US calls on big tech to help evade online censors in Russia, Iran
On Thursday, the White House convened a high-level meeting with major tech companies, including Amazon.com, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, and Cloudflare, alongside civil society activists. The gathering aimed to persuade these U.S. tech giants to provide additional digital bandwidth for government-funded tools designed to circumvent internet censorship.
The tools in question, supported by the U.S.-backed Open Technology Fund (OTF), have seen a dramatic increase in usage in countries like Russia, Iran, Myanmar, and other authoritarian states known for heavy internet censorship.
Laura Cunningham, President of the OTF, detailed the urgency of the situation in a briefing to Reuters. “The demand for VPNs has skyrocketed, particularly from users in Russia and Iran,” Cunningham said. “In recent years, the number of VPN users we support each month has more than quadrupled from around nine million to over 46 million.”
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are crucial for users in these regions, as they allow individuals to obscure their identities and bypass governmental restrictions by routing internet traffic through servers located outside of the censored zones.
The OTF, which focuses on supporting VPNs that operate in restrictive environments, has seen increased financial backing from the U.S. State Department through its “Surge and Sustain Fund for Anti-Censorship Technology,” an initiative launched at the Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy. However, Cunningham noted that despite this funding boost, the organization has struggled to keep pace with the surging demand due to the high costs of server bandwidth.
“We want to continue supporting these users, but the financial burden of maintaining the necessary infrastructure is overwhelming,” Cunningham explained.
While representatives from Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft have not yet commented on the meeting, a Cloudflare spokesperson noted that the company is collaborating with researchers to better understand and document internet shutdowns and censorship practices.
The outcome of Thursday’s discussions could play a pivotal role in sustaining access to vital digital resources for users in heavily censored regions.
