Internet Shutdowns

The Iranian government shut down the Internet in January 2020 amid protests over the accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.

On November 16, 2019, the Iranian government shut down the Internet following deadly protests over fuel price hikes. The five-day blackout derailed daily life, and resulted in widespread disruption of online services, rendering access to healthcare and online education sources unavailable for millions of citizens. While Iranians are no strangers to shutdowns, this one was different to previous incidents, and far more sophistocated. Rather than throttling (slowing of connectivity) and blocking access to certain websites, services and apps, the entire country was taken completely offline, making it difficult use circumvention techniques. "Iran’s ability to shutdown the Internet is the culmination of policies, technological developments and centralised control", says Mahsa Alimardani, one of the authors of the Article19 research and an academic at the Oxford Internet Institute. “A lot of the incentive to shut down the Internet was to shut down communication channels that were seen to be facilitating a lot of this mobilisation,” Alimardani says (source: Wired). Internet shutdowns during protests or civil unrest impact the ability of citizens to get accurate information from government sources when they need it most. It also becomes harder for citizens to contact family members and friends in other parts of the country, or in other countries.