Ecuador government secretly blocks sites through providers

Providers in Ecuador appear to block sites at the request of the government without further publicity. This came to light through a leaked memo about an error that briefly made YouTube and Google completely unreachable.

The technician’s memo came into the hands of journalistic whistleblower platforms Associated Whistleblowing Press and Ecuador Transparente. The Telefónica technician describes in the internal memo how on March 28, 2014, he received reports from colleagues and customers that they could not reach Google and YouTube for half an hour in the evenings. The incident was reported to the country’s Network Operations Center.

That informed the technician that the cause was a decision by the Association of Internet
Providers of Ecuador, or Aeprovi. That umbrella organization of providers in the country had “blocked access to certain sites at the request of the government.” However, something had gone wrong during that intervention, so that Google and YouTube had become part of the blockade. The association then reversed the intervention to restore access to Google and YouTube. That the Ecuadorian government in principle has the option to block domains is also apparent from a slide from EcuCERT, the country’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which states that Aeprovi can block domains on request in the fight against piracy.

It is not known which sites the government in the South American country blocks, in what way and how often this happens, under what circumstances and under what conditions this happens. Under a law that came into effect in February 2015, the government can only take control of internet access if a state of emergency is declared.

While it’s not known which site was blocked in the incident, it’s striking, according to AWP, that it happened a day after the President of the Republic’s Twitter account was the target of a hack and the day Anonymous posted on a Blogspot page, Google’s blogging platform published internal emails from the head of the Department of Security. Critics are now concerned about misuse of the blocking capability as it is being applied out of sight, outside an independent party and without foundation or regulation.