Internet Shutdowns

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.

‘A young artist who asked that his name not be used visited a drugstore near Haft-e-Tir Square on November 16 to fill a prescription for his sister. He told this reporter that the pharmacist said he couldn’t fill the prescription because “I can’t register your prescriptions on the insurer’s website. Come back later.” The young artist left the pharmacy in tears. He was eventually able to find the medication but had to pay extra.’ – Source: Atlantic Council

‘In addition to startups, industries that rely on foreign partners and suppliers were hit hard by the Internet outage. An Iranian woman who works for a local automotive company and asked that her name not be used, said in an interview: “We used to chat with our Chinese partners constantly via WeChat [a Chinese messaging app]. Our engineers rely on their Chinese counterparts’ counsel. Being cut off from the Internet, our operations have been disrupted.”’ – Source: Atlantic Council

‘The Tehran newspaper Hamshahri reported that many small firms would have been pushed into bankruptcy if normal communication services had not been restored. Nazanin Daneshvar, CEO of the website Takhfifan told Hamshahri, “We have lost 80 percent of our sales… [If the internet connection is not restored] we’ll be forced to close down our business.” ‘ Source: Atlantic Council