective punishment on the people of Myanmar and particularly the pro democracy movement. I mean, I will mention the military, I think in attempting to sort of revert to the period before Myanmar's democratization process began. So 2011 and before when it was this very isolated nation, they are running into the fact that Myanmar's a very different country now than it was then and and the internet, which wasn't really a factor then is now playing a vital role in the coordination and information sharing of the pro democracy movement. So their efforts to sort of stifle that sort of activism, as of yet has not has not been successful.
It's a really chilling, case study. Thank you, Shayna. I'm going to turn to Felicia in a minute. But just as a reminder, everybody has a little bit later, we're going to be getting to your questions. I see. Some folks have been submitting questions again, you click on the q&a button, enter your question. And please, if you feel comfortable doing so, please share your name, your affiliation and where you are in the world. Just if you feel comfortable, just to give some nice context to the question. And those of you that have submitted questions, you can just jump back in and add that and we'll we'll pick that up. Thank you.
So I now want to turn to to Felicia Anthonio. She is the works with Access Now as a campaigner for the keep it on campaign a global campaign that fights against internet shutdowns to keep it on coalition is made up of over 210 organizations across the world and fortuitously have access now just put a report out last week, which Feliciano, you're going to speak around with, with a list of the current shutdown. So we'd be very interested in hearing about your latest findings, and also want to hear from you about advocacy efforts around preventing these shutdowns and where we need to go.
Thank you very much. And it's a great pleasure to be part of this panel. So everything that Adrian and my other co panelists have said, falls in line with the findings of our report that was launched last week. That is the report is titled Shattered Dreams and Lost Opportunities: The Fight to Keep It On. And this captures or summarizes exactly how international tanks to impact lives across the globe, and how stakeholders like the #KeepItOn Coalition continue to push back. And so in 2020 access now in the #KeepItOn coalition, under the Stop Shutdown track optimization projects, documented 155 Internet shutdowns, at least in 29 countries. And the key findings ties very well with what has previously been mentioned, over hundreds of millions of people were cut off the internet during a global pandemic. Thus losing access to life saving health information, education and work opportunities, and then also shutdowns were used to target marginalized communities. In 2020, nearly 1 million residents of the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh were affected by the internet shutdown that was imposed by the governments. And then people suffered internet restrictions, which lasted over 355 days, that's impeding people's access to critical information. And then India, they top the list with 109 incidents of shutdowns. And then still in India, every two weeks, people in Jammu and Kashmir regions endured yet an expansion, or new mobile network shutdown ordered by the administration throughout the year. And then increasingly, we did document incidents of shutdowns being used in response to ongoing violence. For example, in Yemen, in Azerbaijan, and then in Ethiopia's Tigri region, we did see that internet shutdowns were being imposed during conflicts. And then a goal of the shutdown, as already previously indicated, governments impose the shutdown to silence protests, to sway elections, hide human rights violations and abuses. And others use it as a bargaining asset, bargain with bad actors, with the support of some companies, tech companies, being able providing the resources for governments to be able to implement these censorship. And then finally, as the #KeepItOn coalition, one thing that stands out for us is the fact that there is an important need for us to continue to push back against these shutdowns given the devastating impact. But then increasingly, as we become strategic in pushing back, governments are also being innovative in investing millions of resources in order to proactively prepare to impose the shutdowns, and they are learning from other governments that are imposed on the shutdowns. And so there is a need for us to continue to push back to ensure that these shutdowns ended in the near future.
Thank you, Felicia, you, you have kept all of you have painted really a incredibly disturbing picture of not only where things are, how bad they've gotten, but where they're going, I want to just pick up on something that you said, Felicia, just now that also was similar to what what Sophie said earlier, which is that the more there are, the more widespread the shutdowns become, the more normalized it becomes, you know, Felicia, it's chilling what you just said, as the US that many more countries are preparing the technology to be able to do more widespread shutdowns or even introduce them for the first time. So you know, the big question, really, to all the panelists right now is, how do we reverse that? What is it? What are the mechanisms that will, that will reverse this this terrible normalization and undo not only protect people's civil liberties, their health, but sort of undo what has been, you know, decades of progress made through access to the internet? Felicia, I know you just spoke, but I'll just follow up with you first, where do you see what do you think are the best levers that can be accessed either by individual countries or by, you know, NGOs or others?
