GNI Report Measures Economic Cost of Internet Shutdowns
The U.S. and other nations with high internet connectivity would lose at least 1.9 percent of their gross domestic product each day that internet services are disconnected, the Global Network Initiative reported Thursday. It was based on a Facebook-funded study…
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conducted by Deloitte, GNI said. The Deloitte study said countries with medium-level connectivity would lose about 1 percent of their daily gross domestic product in an internet shutdown, and a low-connectivity country would lose 0.4 percent of its daily GDP, GNI said. The report noted an earlier Brookings Institution study saying that 81 government-led internet shutdowns between July 2015 and June 2016 cost the affected countries a total of about $2.4 billion. Countries affected in those shutdowns included Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, GNI said. “Shutting down the internet undermines economic activity and chills free expression,” said GNI Executive Director Judith Lichtenberg in a news release. “The economic and human rights harms of network shutdowns reinforce each other, and are of particular concern in developing countries, emerging and fragile democracies, and jurisdictions with weak rule of law.”