Internet blackout in Equatorial Guinea and social media bans in Venezuela

Internet blackout in Equatorial Guinea and social media bans in Venezuela
Internet access has been cut off in Equatorial Guinea, specifically in the Annobón province. Residents have been protesting against the government's environmental and human rights violations on the island. Digital rights advocates are urging the government to restore internet services. Our editor Ania Lichtarowicz, has the details. 

Meanwhile, connectivity issues are also affecting Venezuela. NetBlocks reports that X (formerly known as Twitter) is facing restrictions as the disputed President Maduro has ordered a ten-day ban on the platform, alleging it incites civil unrest. Additionally, the messaging app Signal seems to be partially restricted. Drones patrolling citizens’ activities have been reported alongside other digital methods of limiting information access. Sixty-two media outlets have also been blocked. Marianne Díaz Hernández, a #WhyID Campaigner at Access Now is on the show.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert is Ghislaine Boddington.

More on this week's stories:

Authorities in Equatorial Guinea must end internet shutdown and other human rights abuses

Open letter on technology-enabled political violence in Venezuela

Transcript

00:00:00 Gareth Mitchell 

Hello, kids, I'm Gareth. This is the Somewhere on Earth podcast. It's Tuesday the 13th of August 2024, and we're in our studio in London, which is always a nice place to be. 

00:00:18 Gareth Mitchell 

And with us, today is the excellent Ghislaine Boddington for some expert commentary. And Ghislaine, yeah, how are things? you look well. 

00:00:26 Ghislaine Boddington 

Ohh thank you. 

00:00:27 Gareth Mitchell 

It's always a start. 

00:00:27 Ghislaine Boddington 

Well I am. I am fine. I'm just waiting to go on holiday and I really need it. So I've been wrapping up a lot of work and I've been thinking a lot about the item we did on digital forms, which was a few months ago now. 

00:00:41 Gareth Mitchell 

Ohh yes, and as you know one of my favorite subjects. Everyone goes boring, but it's interesting. 

00:00:42 Ghislaine Boddington 

I know he's become fascinating, hasn't it? And now I've just been filling in digital form after digital form after digital form for university, for this, for that, and all the time I'm thinking about that item we did, which was so fascinating, yeah. We did think it was going to be boring and it wasn't. It was really great. 

00:01:01 Gareth Mitchell 

Because it's how we interface with all these institutions in our lives, isn't it? What could be more important? 

00:01:05 Ghislaine Boddington 

And how how they make you feel stupid or unable to do it, or even some of them like we said in the show that make you feel like, well, are they trying, do I have to prove I'm not a criminal. Yeah. You know, these kind of very weird things that happen within forms which are pushing you in different directions to feel more and more annoyed. And angry until you're like, feel utterly daft. And Iike it must be me. It must be me, you know. 

00:01:31 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, I'm so glad, obviously not for you but for me, that you turn it back on yourself because I do as well. I just think I must be an idiot. You know, I just. I I didn't realize you're meant to put the post code in without a space. Oh how stupid am I. Ohh look here we are. 

00:01:43 Ghislaine Boddington 

I know, I know. Yeah. Yeah, it's very hard. So I do keep recommending people to listen to that one, that podcast one we did, including all the people in my university who make those forms. 

00:01:56 Gareth Mitchell 

Yes, that's very important. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the intended audience. It's people who actually create these blessed things. They're the ones who need to tune into this and take note. But Ghislaine, thank you for that. That's. That's actually really made my day. That whole conversation. I I know I'm. I'm funny. Alright, let's jump in. 

00:02:18 Gareth Mitchell 

And coming up today. 

00:02:22 Gareth Mitchell 

We're focusing on Internet shutdowns in this edition, specifically in two parts of the world. In Venezuela, there's political unrest following President Maduro's contested re-election amid calls for a mass protest this weekend, services like X formerly Twitter are disrupted.  Elsewhere in the world, the government’s taken down the Internet in the tiny island province of Annobón in Equatorial Guinea. We'll be talking about all of that right here on the Somewhere on Earth podcast. 

00:02:58 Gareth Mitchell 

First, then to Equatorial Guinea, where the Internet has gone dark in that province there of Annobón. People there have been demonstrating over environmental and human rights abuses by the government and the government basically is retaliating by saying, well, in that case we're just going to switch off your connectivity.  

