Governments Shut Down the Internet More Than 50 Times in 2016 (thewire.in) 34
An anonymous reader writes: Governments around the world shut down the internet more than 50 times in 2016 -- suppressing elections, slowing economies and limiting free speech. In the worst cases internet shutdowns have been associated with human rights violations, Deji Olukotun, senior global advocacy manager at digital rights organisation Access Now told IPS. "What we have found is that internet shutdowns go hand in hand with atrocities," said Olukotun. "In Ethiopia there's been consistent blocking this year of social media and internet." Dozens of people have died in protests in Ethiopia in 2016, "many of them during the kind of blackout where it's difficult to report on what's happening," he said. Several leaders used internet shutdowns to affect democratic processes, including elections. "In Uganda in February 2016 there was a shutdown of social media networks by President Museveni and that again happened in Gambia (in December) surrounding the election," Olukotun added. In other cases, three governments chose to shut down the internet because they thought that it would stop students from cheating on their exams, he said. "On the whole most governments want to expand internet access," said Olukotun.
However governments do not seem to have taken into account the potential repercussions of the shutdowns, beyond the limits of free speech. According to an estimate, internet shutdowns resulted in a loss of $2.4 billion in 2015.
No (Score:1)
The block after the people are used to it (and, thus, dependent of it somehow) is a very bad to free speech and information flow: no, there's very few things "much, much worse" than it, if any - this kind of thing undercovers very serious violations os human rights!
Title inaccurate (Score:1)
It's access to the Internet that was shut down.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
But Stephen Hawking himself said it was ok. Who are we to argue with The Hawk?
What if your ISP is unstable... (Score:2)
I haven't had a stable connection for more than two weeks. If it was stable enough that a disruption would indicate a possible covert operation I could script for that, but I would get a false alert every week. I'm pretty sure my cable company isn't the only one that sucks for stability and problem determination, ....Comcast
Does this mean that third world countries have a more dependable internet service than we do?
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I knew there'd be some self-centered person in the US who'd figure out some way to spin this to make it about America.
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I knew there'd be some self-centered person in the US who'd figure out some way to spin this to make it about America.
How about this [theverge.com]?
Republican lawmakers have proposed fining Congressional representatives who stream live video or post photos from the House floor, in an apparent attempt to stop a repeat of last year’s Democratic live-streamed sit-in protest.
Now can we talk about how this applies to America, too?
That's not how the internet works (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments around the world shut down the internet more than 50 times in 2016
No, no they didn't...
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Governments around the world shut down the internet more than 50 times in 2016
No, no they didn't...
People in countries where the government shut down the internet disagree. Okay many of these were run of the mill single site censorship, but I do remember the odd case where an entire country was taken offline for a day or two.
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Denying some people access to the internet is not the same as shutting down the internet.
that's just word play, and totaly besides the point. how many times have you heard people say - the internet is down.
ofcourse we know that it's not true, but if you can't access it anymore it might as well be.
A Sony VAIO running Windows and a Blackberry... (Score:1)
Move it!! (Score:1)
Financial impact seems oddly modest (Score:2)
According to an estimate, internet shutdowns resulted in a loss of $2.4 billion in 2015.
Is that all? That's roughly 1% of Apple's annual revenue for perspective. Basically they're saying that you could achieve the same financial impact by Apple going on a long weekend. I realize $2.4 billion is a large number and certainly enough to be consequential to those affected but in the grand scheme of things it's just not as much of an impact as one might think. Obviously it's a hard number to pin down with any precision but I kind of would have expected a larger number.
Democrats want to censor the net in the USA (Score:3)
They're pissed off because their near-monopoly of the lib-left newspapers, CNN (Clinton News Network), MSNBC (Most Socialist Network on Basic Cable), etc was easily bypassed. That's what cost Hillary the election.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-j... [breitbart.com]
> Three years before Matt Drudge changed the world and how news would be
> consumed, President Bill Clinton's White House feared that the Internet was allowing
> average citizens, especially conservatives, to bypass legacy gatekeepers and
> access information that had previously been denied to them by the mainstream press.
http://www.freerepublic.com/fo... [freerepublic.com]
3 years later, it happened. One of the "legacy gatekeepers", Newsweek was considering doing a story breaking the Clinton-Lewinski scandal. But management killed the story. Instead a lowly store clerk with a modem broke the story... you've heard of Matt Drudge http://www.drudgereport.com/ [drudgereport.com] Hillary clinton's reaction was to whine about the lack of "gatekeepers".
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08... [dailycaller.com]
What would've happened if Hillary had won?
> Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign has sent out a fundraising
> email arguing the website Breitbart News has no "right to exist,"
> and suggests that if elected, the website will be shut down entirely.