customer base is the supermarkets and supermarkets in europe was the open because it was part of the essential and that allowed us that. their fertility of so far in those markets. of it has abetted businesses and economies globally is no different on this farm workers here receive food parcels every month in addition to the salaries to help them push on and they know the job security depends on being able to export roses to more global markets. al-jazeera concision zimbabwe. a reminder of our top story is told me u.s. president donald trump has been acquitted in a 2nd impeachment trial 7 republican senators joined 50 democrats in a vote to convict him but that's all short of the 2 thirds majority needed castro has more from washington d.c.

we're talking about statements made by the republican minority leader in the senate mitch mcconnell because not only did he hint at the potential of criminal investigations into trump in the future but he himself said that he thought trump was practically and morally responsible for the violence on january 6th yet he still voted to acquit and the conflict between that really that's the talk of the day and go into the future is really the debate over the soul of the republican party. security forces fired to disperse protesters gathering in the northern state of cash and it's unclear if the footage that was live streamed on facebook as to whether they were using rubber bullets or live ammunition there are reports that several journalists were also arrested the military seize power 2 weeks ago kitty's health cheever's declared a bell an epidemic and after confirming 7 cases in the country 3 of those people have died it's the 1st resurgence in 5 years the virus has also been reported in

the democratic republic of congo the former president of argentina carlos menem has died at age 91 he won 2 elections and lead the country from 1989 to $999.00 when it was born a muslim to syrian immigrant parents but converted to catholicism while in prison during argentina's period of military rule rebels of attack security forces in the democratic republic of congo's 2nd largest city there was heavy gunfire at a military base in the city of lubumbashi at least 9 people have been reportedly killed and you can follow those stories on our web site at al-jazeera dot com i'm back with the news hour in 30 minutes next on our jazeera it's inside story with mohammed judge you stay with us.

well internet shutdowns become the norm across the world governments wanting to stifle dissent are blocking access and banning new platforms before they take hold so can tech companies and their users push back this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program i'm hammered over the past week governments in myanmar india and china have each disrupted the internet to clamp down on dissent although web shutdowns are not new rights activists say it's a tactic that is now being used more often manned mars army has routinely cut internet access since the coup on february the 1st telecoms have been ordered to

block twitter and facebook but protests against the military takeover continue to grow facebook is now restricting profiles linked to the army accusing it of sharing misinformation about the rallies. india's government wants twitter to remove more than $1100.00 accounts it says encouraged violence or misinformation about the protests against new farm laws the social media site deleted some users but it refused to suspend the accounts of news organizations journalists and activists saying doing so would violate free speech the government has threatened to jail twitter executives for up to 7 years if they don't comply india's supreme court is demanding responses from both sides before making a ruling. emerging platforms are being targeted as well people in china recently flocked to an american audience called clubhouse it became a platform for uncensored discussions on sensitive topics including the persecution of weaker muslims and the democracy protests in hong kong the government has since blocked the app the to include those who download 1st will china's internet is open the chinese government manages the internet in accordance with law and regulations

2nd china's position on the relevant issues has always been consistent and clear cut china has an un swerving determination to defend its national sovereignty security and development interests as well as to oppose interference by external forces a recent report found internet shutdowns across the world cost the global economy 4000000000 dollars last year the u.k. based digital privacy and security research group top 10 v.p.n. said disruptions lasted twice as long and 2020 than the year before $21.00 countries were affected india and me and more were responsible for the longest shutdowns disruptions cost the indian economy more than $2000000000.00 the report found governments were using shutdowns to conceal violet abuses often in response to protests civil unrest and during elections. all right let's bring in our guests joining us from london alpo care founder and director of the internet monitoring organization net blocks here in doha mark owen

jones assistant professor of digital humanities at how my belief university and in bangkok matthew bew are head of the asia program at article 19 an organization which promotes freedom of expression and information welcome to the program alp let me start with you today could we see the government shutdowns of the internet becoming normalized and is this becoming a trend now or are we just better at tracking the shutdowns. you know so if you ask me we've seen this normalization happen already. across the world we're seeing if new shutdowns become poets with a political discourse or even a method to suppressing those who discourse as happens during elections during protests and during political scandals so it is possible possible. hold ticks and this is a huge problem for site is across the world. is it

