When the Web Goes Dark

hello everybodyuh welcome to our program my name isvivian schiller and i’m the executivedirector of aspen digitalwe are a program of the aspen institutethat focuses on all things at theintersection of mediathe internet and technology we are soglad that you’re joining ustoday every year the international humanrights organizationfreedom house puts out an annual reporton global internet freedomthe most recent data from freedom houseconfirmswhat many of us in tech and media havebeen observingthat internet access not only continuesto declineas it has for the last 10 years but hasdropped even more steeplyin the last year in the middle of apandemicturns out that the coven 19 pandemic isa very convenient pretextfor autocrats to take more control underthe guise of protecting theirpopulationsto state the blindingly obvious accessto the internetis critical to the ability of citizensto participate in societyand losing it means vastly reducedaccess to economic and social progressbut in this year it takes an even moredeadly turncutting off access to critical publichealthinformation not only within the uhwithin your own countrybut from around the world we’ve longseenlimits on internet access in places likechina and iranbut we are now seeing restrictions orthreats uhuh new restrictions or threats ofrestrictionsin places like myanmar hong kong turkeyvietnam and russiaso that’s what we’re going to unpacktoday luckily we have an all-star panelwho’s going to help us make sense ofthisand then we want to hear from you sohere’s our plan um i’m going tointroduceeach of our panelists um one at a timeand ask them to speak they all bringdifferentuh sets of expertise to the topic uhand in the meantime we’re going to becollecting your questionsuh because in the second half of thehour we are going towe will take their questions and we willdirect them to the panelists soat any time starting right now if youwant to ask a questionuh later which we’ll get to later justclickuh depending on what uh part of zoomyou’re onif you click on the q a button umi’m sorry not that if you click on theah what am i doing okay if you click onthe uh uhq a button yeah uh sorry zoom keepschanging thingsso it’s a little confusing but you canuhuh submit your question at the bottom ofthe screen so again you can put those inany time and we will get to them in alittle bit laterokay let’s get going with ourconversation umour first uh speaker today is adrianshabazzhe is the director for technology anddemocracy at freedom house as ipreviously mentioned the organizationwhere he heads research and policy onhuman rights in the digital agehe is the lead author for freedom on thenet an annual report on global internetfreedomas well as the founder of election watchfor the digital age a data driveninitiativetracking the rise of censorshipdisinformation and violenceahead of national elections i’ve askedhim to speak first today because uh wewant to get sort of a general overviewin terms of what we’re seeing in termsof internet freedom around the worldso um over to you patreon thank you somuchvivian thank you uh all of you who areattending thank you tomy fellow panelists into the aspeninstitute for organizing thisthis great panel uh so as visibilianmentioned i’m going to start usoff just with a global overview of ofwhat we’re seeing through our reportsuh and unfortunately 19has really accelerated society’sreliance on digital technologies at atime whenthe internet is becoming less and lessfreewe have tracked a 10-year declinein internet freedom this goes acrossall categories that we look at fromobstacles to accessing the internetlimits on content once people actuallyget onlineas well as violations of user rights andwe have seeninternet shutdowns being normalized as apolicy toolfor dealing with a lot of the uhexternalities of the internet whetherthat isthe way it can contribute todisinformation the way that it can beused by democratic activists tocontest the results of a flawed electionor to protest against dictatorshipjust just to define this term sointernet shutdown is a an intentionaldisruption of internet serviceby the state and due to thesignificant influence and the roleplayed by social mediaand messaging apps many digital rightsactivists have actually extended that toalso incorporatethose apps and cases where governmentswilljust have a blanket restriction on let’ssay facebookor whatsapp they dotake place at either a nationalor regional or city level uh oneinterestingthing that we have seen is that theyoftenare concentrated in within territoriesthat are home tomarginalized ethnic and religiouscommunities and that brings me tothe the first reported incident of aninternet shutdown which took placein china’s shinjan region which is hometothe uh the uyghur minority populationand the internet was actually cut for10 months to the local populationas sort of a almost as a as a form ofcollective punishmentagainst the population there andunfortunately there’s a trend that wehave seen extendedto many countries that i’m sure willcome up today whether that’s cameroonethiopia or myanmarwhy are these taking place we generallysee themaround times of political unrest such aselections orprotests there have been a few occasionswhere the internet was cut offuh to in the aftermath or to preventa terrorist attack at least thejustification what the justification waswe also see these strange incidents ofthe internet being shut down or certainsocial mediaplatforms being blocked wholesale toprevent high school students fromcheatingon their exams and that brings me tosort of the the impactthat these have which is that you knowobviously there’s the human rightsimpact which is cutting off people fromtheir friends and familyoftentimes people don’t know how toprotect themselvesduring a crisis they can’t share infowith the outside worldcannot hold authorities accountable forhuman rights abuses that are oftentaking place at the same timeand then there’s also significantcollateral damage so when this happensoftentimes you know it’s not only aboutpeople losing access touh instagram or tick tock it’s alsolosing access to atms to educationalmaterialscertain phone services that run over theinternet