This time it’s on account of elections in Congo. For an overview of the phenomenon, see CDT’s map and timeline. We first wrote about this problem in 2006. Then it was worked up into Gyanendra’s Law and its various exceptions. Image source
Yesterday Syria fell off the Internet. Clean cut. Then it came back. Why was it cut? Why did it come back?
Gyanendra’s Law states that those who pull the killswitch do not remain in power too long. Supporting this thesis, Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad has kept his hands off the killswitch for the most part, except at the start of the civil war, and today. Four physical cables connect Syria to the Internet — three under the sea, and the fourth over land through Turkey. For outsiders to cause Tuesday’s outage, security experts say, they would have had to physically cut all four cables simultaneously. That does not appear to have happened in this case, according to security experts.
Looks like international law is being made as we speak. According to the UN, basic human rights are violated when countries cut off Internet access. Burma is not the first. King Gyanendra of Nepal cut off everything in his palace coup. If cutting off Internet is a violation of human rights, what is cutting off phone service to entire regions like Jaffna?
This article shows that government’s instinct to ban cellphones from conflict zones because of the belief that it will be used by militants/terrorists to further their cause, actually neutralizes one of the security agencies most potent weapons to track subversives. I doubt that the Sri Lankan government will allow cellular service to be available any time soon in the North. But at least it gives the security agencies some food for thought. The Indian government was similarly reluctant to have cellular service in Kashmir, but the Indian security agencies are their biggest proponents now. ———— Troops in Kashmir master new weapon: cell phones Reuters By Sheikh MushtaqSun May 21, 1:53 AM ET Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast.