The Internet and elections

This report presents the findings of ONI’s efforts to monitor the Internet during the March 2006 presidential elections in Belarus. Advance preparation included ONI baseline testing and research conducted between June 2005 - January 2006, which revealed that the regime was not filtering political websites at that time but that it also had the technical capability to do so, as well as broader infield research which helped to piece together the architecture of control being put in place to control the informational space in Belarus, including the Internet. ONI’s election testing took place amidst many allegations by opposition groups that the regime was actively filtering or disabling independent websites during the election period. ONI testing results indicated that some allegations were misguided; however, others were not, as some politically sensitive websites were inaccessible or “dead” at different times. The main suspect results included…