businesses lose the ability tocommunicate with their customers ortheir suppliersand and it even affects hospitals banksand the hospitality industryso this is really a a growing problemthat touches on so many issues aroundinternet freedom today and it comes coreto this question about the internetbeing or this concept of the internetbeing a human rightand thankfully the united nations hascome out to say internet shutdownsare a disproportionate restriction onhuman rightsregardless of the circumstances aroundwhat’s happening in that particularcountryand there’s now been so much greatefforts including byaccessnow and the keyboard onlinecoalition to track theseincidents which are unfortunately uhonly happening more and more todaythank you so much adrian for for givingus that thatbig picture and a disturbing big pictureit isum we’re going to go next we actuallyhave a representative from axis now butwe’re going to save heruh for a little bit um and we’re goingto go next to umsophie schmidt sophie is the founder andceoof rest of world which is a globalnon-profit news publication covering theimpact of technology beyond the westernbubbleum if you have not checked out rest ofworld i would encourage you to do soand uh let’s we should drop the link umto them in the chat momentarilyshe founded rest of world in 2019 afterdecadeof living and working uh in asiaafrica and the middle east andwitnessing firsthand how little coverageum in the west at least those uh thattechnologyum and entrepreneurship uh gets in inmanyplaces outside of uh of the usualsuspect so we really hadhappy to have you with us uh sophie sosophielet’s let’s just drill down a little bitin in terms of what adrian was speakingaboutum in terms of the methods thatgovernments are usingto shut down uh the internet or accessto certain parts of the internet andand what are the um how are you seeingthis play out in terms ofyour reporting at rest of worldssure thank you for having me um so toanswer your first questionum you know as adrian mentioned thedecline of the last 10 years has onlymade the practice more widespreadand governments have more tools thanever at their disposal it’s no longer asingle onoff switch in fact you have ways ofgeo-targeting you have very specificapplication and content blocking youhavesomething called throttling which isincredibly popular i thinkmaybe because it seems to get them outof the shutdown bucket but in fact hasmore or the same effect um i haveessentiallythree observations that i think i couldmake both as a tech person and nowsomeone working at media that might helpframe our discussionum so the normalization that adrianmentionedis spot on you know a lot of attention ithink is given in reporting now toprotesters and civilians who fight backwith new tools andnew creative strategies um the milkyalliance of course isthe best known one of this those areincredibly exciting and encouraging butour reporting shows again and againthat the imbalance of power here isreally important um you knowunfortunately there are the hard truthsof internet infrastructurewe like to think that the internetexists above us in some sort of magicalrealm butthere are physical entry and exit pointsthere are physical telecom towers run bycompanies that operate under theblessing of governmentsthere are landing points for subsubmarine cablesyou know this matters because the placeswhere internet shutdowns areincreasingly happening are places thatare still coming onlineand tech literacy is a challenge you canbe an incrediblydigitally savvy young person but you maynot have gotten a chance yet to reallyknow what encryption meansjournalism plays a role here i thinkbecause there’s a certain kind ofbreathless coverage that platforms liketelegram or signal tend to getwhen in reality all platforms arehackableso it’s important i think for civilianseverywhere especially as this type ofbehavior creeps into more democraticstatesfor people to really understand whatthey’re up against the secondobservationis that the search for a sufficientdeterrent for states seems as far off aseverthe more widespread the more normalizedit becomesjust speaking from the media side fiveto six years ago you had almost nocoverage of internet shutdownsnow you have some which is great but ittends to be pretty paint by numbersyou know government shuts down this forthis reasonand i think journalists struggle to findnew angles to these storiesum we have to though because ityou’ll start to desensitize more of theglobal community the more common itbecomesum the third observation that i thinkdoesn’t get enough attentionuh is is essentially a third actor inthis dynamic which is the rise ofprivate cyber security companiesthat are operating in a booming marketfor their services and for their toolkitsjust this morning we published a storyabout the pipeline from the famous8200 technical unit of the idf intoisrael’senormously you know successfulcybersecurityindustry which i think has somethinglike a billion dollars in annualizedsalesthey can sell essentially commodifiedhacking services all around the worldsometimes openly sometimes throughthird-party brokers to maintain somedeniabilityand they further complicate the effortto fight for free access informationthank you sophie and of course there’salso the flip side umon the cyber security issue which is ummaybe a subject for another uhpanel but the fact that cyber securityhacks themselves denial of serviceattacksuh uh can also infringe on people’s uhyou know access access to the internetso it’s very complicatedum thank you um we’re now gonna turn touh shainabachner um and shayna isa researcher in the asian division ofhuman rights watchher work focuses on issues includingrefugees and migrantswomen’s rights and threats to humanrights defendersshe has a specialty aroundmyanmar which of course is one of themore recent umuh uh sovereign nations toto really significantly curtail accessto the internet and their country um soshayna tell us a little bit justdrilling down into myanmaras a case study tell us what’s happeningtheresure yeah thank you for um having mejoin this panelso um i mean one thing to note withregard to myanmar is thatcutting access to the internet as sortof a