Political Factors that Enable an Internet Kill Switch in Democratic and Non-Democratic Regimes

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes' efforts to limit access to the have captivated academic and popular attention. After the political process baptized as Arab Spring, when Egypt (alongside other nation-states) digitally vanished from the global Internet, academics and non-governmental organizations have focused their attention on authoritarian regimes because of their policies' impact on human rights. In this context, one of the policies under study has been the shutdown of the entire Internet, also known as the Internet kill switch. However, it is less known that there has been an ongoing legal debate in democratic regimes on the authority government leaders should have to execute an shutdown in times of crisis. A historical analysis of the world's telecommunications history shows that one of the factors for governmental control is a national security problem, which is addressed differently in democratic and nondemocratic regimes. When it comes specifically to an shutdown, this paper proposes a non-traditional approach to the current academic path: identifying the political factors that enable democratic and nondemocratic regimes to shut down the Internet. For this purpose, this paper proposes a multiple case study, including three democracies (U.S., U.K., Australia) and two nondemocratic regimes (Russia and Venezuela). This paper will provide an overview of each nation-state under study and the shutdown policy's situation within their territories and the governments' reasoning to adopt this extreme form of government control or consider doing so. This paper will not include any episode of taking down a specific website or applications, as those are considered censorship episodes. This paper only will cover episodes where the entire within a nation-state or a specific local jurisdiction was taken down, and when there was a debate to consider doing it. By including democratic and nondemocratic regimes, we expect to enrich the governance debate and create awareness about this extreme form of government control over the Internet.