Infrastructure shutdowns

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Infrastructure shutdowns are cases in which a government or a company cuts off a service that people and organisations depend on, such as internet access, payments, bank deposits or app distribution. The Logos activist course Building a Parallel Society cites four cases: Egypt's internet shutdown of January 2011, the payment companies' blockade of WikiLeaks from December 2010, the Cyprus bail-in of 2013 and Apple's brief removal of Telegram from its App Store in August 2026.

The basics

The four cases involve four kinds of service. In Egypt the internet providers withdrew their networks from the internet. In the WikiLeaks case payment companies closed accounts or suspended payments under their own policies. In Cyprus the banks were closed and large deposits were converted into shares or held back. In the Telegram case an app store delisted an app. In each case the people affected relied on a system run by someone else.

A shutdown is a different lever from Compelled disclosure. There the operator is ordered to hand over data. Here the operator, or the state, switches the service off.

How it applies to Logos

The Logos activist course Building a Parallel Society (2026) uses these cases to argue that "A parallel society on borrowed infrastructure is a tenant". It says that money, records and conversations sit with banks, servers and platforms owned by others, and that "Nobody has to seize any of it. They only have to switch it off." It argues that a parallel institution built on infrastructure owned by others can be evicted once it starts to work.

The course presents the Logos stack as the alternative. It says the stack "runs as networks of independent machines all over the world, so there is no company to order and no switch to pull." Logos describes Basecamp as "a local-first launcher for peer-to-peer apps built on Logos" and says "Your keys, data, and activity stay on your machine." The stack is made up of Logos Blockchain, Logos Storage and Logos Messaging.

Examples

Egypt, January 2011

Protests in Egypt began on 25 January 2011. At 22:34 UTC on 27 January, just after midnight local time, the network monitoring firm Renesys observed "the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes" to Egyptian networks. It counted about 3,500 BGP routes withdrawn and named the four largest providers affected: Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr. The Committee to Protect Journalists, citing BGPMon data, reported that Egypt went from 2,903 networks connected to the internet over 52 providers to 327 networks over 26.

The OECD described the shutdown as covering "Internet and communications services for five days". It estimated direct costs of "at minimum USD 90 million".

WikiLeaks, December 2010

In December 2010 several payment companies stopped handling donations to WikiLeaks, which had been publishing US diplomatic cables. PayPal cut off its account for violating its acceptable use policy. A PayPal spokesman told Bloomberg that the company "wasn't contacted by any government agency and took the action on its own". MasterCard followed, and on 7 December Visa Europe suspended payments "pending further investigation". On 18 December Bank of America said WikiLeaks "may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."

The US Treasury said in January 2011 that it did not have evidence that WikiLeaks met its criteria for sanctions. In October 2011 Julian Assange said the blockade had "destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks' funding", and WikiLeaks stopped publishing for a time to raise money. In April 2013 the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled that the blockade imposed by Valitor, the local Visa partner, was illegal.

Cyprus, March 2013

In March 2013 Cyprus closed its banks during a financial crisis. They reopened on 28 March after what Radio New Zealand called "an unprecedented 12-day lockdown", with daily withdrawals limited to €300 and most transfers abroad prohibited.

The rescue was agreed with the Eurogroup, with financial assistance of up to €10 billion. Deposits under €100,000 were fully protected. At the two largest banks, deposits above that limit were frozen and bailed in. Laiki was resolved, and its uninsured deposits were moved into a legacy unit. A Yale case study reports that Laiki's uninsured depositors "ultimately received 6 cents on the euro." At the Bank of Cyprus, 47.5% of uninsured deposits over €100,000 were converted into shares. The government announced this figure on 29 July 2013.

Telegram, August 2026

In early August 2026 Apple briefly removed Telegram from its App Store. Apple said its review had found content breaking its rules against child sexual abuse material. It restored the app after "the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it". Apple said users who had already downloaded the app were not affected.

Telegram's chief executive, Pavel Durov, said that "Apple removed Telegram from the App Store before contacting us." He said an attacker had "inserted AI-modified illegal content by editing an old message in an active group chat", and that extortionists "use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups" and then report it to Apple. He said Telegram was restored within hours.

See also

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Sources

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