measure of repressionand control isn’t something that justbegan sincethe coup last month this is a tool thatthe previous government had been usingover the past few years to blockinternetin ethnic minority regions where therewas ongoing conflict so this sort ofironically was a tactic that wasestablished bythe administration led by aung santsuchi and is now beingemployed by the military junta one ofthe first things that the hunter did onfebruary 1stafter it arrested aung san tsuchi andthe president and other civilian leadersand basically began this coup was toshut the internet down across thecountry this obviouslyyou know immediately stalled the spreadof information about what was happeningin myanmarto the outside worlds what we’ve seenover the past five weeksin addition to to brutal crackdowns onprotestersand mass arrest is the use of internetrestrictionsum as really a hallmark ofof the junta’s regime they started rightoff the bat by banning various websitesthey blocked facebook and thenimmediately aftercalled on telecoms companies to blockinstagram and twitter as wellpeople have for the most part been ableto to get around this through the use ofvpnsabout two weeks in so for the past threeweeks they began these coordinatednightly internet shutdowns so everynight at when1am the internet is completely shut downessentially acrossacross the country um and remain shutdown untilthe morning there have been sort of alot of rumorsaround the rationale for these thesenightly blackoutswhat we know is that authorities usethese hoursat night to conduct raids so they’vebeen showing up at the houses ofdifferent targets of activists ofjournalistsof government officials to threaten themto arrest themthis weekend there was an official fromsuchi’s party the nld who was picked upat night and tortured and killed bysecurity forcesover 600 people have been arrested intotal over the pastthe past five weeks of this coup sothese shutdowns are reallyproviding some cover for abuses and thisis likelike adrian mentioned very much a formof collective punishment onthe people of myanmar and particularlythe pro-democracy movementum i mean i will mention the military ithink in attempting to sort ofrevert to the period before myanmar’sdemocratization process began so2011 and before when it was this veryisolated nationthey are running into the fact thatmyanmar is a very different country nowthan it was then and and the internetwhich wasn’t really a factor thenis now playing a vital role in thecoordinationand information sharing of thepro-democracy movement so their effortsto sort of stifleum that sort of activismas of yet has not has not beensuccessfulit’s a really uh chilling uh case studythank youshayna um i’m going to turn to feliciain a minute but just as a remindereverybody because a little bit laterwe’re going to be getting to yourquestions i seesome folks have been submittingquestions again you click on the q abuttonenter your question and please if youfeel comfortable doing soplease share your name your affiliationand whereyou are in the world just uh if you feelcomfortable just to give some nicecontext to the question and those of youthat have submitted questions you canjust uh jump back in and add that andwe’ll we’ll pick that up thank youso um i now want to turn to uh tofelicia antonioshe is the uh works with uh access nowas a campaigner for the keep it oncampaign a global campaignthat fights against internet shutdownsthe keep it on coalitionis uh made up of over 210 organizationsacross the world and fortuitously uhaccess now just put a report out lastweek which um felicia i know you’regoing to speak arounduh with um with a list of thecurrent shutdown so we’d be veryinterested in hearing about your latestfindingsand also want to hear from you aboutadvocacy efforts around preventing theseshutdowns and where we need to gothank you very much and it’s a greatpleasure to be part of this panelum so everything thatadrian and my other co-panelists havesaid umfalls in line with the findings of ourreports that was launchedlast week um that is umthe report is titled strategic dreamsand lost opportunities the fight to keepit onand this captures or summarizes exactlyhowinternational downs do impact umlives across the globe and howstakeholders like the capital coalitioncontinued to push backand so in 2020 access now in the capitolcoalitionunder the stop um shutdowntrack car optimization project umdocumented 155um international downs at least in 29countriesand the key findings ties very well withwhathas previously been mentioned overhundreds of millions of peoplewere cut off the internet during aglobalpandemic that’s losing access tolife-savinghealth information education and workopportunitiesand then also shutdowns we did note wereused to target marginalizedcommunities um in 2020 nearlyone million residents of the rural ninjarefugee camps in kog’s bazaar inbangladeshwere affected by the internet shutdownthat was imposed by the governmentand then over umpeople suffered internal restrictionswhich lastedover 355 daysthat’s impeding people’s access tocritical informationand then india the top um the listwith 109 incidents of shutdownsand then um still in india every twoweekspeople in jammu and kashmir regionsenduredyet an extension or new mobile networkshutdown ordered by the administrationthroughout the yearand then increasingly umwe did document incidents of shutdownsbeingused in response to ongoing violenceum for example in yemen in azerbaijanand then in ethiopia’s tigre regionwe did see that international dams werebeing imposedduring conflicts and then the goal ofthese shutdownshas already previously been indicatedgovernments imposing shutdowns tosilence proteststo sway elections hide human rightsviolations and abusesand others used it as a bargaining umat a bargain with bad actorswith the support of um some companiestech companies being providingthe resources for governments to be ableto umimplement these censorship and thenfinallyas um the capital coalition one thingthat stands out for usis the fact that there is an importantneed for us to continue topush back against these shutdowns giventheir devastating impactbut then increasingly as we becomestrategicin