00:03:16 Gareth Mitchell 

Digital rights activists are calling on the Equatorial Guinea and government to reinstate Internet access. Well, Ania, you've been following this very closely, haven't you? Producer Ania Lichtarowicz in the studio with us, by the way. So what do we need to know? 

00:03:29 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Well, on July the 20th this year, the government of Equatorial Guinea cut off the island of Annobón from the Internet, as you said, leading to a cellular blackout. And this was following the demonstrations against environmental exploitation. There have been reports of government security forces conducting arrests and even seizing mobile phones from people would you believe? 

00:03:50 Ania Lichtarowicz 

So this was after dozens of residents peacefully demonstrated in the city of San Antonio de Palais against the harmful impact of dynamite explosions linked to ongoing mining operations on the island. 

00:04:03 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Now on August the 2nd, the government reportedly banned the sale and use of unauthorized intellect, satellite services and equipment. On August the 5th, it ordered satellite Internet provider Starlink to immediately suspend its services for all kits located in the country and to seek a licence. 

00:04:22 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Annobón is a province of Equatorial Guinea. It consists of the island of Annobón and a group of islets in the Gulf of Guinea. It's the smallest province in the country in both area and population, and according to the last census, in 2015 it had a population of 5314. Now there's been a long history of the population suffering from marginalisation, exploitation and human rights abuses there. The island is also a biodiversity hotspot with a natural protected reserve that is under threat. Including from large scale dumping of toxic waste on the island and surrounding waters. 

00:05:01 Gareth Mitchell 

So why has all this come to the attention of people outside the country now? Especially  Ania, as we're talking about this tiny province. I've looked it up and it's this little island, isn't it?  

00:05:11 Ania Lichtarowicz 

You can't see it's there on most maps. 

00:05:12 Gareth Mitchell 

Exactly. Yeah. So you've got this large, relatively large land mass of Equatorial Guinea and then out in the in the Gulf of Guinea, as you say, this small island. Anyway. So why? Why now really? 

00:05:24 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Well, Access Now who we're also going to be hearing from about the situation in Venezuela, have issued a statement about the situation. Now this has been signed by more than 40 organisations from the #KeepItOn  coalition. Now Access Now and the #KeepItOn   coalition are calling on authorities and Equatorial Guinea to immediately restore Internet and telecommunications services in Annobón. According to the statement the disconnection of communications services is the latest in a series of repressive acts by the government of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo 

00:06:01 Ania Lichtarowicz 

who has maintained a tight grip on the country since 1979. It's not the first time that Annobón has experienced Internet shutdowns at the hands of the government, and only a few months ago, in May 2024, it joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, UNPO, and they have issued a statement denouncing the arbitrary detention and torture. 

00:06:26 Ania Lichtarowicz 

of the inhabitants by the regime, in addition to the militarisation of the island and the confiscation of mobile phones. UMP O joined the urgent call for the international community to intervene and address the humanitarian crisis. 

00:06:40 Gareth Mitchell 

Just looking at the map and seeing this small island it occurred to me Ania, that its connectivity must be a challenge there at the best of times anyway, so how easy it is it to get online and we're talking about Annobón, that little province, but also just generally in mainland Equatorial Guinea. 

00:07:00 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Well, what I've looked at is price and that is quite significant. Now, according to the Statista website, one GB of mobile Internet in Equatorial Guinea cost on average US $1.59  in 2023. That's one of the highest prices for mobile data in Africa. 

00:07:21 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Out of 15 data plans measured in the country, lowest price was one US $1.17 for one GB for 30 days. Most expensive plan for one GB was $1.69. Now you compare that like today I was actually looking at changing mobile phone for my daughters and I was able to find deals in the UK at less than a dollar a month for three gigabytes of data, so that kind of gives you a comparison. 

00:07:46 Gareth Mitchell 

And especially if you take into account the disparity in earnings and income between a country like the UK and Equatorial Guinea. 

00:07:51 Ania Lichtarowicz 

Absolutely. 

00:07:53 Gareth Mitchell 

My goodness. All right, Ania, thank you. So, Ghislaine is listening intently to all that then. So it's kind of inevitable Ghislaine I'm afraid, but still rather depressing that we sit around this table and talk about Internet shutdowns. 