a situation that is growing well yes it is spreading but also we're becoming wiser to the situation because we are better able to monitor measure and advocate so there is a niche to these incidents and in a way it's a developing incidents to everyone that they're going to help but notice you nodding along to what some of what alp was saying do you want to jump in sure i've spent most of the last 2 weeks dealing with the unfolding situation in myanmar where there's been a military coup and since the military took power they've twice implemented a nationwide internet shutdown as they were rounding out on science and she and other government officials they were blocking mobile data access and they started throttling broadband internet i briefly last chapter of colleagues and friends they've blocked access to the internet so this is really a tactic that we're seeing increasingly in the region where i work which is which is asia and has really grave human rights consequences mark you know we've seen

a pattern emerge whereby government shut down one platform or an app and then the activists that are using that app just migrate to another app or to another platform is the technology going to stay one step ahead of the governments going forward or are the governments just going to be co-opting these new technologies. i think it's a difficult assessment to make but what we've seen an authoritarian regimes or liberal talk democracies is regimes adapting to new technology in such way that they can either co-opt it or control it we certainly saw with the arab uprisings in 2007 and since then some of the regimes willing to use these very crude nationwide internet lockdowns but failing that what the regime is sent to do is use tactics like social engineering surveillance and filtration the use of spyware to track and

monitor activists so i think in certain cases regimes get a handle of the instant destruction actually used to use that as a tool of social control which is also extremely worrying that's not to discount the worrying nature of internet shutdowns they are equally problematic in sense of censorship and they amount to a human rights violation but i think any time a new social media app comes on the block now people are talking about cup clubhouse regimes will obviously do a threat assessment and find a way to use that technology in a way that they can be used to. track or monitor activists alp what are some of the other countries where we've seen either full or partial internet shutdowns in the past year. so we have track some $35.00 countries with a major shutdown incidence and this includes social media blackout as well as a total near total internet blackout so these a nation scale incidents that's done countries and these countries also tend to repeat what they're doing so that we multiple instances per country if one to look

at some the recent incidents uganda stands out generally 12th this year elections. contested elections and the public trying to speak out and internet is cut 1st social media are restricted and then just on the eve of elections the internet cuts out so that people don't have access to political discourse online and the fed state to media for the duration of the election and some period after so that's one example and if i'm to look at it in the longer instances i have to draw your attention to if you're here which has had some very severe internet blackouts which are ordered by the state and they last for weeks sometimes months they're regional in cases in other cases they're national and this is happened for example during the outbreak of conflict in tikrit. just before the onset of conflict it's not cuts out in the region and people in some cases aren't even aware that computers has

started with the government so. these are used really to control discourse during preschool incidents and now we're looking at where it's all playing out again over the last 9 days matthew i want to look more specifically at me and more for a few moments because right now you have an issue with facebook there were facebook is trying to limit the spread of misinformation by me and mars military they say that they will significantly reduce the distribution of all content on pages and profiles run by the military of course facebook is essentially synonymous with the internet in me and more so many people use it there it is ubiquitous. as a platform but of course facebook was also heavily criticised for allowing itself to be used to incite hatred especially against for him to muslims in 2017 and in fact facebook in 2018 admitted that it failed to do enough to prevent its platform being used to incite violence and spread hate so how significant

a move is it right now that at this point in me and more after this coup that facebook is taking these actions. so it's been an evolution for facebook myself and friends were raising concerns about the way facebook was being used to incite violence before a massive campaign of crimes against humanity and lead acts a genocide alleged acts of genocide against their engine people and facebook did frankly very very little facebook has become much more active recently they directed more resources towards myanmar including by hiring local language content moderators and that's a really positive development we're still urging them to do more specifically to be more transparent in their decision making while they've taken some some good steps or against bad actors who are spreading misinformation who are inciting violence the reasoning behind those decisions hasn't been great and facebook is also very

clearly made politicized decisions at the request of the myanmar government in the past few years for example by giving get bans to ethnic armed groups that are fighting against the myanmar military it way it was very clearly responding to requests from the government so it's a it's a mixed bag facebook is doing much more now than they have in the past but there's still a lot more to be done especially in terms of transparency mark let's turn to china for a moment the fact that you know in a country like china people could at some point find and use an app like clubhouse that just for a few days would allow them a glimpse of an uncensored internet what kind of effect is that have in the long run. i mean i think the internet the impact of the internet across the world. including in the middle east region and china has been fairly profound i don't

