The Internet during the anti-government protests in Cuba

On Sunday, July 11, thousands of Cubans, took to the streets in anti-government protests triggered by COVID, the faltering economy and an overwhelmed healthcare system. In four days, at least 118 large and small protests took place across the island. The following is a snapshot of an interactive, crowd-sourced map showing the locations of the demonstrations (94 reported on the 11th, 14 on the 12th, 7 on the 13th and 3 on the 17th).

For the interactive version, many with images and videos, click here. As the images and photos show, the government responded with arrests and violence in some cases.

The government also began blocking the Internet on the evening of the 11th, as shown in the following graph, posted by Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Kentik.

It was totally blocked for a short time, then partially blocked. Madory speculated that they may have been trying to figure out how to block certain portions of the country.

Several messaging apps were blocked during the protest period. As you see below, the encrypted messaging app, Signal, was blocked at 10:41 PM on July 11 and was still down on the 17th. (UTC is four hours ahead of Cuban time). Messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram were also blocked, but not Facebook Messenger.

Cloudflare was also monitoring the situation in Cuba and, as shown below, there was a marked shift from mobile to desktop traffic. I read reports that mobile access had been cut off, and there are periods where 100% of traffic was from desktop users, but some mobile traffic moved during the protests.

Another interesting shift was in the percent of traffic written by humans to that from bots. Some of this shift may be a result of the blocking of human traffic or from increases in search engine activity. Since they report percents rather than absolute levels, it is hard to know.

In spite of blocking and suspension of Internet service in Cuba, there was a roughly three times increase in Cuban traffic during the protest time -- Cuba was in the news and Cubans were doing their best to communicate.

When blocked, many Cubans accessed the global Internet using the Psiphon VPN service. As shown below, the number of VPN users grew steadily during the protest period and reached a peak of 1.389 million daily unique users on July 15. I bet many new people learned about VPNs and learned to use Psiphon during the days of protest.

Cuba censors SMS messages ... for now

What could the Cuban government do with Russia-style access to Facebook data? What sorts of fake news could they create and circulate on YouTube and Pinterest? What can be done to control the dark side of the Cuban Internet?

Cuba is about to hold a referendum on a proposed constitution that the government supports and Eduardo Sanchez posted a test showing that SMS messages with anti-referendum terms like #YoVotoNo, #YoNoVoto or abstención are being blocked.

This form of censorship is not new. In 2016, 14Ymedio posted a story documenting the blocking of SMS messages containing terms like "human rights" or the names of certain dissidents.

While this blocking appears to occur only on SMS messages, as opposed to Internet texting, one can imagine similar screening of Internet traffic. The 3G mobile connectivity that Cuba began deploying last month appears to have significantly increased Internet activity, making this rudimentary censorship more significant.

But screening texts for key words could be just a start. As shown here, Cubans are already users of Facebook, YouTube and other social media services.

Cuban social media market shares, January 2018-19 (source)

I have long advocated improved Internet access in Cuba -- most recently suggesting several reasons for making 3G mobile access free as soon as capacity would allow, but what might the Cuban government do with Russia-style access to Facebook data? What sorts of fake news could they create and circulate on YouTube or Pinterest?

In the early days of the Internet, we naivly saw it a force for Good, but China, which came online in 1993, showed us (& Cuba) the dark side. Like China in the 1990s, Cuba is a near "green field." What can be done to control the dark side of the Cuban Internet?

Venezuela cracks down on the Internet

The tension between the benefits of the Internet and it's power as a political communication tool has been with us since the early days of the Internet. When the Internet came to Cuba, the government debated this Dictator's Dilemma and decided to limit and monitor access. The Venezuelan government took a more liberal stance and, today, the Internet is more advanced and ubiquitous there than in in Cuba.

The current political protests have led the Venezuelan government to crack down on the Internet -- see these posts from the Electronic Froteir Foundation, the Associated Press and Aljazeera America.

Perhaps President Maduro wishes Venezuela had adopted the Cuban policy. How, if at all, does this affect Cuba?

Freedom House report on Cuba in "Freedom on the Net, 2013"

Freedom House has published their annual Freedom on the Net report. (I also summariezed the 2012 report). Cuban Internet freedom is ranked 59th of the 60 nations surveyed, using an index based on:

• Obstacles to Access—including infrastructural and economic barriers to access, legal and ownership control over internet service providers (ISPs), and independence of regulatory bodies;
• Limits on Content—including legal regulations on content, technical filtering and blocking of websites, self-censorship, the vibrancy/diversity of online news media, and the use of ICTs for civic mobilization;
• Violations of User Rights—including surveillance, privacy, and repercussions for online activity, such as imprisonment, extralegal harassment, or cyber attacks.

Here are the controls in effect in the top and bottom five scoring nations:

The USA rank will probably drop next year, reflecting the recent revelations of the extent of NSA Internet surveillance. (For the full list of national controls click here).

