Government Internet Shutdowns: A Global Concern and Impact

Government internet shutdowns threaten rights, economies, and communication, raising urgent concerns about their implications worldwide.

### The Impact of Government Internet Shutdowns: A Global Perspective
* 🌐  The rise of government internet shutdowns has become a global issue, with **283 incidents recorded in 2023 alone**, affecting **39 countries**.
* 🔒  Countries like China, Russia, and India have well-established mechanisms for shutting down the internet, with China once implementing a **312-day shutdown in Xinjiang in 2009**.
* 🌍  Western countries like the UK, Australia, and the US also have laws that allow for **internet shutdowns in certain circumstances**, such as **national security threats**.
* 🏛️  The UN has declared internet access a human right, but there is no binding international law that **prohibits governments from shutting down the internet**.
* 💼  The economic impact of internet shutdowns can be significant, with Bangladesh losing an estimated **$393 million** during a **5-day shutdown in 2024**.
* 📚  Some countries justify internet shutdowns for reasons like **curbing protests or preventing exam cheating**, but the **collateral damage can be extensive**.
* 🛰️  Potential solutions to mitigate the impact of internet shutdowns include **satellite internet (e.g., Starlink)**, **decentralized mesh networks**, and advocating for **internet access as a fundamental human right**.
* 💬  The episode concludes by raising questions about the **future of internet access and usage**, and how societies can protect this **vital resource** from government interference.

this video is brought to you by Aura. Hi, welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion. Imagine this: a group of students have taken to the streets. They're angry about the reintroduction of a controversial policy that affects public sector jobs. The protests have been mostly peaceful, but over the span of a few weeks, chaos unfolds and violence erupts. Many are killed and hundreds injured. The government gets involved, police roam the streets cracking down on protesters concerned. You're seeing all of this unfold. Things are really getting out of hand now, so you go online to keep tabs on what's going on. Are your friends and family safe? And what are other people saying on social media? Then all of a sudden, every website that you visit stops loading. Every text that you send keeps bouncing back. A slow realization dawns on you: the internet has gone dark. And to your horror, it was the government who had shut it down. This sounds like an episode of a new season of Black Mirror, but in reality, this was indeed the story of citizens in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 18th.

2024, along with a curfew. The sudden removal of the internet didn't last for a few hours or even a day. There was no internet for an agonizing 5 days for the entire country. Think about this for a second. How do you do your banking, communication, and commerce as a whole? We observed the network in Bangladesh started going down, and we found statements from the government that they intentionally shut it down. People weren't able to communicate for 5 days. They had a change of prime minister, and the Prime Minister resigned, left the country. The internet shut down again for a couple of hours around that departure, so you can imagine that that was also government-mandated. It's insane, but Bangladesh isn't alone in this. According to Access Now, 2023 was the worst full year of internet shutdowns at a record 283 incidents. So, I know what you're thinking. Some of you might look at this map and think, H, this only applies to faraway countries with tyrannical governments. But the fact of the matter

is that the mechanisms to achieve this do exist in Western countries. The UK and Australian governments have an internet kill switch in place, but we'll get to this later in the episode. This is a topic that I haven't seen much discussion about, but really, for something as important as the internet, a tool that allows us to express ourselves, connect with others, and do commerce, it's a topic worth looking into. So, in this episode, we'll look into government internet shutdowns, a topic overlooked but underrated. I also sat down with internet analysis expert John Heiderman to get his thoughts on all of this. Okay, so let's get into it while we still have an internet connection. You are watching T Fusion TV. Before we continue, I just want to give a quick shout-out to today's sponsor, Aura. We've all received those annoying spam calls and text messages. The reason that this happens is all of our online information is out there for spammers to use. Recently, AT&T revealed that nearly all of their customers' calls and texts had been exposed in a massive

