Newsletter update: I’ve been away for more than a month… This was partly due to holidays and partly due to issues with my website. Publications should resume at the usual frequency from today.

Latest internet restrictions

Iran 🇮🇷 The parliament is considering a new bill that would significantly expand state control over the internet, including placing the country’s internet gateways under the authority of the Supreme Cyberspace Council, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in early September.

The legislation would require internet providers to authenticate users and impose penalties on online platforms that violate government rules, raising concerns over surveillance, censorship, and reduced online anonymity. 

Russia 🇷🇺 In August, authorities disrupted access to more than 20 popular VPN services, in what was described as one of the largest such crackdowns to date. 

At the same time, a 19-year-old man in Kurgan was charged after using a VPN to access and listen to a song designated as "extremist" - the sixth known case under a law criminalising the search for and access to such material.

Telegram has also come under increasing pressure, with authorities slowing the platform and blocking some of its features, while the FSB issued an arrest warrant for founder Pavel Durov in July, accusing him of facilitating terrorist activities.

Pakistan 🇵🇰 Internet shutdowns and restrictions on information intensified in Pakistan in recent months, particularly in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Balochistan. 

In Azad Jammu and Kashmir, prolonged internet disruptions accompanied protests over political representation and governance, with authorities also restricting international media access to the region. 

Services were gradually restored in some areas in August, while mobile internet remained suspended in parts of Balochistan amid security concerns. The authorities have also been accused of blocking news websites, including Al Jazeera, during the Kashmir protests.

In a recent column, Sally Gimson, editor of Index on Censorship, highlighted the case of Pakistani filmmaker and activist Roshaan Khattak, whose research into human rights violations in Balochistan was followed by death threats and, according to Khattak and his supporters, an inadequate response from the University of Cambridge. Gimson argues that the case raises broader questions about transnational repression and academic freedom.

India 🇮🇳 Internet restrictions also continued to feature prominently in India in recent months. In July, authorities suspended mobile internet services within a 1.5-kilometre radius of New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar during protests, prompting a legal challenge that was later withdrawn after services were restored.

Separately, the government ordered GitHub to remove repositories hosting BitChat, a decentralised messaging app that protesters had used to communicate during localised shutdowns. 

Civil society group SFLC.in published a survival kit for activists, humanitarians and journalists facing digital restrictions.

Want to know more? Read Madhavankutty Pillai’s analysis on Open Magazine, "The Sovereign and the Server: Indian’s Digital Freedom."

Guinea 🇬🇳 Internet measurement groups like OONI and Netblocks observed a disruption to several social media platforms in Guinea corroborating user reports of difficulty accessing Facebook, YouTube and TikTok at the end of July.

🌍 Stay up to date with the latest internet disruptions with Internet Society’s Pulse shutdown tracker.

In this month's digital censorship news

🏆 The Electronic Frontier Foundation has granted Access Now, 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, DeFlock, and New Media Rights its 2026 EFF Awards for their "vital work in ensuring that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people." EFF, September 9, 2026

🇹🇼 Taiwan conducted its first-ever mobile internet throttling exercise during its annual civil-defence drills, deliberately slowing 4G/5G networks for 30 minutes across parts of the island. The exercise was designed to simulate communications disruption during a Chinese attack or major disaster and test civilian preparedness. It affected areas covering roughly 70% of Taiwan’s population and was explicitly designed to test civilian preparedness and encourage alternative forms of communication during a crisis. While framed as a resilience measure, it highlights digital-rights concerns around governments deliberately restricting access to communications networks in the name of national security. The Guardian, August 14, 2026

