Iran net outage first to effectively isolate a whole nation

Internet connectivity is trickling back in Iran after the government shut down access to the rest of the world for more than four days.

The outage came in response to unrest apparently triggered by a gasoline price hike.

Experts say the shutdown across a nation of 80 million people was the first to effectively isolate a modern, highly developed domestic network. That makes it a milestone in efforts by authoritarian governments to censor online communications.

Other governments have imposed longer internet shutdowns. And Russia is headed in the same direction. But the experts say nothing to date equals Iran’s shutdown in logistical complexity, the experts say.

Adrian Shahbaz works for Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group. He says the Iranian government seeks “a monopoly on information.”