Join the Internet Governance Lab on Friday, February 12th from 12 -1:30 p.m. for a Virtual Roundtable featuring Dr. Eric J. Novotny, Hurst Senior Professional Lecturer, AU School of International Service, for a talk entitled “Understanding Internet Shutdowns in Iran.” This event will be conducted via zoom. To attend, please send an email to ‘cv7692a@american.edu’ with ‘Internet Shutdowns in Iran’ in the subject line.
About Dr. Novotny’s talk:
As widespread protests wracked Iran in 2019, the regime disrupted the country’s access to the global Internet as part of efforts to sustain control of the information environment and population. We will examine this event as an apparently premeditated action, and explore the technical measures leveraged to achieve Internet disruption by analyzing network behavior through a variety of datasets.
We will also discuss:
The impact of this event on the government ’s existing surveillance and censorship infrastructure
The connectivity that still remained active during the shutdown period
The changes to backbone international network access that followed these events
The case provides unique insights into the problems of instability and repression involving authoritarian regimes that are increasingly seeking to exercise technical controls pointing towards an ever more fragmented cyberspace, and challenges the Internet freedom community in planning for similar events in the future.
About Dr. Novotny:
Prior to becoming the Program Director for US Foreign Policy and National Security, Eric J. Novotny was appointed Senior Advisor, Digital Media and Cyber Security at the U.S. Department of State. He was also Senior Advisor, Democracy and Technology, at the U.S. Agency for International Development. From 2006-2011, he was Senior Vice President at the Civilian Research and Development Foundation. Novotny held senior executive positions at Lockheed Martin and at Hughes Electronics and is a former U.S. Air Force officer. At AU, Novotny is also a Faculty Fellow of the Internet Governance Laboratory.