The electricity didn’t go out in Kashmir, a disputed region of India, but something almost as vital was turned off during the summer: the internet.
In a preemptive move to assert political control, the Indian government shut down internet service, as well as phone service, in the Kashmir region. No email. No Google. No texting. No digital businesses in operation. No news beyond state-sanctioned outlets.
It was censorship in extremis, resulting in a loss of freedom.
Eventually most mobile phone service was restored, but the World Wide Web has stayed dark for months.
The internet is a marvel of democracy in the broadest sense, meaning it eliminates barriers to entry. Merchants can sell goods without the need to open a physical store, while political activists can circumvent government controls to spread their messages. And newspapers can transmit their journalism to places where delivery trucks can’t carry ink on paper.
The internet derives its power from openness and connectivity, and that is also why the internet was shut down in Kashmir: because the web represents a threat to governments seeking to control or repress the sharing of information.
Some anti-democratic countries, notably China, recognized early on that the internet could pose a potential threat to ironclad political control. To quash dissent, the Chinese leadership erected a high-tech censorship system known as the Great Firewall of China that blocks all content and conversation that could challenge government authority.
China’s internet looks a lot like the West’s internet, without Facebook, Wikipedia and other freewheeling information sites. Texting, too, comes with strictures: Politically sensitive words and ideas are blocked.
In recent years, foreign governments have looked at the power of the internet to disseminate ideas and recoiled: Too open, too free, too challenging. Freedom House, a watchdog group, looked at the current state of internet freedom in 65 countries and found that law enforcement in 47 countries arrested people for posting political, social or religious speech online.
The more countries take control of their digital pipelines and content, the more likely international access will be denied.
“The great risk is that digital nationalism will Balkanize the internet, breaking it up into a patchwork of incompatible and irreconcilable fiefs,” wrote Akash Kapur, a senior fellow at the GovLab at New York University, in The Wall Street Journal. “The prospect of a technical ‘Splinternet’ is no longer as inconceivable as it once was. …”
If the web continues to fracture, the loss to humankind will be profound. When governments place limits on internet access, the spread of knowledge is stifled. Important ideas are not shared. Business development is stunted. Societies suffer.
Western democracies need to recognize what’s at stake and cooperate to manage and protect internet openness. There will be no easy way to convince paranoid governments to release their grips on the web, but that’s no excuse to quit trying.
The concept of a free and open internet is a value, like human rights, and a commodity. The more American government officials, business executives and advocates push foreign governments to release control, and explain the benefits, the more likely progress will happen.
— Chicago Tribune