Yes, I would, I would refer to an example how Sandvine was involved in the internet shutdown that happened in Belarus. And I think the most important thing is for us to be able to investigate and uncover these mechanisms being adopted by governments to disrupt the internet. And so they the research, that was the investigation that was carried out, which brought to light that sunblind was actually behind. The infrastructure that was used by the Belarusian government to shut down the internet last year was really important, making us plan our advocacy towards these companies to ensure that they recognize their responsibility to respect human rights. too, rather for studying and not encouraging governments by providing them with relevant resources to do that. And when we first called out Sandvine regarding its involvement in the Belarusian shutdown, at that phase, they did resist and didn't want to cooperate act when we called on them to stop whatever engagement they had with the government of Belarus. But then later on, they did accept that, okay, Internet has become part of or enabled human rights. And so they did cancel whatever contracts we had with the Belarusian government. And I think such examples are really important. Such discoveries are important for us to call out companies that are helping governments to perpetrate these acts of repression against their own citizens, and to continue to research to see how these governments are getting more innovative, and also kind of be a step ahead of them. That is from the civil society perspective, and to ensure that these shutdowns ended, and we all provide or work towards providing everyone with internet access for the respective use or need.
So that's very interesting. You're You're saying that one of the best levers is to put pressure on the individual providers of services in those countries to not comply with autocratic demands to take to cut off that access? I'd love to hear other other levers or other ways to reverse this. I know, Adrian, I think you wanted to jump in.
Yeah, thanks for doing it. Just to add to you know, what Felicia had to say here, which I think is really important that we've also seen some, some success with strategic litigation. So in a number of countries that we covered, I believe, rest of the world had a fantastic article about Sudan that maybe so we can bring up, but we have seen some some strong winds, driven by, in many cases, civil society. So there was this court case in Sudan, ordering an enter to the country's shut down. Also, there were judges in Indonesia, who found that a government imposed shutdown in certain regions there had been illegal. And even in India, which is the world leader in internet shutdowns. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court had ruled that the shutdowns in Kashmir were in fact illegal. So there is some Thankfully, there is some pushback happening. And I think that there is some room for for even us, you know, to to be greater to be more supportive of these efforts to really bring these cases to court, where, you know, in some of these countries, we actually have seen some wins.
Interesting. So there's a putting pressure on the technology companies. Court cases, I don't know if you want to say something about that Sudan case, Sophie, or bring up...
I'd love to, it's one of the greatest stories I've been briefed on. Thank you, Adrian.. This was a story that covered the Sudanese shutdown, which lasted quite a long time. I think it was June 2012. And the extraordinary thing was that the person who had probably the biggest role in turning the internet back on was actually a lawyer. He, among other things he di,d he read the Terms of Service, his cell phone contract, and he determined that the shutdown violated his Terms of Service. And so he took the government to court for that reason, and the court ruled in his favor. So it's extraordinary that anybody actually read the Terms of Service first. But he found a loophole. And it was a loophole. But the Court recognized and so for that reason, I think that's that's a great source of hope. The other thing I'll just mention from that story that is somewhat less legitimate in that way, is the idea that not only in
[inaudible] sorry. I'm sorry,
No worries.
So, within the telecom that was that was responsible for the shutdown. When the order came through, there were essentially moles in the telecom company who defied the order by setting up their own skunkworks Internet that provided a lot of the internet service that helped the protesters eventually push the government back. So there is a weak link in shutdown orders, which, of course, are the humans. And not every shutdown is a complete blackout for that reason, and humans will always be the weak point in that way. So there's a small source of hope there. Nothing you can bank on, but it is interesting that you see it again and again.
Yeah, interesting. You know, you've so again, we've talked about court cases, we've talked about putting pressure on it. technology companies. I haven't yet heard anybody mentioned political pressure. And in fact, we have a question. I'm going to start the week the questions in here from Maggie Gray, who is with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who asked what can the US government do to combat combat internet shutdowns by authoritarian states? Is there anything that the US government can do? Anybody have a response to response to that one, Adrian?