While Cuba's low rating is not news, the report includes a concise, well-referenced essay on the state of the Cuban Internet. The statistical summary from the article is shown here:

The key developments for May 2012 – April 2013 were:

• Cuba’s eagerly anticipated high speed ALBA-1 fiber optic cable, which was expected to increase data transmission speeds on the internet 3000 fold, was connected in early 2013; however, access was limited to select government offices rather than being extended throughout Cuba (see Obstacles to access).
• The government imposed tighter restrictions on e-mail in the workplace, installing a platform that blocks “chain letters critical of the government” (see Limits on Content).
• In 2012 and 2013, the government continued its practice of employing a “cyber militia” to slander dissident bloggers and to disseminate official propaganda (see Limits on Content).
• Arbitrary detentions and intimidation of bloggers increased in late 2012 (see Violations of User Rights).
• Travel restrictions were loosened in early 2013 and some high-profile bloggers, such as Yoani Sánchez, were granted permission to leave Cuba for the first time in years (see Violations of User Rights).

Fidel likes the Internet, but does that matter?

A recent story on Fidel Castro's 87th birthday calls him a "soldier of ideas on the Internet," who, according to his biographer and book editor, Katuiska White, surfs the Internet for "personality profiles, maps, monographs, data, anecdotes and recollection of events."

This took me back to the early Internet days, when the role of the Internet was being debated in Cuba. What was Fidel's view of the Internet?

One clue is his support of the formation of the Youth Computer Clubs (YCC), several of which had email and Usenet access in the pre-Internet days. This article recounts his financial and policy support of the clubs. As shown below, he expressed his envy of the young people at the dedication of the YCC headquarters, which occupied what had been the Sears store in Havana.

Fidel Castro dedicates the YCC headquarters

This post by Omar Pérez Salomón includes several other quotes and actions indicating that Fidel continued to favor education in computer science and the use of information technology (though perhaps not the Internet).

On the other hand, government leaders like Raúl Castro and Ramiro Valdés have warned of dangers the Internet poses.

Raúl Castro and Ramiro Valdés

The state of the Internet in Cuba today leads one to conclude that, whatever Fidel may say or believe, widespread access of the citizens to the Internet has not been a priority of the government.

What happened to the ALBA-1 undersea cable?

(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

Associated Press reporter Andrea Rodgriguez, @ARodriguezAP, has published an article stating that "mystery shrouds the fate" of the ALBA-1 undersea cable linking Venezuela and Cuba.

Cuban officials promised that the cable would in use last fall, but Rodriguez finds no evidence that it is use in government offices or elsewhere.  She interviewed a dozen employees of public institutions who said they have seen no noticeable improvement in their work connections.  Some said that download speeds have even gotten a little slower.  She also made "multiple attempts to get Cuban and Venezuelan government officials to comment," but was unsuccessful.

She is a reporter who is on the ground in Cuba and unable to find evidence of the deployment or application of the cable.

How might we explain this?  I can think of three hypotheses:

1. There have been claims of corruption, and some of the peple Rodgriguez interviewed corroborate that assertion.
2. I have suggested earlier that a fast undersea cable would be a strong link in a weak (or nonexistent) chain if Cuba's domestic Internet infrastructure were not upgraded to utilize it.  Skilled networking technicians would also be needed.  Perhaps capital to upgrade the domestic network is not available.
3. The Arab Spring may have frightened the government.   Raúl Castro opposed the Internet when Cuba connected in the mid-1990s.  In October 1997 he stated that "Glasnost, which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries, consisted of handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism." Perhaps he fears an Internet supported "Cuban Spring."

Or, maybe the answer is none of the above -- or all of the above.  Whatever the reason, it seems that a reported 70 million dollar investment is gathering barnacles and little more.

Is Ms. Rodgriguez wrong?  Does anyone have evidence of the cable being in operation?  I would love to hear about it and, even better, run a few pings and traceroutes.

Video of ASCE presentation

I was traveling this week and could not attend the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, but we were able to arrange a remote presentation. You can see a video of the 21 minute presentation on the Past, Present and Future of the Internet in Cuba.

Jeremiah Woolsey also gave a version of the talk at the UCLA Business Information Technology Conference.

Committee to Protect Journalists report on Cuba

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has just released a special report called After the Black Spring, Cuba's New Repression by Karen Phillips. The title refers to the recent release of the last of 29 journalists who were jailed in 2003.

The CPJ examined government activities in March and April 2011, two months with sensitive political milestones, and found that critical journalists were targeted in more than 50 instances of repression -- arbitrary arrests, short-term detentions, beatings, smear campaigns, surveillance, and social sanctions. The government strategy seems to have shifted from long jail sentences to frequent, low-profile harassment.

Much of the focus is on bloggers and Twitter users. According to the CPJ, there are about 40 critical bloggers and "the struggle for free expression is being waged almost exclusively in digital media." They go on to state that "the government proudly announced in February that it had enlisted roughly 1,000 bloggers to denounce critical journalists," but did not offer a reference to that announcement.