think anyone can deny that the accessibility of information online has led to people exploring topics that were outside the curriculum outside what they were allowed to study universities so i think the internet and accessibility of the internet to people particularly authoritarian or censor regimes is vital and the same is absolutely true for china the issue is that often these moments new technological change or even the development of new platforms off a brief windows of hope and change so there might be a period of a short period where one of these technologies is able to circumvent aspects of state control usually the states will find a close that gap and again we saw this with the arab uprisings web people were holding up banas celebrating facebook and twitter and then very quickly it became clear that those platforms themselves with them being used to police citizens so i think often when we have a new technology we have a window of hope that is closed by the regime and i assume the same will happen

with china which is obviously incredibly censorious and i'd just like to make another comment on building a whole app album at them one of the interesting things about this information and even misinformation is that's one of the problems that we've see on these. social media platforms and we will often see the fact that i'm willing to regulate themselves leave the spread of this information in its formation and simultaneously that's also one of the reasons regimes including in uganda and i am not used to justify that closures of the internet they say they're doing it for national security purposes and the trying to struggles stop this mission of misinformation in fact that's largely not true many of these regimes are responsible spreading out from this misinformation so they just use it as a convenient excuse that pegging onto the global backlash and the global attention on fake news in order to justify these authoritarian measures alp there's a significant standoff going on right now between twitter and india over the issue of freedom of speech how do you see this playing out potentially. well it's

a measure of information is already just is not said it's not who owns the narrative in a certain country and there are also business interests in books so these companies they make money whether it's facebook or twitter they earn their money from advertises so they can't necessary just pull back withdraw from a country and say you know we're going to we're going to broadcast the people's voice all the time on these channels on these on these online channels they have to find a common ground and this is where tends to break down because as soon as you are not registered space with the country decides whether it's india whether it's whether it's uganda whether it's where there's myanmar you're working in that country territory and you have to play by the rules whether or not there is rules in a city fair so this is really where international regulation starts come in how far can social media platforms push it and are there incentives for those platforms to

do the right thing and it's not necessary to that right now there are enough incentives for them to do that i mean album blue just follow up with you about that i mean it's you said that it's unclear but do you think at some point there will be things that could be done measures that could be taken to stop regimes and governments in different part of the world from some blocking or shutting down the internet right so this falls into 2 categories the technical and and i suppose the policy of the the political so can you find a way to encourage these companies do the right thing or can you find a technical means for them to be able to do the right thing without damaging their business interests or indeed any essential his network so people can communicate themselves without needing platforms and so far. this hasn't really worked as a part of history in all to all 3 of those categories just because it's difficult to do so without incentivizing those businesses so the technology comes it's

a catch and mouse game where circumvention will happen people find a way around restrictions but then those will also be blocks and it's more or less the same with companies as well companies will push back for a while when there is an incentive to do so when there's international spotlight with an international desire to do that but as soon as the spotlight fades it will go back to business as usual where there's in. so it's really challenging environment and it's not clear things in a city getting better as fast as they should be matthew let's turn back for a 2nd to india the fact that internet shutdowns have been happening there i mean this is the world's largest democracy and the fact that the country's government is in a standoff and a debate about free speech with twitter social media giant does that signal to you that more countries will be engaging in these in these tactics going forward. certainly most of my work tends to be in east asia and southeast asia but that's

something we're seeing in this region as well. there's a lot of cases where we see governments pushing social media platforms for instance to. remove data that is critical comments that are critical of the government to localize data that data storage to hand over information about activists about human rights defenders about journalists to government officials and a lot of times that that pressure is coming from authoritarian governments who have nefarious goals. and when there is compliance by social media companies it results in human rights violations so and just to echo something that. that outfit was saying i think was very useful there are both technological ways to push back against some of these. these episodes of censorship and internet shutdowns and

we're right now we're trying to work with activists and yet more to access some of those tools but then we also need to work on pushing one policy reform and some article 19 is doing not as well working through the human rights council working with diplomats to try to ensure that governments that implement internet shut shutdowns that restrict access access to social media apps feel pressure and know that. those actions are clear violations of human rights that will not be excepted mark how challenging or how much more challenging does the situation become for activists in places like me and more or uganda or china or india when there are internet shutdowns and how much more difficult is the situation become for the protest movements and in those countries or others i think it absolutely. essential with why the nile is often fame often it is the human. lation as