Sure, I'll jump in. So thankfully, there is a lot that the United States government can do. There is some that I think the US government is doing. But I think that the, the main thing is putting this on the agenda of, you know, on foreign policy, and then bolstering the United States capacity on cyber diplomacy. So right now, I think, well, recently, our diplomats who are devoted to these issues was trimmed down, which I think is unfortunate, you know. So I think that there are now some some bills up in Congress that would actually bolster the US diplomatic presence on digital issues on internet freedom, on encryption, internet shutdowns, you name it. So there is a lot that can be done. I think that we have to have an investment, I think that the US needs to be a leader on these issues, unfortunately, I think after is going very much ahead in the race, especially when it comes on the corporate side. There hasn't been as much leadership as I think we would like. There are some ways, though, that I think, pointing out the economic impact that this has, particularly in countries that are developing, where there have been some studies that show that this is really in the millions of dollars per day, the impact that it has on the economy. And so there might be ways that this can be tied as a condition into certain forms of economic aid or development, whereby if a country does shut down the internet, they're then in violation, or that countries that have a record of shutting down the internet are no longer How do you say, eligible to receive certain types of financial or economic aid?
We think there's the political will to see that through.
Well, we have seen some victories on other things, you know, I think that when there is the, when there is the will, right now, unfortunately, the conversation when it comes to digital policy is is so let's say occupied with things like disinformation or foreign intervention. And so I do think that there needs to be a rebalancing around looking at these issues of human rights and things like data localization, internet shutdowns. And a lot of the different laws that we see being passed around the world, that thing give the local government greater control over companies that are operating in that space, because those are all then oftentimes used to commit human rights abuses.
Thank you. All right, we've got some really good questions coming in. Just as a reminder, click on the q&a button at the bottom of your screen. Enter your question with your name and your affiliation and where you are in the world if you feel comfortable adding that. And so we have a question from Trish Remo, no affiliation, asking what is the role of VPN in a battle for internet freedom? Shane, I think you mentioned that VPN is we're away in Myanmar, that some are skirting the internet blackouts. But maybe you can say a little bit more about the role of VPN, whether it's in Myanmar elsewhere, and then any of the other panelists are happy to, can feel free to jump in.
Sure. I mean,
Yes, certainly. VPN, which we're not necessarily that widely used in Myanmar in the past have become over the past sort of five weeks very well known among internet users in me and Martin have been the way that these activists and protesters have gotten around some of the blocks on Facebook on other social media sites, what's what's worrying is sort of the, the who does ability through its various kind of levers of control to even hinder some of the access to VPN, particularly the free VPN that the majority of people in Myanmar have been trying to use, the military has been able to find ways to sort of chip away at their ability to to get around the existing internet blockages. So it's, you know, in the end very much a stopgap and something that I, you know, is concerning to see the ways in which that is being rolled back. The kind of long term concern in Myanmar is that the government, the military government is attempting to sort of set up a broader internet fire or wall in a way that reflects the restrictions that we see in places like China.
You know, I realize, for some in the, for some of the audience, I may be using too much jargon when i when i when i say VPN, can you just briefly not from a technology point of view, but can you just briefly explain, for those who who don't try to watch in the Western world who don't use VPN, to watch television shows from other countries, what a VPN is and how it can be useful here?
Sure, yeah. VPN, a virtual private network. And, you know, not without a technology background, basically, someone can, can download and will be able to access the internet by using an IP that is not blocked. So using IP from another country to be able to access the internet if it's been geographically blocked in their country.
Great, thank you so much. So the next question, but there's a lot of questions around different solutions and workarounds, which I find interesting. So this next one in that spirit is from Cyril Wiggins, I'm sorry, Cyril, if I'm pronouncing your surname, incorrectly as a fellow with the Royal Society of arts. His question is, do you think that the future that future internet technology through satellites, could fit fix such issues that everyone has a way to access the internet? unfiltered, so I don't know if anybody has, has the background on that, to know whether that is a feasible, we don't really necessarily have a hardcore technologists on this panel. But is there anyone that that knows, has looked at whether that's a feasible solution,
and I can give it a shot here. So people have looked into this, and there are some companies and also nonprofits that are playing around with this technology, in order to as as Cyril has mentioned, to find a way to restore access to the internet, during an internet shutdown? You know, satellites are one part of it. There's also something called mesh networks where people can sort of connect with each other's phones. So you're almost creating like a local area network that is not connected to the outside internet. But that is connected to everyone who might be in a in a particular square. But really, on satellites, I think one of the one of the obstacles has been the cost. these are these are very expensive to set up. Oftentimes, they do need to be pre installed, in many case, occasions. And so it's sort of in countries where you anticipate a internet shutdown happening, it's hard to sort of just flick it on, turn it on with a flick of the switch. One country where it has been talked about a lot is in Iran, where the internet is heavily censored and monitored. And that just brought me up to this question of VPNs. And sort of a broader trend that I just wanted to bring up, which is how Iran is, as China mentioned, you know, moving towards this firewall approach to cutting yourself off from the rest of the internet. You know, people think of China as as the as the core example of this, Iran has been very busy over the past decade or so, investing in local infrastructure, and during the latest internet shutdown, or maybe not the latest because they have continued these. But during one of the major internet shutdowns that took place during mass protests in 2019, I believe it was, what happened is the authorities kept local connections, but cut off access to the outside world. And so people had access to sort of a pre vetted internet that consisted of websites and services that were tightly controlled and monitored by the authorities. They just didn't have access to anything from the outside world. And as part of that people were desperately trying to get on VPN, and through the government's control of internet infrastructure, not going into the technical details, but had essentially blocked access to all external connections. And so it was very difficult also to get on VPN during the during those internet shutdowns.