data breach, and this comes hot off the heels of them admitting that 70 million of their user Social Security numbers have ended up on the dark web. The stolen logs also contain a record of every number AT&T customers called or texted, so even if you don't use AT&T, your number still may be exposed. So, how do you protect yourself? Well, one of the best ways is today's sponsor, Aura. Aura alerts you if they find your phone number or any other sensitive information has been compromised. They also give fast fraud alerts if anyone tries to use that data to access your credit or bank account. But Aura does so much more than keep you and your family safe. They also have transaction monitoring, a VPN, antivirus, a password manager, parental controls, and identity theft insurance. You get this all-in-one app at one affordable price, and now there's even an AI-powered call assistant, so it can pick up unknown calls and filter out the spams for you. And it can also forward legitimate calls to you, so you don't miss out on

appointments, deliveries, and emergencies. Aura also identifies data brokers that are exposing your information and automatically submits opt-out requests on your behalf. So let Aura do all the hard work of keeping yourself safe online. If you sign up right now, Aura will give you a 2-e free trial with my link. Go to aura.com/coldfusion to get started on your free trial. You can click the link in the description or scan the QR code. Okay, thank you. Now back to the episode. It seems so unbelievable that the internet could be completely shut down, but the world's second-largest economy did that in one of its regions for almost an entire year. We all know about China's great firewall. It's an advanced system for filtering the internet for population control. China runs the world's most complicated censorship machine. The government actually requires Chinese internet companies to employ armies of human sensors to police user-generated content on their platforms. But the Chinese government also has control over internet service providers. This allows them to enforce national or regional shutdowns as needed. In 2009, the

Internet was cut off for 312 days in the Xing Jang region in response to riots. Meanwhile, in 2019, Russia passed the quote Sovereign internet law that gives the government the power to isolate its internet from the rest of the world. CH communications companies are large corporations, and there's usually only a few of them. It's very easy for the government to reach out to the heads of those corporations and say, We think it's in the interest of the nation to make a change. The internet has something called routing, which is how we decide where to send traffic, and routing is managed by telecommunications companies. Other countries sometimes have very sophisticated means of intercepting some communications, but not all. But where does the USA stand in all of this? The Obama Administration tried to pass an internet kill switch bill called the quote Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010. It was introduced to the Senate but was heavily criticized and never passed. In the United Kingdom, if there's an emergency

that can cause quote serious damage to political, administrative, or economic stability. The government can shut down the internet. The Communications Act of 2003 and the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 give emergency powers to the government to suspend the internet, and this is done by ordering service providers to shut down internet operations. A UK government representative said quote, It would have to be a very serious threat for these powers to be used, something like a major cyber attack. These powers are subject to review, and if it was used inappropriately, there could be an appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Any decision to use them would have to comply with public law and the Human Rights Act, end quote. And the passing of this act hasn't been without its detractors and critics, but as usual with government power, there is the risk of abuse, and some governments flat out just abuse this power. After Libya's devastating flood disaster in 2023, Dera, one of the cities hit hardest by the floods, experienced a significant communication blackout and complete internet shutdown initially.

some people thought it was because of the natural disaster, but the real reason was to stop online criticism and potential riots against how badly the government was handling the crisis. And this was at a time when 11,300 were reported dead and 40,000 displaced. The government obviously didn't have their priorities right, and if this isn't an absurd abuse of power, I don't know what is. A lot of countries have proposed we should have a kill switch. The United States, the UK, Australia have all proposed kill switches. And I was just looking before joining you, what I saw was a news report saying Australia actually has a kill switch. In Australia, an internet shutdown mechanism exists under Section 581 of Australia's Telecommunications Act of 1997. It grants the Australian government significant authority over telecommunications networks, including the power to stop internet access in the interest of National Security. In 2003, in the wake of the war on terror, the Act was amended so that the attorney general, who was the chief law officer of the Commonwealth of

