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Kill Switch episode 5: Human Rights and Internet Access

The Internet shut­down is not about you. It’s not tar­get­ed at you. The Internet shut­down is real­ly about the pro­test­ers. Amid the cloud of tear gas in the streets, retreat­ing from a vol­ley of sting­ing rub­ber bul­lets, are the real tar­gets of the shut­down. Now that their mobile phones aren’t con­nect­ed, they can’t regroup, orga­nize, and reassess their rights. And they can’t doc­u­ment or report on how the secu­ri­ty forces are switch­ing from rub­ber bul­lets to live ammu­ni­tion. They can’t tell the world that they are about to be slaugh­tered. And they can’t ask for help.

Kill Switch episode 4: The Fight to Get Back Online

It’s been a crazy month. It feels like you’re liv­ing a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent life than you used to. You have no con­nec­tion with the out­side world. The only news you are get­ting comes from the gov­ern­ment. The same gov­ern­ment that has been block­ing your Internet access. How can you believe any­thing they are say­ing right now? You need to find a way to be back online.

Kill Switch episode 3: Everyday Life Under a Shutdown

You thought that miss­ing your chance to apply for uni­ver­si­ty would be the worst thing to hap­pen due to the shut­down. But look­ing back now, more than three months into the shut­down, you real­ize that was only the begin­ning. There were a lot of unin­tend­ed side-effects of the Internet shut­down that nei­ther you nor any­one else saw com­ing at first. 

Kill Switch episode 2: Taking the Shutdown to Trial

Your gov­ern­ment claims that what it’s doing is legal. That they are fol­low­ing the let­ter of the law. Could you per­haps make an argu­ment against this claim? Could you prove that the Internet shut­down is in fact ille­gal, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic? If you could make that case, would they real­ly let you win? 

Kill Switch episode 1: The Rise of Internet Shutdowns

You des­per­ate­ly shoot off mes­sages on your phone to find out what is hap­pen­ing. But none of the mes­sages are going through any­more. Your Twitter feed is not refresh­ing. Even when you open your lap­top and decide to try from there, it is use­less. Your com­put­er does not want to con­nect. Even this pod­cast you’re lis­ten­ing to right now stops stream­ing suddenly. 

Kill Switch episode 6: How Do We Win the Fight

The Internet shut­down is final­ly over. The con­nec­tion has been restored. The court ruled that the shut­down is unlaw­ful, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and a vio­la­tion of fun­da­men­tal human rights. The gov­ern­ment had no choice but to reluc­tant­ly lift the Internet black­out. But the kill switch mech­a­nisms remain in place, and the invis­i­ble hand of the gov­ern­ment is always hov­er­ing over it.

A #Netfreedom Agenda for the 45th POTUS

In addi­tion to free­dom to con­nect, there also needs to be the abil­i­ty to con­nect, and that we need to mod­el best prac­tice at home and around the world, and the poli­cies that relate to that.

Who’s Killing Crypto?

Encryption is a key piece of a robust enter­prise approach to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. It keeps down the num­ber of data breach­es as the scale and the size of data breach­es con­tin­ues only to grow. It also is the first line of defense that users have against peo­ple access­ing their data on an indi­vid­ual level.