Should Government Be Able To Turn Off The Internet?

In the unlikely event of full-scale war, should the British government have the power to turn off the Internet entirely?

This was one of the more provocative questions asked at Nominet’s first annual .uk policy forum in London yesterday, where industry members and stakeholders gathered to discuss the issues of online protection and trust. The question was asked by Ray Hammond – futurologist, technology analyst and commentator on the digital age – who also gave a keynote address at the event.

“I merely put this question out as one of the most extreme and difficult questions that must be asked,” he said.

National security in the digital age

While most people in Britain would be aghast at the thought of the government having this kind of control over national communications infrastructure, Hammond points out that it might not be possible to protect the country with the Internet on. Anyone monitoring online communications would be able to gain an intricate picture of activities within the country, and intelligence would be leaked regularly.

As John Naughton, professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, put it, “The Internet is an absolutely perfect surveillance system. George Orwell couldn’t have made it up.”

While another full-scale war in Britain is highly improbable, Hammond’s question is pertinent in light of the recent civil uprisings in Egypt and Libya, where governments in those countries opted to turn off the Internet in an attempt to suppress rebel action.

The Egyptian government is believed to have taken down the Internet on 28 January to prevent anti-Mubarak activists from co-ordinating a large-scale demonstration in Cairo. The Internet blackout paralysed 91 percent of Egypt’s Internet networks for five days.

Then on 19 and 20 February, Libya’s Internet service was cut off amid protests against the government of Muammar Gaddafi. As it turns out, the chairman of Libya Telecom & Technology, the country’s leading ISP, was none other than Muhammad al-Gaddafi, the eldest son of president Moammar Gadhafi.

Meanwhile, US Congress has been bandying about the idea of an ‘Internet kill switch‘, that would allow the government to disconnect critical infrastructure from the Internet in an emergency. Senators said the proposed legislation was intended to protect the country from “external attacks” and that any exercise of “such broad authority” to “deny US citizens access to the Internet” would be an “affront to our Constitution.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no mention of an Internet kill switch in the White House’s recently announced cyber-security strategy.

Hindrance or help?

One question is whether a nation-wide switch-off of the Internet is even possible. Borders are porous, and data packets can be delivered via satellite or packet radio, or even routed through other countries. Historically, this ability to survive was a key design factor when the Internet emerged from the US defence sector.

In the case of Egypt, many people turned to old-fashioned dial-up modems in order to dodge the cyber restriction, and ISPs in the US, Sweden, France and Spain set up pools of modems to receive international calls from Egypt.

It has also been suggested that shutting off the Internet would breach people’s right to free expression. A poll conducted by GlobeScan on behalf of the BBC World Service last year revealed that nearly 80 percent of people worldwide consider access to the Internet to be a basic human right, rather than a privilege.

Most importantly, however, is the question of whether turning off the Internet at a time of national crisis would be more if a hindrance than a help. As one attendee at the Nominet event pointed out, cutting vital communications could “disable the country’s ability to respond in a way that might prevent the enemy from winning”.

For the last few years, the UK government has actively been pushing public services onto the web, and is also leading a country-wide effort to persuade the last nine million citizens to get online. With individuals and organisations growing increasingly dependent on the Internet, a national switch-off could potentially paralyse critical infrastructure.

The economic effects could also be devastating, with so many UK businesses relying on the Internet for basic operations. The five-day blackout in Egypt reportedly cost the country roughly $90 million (£56m), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), accounting for between three and four percent of the country’s GDP per day.

The mere suggestion of switching off online communications sounds like madness, but we are fast passing the point where such a thing is even conceivable. Within a couple of generations, no one will remember what life was like before the Internet, so this is an issue we need to face now, before it is no longer considered an option.