According to earlier reports, there were claims that the French police had asked the government to consider the idea of disabling public WiFi during emergencies, like terrorist attacks so that the terrorists won’t be able to communicate with each other, or at least making it harder. Turns out that the French police weren’t alone in their thinking.
It seems that Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has a similar idea, except that instead of just disabling public WiFi, Trump’s recent comments have suggested shutting down the internet completely. This idea was thrown out during the candidates’ final debate of the year, although Trump later tempered his remark by saying that internet in countries like Syria and Iraq should be shut down.
Trump’s comments are just some of the many suggestions from candidates last night on what they would do to prevent the internet from helping terrorists and the bad guys from communicating with each other. Trump’s idea is a bit extreme obviously, not to mention it would be nearly impossible to do so.
Putting aside the issue of logistics, it would also be wrong as innocents from Syria and Iraq fleeing the country rely on the internet to find safe haven. According to Thomas Ristenpart, a computer science professor at Cornell Tech, “Preventing entire populations from getting access to basic information would be a human-rights catastrophe, particularly for areas of the world that are already war-torn.”
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