pushing back governments are alsobeing innovative and investingmillions of resources in order toproactivelyprepare to impose these shutdowns andthey are learningfrom other governments that have imposedon these shutdownsand so there is a need for us tocontinue to push backum to ensure that these shutdownsended in the near futurethank you felicia you uh you have cappedall of you have painted really aa an incredibly disturbing pictureof not only where things are how badthey’ve gotten but where they’re going iwant tojust pick up on something that you saidfelicia uh just now that alsoum was similar to what what sophie saidearlierwhich is that uh the more there areum the more widespread the shutdownsuh become the more normalized it becomesyou know felicia it’s chilling what youjust said as theuh that many more countries arepreparing the technology to be able todo ummore widespread shutdowns or evenintroduce them for the first timeso you know the big question really toto all the panelists right now isum how do we reverse that what is itwhat are the mechanisms that willum that will uh reverse this thisterrible uh normalization and and undonot only protect people’s civilliberties um their health but sort ofundo what has been you know decades ofprogressmade through access to the internet umfelicia i know you just spoke but i’lljustfollow up with you first um where do yousee what do you think are the bestleversuh that can be accessed either byindividual countries or byyou know ngos or othersum yes i would i would um refer to anexamplehow sun vine was involved in theinternet shutdown that happened inbelarus and i thinkthe most important thing is for us to beable toinvestigate and uncover thesemechanisms being adopted by governmentstoto disrupt the internet and so thethe research that was the investigationthat was carried outwhich um brought to light that sun vinewas actually behindum the infrastructure that was used bythebelarusian government to shut down theinternet last yearwas really important making usturn our advocacy towards thesecompanies to ensure that theyrecognize their responsibility torespect human rightsand to rather foster them and notencourage governments by providing themwith the relevant resources todo that and when we first called out umsunvine regarding its involvementin in the belarusian shutdown at firstthey did resist and didn’t want tocooperate um when we called on them tostopwhatever engagement they had with thegovernment of belarusbut then later on they did um acceptum that okay internet has becomepart of or enabled human rights and sothey did cancel whatever contracts theyhadwith the belarusian government and ithink such examples are really importantsuch discoveries are important for us tocall out um companies that are helpinggovernments toperpetrate these acts of repressionagainst their own citizensand um to continue to research to seehowthese governments are getting moreinnovativeand also help kind of be a step ahead ofthemthat is from the civil societyperspective and umto ensure that these shutdowns are endedand um we all provide orwork towards providing everyone withinternet access for their respective useor need so that’s very interestingyou’re you’re saying umthat one of the the best levers is toput pressure on the individualuh providers of services in thosecountries to notcomply with um withuh autocratic demands to take to cut offthat accessi’d love to hear um other other leversor other ways to reverse this i know umadrian i think you wanted to jump inyeah thanks vivian and just to add toyou know what felicia had to say herewhich i think is really important umwe’ve also seensome some success with strategiclitigationso in a number of countries that wecovered and i believe uhrest of the world had a fantasticarticle aboutsudan that maybe soviet can bring up butwe have seen somesome strong winds umdriven by in many cases civil society sothere was this court case in sudanordering an end to the country’sshutdown alsothere were judges in indonesia who foundthata government-imposed shutdown in certainregions there had been illegaland even in india which is the worldleader in internet shutdownsunfortunatelyuh the supreme court had ruled that theshutdowns in kashmir were in factillegalso there is some thankfully there issome pushback happening and i think thatthere is some roomum for for evenus you know to to be greater to be moresupportiveof these efforts to really bring thesecases to courtwhere you know in some of thesecountries we actually have seen somewinsinteresting so there’s a puttingpressure on the technology companiesum court cases i don’t know if you wantto say something about that sudan casesophie or bring upi’d love to it’s one of the greateststories i think we’ve done thank youadrianso this was a story that covered um thesudanese shutdown which lasted quite along timei think it was june 2012. umand the extraordinary thing was that theperson who had a probably the biggestrole in turning the internet back on wasactually a lawyerhe among other things he did he read theterms of servicehis cell phone contract and hedetermined that the shutdownviolated his terms of service and so hetook the government to courtfor that reason and the court ruled inhis favor so it’s extraordinary thatanybody actually read the terms ofservice first of allbut he found a loophole um and it was aloophole that the court recognized andso for that reason i think that’s thatthat’s a great source of hopeum the other thing i’ll just mentionfrom that story that is um somewhat lessuh legitimate in that wayum is the idea that not only inexcuse me sorryum sorry no worries so within thetelecom capitalum within the telecom that was uhexcuse me that was uh responsible forthe shutdownwhen the order came through uh therewere essentially molesin the telecom company who defied theorder by setting up their own skunkworksuh internet that provided a lot of theinternet service thathelped the protesters eventually pushthe government back sothere is a weak link in uh shutdownorders whichof course are the humans um and notevery shutdown is a complete blackoutfor that reason and humans will alwaysbe the weak point in that way so there’sa small