Cloudflare Gives Civil Society Early Warning on Internet Shutdowns
Internet shutdowns and cyberattacks designed to restrict information are on the rise. Access Now’s #KeepItOn coalition documented at least 155 shutdowns across 29 countries in 2020 alone. That same year, Cloudflare saw a five-fold increase in attacks targeting human rights, journalism, and non-profit sites protected under its Project Galileo initiative.
Such measures have broad consequences. As the UN Human Rights Council has noted, the Internet is essential not only for freedom of expression but for a wider range of rights, including education and participation in cultural, civil, and political life. Disruptions hit especially hard during elections, when access to reliable information is critical to democratic integrity. Cloudflare has long defended civil society groups from direct cyberattacks; now it is adding new tools to help those same groups detect, document, and respond to network-level disruptions.
Radar Alerts: From Internal Watchdog to Public Resource
Detecting shutdowns is increasingly difficult as they grow in length, scale, and sophistication. Cloudflare operates one of the world’s largest networks — data centers in over 100 countries and more than one billion unique IP addresses — giving it broad visibility into global traffic patterns. Its Radar platform, launched in 2020, lets anyone observe traffic anomalies that often signal a shutdown. But trend graphs only help when you know what to look for.
Internally, Cloudflare maintained an alert system for potential disruptions as an early-warning tool. After discussions with organizations that track and report shutdowns — including The Carter Center, IFES, the Internet Society, Internews, the National Democratic Institute, and Access Now — the company built a validation layer and notification system on top of that internal capability. Radar Alerts sends notifications via email and social media when significant traffic drops are detected.
This work is particularly relevant given the documented rise in protest-related shutdowns. From January 2019 to May 2021, #KeepItOn documented 79 such incidents, including instances during elections. UN Special Rapporteur reporting has also noted that shutdowns are increasing in length, scale, and sophistication.
Civil society partners see Radar Alerts as a meaningful step forward. Access Now’s General Counsel Peter Micek notes that accurate, global-scale data enables timelier interventions, helping the #KeepItOn coalition in its fight to end shutdowns. Michael Baldassaro of The Carter Center highlights the value of real-time information for substantiating shutdowns that might otherwise only surface anecdotally. Internews’ Jon Camfield says sharing data to raise visibility of shutdowns is a welcome contribution to open Internet advocacy.
Cloudflare acknowledges that what it detects — the drop in traffic — may lack the on-the-ground context that its partners provide. The intended workflow is complementary: Cloudflare supplies the alert dataset; civil society partners supply the expertise needed to document, track, and hold institutions accountable for human rights violations.
Organizations that track and report on Internet shutdowns can request access to the private beta by contacting [email protected] or following the Cloudflare Radar alerts Twitter page.