00:08:11 Ghislaine Boddington 

It is isn't it? And actually, we know from covering this issue in this show and others previously, it's getting worse, yeah. And we know that a lot happened in India this year, particularly around the issues around the election. We know that more and more are happening around elections. We're seeing the situation being brought up like, oh, you know, do you think they're going to do an Internet shutdown? It's starting to come into the queries now, to more mass level, I think yeah. 

00:08:43 Ghislaine Boddington 

And I even got asked it about Britain the other day, you know, will the new Prime Minister actually shut down the Internet with what's happening in our own unrest situation, which we'll talk about later? Yes. 

00:08:51 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, and and to explain, yeah, it's we have a far right, right in this country. 

00:08:55 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, far right riots this last few weeks and and we're just going to talk about Venezuela as well. So I think we've got a very big tipping point in how the internet's being used. We know socially the social media side is full of disinformation, misinformation, even though we knows still also that it's incredibly good for many, many reasons, educational et cetera. So a bit depressing though. 

00:09:20 Gareth Mitchell 

It certainly is, and clearly for many governments they will just see in many regimes that there's an economic cost, of course to a shutdown, but they will see that as a price worth paying to silence dissent in whichever country it might be. 

00:09:35 Gareth Mitchell 

So OK, look. Well, Ghislaine, you mentioned Venezuela there. So according to the NetBlocks observatory that follows all these shutdowns, and X, formerly Twitter is restricted now in Venezuela as contested President Maduro orders the platform to be banned for 10 days claiming that the platform X is promoting civil war. The messaging platform Signal also appears to be partially banned. Certainly in the last data that I looked at before we came to the studio. 

00:10:05 Gareth Mitchell 

Let's hear a bit more now from Marianne Díaz Hernández, who is #WhyID campaigner at Access Now. Thanks for joining us, Marianne, welcome to the podcast. 

00:10:18 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

Thank you for having me. 

00:10:20 Gareth Mitchell 

Lovely. So can we just get a sense of what happened? What is happening in Venezuela, what the restrictions are? 

00:10:26 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

Well, as you mentioned, Maduro ordered the blocking of Twitter a few days ago, Thursday, that strike here. Maduro ordered the the blocking of Twitter on August 11. He had already expressed his intention to regulate, either regulate or block social media in general. He mentioned TikTok, he mentioned Instagram and also Twitter.  

00:11:00 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

And he accused his steps of being, quote unquote, the main instrument to increase hatred and fascism in the country. Those are his words, not mine. And then what happened was that as Twitter started being blocked, implemented the blocking,  

00:11:21 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

several other services went down. Some things had already happened before, like credit being blocked, Signal starting to experience difficulties with Signal’s website and also the websites of VPNs such as Proton and TunnelBear have been unavailable, so that doesn't stop the VPS from being used per se, but it makes it more difficult for people to download the apps without being able to access the website, particularly for desktop. And so when the blocking of Twitter was implemented  

00:12:00 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

we found that some other places were also unavailable, like Disney+ and HBO Max and Mercardo Libre, which is a sort of Amazon-like site that's popular in Latin America. 

00:12:15 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

Binance, all of Microsoft domains, so Teams, for instance, was unavailable and some of this was later explained by further research conducted by local NGOs, by learning that the entirety of AWS CloudFront was blocked in Venezuela. So this is affecting a large number of online sites, particularly those that are using CloudFront to handle large amounts of  

00:12:47 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

traffic that is on that side and then there are other developments on the legal and political aspect, which is that yesterday the Maduro government gave statements accusing Tiktok now from wanting to start a civil war, so we can probably see TikTok blocked in the upcoming days. And they are working on like today, they're having a discussion at the Congress which is controlled by Maduro’s government on cyber terrorism, the rise of digital fascism, which is a very, very interesting concept I might say. Maybe someone who is not Venezuelan might find them more interesting. 

00:13:37 Gareth Mitchell 

Right. Well, well, well, we, we, we we can do that because Ghislaine is here in the studio and Ghislaine, we're just seeing so much of this misuse of social media worldwide, aren't we. So you’ve got the aspect of the shutdowns, but then also when social media is available, all kinds of nefarious actors doing bad things on social media intending to create certain harms or to achieve certain outcomes. So you're you're interested in this aren’t you? 