Thank you, Adrian.
We have a question from now from marshawn. I'm sorry for the mangling people folks named marshawn, a saucy who's a doctor, doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who asks I'm curious to hear the panel's thoughts on the US use of the Internet to monitor citizens and the increasingly close collaboration between the government and private sector in matters of surveillance. So obviously, this is a different set of issues. It's not in the US there is no blockage to access to the internet. But both in the US internet and in other countries, there is increasingly close collaboration in some instances between the government and, and tech companies to monitor so. Oops, it looks like we have lost Felicia, hopefully who will be back. But is there anybody that would like to to take that on? If that's something that you're looking at either, if not in the US and other parts of the world? Sophia, is this something that you've reported on and I know you don't cover the United States that you would have covered other parts of the world?
We haven't, specifically, but if I could add one thing, just Adrian's last point, mesh networking has been around for a long time. Many people remember hearing about sneaker nets in Afghanistan in places with a lot of connectivity gaps. We covered a really fascinating app called Bridger five. He's actually from Mexico, which was downloaded, I think, about 2 million times over the span of a couple days during the Hong Kong Kong protests and is now very active in Myanmar. And so having actually taken a step back from the most advanced, which might be satellites into something that's actually a little bit more primitive in the technical sense, maybe another way out of some of these very tight situations.
Thank you. We will I think we just don't have we don't have, you know, folks on this panel to address that that specific issue. But we've got another series of issues that are questions that are related, having to do with the notion of internet access as a human. Right. And so we had an anonymous question or asking for the panel's thoughts on internet access as a human right. And also, related to that a question from sukumar Ganapati, asking if the government should recognize internet access as a basic infrastructure so that those internet rights can be protected? So of course, these are related questions. Felicia, welcome back. I wonder if you if access now has a point of view about Internet access as a human right. And whether that is will help increase international pressure to maintain internet access.
We do see internet access as an enabler of other human rights. And so definitely, there's a need to prioritize that to ensure that people have access to the internet in order to and exercise the other rights that lead to internet access. And ad is a basic need that everyone should have their rights to.
Shana, is that, is that something that you're that you see in Human Rights Watch, looking at at positioning internet access as a as a human right, and whether that increases or will help bolster international pressure to maintain access?
Yeah, certainly, I mean, access to internet definitely falls under sort of broader category of the right to free speech. And it's sort of become a critical part, you know, particularly as we've seen the past year, as Felicia said, the way it's tied to all of these other rights, including accessing the right to health, particularly under your COVID. And the threat that internet restrictions have, I mean, what we've seen in places where the government is using this in situations of conflict, or where it says that it's shutting down the internet, in response to some sort of emergency is in the immediate threat to people's safety and security. So, you know, the need to sort of, yes, keep this issue on the fore, in international forum, both in you know, at the UN in Geneva, and New York, is certainly is certainly critical. And I think we've seen that kind of slowly increasing and expanding over the past number of years. But, but more to sort of, you know, highlight the kind of intersectionality of these these rights concerns is needed.
Right. And Adrian at Freedom House, I know this is an issue for you as well. Yes,
of course, I mean, that's this is the core of our report is looking at this question of internet freedom, which is really just the idea that the same rights held by people offline must be protected online. So it is it is promising to see that, you know, the internet, there is now largely a consensus both among, you know, civil society and business but most particularly among governments that digital rights are human rights, so to speak. It's just unfortunate that there have that so many governments are translating many of their tools for oppression from In the offline world onto the online world, and in many cases, there are ways that digital activism makes people more vulnerable to repression. Due to the fact that, you know, well, let's say that social media has really increased civic space exponentially. It's just that in many cases, that civic space is highly monitored by the government. And it does make it easier when the government has that technology in order to identify people that are speaking out against the regime or are using certain types of language that are off limits in that country, and then to be able to to arrest them and punish them.