source of hope therenothing you can bank on but it isinteresting that you see it again andagainyeah interesting you know you so againwe’ve talked about umcourt cases we’ve talked about puttingpressure on the technology companiesi haven’t yet heard anybody mention umpolitical pressure andand in fact we have a question i’m goingto start to weave the questions in herefrom maggie gray who was is with thesenate foreign relations committeewho asked what can the u.s government doto combatcombat internet shutdowns byauthoritarian statesis there anything that the us governmentcan doanybody have a response to uh responseto that one adriansure i’ll uh jump in sothankfully there is a lot that theunited states government can do there issome that i think the the us governmentis doing but i think that thethe main thing is uh putting this on theagendaof you know uh on foreign policyand then bolstering the united statescapacity on cyber diplomacy so right nowi thinkwell recently our uhdiplomats who were devoted to theseissues was trimmed downwhich i think is unfortunate you know soi think that there are now somesome bills up in congress that wouldactuallybolster the us diplomatic presence ondigital issues on internet freedomon encryption internet shutdowns youname it sothere is a lot that can be done i thinkthat we have to have an investment ithink that the u.s needs to be a leaderon these issuesunfortunately i think after uhgoing very much ahead in the raceespecially when it comes on thecorporate sidethere hasn’t been as much leadership asi think we would likethere are some ways though that i thinkpointing out the economic impact thatthis has particularlyin countries that are developing uhwhereuh there have been some studies thatshow that this is really in the millionsof dollars per dayuh the impact that it has on the economyand so there might be ways that thiscould be tied as a conditioninto certain forms of economic aid ordevelopmentwhereby if a country does shut down theinternet they are then in violationor that countries that have a record ofshutting down the internet are no longerum how do you say uh eligible to receivecertain types of financial or economicaiddo we think there’s the political willto see that throughwell we have seen some victories onother things you knowi think that when there is the whenthere is the willuh right now unfortunatelythe conversation when it comes todigital policy isis so uh let’s sayoccupied with things like disinformationorforeign intervention and so i do thinkthat there needs to bea rebalancing around looking at theseissues ofhuman rights of things like datalocalization internet shutdownsand a lot of the the different laws thatwe seebeing passed around the world that thengive the local governmentgreater uh control overcompanies that are operating in thatspace because those are off thenoftentimes used to commit human rightsabusesthank you um all right we’ve got some uhreally good questions umcoming in just as a reminder click onthe q a button at the bottom of yourscreenenter your question with your name andyour affiliation and where you are inthe world if you feel comfortableadding that um and uh so uh we have aquestionfrom uh trish remo no affiliationasking what is the role of vpns in thebattle forinternet um freedom um shane i think youmentioneduh that vpns were away in myanmar thatsome areare skirting the internet blackouts butum uhmaybe you can say a little bit moreabout the role of vpns whether it’s inmyanmar or elsewhere and then any of theother panelists are happy tocan uh feel free to jump in surei mean yes certainly vpns which were umnot necessarily that widely used inmyanmar in the past have become over thepast sort of five weeksvery well known among um internet usersin myanmar and have been the way that umthat these activists and protesters havegotten around some of the blocks onfacebook onother social media sites um what’swhat’s worrying is sort of theum the junta’s abilityum through its various kind of levers ofcontrol to evenhinder some of the access to vpnsparticularly the freevpns that the majority of people inmyanmar have been trying to use themilitary hasbeen able to find ways to sort of chipaway at theirability to to get around the existinginternet blockages um so it’s you knowin the end very much a stop gap andsomething thatum uhyou know is concerning to see the waysin which that is being rolled backum the kind of long-term concern inmyanmar is that thethe government um the militarygovernment is attempting to sort of setup a broaderum internet fire or wall in a way thatthat reflects the restrictions that wesee inin a place like china you know i realizeuh for some in the uh for some in theaudience i may be usinguh too much jargon when i when i when isay vpncan you just briefly not from atechnology point of view but can youjust briefly explainum for those who who don’t try to watchuhin the western world who don’t use vpnsto watch television shows from othercountrieswhat a vpn is and how it can be usefulheresure yeah a vpn a virtual privatenetwork umand you know not without a technologybackgroundbasically someone can can download andwe’ll be able toum access the internet by using an ipthat is not blocked so using ip fromanother country umto be able to to access the internet ifit’s beenuh geographically blocked in theircountrygreat thank you so much so the nextquestion there’s a lot of questionsaround different solutions andworkarounds which i findinteresting um so this next one in inthat spirit is from umcyril uh wiggit i’m sorry uh uh cyril ifi’m pronouncingyour uh surname incorrectly as a fellowwith theroyal society of arts uh his question isdo you think that the futurethat future internet technology throughsatellitescould fit fix such issues that everyonehas away to access the internet um unfilteredso um i don’t know if anybody has uhhas the background um on that to knowwhether that isa feasible we don’t really necessarilyhave a hardcore technologist on thispanelbut is there anyone that that knows hashas looked at whether that’s afeasible solutioni can i can give it a shot here sopeople have looked into this and thereare some companies and also non-profitsthatare playing