Australia could direct a telecommunications carrier to kill the internet, quote, either generally or to a particular person or particular persons, end quote. Before executing the ACT, he must ask the Prime Minister and Minister for Communications' approval first. The amendment was rushed through, giving only four working days for anyone to raise concerns. Concerns were indeed raised, so the language was changed. The law now couldn't be used to turn off the internet for an individual or organization, only the internet as a whole. So, that's comforting, I guess. In 2024, Malaysian Minister Aelina Oan SED recently announced the government's plans to implement an internet kill switch. The minister issued a statement that the quote, new legislation that includes the provisions regarding the procedure and enforcement of a kill switch, end quote, is for the purpose of analyzing digital security. That's probably as thinly veiled as it gets. The legislation will reach the Malaysian parliament in October. As mentioned earlier, around 39 countries around the world have, in one way or another, completely shut down access to the

internet. We, as citizens of nations, need protection if only in the interest of being prudent. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted something called the UN Declaration of Human Rights, an international legal document that outlines fundamental human rights and freedoms such as the right to life, equity and non-discrimination, the right to freedom of work, freedom of education, and so on. But what about a right to the internet? Just 15 years ago, this might have sounded absurd, but today the internet is the infrastructure on which modern society is built. Because of this, it's no wonder that the UN has declared internet access a human right and deemed internet kill switches as illegal. And this was in 2016. In practice, however, while there's significant international pressure against internet shutdowns, there's no binding international law that bans governments from doing such actions. In Bangladesh, the primary reasons to shut down the internet, as cited by the government, was to stop misinformation and rumors from spreading. But does it actually help? The busy streets of Dhaka are deserted with burnt

vehicles and bricks strewn across the roads, and the protesters have gone on a rampage at many police stations in government establishments. There's a complete internet and telecom shutdown that is in effect in a move to curb the violence. So, misinformation is a real challenge, and I guess if you shut the internet off, nobody's looking at Facebook in that sense. It's quote successful. It's a very heavy-handed maneuver, though. The other thing I was thinking about in misinformation, I mean in the United States right now, there's been some debate about what role the government should have in intervening in the spread of misinformation on social media. I don't think anyone's proposing shutting down the internet, but people are talking about the role of interactions between the government and social media sites, and how do you label misinformation on social media. And I think those are things we all have to grapple with, and there's different points of view about [Music] that shutting down the internet to curtail protest like in Bangladesh, Egypt in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and for

election periods in Venezuela, like in 2019, are the more common excuses to kill the internet. But there's a very strange reason why some countries might end up doing it in 2024. From May 26th through to June 13th, the internet in Syria went dark. The reason? High School exams. This is actually a common tactic used in many countries, including Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and many others. The purpose is to stop students cheating in exams by using online methods. If this method really is that effective remains to be seen, but it hasn't stopped 12 shutdowns recorded in 2023 alone. But the question is, what does everyone else in the country do at that time? I guess they just sit around and twiddle their thumbs. But it does bring up an interesting point, though. What is the cost of an Internet shutdown beyond the tragic loss of life and injuries? The recent internet shutdown in Bangladesh has seen immense economic damage, as you can imagine. According to NetBlocks and their cost of shutdown tool, the total financial impact to Bangladesh has been around $393

million for 5 days of Internet shutdown. For the United States, daily e-commerce trade is valued at $2 billion, and the daily digital economy is about $5.5 billion. So, a complete internet shutdown for one day in the United States could amount to losses in the range North of $7 billion at a bare minimum just for one day. But back to Bangladesh and the internet shutdown. It's estimated that there's over 1 million freelancers that operate out of Bangladesh. That's a million people who depend entirely on the internet for their careers. And this isn't just for work within the country but to deliver projects abroad. And suddenly, their entire livelihood is gone. And the worst part is that they have no idea when it's coming back. And this isn't to mention the impact on hospitals, banking, and other critical industries that rely on the internet to operate. So, it's not just the dollar value but humans and their daily life is at stake with internet shutdowns. Imagine the economic damage that would have if if

your internet was shut off for 5 days. You know, I think a government's got to think very carefully before they take such a decision because of the economic implications, much less the social implications. According to the Internet Society, quote, so far in 2024, four governments have ordered an internet shutdown or suspended internet services during or following elections time. This number could grow, and it's a tempting solution for authoritarian governments, but not only that. As discussed, the mechanisms for an internet shutdown do exist in Western countries and other countries you may not expect. So, what happens in the future if governments can readily order shutdowns of the internet? What does it mean for us, and is there anything that we can do? Well, one solution is satellite internet, things like Starlink and Huset. It's a pretty straightforward solution, but mass-scale adoption of such constellations requires government participation and a lot of regulation. I think the role of Starlink to help during internet disruptions is very important, or other kinds of wireless communications also.