Speaking of speech, we have a number of questions around the intersection between internet shutdowns and missing disinformation. So this question is, and then there were similar questions from others. This question is from Sarah, all shalosh, who asked, she asked how important are blunt blanket strategies like Internet shutdowns for anti democratic regimes, as opposed to things like misinformation, trolls, farms, and other forms of dissent suppression that seek to drown out centers? I'm certainly I, I will say I don't know that those two. Those two strategy are necessarily mutually exclusive. But it'd be interesting. And I will also add my own sort of question to that, which is we have seen in many cases where speech or access has been suppressed, that it has been in the name of controlling fake news. For those of you that may be listening and not looking, I'm using air quotes, you know, as a way to protect the population but really as a way to suppress, suppress free expression. So I'd love to hear from any of the panelists about what you see as the intersectionality around controlling speech, the use of mis and disinformation and internet shutdowns.
Go ahead, Felicia, I can speak. Oh, go ahead. Sophie, please. Now Felicia pika.
Okay, so what we've not noticed over the years is that most governments tend to justify shutdowns by giving diverse reasons and prevention myths or this information is one of them. But then in actual fact, fact, what these when you look at what happens on the ground, and the justification that governments give there is they do not correlate because shutdowns would normally happen around elections. And so if government say we imposing shutdowns to prevent the spread of this information, or fake news or pitch speech, indeed means we are imposing shutdown to silence this defense and or to call protest or to prevent people from accessing information. So the actual reasons or the actual justifications of these shutdowns tend not too much with the the justification that the government is especially also when the government cites national security or precautionary measures, which has a very broad backing backups indicating how, and sometimes you wonder how internet shutdown is going to restore national security. And over the years, we've noted that whenever there's a shutdown, things become more chaotic. People are being abused, people are cut off the rest of the world. Those outside that particular country are not able to monitor what is happening. And so I think there's always
there's always had was the word. We don't always get to see these justifications that governments give reflect on the realities that is happening on the ground. So I would say that internet shutdowns are disproportionately violates human rights. They're unnecessary. And they put people in a kind of endanger life rather than protect people from this information or hate speech. And so government should look at other forms of regulation rather than completely shutting down the internet, when people need it most to carry out their own activities during a particular national crisis or national events.
Thank you, Felicia, Sophie, intersection of internet shutdown and missing this information.
Just adding to that from our own reporting in Myanmar. It's very clear that misinformation, misinformation perpetrated by the government played a huge role in how the the protest Started, right? Because you could not design a better environment for disinformation to rein them. In a blackout. People are an incredibly volatile physician. They need information. And governments that tend to do this. It's not their first time, right? They've been shaping public opinion for years and their own social networks. And so they're already prepared. One example of this is that in Myanmar's case, right, when you start to have rolling blackouts, curfew, blackouts throttling, sometimes that's a tactic to push activists or protesters off of the platform that the government has a little bit less control over an inter more insecure networks, like SMS and like voice, but even in the places where I think people hope that they can feel safe, like telegram or signal. There's always a lot of infiltration by government actors on those platforms. And so really Nowhere is safe in those spaces and disinformation. Unfortunately, again, in countries with limited media environments, limited journalism, accountability, unlimited tech literacy, it's incredibly hard to tell if that conviction, so that shutdowns in
the throttling are just one tactic among many to control speech.
The we have a question from this one is for you, Adrian, I'm directing it to you because it references your opening remarks. It's from wrong she who is with a voice of America's Mandarin service. In reference to what you spoke about a pushback in Shin Jang I'm wrong. She asked, it says it seems all the means mentioned are impossible in China. How do solutions work in that context? So can you expand upon that a little bit, specifically with reference to China?