They predict that the ALBA undersea cable will disadvantage the critical bloggers who have to scramble for Internet access illegally, visibly at embassies and Internet cafes or at expensive hotels. Journalists outside of Havana, with few hotels and no embassies, are at an even greater disadvantage. The cable will improve the already free access enjoyed by the official government bloggers.

The report concludes with lists of specific recommendations for the Cuban government, international community, U.N. Human Rights Council, European Union, Organization of American States, technology and blogging community and U.S. government.

The CPJ states that they have reports of 50 sanctions during a two month period and presents a number of annecdotes to support the claim. It would be interesting to conduct a survey of the independent Cuban bloggers to ascertain the frequency and types of harassment they have experienced.

Finally, this report may seem one-sided to some who feel that Cuba has no choice but to engage in such practices because of US attempts to influence Cuban public opinion, so called "cyberwar." There is no doubt that many reports and committees on Cuba are blindly one-sided, seeing the situation in stark black/white terms. But, this report is lent credibility by the fact that the CPJ is not a Cuban interest group -- they are interested in protecting journalists globally. They are an equal opportunity critic of repression wherever they encounter it.

The dictator's dilemma

Lage

Castro

Glasnost which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries consisted in handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism.

Raúl Castro
October 1997

One telex can cost twelve dollars [whereas] the same message costs 75 cents in the form of a fax and 3 cents via the Internet ... in spite of our blockaded circumstances, we are in a relatively good position [to face the challenges of such scientific and technological changes], due to the educational and scientific work developed by the revolution.
Carlos Lage
March 1966

The Internet was the subject of high-level debate when it came to Cuba. Carlos Lage, Executive Secretary of the Council of Ministers, saw the promise of the Net, while Raúl Castro was unwilling to risk political instability in order to achieve its benefits. Castro and his supporters prevailed, opting for a small Internet effort with tight control over content and access. (He cited Khrushchev's "glasnost" (openness and transparency) policy as a cause of the demise of the Soviet Union and noted the role the Relcom network had played during the Soviet coup attempt of 1991).

I hadn't planned for the "dictator's dilemma" be the topic of the first post to this blog, but developments in Tunisia and Egypt have pushed it to the front of the queue.

In the 1990s, I would have agreed with Castro that the Internet was destined to bring democracy. Today I have a more nuanced view -- the Internet is used by dictators and terrorists as well as democrats. Furthermore, happy, well-fed citizens (for example in China) are relatively complacent in their attitudes toward Internet openness.

The Internet did not cause the governments of Egypt and Tunisia to fall -- Mubarak and Ben Ali get credit for that, not Mark Zuckerberg -- but it played a key emotional and logistical role in the demonstrations that pushed them over the edge.

Mubarak tried to shut the Internet down, but that backfired. As Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim pointed out in a 60 Minutes interview, cutting the Internet showed the people that the government was afraid and caused them to go out into the street to learn what was happening. It was too late -- perhaps Mubarak would still be in power if he had chocked the Internet the way Cuba did in the mid-1990s.

I wonder how the Internet and these events are seen by Cuban leaders today.

Valdés 

In his 2007 keynote address at the bi-annual Informatica Conference in Havana, Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, then Minister of Informatics and Communications, embraced "the wild stallion of the new technologies," which "could and should be controlled and used to serve peace and development" in spite of the fact that it constitutes one of the "mechanisms for global extermination." He sounded like a combination of Lage and Castro on steroids -- still focused on the dictator's dilemma.

Perdomo

The tone was different at the 2011 Informatica conference held this week. Deputy Minister of Informatics Communications Jorge Luis Perdomo, who chaired the conference organizing committee, said that limitations on Internet access were technical, not political and he stressed the government's willingness to open Internet access to the general public. The government also unblocked access to over 40 Cuban Voices blogs, including that of dissident Yoani Sánchez.

Are the times changing? (Valdés and Perdomo certainly look like they are of different generations). Will Cuba have the will and infrastructure (human and physical) to utilize the bandwidth of the new undersea cable?

What about the Army? The new Minister of Informatics and Communication is an army general and last month Telecom Italia sold their share of ETECSA to Rafin S.A. Dissident blogger Iván García tells us that "Rafin" stands for "Raúl Fidel Inversiones" and that it is run by military businessmen. Garcia says "Since 2008, Cuba has changed into a country almost basically controlled by the military. The majority of the ministries are occupied by active duty or retired olive green officers." The military running business sounds a bit like Egypt.

Stay tuned.

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Update 11/9/2016

Yesterday's election in the US got me thinking about our early optimism regarding the Internet and the "dictator's dilemma."

I discussed the dictator's dilemma in several reports and articles on Cuba in the mid-1990s. For example, in a RAND report, I described it as "the desire to have the benefits of the Internet without the threat of political instability" and said a dictator must ask "how do you give people access to information for health care, education, and commerce while keeping them from political information?"

That being said, I remained optimistic in describing the potential benefits of the Internet for developing nations in general and Cuba specifically.

I'm having second thoughts today.