They're Not Just Watching. They're Silencing

Key Takeaways

• Governments shut down internet access at least 313 times across 52 countries in 2025, a record according to Access Now's annual report.
• Commercial spyware, software that can silently take over a journalist's phone, has been deployed by governments across Europe, the Middle East, and beyond, with almost no consequences.
• SIM card registration laws link every phone call and message to a verified identity, making anonymous communication nearly impossible.
• No government official has been convicted for using state-sponsored spyware against journalists or opposition figures.

Imagine you're a journalist in a country where the government doesn't like opposition. You've heard from a source inside a ministry about something the public deserves to know. You want to write about it. But before you can do that, you have a problem: every phone call you make is traceable to you. Each app you use may be compromised. If you publish a story, but the internet goes down, no one will read it.

This isn't a hypothetical. It's what reporters, activists, and whistleblowers deal with in dozens of countries worldwide. And the tools being used against them are becoming more sophisticated and harder to fight.

What an Internet Shutdown Actually Means

Most people think of the internet as something that might lag or fail occasionally. A government internet shutdown is different. It's a deliberate decision, made by authorities, to cut people off entirely or block specific platforms, usually when they really need to communicate.

Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented at least 313 shutdowns across 52 countries in 2025, topping records set in previous years. These weren't random outages. For three years in a row, conflict was the leading trigger, with 125 conflict-related shutdowns making up 40% of the global total.

In plain terms: when a government starts bombing its own cities, or cracking down on protests, the first thing it does is turn off the internet. In Myanmar, when local military forces cut internet services during airstrikes on nearby towns, residents described watching their phone signal as a warning sign: the moment signals dropped, people ran to underground shelters.

A Tanzanian journalist described what the October 2025 election blackout entailed: cut off from sources, unable to publish stories, and unable to verify what was happening on the ground. Thousands were reportedly shot during a five-day nationwide internet blackout coinciding with a curfew and violent crackdown. The blackout wasn't incidental to the violence. It was part of it.

SIM Cards May Track Your

In much of Africa, Asia, and the Global South, people use prepaid SIM cards rather than long-term contracts. Prepaid cards are cheap, flexible, and accessible.

Over the last two decades, governments have passed laws requiring people to register those SIM cards with their real identity, often including a government-issued ID or even biometric data. They claim it’s crime prevention.

As of 2019, 50 African countries had introduced mandatory SIM card registration laws. Experts have been clear about what this means: if almost every mobile device has its SIM card registered to a person, and the government can access that subscriber information, anyone using such a phone can be easily tracked. Journalists, human rights defenders, and others disagreeing with the government are vulnerable.

There's also a practical problem with these laws. There's no actual evidence that mandatory SIM card registration lowers crime rates, and those laws can be easily circumvented by anyone determined enough to engage in criminal activity, as simply as borrowing and using someone else’s phone.

Setting aside direct surveillance, the fear of being watched is a powerful tool on its own. People may not feel comfortable visiting certain websites. Journalists may abandon sensitive investigations for fear of consequences, unable to do the work of uncovering and challenging injustices.

Spyware That Needs No Invitation

Most surveillance requires the target to do something: click a link, open or download a file. Zero-click spyware removes that barrier. It can silently take over a device, read messages, activate the camera and microphone, track location, and copy contacts. You’d never even notice.

This isn’t science fiction. This is what tools like NSO Group's Pegasus and Intellexa's Predator do. They have been sold to governments around the world, including inside the European Union.

The European Parliament's PEGA committee found illegitimate spyware use in at least four EU member states. In Italy, prosecutors confirmed that journalist Francesco Cancellato's (known for his investigations into corruption, organized crime, and the far-right) phone was infected with Israeli-made spyware. The Italian government denied involvement. The trail went cold.

The committee's rapporteur was direct: not one victim of spyware abuse had been awarded justice, and not one government had been held accountable. The same pattern repeats globally: when journalists believe their communications are monitored and sources fear being identified, reporting doesn't just get harder. It stops.

Getting Around Is a Crime

When people try to work around censorship, they use VPNs. A VPN routes your traffic through a server in another country, masking its origin and contents. It's the digital equivalent of reading a letter inside an envelope rather than on a postcard.

Governments are now criminalizing that. In Iran, authorities criminalized the purchase, sale, and use of unauthorized internet tools, with punishment including the death penalty for those deemed to be acting against the regime. In India, police penalized around 800 users for unauthorized VPN use. In Venezuela, 20+ VPNs were blocked during President Maduro's January 2025 inauguration.

The pattern is the same everywhere. Block the content. Criminalize the tools. Rinse and repeat.

Nobody Is Held Accountable

Here’s the part that should make everyone angry. It’s not just that these abuses are happening. It’s that the people responsible face essentially no consequences.

The UN Human Rights Council adopted its first resolution on commercial spyware in October 2024, three years after the first warning that tools like Pegasus threatened the right to privacy. The result was a non-binding resolution. Not a single day of 2025 passed without at least one internet shutdown somewhere in the world, and the International Criminal Court only formally recognized the link between shutdowns and crimes against humanity in December 2025, after more than a decade of pressure.

The surveillance infrastructure is expanding faster than any accountability process can keep up with. And the people paying the price are journalists, activists, and sources who are trying to do work that societies depend on.