Activated! Public dissent, internet access and satellite broadband

The Seattle WTO protests in 1999 are known to be the first large-scale protests organised using the internet (Eagleton-Pierce, 2001). The role of internet connectivity in public demonstrations has been well documented since then (Castells, 2015). Over the years, the emergence of social media has enabled further ease in organising public responses for various purposes (Tufekci, 2017). The enabling force behind the Arab Spring in the 2010s had been deemed to be social media (Howard et al., 2011). Protestors communicated with each other through social media and shared their struggle and instances of glory, which inspired the spread of revolutionary moves throughout the region. In response, state authorities started restricting access to the most popular applications and throttling or blocking internet access during times of duress. Despite the increasing concerns of states, internet access has become essential for many government functions and social life. States established varying degrees of control in line with their ideology to mitigate cyber and social threats, which they perceived to be associated with this global communications network and applications (Gstrein, 2020). The legitimacy of these measures has been discussed at length, especially from human rights and fundamental freedoms perspective, particularly freedom of opinion and freedom of expression (Keller, 2011). In this regard, the positive and negative obligations of states are predominantly scrutinised with reference to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reinstated in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The issue came back on the agenda in the context of the Iranian government's restrictions on internet access to suppress the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a woman who was in detention at the time of her death for not wearing her scarf properly in public. This time the debate extended to the role of private control over access when the protestors demanded that Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, grant protestors access to broadband services provided by Starlink, the most advanced constellation in LEO operated by his company and he accepted.

After the protests started, the videos of the women of Iran, supported by their fellow male citizens, protesting the mandatory dress code enforced by the morality police on the streets reached global news outlets almost in real-time. This women-led revolutionary move received admiration from around the globe. Eventually, the protests evolved into a countrywide call for broader reforms. The restrictions imposed by the Iranian government were intended to disrupt communications among protestors and to stop the news from reaching across borders, avoiding the established government content controls. However, the access restrictions were ineffective in stopping the news flow. The international response supporting the protestors' cause but also their right to freedom of information and expression grew. Yet, external critique is rarely effective in these types of situations. The governments have jurisdiction over their communication infrastructure and often resort to emergency measures in times of crisis to justify their restrictive actions.

How is Iran different from Ukraine?

This time the dissidents in Iran thought there was a solution. The satellite broadband services, the technicalities of which remain a mystery to most people around the globe, seemed like the perfect answer. To the protesters, it seemed clear that access to online news and communication with the use of a network located in space would allow them to escape territorial restrictions. Connecting from your device to one of SpaceX's satellites would enable one to get all the news and directly share reliable updates in real time. Why should Elon Musk not bring the internet to the Iranian people and support the first women's rights-inspired revolution in the region, maybe around the globe?

He had helped Ukraine when the Russian forces disrupted their communications infrastructure. In that case, the service had become so helpful that the US and the EU considered paying for it when SpaceX announced they would need funding to continue their services. The call for help from Iranian dissidents seemed like the perfect opportunity for the tech billionaire owner of SpaceX to reassert his self-proclaimed role as a free speech absolutist. Once the US government announced that it had decided to lift some of the sanctions put on Iran consecutively since 1979, Musk responded to the calls and tweeted that Starlink services had been activated in Iran. However, the sheer availability of SpaceX satellites over Iranian territory did not mean satellite-enabled internet was accessible to the people. Starlink's failure to provide connectivity lies in the regulatory and technical requirements for satellite broadband services to become available in a jurisdiction, as elaborated below.

State jurisdiction and satellite broadband access

To understand the universal broadband access promise of LEO satellite constellations, one must realise that Starlink broadband services are available only to those with user terminals. The costs of these terminals are significant and would need to be covered or subsidised by an outside investor unless the dissidents are able to afford it. Moreover, without import licences, they would have needed to be moved across the border illegally. Most significantly, the satellites connect to the internet using ground stations. These stations connect the service to local fibre optic networks, which the dissidents rely on. Current technologies are not advanced enough to ensure direct satellite access from one's personal device, like a standard phone or a laptop. To ensure access, local ground stations need to be at most 1000 km from where the service is to be provided. This means that if there is no ground station in the country, or if the government restricts access to the ground station, the neighbouring country should allow the use of theirs. For Ukraine, ground stations in Poland, Lithuania and Turkey were available to ensure individual access to SpaceX-offered services. This friendly neighbourly support was, however, not the case here. For Iran, the ground station in Turkey would have been in closest proximity, but would Turkey face the potential geo-political implications of a decision to allow the use of its infrastructure that would ensue from its neighbouring country? Finally, the satellites communicate with user terminals and ground stations via spectrum frequencies. And it is not very difficult for governments to detect and disrupt frequency signals, should all other obstacles to connectivity be somehow overcome (Mountin, 2014).

Besides, the international regulatory framework does not support the provision of satellite services in a particular country without proper authorisation and licensing procedures. These are called landing rights, and the countries decide for themselves on their terms. Setting up ground stations, licences to use the frequency spectrum, internet service provider licences and the importation of user terminals are all subject to the host jurisdictions' laws and regulations. In Ukraine, the Ukrainian government officials requested help from SpaceX, so the regulatory barriers were not an issue. In the absence of governmental support, the provision of unauthorised access is mostly in contravention of well-established international telecommunications regulations. Also, states are directly responsible for all space activities conducted by their public or private entities. It is their responsibility to make sure that all their actions are conducted in accordance with international law. States have a strong incentive to supervise and regulate actions by their private companies. Acting in contravention of their international commitments can have wide-ranging repercussions, including international sanctions. No neighbouring country has had sufficient ethical incentives or political interest to allow SpaceX the use of its territory for enabling internet access to the Iranian people. Satellites alone were simply not enough.

Stakeholders as guardians of reliable internet access

This example shows that simply "activating" the satellite internet will not enable unauthorised access within a jurisdiction, at least not on a wide scale. However, it raises an essential question regarding the private interests that guide the decisions about activating or deactivating. In a reverse scenario, how will the power to deactivate a network enabling internet access be constrained against private economic or political interests? Should internet access be a means of punitive action or sanctions? Should the international understanding be that infrastructure operators are to remain neutral in times of international conflict or internal turmoil and continue providing access as a rule? If so, where would such a rule stem from?

The current arrangement for internet governance relies on the principle of multistakeholderism dating back to an international agreement made in 2005 in Tunis during the World Summit on the Information Society. It recognises that governments, service providers and civil society in their respective roles jointly decide over the norms, procedures, and protocols for managing key internet resources. This is different to traditional international law-making, relying exclusively on states. This bottom-up process relies on the role of service providers as the guardians of the internet's stability and security. This understanding of their role led multistakeholder organisations operating core functions of the internet in conflict-torn Eastern Europe: ICANN and RIPE NCC, to decline the Ukrainian authority's request for sanctions to be applied against Russia. Ukraine requested these technical organisations to take Russia offline and disable its access to core internet functions. Both ICANN and RIPE NCC, in their decisions, reiterated their commitment to providing undisrupted services to all, including those on different sides of political conflicts. In this case, the multistakeholder model won, ensuring access to all.

Satellite internet access is still in its infancy, and these types of developments will shape the relevant policies (Internet Society, 2022). However, the emergence of an equally reliable multistakeholder governance model for it seems unlikely. In addition, if perceived as operating at the will of private interests and their political alliances, the host states will be hesitant to rely on LEO satellite broadband companies’ services, hindering the connectivity potential that this new infrastructure has to offer.