What’s a good reason to cut off a country’s
Internet access?
How about dead fish and school exams?
The Internet is still a relatively young technology,
and yet it’s hard to imagine our world without
it. So how would you feel if your country’s
government restricted your access to the Internet?
It’s something that has happened several
times in the past, despite the United Nations
declaring that Internet access should be unrestricted
except in a few cases prescribed by international
human rights law. And it may have happened
recently in Vietnam, where it all has to do
with pollution and fish. Since April, dead
fish have been turning up in rivers and on
shorelines. Many in Vietnam blame a Taiwanese
company called Formosa Plastics. It turns
out Formosa had an illegal waste pipe, but
the company maintains it isn’t responsible
for the fish dying. The Vietnamese government
required Formosa to dig up and remove the
pipe. According to city government officials,
the real culprit might be a polluted canal
system coupled with heavy rains. But for two
weeks, protestors used Facebook to organize
rallies in major cities calling for Formosa
to admit responsibility for the dead fish.
Then, mysteriously, people in Vietnam discovered
they couldn’t access Facebook or Instagram.
Did the government shut down access to Facebook
to prevent further protests? As we record
this episode, the answer is unclear. But many
are assuming as much. Meanwhile, in Iraq,
the ministry of communication shut down all
access to the Internet three times for three
hours each. Why? To stop students from cheating
on exams. Apparently, Iraqi schools have a
problem with students bringing mobile devices
into exam rooms. Cutting off Internet access
nationally was an effective, if excessive,
solution. Perhaps this will mean the return
of the old reliable method of writing answers
down on the palm of your hand. Or, maybe,
it will even lead to students studying harder
for exams. But jokes aside, this policy impacts
everyone in Iraq, not just students. And human
rights advocacy groups like Access Now have
spoken out against the strategy. Is it ever
okay for a government to limit or remove Internet
access? We’ve seen it happen during contentious
elections in Uganda, during the Arab Spring
uprisings in 2011 and as a matter of general
policy in China.
What do you think? Get in touch with us and
let us know. And don’t forget to come back
to now.howstuffworks.com every day to hear
about the most interesting stories happening right now.