00:14:04 Ghislaine Boddington 

No, definitely. And I think the kind of, no I don't think the word irony is the right word, but it is a quite an irony where in one country in Venezuela at the moment, for example, the shutting down of Twitter is a problem because people can't stay in touch and keep going. 

00:14:21 Ghislaine Boddington 

And in another country like the UK, we're not shutting down Twitter, but actually, you know, Twitter is causing part of the problem. Yeah, because this whole issue around misinformation, disinformation, which leads and goads people into, you know, online threats and racist trolling and leading to physical threats and this kind of harassment. 

00:14:41 Ghislaine Boddington 

And then even to physical injury, because we've had these UK riots in the last two, two or three weeks and it is, you know, fairly clear, it's become fairly clear with a lot of verification and sources being checked, 

00:14:52 Ghislaine Boddington 

that the kind of call to action was often incited by the misuse of social media by far right groups and including X, of course, but actually other scenarios too. It did start with a lie, that social media thing. They've absolutely clarified that it wasn't a Muslim guy that did the murdering of three young girls. It wasn't, you know. 

00:15:15 Gareth Mitchell 

And let's just just explain that for people outside the UK or who may not be familiar with this, but three young girls were horrifically murdered while they were attending, like a summer holiday dance class, a school holiday dance class and then rumors went around the Internet through social media that the perpetrator was a Muslim and somebody who had illegally entered the UK on a small boat crossing from the European continent. So. So just to pick up then Ghislaine,  

00:15:49 Ghislaine Boddington 

Was fake yes, it was a fake name.  

00:15:47 Gareth Mitchell 

Then that that was the catalyst and so these these reports of this being a kind of Muslim asylum seeker were fake, yeah. 

00:15:53 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yeah. And it and it pushed, it pushed a lot of people into riots and street violences in many towns, cities and towns in England and Northern Ireland. 

00:16:03 Ghislaine Boddington 

But what I think is really interesting about this because you know, we're looking at the irony of these being different uses in different countries. But basically it comes down to pinpointing what the other is, that actually otherness being seen as a negative, rather than  what we know is that other otherness is different. And that's a very, very positive part of the world and why we get so much joy from the world, different culturally, different gender wise, different racially? I mean, imagine if we were all the same. 

00:16:30 Ghislaine Boddington 

I mean, you know, so I think that we are having the creation of an us and them scenario that's happening in many places. You know either way, right, left or it doesn't really matter actually on the politics, but it's us and them and they're useful. If it's useful for your election campaign or to gain votes, it's that rhetoric that's being used and often is seemingly now leading to violence, physical violence. 

00:16:54 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. And throw that  then say that into the explosive echo chamber that is social media and people believing what they want to read and then sharing and amplifying yet. And a lot of stuff that we've discussed on this podcast. Marianne, back to you then. 

00:17:09 Gareth Mitchell 

How are people in Venezuela if they are able to and getting around some of these restrictions that you've mentioned? I mean, maybe VPN's, but you said that even a number of VPN sites have been taken down as well. So are people finding other means of getting online? 

00:17:24 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

I mean, yes and no. It depends a lot on on many factors such as the level of familiarity with technology that people have. 

00:17:33 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

And just the Internet quality. Because sometimes when Internet is very poor, then VPNs do not help you connect. But we have been fighting against censorship for 15 years now. So there is a lot more familiarity in Venezuela with the concept of what what VPN is. And the concept of circumventing censorship by, for instance, changing DNS in your computer,  done in other countries that I have worked with at the same time. 

00:18:05 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, and sorry, just to interrupt you then, you said changing the DNS in your computer, this is your DNS entry on the Internet. It sounds a little bit technical for people who don't do this all the time and just just briefly, can you explain what that means then, going in and fiddling with the DNS settings. 

00:18:19 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

Yeah, sure. It mainly means that if the blocking is a DNS type of blocking which is one of the many types of blocking that a government might implement. It is what we are facing right now. It is not the only type that we have faced in the past, but it is what we have.  

00:18:39 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

That’s the easy one, that's the one you can circumvent through VPN. And why? It is because the DNS which is the domain of the site that you are trying to access is like a phone number in a phone book. If someone can imagine an old phone book. 