around with this technologyin order toas as cereal has mentioned to to find away to restore access to the internetduring an internet shutdown um you knowsatellites are one part of it there’salso something called mesh networkswhere people can sort of connect witheach other’s phonesso you’re almost creating like a localarea networkthat is not connected to the outsideinternet but that is connected toeveryone who might be in a in aparticular squarebut really on satellites i think one oftheone of the obstacles has been the costthese are these are veryexpensive to set up oftentimesthey do need to be pre-installed in manyoccasions and so it’s sort of incountries where you anticipate aninternet shutdown happeningit’s hard to sort of just flick it onwith uh turn it on with aflick of the switch one country where umit has been talked about a lot is iniranum where the internet is heavilycentered and monitored andand that just brought me up to thisquestion of vpns andsort of a broader trend that i justwanted to bring up which is howuh iran is as shayna mentioned you knowmoving towardsthis firewall approach to cutting itselfoff from the rest of the internetum you know people think of china as asthe examas a core example of this iran has beenvery busy over the past decade or soinvesting in local infrastructure andduring the latest internet shutdown ormaybe not the latest because they havecontinued these butduring one of the major internetshutdowns that took place during massprotests in 2019 i believe it waswhat happened is the authorities keptuh local connections but cut off accessto the outside worldand so people had access to sort of apre-vettedinternet that consisted of websites andservices that weretightly controlled and monitored by theauthorities they just didn’t have accessto anything from the outside worldand as part of that people weredesperately trying to get on vpnsand through the government’s control ofinternet infrastructurenot going into the technical details buthad essentially blocked access toall external connections and so it wasvery difficult also to get on vpnsum during the during those internetshutdownsthank you adrian um we have a questionfrom um now from um marjani’m sorry for the mangling people folksnames marjanasasi he’s a doctor a doctoral studentat the johns hopkins schoolof advanced international studies um whoasks i’m curious to hear the paneliststhoughts on the ususe of the internet to monitor citizensin the increasingly close collaborationbetween thegovernment and private sector in mattersof surveillanceso obviously this is a different set ofissues it’s notum in the u.s there is no blockage toaccessuh to the internet but both in the uinternet and in other countries there isincreasingly close collaboration in someinstances between the governmentand um and uh tech companies to monitorsoum uh oops it looks like we have lost uhfelicia hopefully who will be back umbut is there anybody that would like toto uh take that on if that’s somethingthat you’re looking atif not in the u.s and other parts of theworldsophie is this something that you’vereported on and i know you don’t coverthe united states but you recover otherparts of the worldyou know we haven’t uh specifically butif i could add one thing just adrian’slast point mesh networking that has beenaround for a long time many peopleremember hearing about sneaker nets inafghanistan and places with a lot ofconnectivity gaps we covered a reallyfascinatingapp called bridgefive which is actuallyfrom mexico whichwas downloaded i think about two milliontimes over the span of a couple daysduring the hong kongcomp protests and is now very active inmyanmarand so having um actually taking a stepback fromthe most advanced which might besatellites into something that’sactually a little bit more primitive inthetechnical sense may be another way outof some of these very tight situationsuh thank you we will i think we justdon’t have umwe don’t have you know folks on thispanel to address that that specificissueum but we’ve got another um series ofissues that are uhquestions that are related having to dowith the notion ofinternet access as a human uhright and so we had an anonymous umquestioner askingfor the panel’s thoughts on internetaccess as a human rightand also uh related to that a questionfrom sukumarganapati asking if the government shouldrecognizeinternet access as a basicinfrastructure so that those internetrights can be protected so of coursethese are our related questions umfeliciawelcome back i wonder if you um if ifaccessnow um has a point of view aboutinternet access as a human right andwhether that iswill help increase internationalpressure to maintain internet accesswe do see internet access as an enablerofother human rights and so definitelythere’s a need to prioritize that toensure that peoplehave um access to the internet in ordertoum and exercise the other rights thatare linked to internet access and indeedis a basic needthat everyone um should have theirrights toshaina is that um is that something thatyou’re uh thatyou see at human rights watch um lookingatat positioning internet access as a as ahuman right andum whether that increases or will helpbolsterinternational pressure to maintainaccessyeah certainly i mean access to internetdefinitely falls under sort ofum broader category of the right to freespeech and it’ssort of become a critical part you knowparticularly as we’ve seen the past yearas felicia said the way it’s tied to allof these other rights includingaccessing the right to healthparticularly under covet and the threatthatinternet restrictions have i mean whatwe’ve seen in places where thegovernmentis using this in situations of conflictor where it says that it’s shutting downthe internet in response to some sort ofemergencyis then the immediate threat to people’sum safety and securityso um you know the need to sort ofyes keep this issue on the floor um ininternational forum both inyou know at the u.n in geneva and newyork is certainlyis certainly critical and i think we’veseen that kind ofslowly increasing and expanding over thepastnumber of years but um but more to sortofum you know highlight the kind ofintersectionality of these these