Rohini Lakshané on Internet Shutdowns

Internet shutdowns have increased in their frequency around the world. Many countries routinely deny access to vast parts of the population, by requiring internet service providers to shut down services for extensive periods. This has significant impacts on human rights - to freedom of expression and assembly, but also to seek receive and impart information, as well as to trade and to education and health. What was once seen as an aberration is becoming a norm. Countries including Pakistan, Myanmar, parts of China, and India have shut down the Internet (in some cases slowing down access) with severe consequences for people. In India it used to be sporadic, such as in states in the north-east, but since August, the former state of Jammu and Kashmir (since bifurcated into two federally-administered areas) has had limited access to the outside world. India has a long history of internet shutdowns.

Rohini Lakshané is a technologist by training, public policy researcher, Wikimedian and digital security trainer. She has worked on several research and advocacy projects on the intersection of technology, policy, and civil liberties. Her body of work encompasses diverse territories such as the application of technology and policy to solve issues of gender inequity and violence; access to knowledge; openness; patent reform; making tech spaces diverse and inclusive; and the cross-hairs of gender, sexuality and the Internet. She also conducts digital security trainings for journalists, activists, and at-risk civil society groups. She has served on interational juries honouring excellence in online activism. For her research, she was profiled in the 2019 book “31 Fantastic Adventures in Science: Women Scientists in India”. She cowrote a report on Internet shutdowns in the Indian state of Manipur, which has witnessed insurgency. Her report focuses on the gendered impact of such shutdowns. While Indian law is firm in requiring companies to comply with government instructions, Lakshané argues that companies should explore collective responses to the problem.

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