critical is the ability to quickly roll out and do repairs. A few years ago, a hurricane ran across the island of Puerto Rico, and they had major infrastructure damage for many months. And so, the ability to quickly recover is critical to the people whose lives depend on who need to communicate for media or for work or for all the things we care about. For there is a more libertarian solution though. You see, during the internet shutdowns of Hong Kong and Iran, protesters used something called a decentralized mesh network. And this allows devices like smartphones, computers, or routers to connect directly through each other instead of a central ISP. But perhaps the best shot we have for future-proofing internet access is to make internet access a fundamental human right. It might sound like a funny concept still now, but in 50 years' time, we may be glad that we have it, whether that's through legislation or judicial oversight. Yes, we all hate political flame wars, misinformation, arguing, confusion, fake generative AI content, but even in times of unrest, there has to be

a better way to combat this without shutting down the entire internet. So, I'm going to pass the question off to you guys. What do you think about government shutting down the internet, and how do we move forward in society where the internet is not only available to everyone, but we all have a right to use it free from the pressure of external powers? I'd love to hear your thoughts down below. So, also just some housekeeping. I've partnered with ABC Australia again to make a miniseries on online scams. The first episode goes through the types of wild scams that are out there now, and the second episode is all about how to protect yourself. I'll leave a link to it in the description below. Anyway, that's about it from me. So, that's what's going on with government and shutting down the internet. Okay, so my name is Goo, and you've been watching Cold Fusion, and I'll see you again soon for the next episode. Cheers, guys. Have a good [Music] one. Cold Fusion. It's new thinking.

Governments Are Suddenly Shutting Down The Internet - Here’s Why

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Government Internet Shutdowns: A Growing Concern

The video discusses the violent protests in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in July 2024, which led to a government-mandated internet shutdown for five days.

This incident is part of a larger trend, with 2023 recording a record 283 internet shutdowns worldwide.

The video also highlights that Western countries, like the UK and Australia, have mechanisms in place for similar shutdowns, raising concerns about the government's control over the internet.

AT&T's recent data breach has exposed 70 million user Social Security numbers and call logs, potentially affecting many individuals.

Aura offers comprehensive protection against data breaches, including fraud alerts, transaction monitoring, and an AI-powered call assistant.

China's government has implemented strict internet censorship and shutdowns, while Russia has passed a law to isolate its internet, raising concerns about government control over online communication.

Government Power to Shut Down the Internet

The UK government has emergency powers to suspend the internet, using the Communications Act of 2003 and the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004.

These powers have been criticized for potential abuse, as seen in Libya's communication blackout after a natural disaster.

Other countries, including Australia and Malaysia, have proposed or implemented similar internet shutdown mechanisms for national security.

The UN has declared internet access a human right, condemning internet shutdowns as illegal since 2016.

Despite international pressure, there is no binding law to prevent governments from enforcing shutdowns, as seen in Bangladesh's recent actions to curb misinformation and violence.

The economic impact of such shutdowns can be significant, with Bangladesh facing a financial loss of around $393 million.

Internet shutdowns can cause significant economic losses, with the U.

potentially losing over $7 billion in just one day.

In Bangladesh, over 1 million freelancers rely on the internet for their livelihoods, and shutdowns can disrupt critical industries like hospitals and banking.

The trend of governments ordering internet shutdowns during elections is increasing, raising concerns about the future and the need for alternative solutions like satellite internet.

The Importance of Quick Internet Recovery

Rapid recovery from infrastructure damage is crucial, as seen in Puerto Rico's hurricane aftermath.

Decentralized mesh networks have provided a solution during internet shutdowns in Hong Kong and Iran.

Advocating for internet access as a fundamental human right may be the key to future-proofing connectivity for everyone.