rightsconcerns as neededgreat and adrian at freedom house i knowthis is an issue for you as wellyes yeah of course i mean that’s this isthethe core of our report is looking atthis question of internet freedom whichis really just the idea thatthe same rights held by people offlinemust be protected onlineso it is it is promising to see thatuh you know the internetthere is now largely a consensus bothamongyou know uh civil society and businessbut most particularly among governmentsthatuh digital rights are human rightsuh so to speak uh it’s just unfortunatethat there had thatso many governments are translating manyof their tools for repressionfrom the offline world onto the onlineworld and in many cases there are waysthatdigital activism makes people morevulnerable to repressiondue to the fact that you know well let’ssay that social media hasreally increased civic spaceexponentially it’s just that in manycases that civic space is highlymonitored by the government and it doesmake it easierwhen the government has that technologyin order to identify people that arespeaking out against the regime or usingcertain types of language that are offlimits in that countryand then to be able to to arrest themand punish themspeaking of speech we have a a number ofquestions aroundthe intersection between internetshutdownsand miss and disinformation so thisquestion is umand then there were similar questionsfrom others this question is fromsarah al-shalash um whoshe asked how important are bluntblanket strategies like internetshutdowns for anydemocratic regimes as opposed to thingslike misinformation trolls farmsand other forms of uh dissentsuppression that seek to drown outdissenters um certainly i ii will say i don’t know that those twouh those twouh strategy are necessarily mutuallyexclusivebut it would be interesting and i willalso add my own sort ofquestion to that which is we have seenin many cases wherespeech or access has been suppressed uhthat it has been in the name ofcontrolling fake news for those of youthat may be listening and not lookingi’m using air quotesyou know as a way to protect thepopulation but really as a way tosuppressum suppress free expression so i’d loveto hearfrom any of the panelists about um whatyou see is the intersectionalityaround um controlling speechuh the use of miss and disinformationand internet shutdownsgo ahead felicia i can speak okay oh goahead sophie please no fleshokay so um what we’ve not noticedum over the years is that mostgovernments tend tojustify shutdowns by giving diversereasons and preventing mythsor disinformation is one of them butthen in actual factfacts watch these uh when you look atwhat happens on the groundand the justifications that governmentsgivethere is um they do not correlatebecause umshutdowns would normally happen aroundelections and so if governments saywe are imposing shutdowns to prevent thespread ofthis information or fake news or umhate speech indeed it means um we areimposing shut down to silence thisdescentand or to call protests or to preventpeople from accessing informationso the actual reasons or the actualjustifications of these shutdowns tendnot to match with um thethe justifications that the governmentgets especiallyalso when the government cites nationalsecurity or precautionary measures whichis a very broad[Music]bucket indicating how and sometimes youwonder howan internet shutdown is going to restorenational securityand over the years we’ve noted thatwhenever there’s a shutdownthings become more chaotic people arebeing abusedum people are cut off the rest of theworldum those outside that particular countryare not able tomonitor what is happening and so um ithinkthere’s always umthere’s always um was the word umwe don’t always get to see thesejustifications that governments givereflectson the realities that is happeningundergroundso i would say that um internationaldowns are disproportionate they violatehuman rights they are unnecessaryand um they put peoplein um they kind of endanger lives ratherthanum protect people from this informationor hate speechand so government should look at otherforms ofregulation rather than completelyshutting down the internetwhen people need it most to umcarry out their own activities during aparticular nationalcrisis or national eventsthank you felicia sophie intersection ofinternet shutdown and missingdisinformationjust adding to that from our ownreporting in myanmar it’s very clearthat disinformation misinformationperpetrated by the governmentplayed a huge role in how the theprotest uhstarted right because you could notdesign a better environment fordisinformation to reign thanin a blackout people are an incrediblyvulnerable position they needinformationum and the governments that tend to dothis it’s not their first timeright they’ve been shaping publicopinion for years in their own socialnetworksand so they’re already prepared um oneexample of this is that inmyanmar’s case right when you start tohave rolling blackouts curfew blackoutsthrottlingsometimes that’s a tactic to pushactivists or protestersoff of the platforms that the governmenthas a little bit less control over andinto more insecure networkslike sms and like voice but even in theplaces uh where i think people hope thatthey can feel safe like telegram orsignalum there’s always a lot of infiltrationby government actorson those platforms and so really nowhereis safe in those spaces anddisinformationunfortunately again in countries withlimited media environmentslimited journalism accountability andlimited tech literacy it’s incrediblyhard to tell fact from fictionso that shutdowns in the throttling arejust one tactic among manyum to control speech umthe um we have a question from this oneis for you adrian i’m directing it toyou because it references youropening remarks it’s from uh wrong shewho is with uh voice of america’smandarin serviceum in reference to what you spoke abouta pushback inxinjiang um uhwrong she asked it says it seems all themeans mentioned are impossible in chinahow do solutions work in that context socan you expand upon that a little bitspecifically with reference to chinasure so uh the incident that i was thati hadbrought up happened in uh 2009 