Re: Internet shutdown proposal

From: Martin <martin_at_navacelle.net>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2017 20:04:25 +0400


‎Indeed thanks. Very valuable and useful.

  Original Message  
From: Ish Sookun
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 19:30
To: S Moonesamy; mauritius-internet-users_at_lists.elandnews.com
Subject: Re: Internet shutdown proposal

Hi SM,

Thank you for your synthesis.

On 25/04/17 01:33, S Moonesamy wrote:
>
> A few months ago, the Kenyan regulator hinted that there may be an
> internet shutdown during the general elections if things get out of
> hand. There is an unconfirmed report of an ISP in Kenya being requested
> to shut down the internet; the request was revoked after a few hours.
> The proposal was submitted after those events.
>

Cloudflare [1] has a point-of-presence in Kenya. Major businesses would
be affected if an internet shutdown were to happen in Kenya. The
economic impact would be high.


> There is a long discussion about the proposal on the Resource Policy
> Discussion mailing list. There were suggestions to discuss the matter
> within a government-only "working group" as the proposal, if it is
> adopted, may create a direct conflict with one or more governments in
> the region. There are other issues, i.e. is a Regional Internet
> Registry allowed to have a policy to take specific action against a
> government; what impact would such a policy have on the other Regional
> Internet Registries; will there be repercussions at the global level?
>

I wondered about that. There is no such "anti-shutdown" measure by other
RIRs. If the proposal gains traction and gets adopted by Afrinic, I
suppose other RIRs would follow.

> The internet shutdown in anglophone regions in Cameroon was mentioned
> during the discussions about the proposal. A few months ago, a
> journalist raised that issue in an unrelated discussion and pointed out
> that the local chapter of the Internet Society in that country approved
> of the shutdown. Several organizations involved in "internet
> governance" sent a letter of protest to the (global) Internet Society
> about the stance taken by its local chapter in Cameroon.
>

I understood that the statement in favor of the internet shutdown came
from one member of the Cameroon chapter while ISOC did not dissociate
from that statement.

> A few days ago, the Head of State [1] instructed the Minister of Post
> and Telecommunications to have internet access re-established in the
> affected regions. There was a question about whether the proposal had
> any impact of the situation in Cameroon. I would say that it had an
> impact as there was a change after foreign news sites published news
> stories about the proposal and the situation in Cameroon.
>

Sadly, I didn't see anybody else talking about the subject in Mauritius.

> [..] I didn't mention the following
> news article as I was not sure whether you were still interested in the
> matter:
> https://www.lexpress.mu/article/trilock-dwarka-pourquoi-licta-bloqu%C3%A9-%C2%ABfacebook%C2%BB
> I suggest comparing it with the reply which you received.
>

I was unaware of the above statement by Trilock Dwarka made in 2007.
Thanks for bringing my attention to the same. I find it difficult to
digest that a person having said « Je soutiens la direction sur les
décisions prises. » is currently the Director of Information Technology.
(/_-)

[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/network/

Regards,

-- 
Ish Sookun
I drink coffee and manage Linux servers for lexpress.mu.
Received on Tue Apr 25 2017 - 16:04:45 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Apr 25 2017 - 16:09:01 PST