back to article Bangladesh shuts down its internet during war crimes trial

The government of Bangladesh shut down its internet for an hour earlier today in response to the announcement of the death penalty in a high-profile war crime trial. Between 1.15pm and 2.15pm local time, almost all online activity in the country, which shares India's eastern border, was systematically shut down. Of the 2,500 …

  1. Stevie

    Bah!

    A regrettable mistake, and anyone who says different will receive three hundred strokes of the cane.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A Useful Example..

    For Teresa May to see how the separation of services on the internet to selectively affect just one service is not as easy as it sounds!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seems legit

    Anyone notice a temporary drop in scam calls?

  4. channel extended

    Just wait

    Soon some US judge will require all traffic from a 'suspect' to be blocked and shutdown. Then when the US goes dark there will be claims that it was a terrorist attack

  5. Bumpy Cat

    Politically complicated

    The situation in Bangladesh is dangerous at the moment. The mostly democratic and secular government is under major pressure from Islamists, many of whom collaborated with Pakistan in the genocide and civil war in 1971.

    Secular bloggers are being systematically murdered, targets of an Islamist campaign to silence people speaking against the Islamists. The campaign is being run online, and there are supporters and funders (and targets!) in the UK. So in these circumstances it is possible to see the motivation to shut down the internet, even if it's counter-productive or unworkable.

  6. Graham Marsden
    Mushroom

    "or felt it was better to be safe than sorry"

    Or decided to be deliberately bloody-minded and respond "Ok, you want to be stupid? Right, we'll show you *exactly* what you'll get as a result!"

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: "or felt it was better to be safe than sorry"

      Or more probably, very senior management agreed to do the job without understanding what was involved. The job ended up passed down the chain until it reached a relatively junior tech who was told out of the blue that he had to block these sites within a minute. He protested it wasn't possible, and the manager said that it had better be possible or he would face $SeverePunishment.

      Said tech knows that he can't devise a national strategy for preventing access to these sites within 15 seconds, and so just uses the plan that does exist to axe everything. The big surprise is that management and politicians managed to make a decision to put everything back online within mere minutes.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Exit to the left

    There's nothing to see here, now move along please.

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