and thatwas one of the firstincidents of an internet shutdown thattook place obviously a lot has changedin chinasince then and i think that if if thereis a trend perhaps this is ituh the government there no longer relieson internet shutdowns as much as it hasyou know in the past and as much asother countries have and instead theyhave built upthis uh apparatus formonitoring and censoring and then alsospouting out propaganda anddisinformation onlinein order to avoid having to use internetshutdowns if that makes senseso i think on the continuum we can seethat internet shutdownis being used as a blunt tactic whereoftentimes governments don’t want toresort to them because of the economicor even political costsof cutting off the internet for theentire populationand on the other hand you have uhgovernments that are highlysophisticated and have investeda lot in um eitherthe technical infrastructure required tomonitorwhat is happening online all of thesecomments to introduce things likekeyword censorship where if you aretexting with somebodyusing a chinese messaging app there arecertain keywords that are banned and soit’s just automatically that messageswill be censored when you’recommunicating with one anotherthat being said you know there is stillsome abilityto uh jump the great firewall if youwill and you do havea continues of people within china uhit’s not only you knowforeign expats if you will there’s alsopeople who arewho are using circumvention tools inorder togain access to let’s say facebooktwitteryoutube but not only that also to toother news sitesin order to get a more reliable anddiversein order to get access to a morereliable and diversenews environment so while it is one ofthe mostuh restricted it is actually the mostrestrictedinternet um environment as is rated byfreedom on the net they’ve been theworst of the worst for i think four orfive years in a rowthere is still this hope and a lot of itcomes from the workbeing done by technical experts uhcircumventionthe makers of circumvention tools vpnproviders in orderand they are trapped in this cat andmouse game oftentimes with thegovernment and i think that’s also ishould mentionone thing where the us government canhelp is in investingmore in creating these tools forcircumventionand making sure that they are out therewhere people in these restrictedenvironments can easily access them andthat they know about them so that theycanuh read up about uh what theirgovernment is doing in places wheresophie said thethe media environment is so heavilyrestricted yeahyou know you’re as we’re drawing justinto the final uh moments of thisuh session i i appreciated you during aduring a pretty uh grim conversationwe’ve been having findinga glimmer of hope and i wonder if i justasked the other panelists as wellif there’s anything just as we movetowards the end if there’suh if you would like to share where yousee glimmer of hopeglimmer of hope or what we might lookfor towardsum uh this just deeply worryingworrying trend of of of access to theinternet and all of the good that thatbringsum being shut down so i will open it upto uhadrian you were so articulate about itbut now shayna sophie oruh felicia sophie go aheadsure so um this is maybe with my mediahat on umi put my faith in people right andhumans and these are not thethe solutions that are going to solvethe macro problem um but time and timeagain we findindividuals who have been incrediblyresourceful incredibly creative andfrom the state’s perspectiveunpredictable umin the iranian shutdown that adrianmentioned we found that people wereretooling their satellite dishes totransferinformation packets between each otheracross a massive shutdownin west papua during another blackoutperiodactivists literally hiked through thethe junglemountains through papua new guinea tofind a luxury hotel to use the wi-fithereso don’t discount people here becausethey arealways going to find in the loopholethey’re always going to find a way outum it’s not the macro solution but it isit is always a source for hopefor me yeah never underestimate theresourcefulness of humansuh shaina anything you’d like to addyeah i mean i would just echo uh justwhat sophie said andum watching over the past five weeks inmyanmar thethe millions of people who have beenparticipating in the civil disobediencemovement umthe military had announced that it wasgoing to institute this lawa new cyber security law that was goingto even further restrictinternet access and was going topressuretelecoms companies threaten them withimprisonment if they didn’t comply withvarious government directivesand civil society immediately startedthis campaign i mean tens of thousandsof people were tweeting andposting on facebook criticizing this lawwhich then got escalated to governmentswho released statements we saw variouseu member statesalso condemning the law and the militarywhich i mean the junta has so farproven fairly unbothered it um haltedit has not moved ahead with pushing itthrough so i think yes there aresome of these glimmers of hope for us toto hold on tothank you shayna and felicia i will giveyou the last wordyes i i i agree with everything that hasbeen saidand yes the people are very powerfuland i always say that you can shut downthe internetbut then you cannot shut down thepassion and the voices of the peopleso but in whichever way they wouldthey would find means to come backonline they would find ways tohighlight whatever it is that ishappening there and we’ve seen what’shappening in myanmar we saw whathappened in sudanwe saw what happened in belarus and sothe interestand the passion to keep the fight onis there and civil society continues toprovide um support forindividuals around the world um like thecapital coalitionand we think there’s an interest inin stopping shutdowns by othergovernments around the world and solet’s keep the fire onand keep pushing back againstinternational downs globallythank you felicia antonio shayna bachneradrian shabazz sophie schmidtthank you so much and thank youeverybody for your thoughtful questionsand uh this will be posted online lateron uhaspen institute’s uh uh twitter accountat aspen digital and we willsee you next time thank you bye-byeyou