Sure. So the incident that I was that I had brought up happened in 2009. And that was one of the first incidents of an internet shutdown that took place. Obviously, a lot has changed in China since then. And I think that if there's a trend, perhaps this is it. The government there no longer relies on internet shutdowns as much as it has, you know, in the past and as much as other countries have. And instead, they have built up this apparatus for monitoring and censoring, and then also spouting out propaganda and disinformation online, in order to avoid having to use internet shutdowns, if that makes sense. So I think on the continuum, we can see that internet shutdowns being used as a blunt tactic, where oftentimes governments don't want to resort to them because of the economic or even political costs of cutting off the internet for the entire population. And on the other hand, you have governments that are highly sophisticated and have invested a lot in either the technical infrastructure required to monitor what is happening online, all of these comments to introduce things like keyword censorship, where if you are texting with somebody using a Chinese messaging app, there are certain keywords that are banned. And so it's just automatically that messages will be censored when you're communicating with one another. That being said, you know, there is still some ability to jump the Great Firewall, if you will, and you do have a continued of people within China. It's not only you know, foreign expats, if you will, there's also people who are who are using circumvention tools in order to gain access to, let's say, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, but not only that, also to other news sites, in order to get a more reliable and diverse in order to get access to a more reliable and diverse news environment. So while it is one of the most restricted, it is actually the most restricted internet environment as rated by freedom on the net, they've been the worst of the worst for I think, four or five years in a row. There is still this hope. And a lot of it comes from the work being done by technical experts, circumvention, the makers of circumvention tools, VPN providers, in order, and they are trapped in this cat and mouse game oftentimes with the government. And I think that's also I should mention, one thing where the US government can help is in investing more in creating these tools for circumvention. And making sure that they're out there where people in these restricted environments can easily access them and that they know about them so that they can read up about what their government is doing in places where Sophie said the the media environment is so heavily restricted.
Yeah, you know, you're as we're drawing just into the final moments of this session, I appreciate it you during a during a pretty grim conversation we've been having finding a glimmer of hope and I wonder if I just asked the other panelists as well. If there's anything just as we move towards the end if there's, if you would like to share where you see a glimmer of hope a glimmer of hope. What we might look for towards this, just deeply worrying, worrying trends of, of access to the internet and all of the good that that brings being shut down. So I will open it up to Adrian, you were so articulate about it, but now Shana, Sophie or Felicia? Sophie, go ahead. Sure.
So this is maybe with my media hat on, I put my faith in people, right. And humans, and these are not the solutions that are going to solve the macro problem. But time and time again, we find individuals who have been incredibly resourceful, incredibly creative, and from the state's perspective on unpredictable. In the Iranian shutdown that Adrian mentioned, we found that people were retooling their satellite dishes, to transfer information packets between each other across a massive shutdown. In West Papa during another blackout period, activists literally hiked through the jungle mountain, through poverty, getting to find a luxury hotel to use the Wi Fi there. So don't discount people here because they are always going to find a loophole. They're always going to find a way out. It's not the macro solution, but it is it is always a source for hope for me. Yeah, never underestimate the resourcefulness
of humans. Shana, anything you'd like to add? Yeah, I
mean, I would just echo just what Sophie said. And watching over the past five weeks in Myanmar, the the millions of people who have been participating in the civil disobedience movement, the military had announced that it was going to institute this law, a new cybersecurity law that was going to even further restrict internet access and was going to pressure telecoms companies threaten them with imprisonment if they didn't comply with various government directives. and civil society immediately started this campaign. I mean, 10s of 1000s of people were tweeting and posting on Facebook, criticizing this law, which then got escalated to governments, who released statements we saw various EU member states, also condemning the law and the military, which I mean, the junta has so far proven fairly unbothered. It halted, it has not moved ahead with pushing it through. So I think yes, there are some of these glimmers of hope for us to hold on to.
Thank you, Shana. And Felicia, I will give you the last word.
Yes, I I agree with everything that has been said. And yes, the people are very powerful. And I always say that you can shut down the internet, but then you cannot shut down the passion and the voices of the people. So but in whichever way they would would find means to come back online, they would find ways to highlight whatever it is that is happening. And we've seen what's happening in Myanmar, we saw what happened in Sudan. We saw what happened in Belarus. And so the interest and the passion to keep the fight on is there. And civil society continues to provide support for individuals around the world, like the cubitron coalition. And we think there's an interest in, in stopping shutdowns by other governments around the world. And so let's keep the fire on and keep pushing back against international dose globally.
Thank you, Felicia Antonio, Shayna bochner Adrian Shabazz, Sophie Schmidt, thank you so much, and thank you, everybody for your thoughtful questions. And this will be posted online later on Aspen Institute's Twitter account at Aspen digital and we will see you next time. Thank you. Bye bye.