🇨🇳 American researchers have identified overlaps between the source code of products developed by Chinese technology company Geedge Networks and China’s Great Firewall, the country’s extensive internet filtering and censorship system. According to research presented at the USENIX Security 2026 conference, the Chinese government is using Geedge’s Tiangou Secure Gateway (TSG) as part of the Great Firewall’s traffic-filtering capabilities. Researchers established the link after more than 100,000 files from Geedge’s network were leaked in 2025, including its source-code repositories. By reconstructing the TSG firmware from the leaked data, they identified technical similarities between its filtering functions and those of the Great Firewall, providing new evidence of the infrastructure underpinning online censorship in China. 35th USENIX Security Symposium, August 12–14, 2026 

🎂 The #KeepItOn coalition, led by Access Now is "celebrating" a decade of fighting internet shutdowns. The initiative, which began with 70 organizations, has now grown to over 370 local, regional, national, and international organizations from 106 countries. The civil group organization took a moment to reflect on some of the movement’s main accomplishments and remaining challenges. Access Now, August 11, 2026

🆘 The Tor Project has unveiled Snowflake Volunteer as a standalone Android app. The app lets you help people living in restricted countries bypass internet censorship by acting as a proxy for them to connect to the Tor network. TechRadar, August 11, 2026

🇲🇿 Mozambique’s Constitutional Council has blocked internet shutdown powers the government had written into law after losing a 2024 court case. However, the ruling of the country’s top court does not prevent parliament from passing new legislation granting authorities similar powers. Techpoint Africa, August 10, 2026

🆓 Amnezia VPN is offering free premium subscriptions to  human rights defenders, digital rights campaigners and journalists through a partnership with non-profit human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders. The Independent, August 5, 2026

🇷🇺 Seven Russian banks - Sber, VTB, Rosselkhozbank, T-Bank, Uralsib, Promsvyazbank and Bank Saint Petersburg - have moved some of their websites to a certificate authority run by the state, likely in a bid to sift through users’ traffic. Independent Russian news portal Mediazona reported that some of their websites recently began serving TLS certificates issued by Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development. However, the migration is uneven, with T-Bank moving only tinkoff[dot]ru, which references the bank’s more common older name, leaving tbank[dot]ru still on US-based Let’s Encrypt certificate, and Levoberezhny bank switching only its business banking. Mediazona, August 3, 2026

This month's reading list

"Internet Censorship’s Implications on Academic Research: Motivating an Academic Accessibility by Design", Steffen Wendzel, Julia Lenz, and Martin Baumann, Communications of the ACM, Volume 69, Issue 9 | August 25, 2026

"Cost of Access: When the Internet Goes Dark, People Become the Network", Saadia Azim, Internet Society Pulse | August 20, 2026

"The Humanitarian Costs of Starlink’s Policy", Su Mon Thazin Aung, Fulcrum | August 19, 2026

"Shutdown Trends from 2019 to 2025: Where Do We Go from Here", Internet Society and Conexion Segura y Libre | August 6, 2026

"Bridging the Gap: LEO Satellite Internet and Human Rights", Andrew Friedman, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) | August 6, 2026

Upcoming events

📆 RightsCon Continues
Where & when: Online | September 22, 2026
Host: : Access Now
Website | Subscribe to the RightsCon Rundown

📅 Disconnected Justice: The Non-Implementation of Internet Shutdown Judgments
Where & when: Online | September 28, 2026
Host: Media Defence
Website | Register

🗓️ Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa 2026 (FIFAfrica26)
Where & when: Balaclava, Mauritius | September 28-October 1, 2026
Host: Collaboration on International ICT Policy For East And Southern Africa (CIPESA)
Website | Register

📆 SMEX Secure Communications Hackathon at Bread&Net
Where & when: Beirut, Lebanon | October 10-11, 2026
Host: SMEX
Website | Apply (deadline: September 30, 2026)

🗓️ Bread&Net
Where & when: Beirut, Lebanon | October 14-16, 2026
Host: SMEX
Website | Register

📆 Remote Sensing and OSINT Analysis for Human Rights and Humanitarian Applications
Where & when: Online | October 19-23, 2026
Host: Humanitarian Research Lab, Yale School of Public Health
Website | Register interest