In Sudan, India, Uganda, Egypt, and a lot of other places, governments have shut down the internet during protests, and it leaves people with basically one real choice: a VPN, if the block isn't smart enough to catch it, or paying for a satellite connection like Starlink if it is. That's the whole menu. I want to walk through what that's actually looked like this year, because it's not one story, it's the same tactic showing up everywhere.

Start with India. In July 2026, telecom companies cut mobile internet around Delhi's Jantar Mantar, where protesters were demanding accountability over leaked NEET medical entrance exam papers. The shutdown ran in a 1.5-kilometer radius, on and off, from July 21 to 25[3]. It's now in front of the Delhi High Court, on an urgent public interest litigation, with the Internet Freedom Foundation arguing the shutdown broke the safeguards the Supreme Court laid out in a 2020 ruling and violated the government's own 2024 telecom suspension rules[3]. That's the best-case version of this story, a legal system actually being asked to check the government's power in real time.

Uganda didn't get that check. Two days before its general election in January 2026, the Uganda Communications Commission ordered a full shutdown of internet and mobile networks, and separately ordered Starlink, which doesn't even have an operating license there, to block its terminals, while threatening anyone caught using a VPN[2]. Civil society groups ran a #KeepItOn campaign begging the government to reconsider. It didn't. The blackout lasted five full days, through the entire election[2].

Sudan's version is a war story, not an election story. Three nationwide shutdowns hit the country in 2025 as the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces both tried to control what information got out. At one point, mobile internet was blocked during national school exams. Separately, RSF forces reportedly used Chinese-made drones and jamming equipment to knock out Starlink and mobile service in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, right before an attack that finally broke the government's hold on the city[1]. When a shutdown becomes a tactic used mid-battle to blind the other side, "inconvenience" stops being the right word for what this is.

Access Now's tracking makes the pattern impossible to miss, this isn't a handful of isolated incidents, it's a recurring move governments reach for specifically because it works, it's hard to challenge in real time, and by the time a court gets involved, the moment it was meant to control has usually already passed[1].

So here's the actual question worth asking, wherever you live: is there a legal limit on your own government's power to do this to you? I built that exact question into the Digital Rights Atlas, cited, country by country. For a lot of places, the honest answer right now is no, or a limit so vague it doesn't really hold. I think you should know which one your country is before you ever need to find out the hard way.

Check yours at rowataha.com/digital-rights.html.