A researcher who has found a correlation between periods in which the Internet in Syria is shut off and violence inflicted by the government on rebel groups says the tactic also is employed in other countries, according to a report at Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Anita Gohdes, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim in Germany, previously wrote about her work in the Washington Post.
"It looks like Internet blackouts form a part of the Syrian regime's arsenal of tools aimed at crushing the opposition," she wrote.
"Digital censorship – in its most extreme form represented by full blackouts – is part of a dangerous new repressive strategy in the 21st century."
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Her conclusions were based on her review of Internet shutdowns in Syria, where the government has developed a huge online presence and opponents often coordinate their efforts through the Web.
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"I argue that governments fighting to maintain political control have an incentive to implement such Internet blackouts in conjunction with larger military offensives. Regime forces are likely to utilize these shutdowns as a tactical advantage when facing intense confrontation from violent opposition groups," she wrote.
She reported: "Social media has rightly been celebrated as an empowering tool for ordinary citizens to mobilize against repressive rules, and make marginalized voices heard. But a crucial question remains unanswered: why should power-hungry states, with de facto control over access to the Internet, impassively concede to defeat? The simple answer is: they do not."
She found in Syria that "network blackouts are accompanied by significantly higher levels of state killings."
"The change in violence in particularly strong in regions where the government and opposition forces are directly confronting each other."
In a new interview with Sarah Myers West of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, published this week, she now is warning: "Anecdotal evidence from other countries points in this direction: The Ethiopian government regularly shuts down mobile phone and Internet access during demonstrations, the Egyptian government shut down Internet access in January 2011 during major protests on Tahir Square in Cairo, the Chinese government has taken entire provinces offline in the wake of unrests, the Sudanese government did the same in September 2013 over growing unrest related to fuel prices, and in the Central African Republic the Internet was cut in December 2013 amidst ongoing violen[t] clashes.
"These are all rather extreme cases where full access was denied – many countries opt for less obstructive strategies where only certain sites are block. But they all indicate that governments are still very aware of their position of power when it comes to granting their citizens access to the Internet."
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