What if your government decided to shut down the Internet?
This is a question I've been asking myself more often lately. In many countries, deliberate disruption of the Internet is almost normal. I've read of cases in India where temporary Internet shutdowns seem to be very common and sometimes done for ridiculous reasons, such as to prevent fraud in audits.
It gets even more serious when the Internet is shut down for political reasons, during elections or in times of war.
The Government in Kazakhstan recently shut down the internet nationwide because of civil unrest caused by the rising the price cap prices for fuel. You can read the full story here
But a whole shutdown of the internet is not even necessary if a Government can control what you can find online. For surprisingly many country's is a censorship of the internet common. Here a map that shows an overview of “internet freedom”
Can you find your country? Even though my country is green, I often feel like I can't find what I'm looking for when it's a little critical. So it's hard to imagine how I would feel in a red zone. But it also made me realize that I depend a lot (and maybe too much) on the Internet and the good will of my government.
On this following map you can find country's that face internet showdowns in the past or currently facing a shutdown
according to pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns Yemen, Ethiopia and Myanmar are currently facing shutdowns.
How do you feel about it? What would you do if your country shutdown the internet? I honestly can´t imagine what it would be like and I hope I never have to face it....