as that we live in an increasingly day to fight society and much of our life is embedded in digital technology whether it's communication via whatsapp of these other social media platforms whether we're talking about organizing a contacting our family these are essential means of communicating with people we love and people we care about from an activist an oppositional perspective obviously these are essential for organizing and communicating so once that ability is removed it's always the hugely detrimental to the if they could see all of the such movements and let's not forget as well on a slightly related note we're living in a pandemic the internet has is incredibly important right now as most of us live in social isolation so whether it's made out of our elsewhere you know we i think people are increasingly reliant on the internet as a means to stay mentally healthy and such things so you know there's a huge issue of context that i think is very important. if you just sorry mark just hit upon something that i wanted to ask you about as well which is when it comes to

the humanitarian costs of an internet shutdown especially during a health crisis during a pandemic what is the impact of that look like. the impacts are varied and they're across the board i mean we have the economic impact and that's something we've been trying to assess and it varies but it's always high for the population so presently if you're 4 point $5000000.00 u.s. dollars per day during an internet shot then enough. for a developing economy but look at the bitterest where you have nation scale internet shut down not too long ago and the impact of that was in the region yes that was around $60000000.00 u.s. dollars per day because it's an economic powerhouse of the region where you have really all kinds of sectors there you also have the tech sector just starting up there and and what we see is that yes these are restrictions on political freedoms on the future of people to have their own voice but it's also ruining the country's

bottom line it's damaging the economy is damaging investor confidence in that country and it's generally pushing people away from that region so. may get back that say things somehow revert to normal that still would leave a shoot gap in terms of trust in the digital space and the digital economy because that is not compromised and when there's political instability that means there's also going to be digital instability in that region and it's very difficult to win the trust back matthew i saw you nodding along again it looks like you want to jump in please go ahead. sure we've been talking a lot of internet access in terms of freedom of expression or the right to protest i think we also need to keep in mind that access to information is a human right and in the digital age access to information usually means access to the internet and people need to be able to protect themselves educate themselves

make payments conduct business all of these things rely on access to information and this is especially true in conflict zones. access to information or access deep to the internet can really be the difference between life and death in myanmar prior to the crew there was a year and a half long internet shutdown in western anbar and this is the region where the men were military has been accused of genocide and there's also been a very bloody ongoing civil war and we were worried that the internet shutdown was being used as a veil to counter human rights violations but also had devastating impacts during the cold 19 crisis there was very credible reporting that many people in that area of the country didn't even know that there was a pandemic let alone know how to access medical care or protect themselves or their families mark of course the telecoms have come under increased pressure in

criticism from rights groups around the world for facilitating in the shutdowns for caving to the demands of the governments do they have a choice and do you think that we would see them push back in any significant way going forward i think everyone has the choice to ever have the ability to youth that let's go to commercial clout to actually stand by or stand behind human rights legislation i think that's absolutely true and i think this particular case when it comes to states that allied with the countries in which a lot of the happens we've been talking about in particular apace. you know one of the one of the most egregious examples i saw in the gulf region was in in the states of the high end where they actually successfully shut down the internet and one small town for over a year as as they attempted to isolate a group of political dissidents and this you know how to get a huge economic cost of about $260000.00 u.s. dollars just for shutting down the internet in the small town that we know for example who supplies internet infrastructure and supports bahrain for example so i

think that leverage needs to be used especially when there's the ability to exploit political relationships and allied relationships in order to do that of course is going to be harder in some way let me and which is somewhat more distant from say the u.s. and europe politically but i think certainly with a lot of the technological infrastructure built by specific companies i think that it can actually be used and should be used as a tool of political pressure help we only have about a minute left let me ask you do you think we're going to be seeing more companies whether they be social media giants whether they be tech platforms whether they be telecoms pushing back against governments who want to shut down the internet. well we definitely need to see more of this because these companies aren't doing enough to push back i mean there is no transparency now that's something we were seeing if you look at tele no resample norwegian i speak they have been putting out a list of orders that came from the. government in myanmar but it's still reactive it doesn't happen in real time and only happens when there is that pressure from

the outside but again there is no impetus there's no incentive for these companies to actually really talk about it it is in their benefits in a way in default not to talk about it because that could damage their public image so a huge amount you know if there's a solution it's in transparency it's about how these companies act it's about creating a space where they can speak out all right we've run out of times we're going to have to leave the conversation there thank you so much to all our guests out tucker mark owen jones and matthew york and thank you too for watching you see the program again any time of visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter we're at at a.j. anti story have a gentleman the whole team here but for now. talk

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