00:18:57 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

And then you're calling that number and that number is unavailable, and changing the DNS is basically changing the book that you're trying to call to reach the same place. So finding another way around it, calling a different number. And so we are familiar with that. You go through a setting. It's not that difficult. 

00:19:17 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

But it requires some guidance and we have developed, as many other countries have, we have developed some guides to help people go through that and also to to help them install VPNs, which is just another way of doing that. 

00:19:30 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

As in the TunnelBear animation when you enter, right. It's a bear digging a tunnel to exit through somewhere else, trying to access from a different location, or calling to a different number. 

00:19:44 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, it's all ingenious and necessary clearly, given the context. So you're with Access Now, so you're a digital rights campaigning group. What are you calling for? 

00:19:55 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

Oh wow. 

00:19:57 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. Where do we start? I know you have a lot of things that very much concern you, but in the Venezuelan context and are are you making certain recommendations or could I put it more strongly and even say demands or requests? 

00:20:09 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

We released an open letter on technology enabled political violence on Monday, where up to 200 individuals and organizations are calling with us to stopping ending the use of technology path tools on digital platforms for the surveillance and persecution of political dissent, specifically in the wake of elections. 

00:20:35 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

This is a system that has been created for like during 20 years, they have been creating the system. They are now using the entirety of the weight of the system against opposition, against civil society. And so it has several aspects. So as I was mentioning, censorship and filtering is one of them. 

00:20:59 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

The only one that I was thinking as you were talking is harassment, because at the same time that they are blocking social media, the government itself is using social media to harass and dox people. And this is happening offline, like they are marking houses with big X’s. Yes, and it's happening online. They're using their social media accounts to spread videos and images of people that they want to chase and disappear and all sort of things. And they are they're using specific apps as well for this other than Instagram, Telegram and Twitter itself. 

00:21:42 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

And there's also surveillance. And for me, I work on identification and legal ID. One of the things that are a big worry for my campaign right now is that passports are being annulled by the thousands. We have found that,  

00:22:04 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

I don't know how many and we cannot know the number, but there are many, many, many human rights defenders and journalists have had their passports annulled in the past couple of weeks. And if they try to exit the country, they are arrested at the airport and if they try to go to an office to learn what happened to their passport, they are taken by the military.  

00:22:26 Gareth Mitchell 

So they're being trapped effectively, aren’t they? 

00:22:28 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

Yes, that is the point that they cannot move. Information cannot go out, people cannot go out. That is the entire point, it is a control system. So what we're calling, of course on those governments to cease using and abusing technologies in these ways. The full explanation is on the letter that is 5 pages long, but we're also calling, I think very importantly, 

00:22:49 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

on international organizations and international communities and countries that are in communication with this government to strongly condemn these violations of human rights specifically. 

00:23:01 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

They use an abuse of technological tools for it because the abuse of human rights is happening and technological tools are amplifying it. That is what's happening, right? They are not the origin of the violence, they are the origin of censorship. They are the way of amplifying and strengthening that harassment. 

00:23:21 Marianne Díaz Hernández 

So we are urging, the international community to strongly condemn these violations, to tell them that this is not acceptable because this is not within international law and of course, Venezuela is not really obeying the law at this point, but it is important to create that pressure around it. 

00:23:43 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. OK. Well, we'll look, we'll, we'll leave it there for this part of the podcast, but we'd love it if you can stay on and talk to us just for a few more minutes in our Podcast Extra. But thank you very much for joining us for that. By the way, people who want to read the statement from Access Now, it's on the website isnt it, accessnow.org. It's really easy to find under the take action part of the website. And it's available in Spanish as well. 

00:24:04 Gareth Mitchell 

Joining us from Access Now, that's Marianne Díaz Hernández and also of course, here in the studio we have editor and producer Ania Lichtarowicz and Ghislaine Boddington. And over there doing sound, we have the excellent Dylan, he's giving us a little wave there through the glass. Our production manager is Liz Tuohy and I'm Gareth. There we are, got through all the credits there. 

00:24:27 Gareth Mitchell 

Most credit, of course, to you, dear listener, for being with us. And if you can't join us for the subscription episode, of course we'll see you in the next edition. Thanks so much for being with us. It means a lot. Take care of yourselves, folks. Speak soon. Bye bye.