[bestbits] Spain/Catalunya Developments. Scary

[Gus Rossi]

Hi everyone,

*Context: *Catalunya is holding an independence referendum next month. The
Spanish Constitution does not recognize any kind of questioning of the
territorial integrity of Spain. But the Catalan parliament approved having
a referendum anyway. Today, Spanish police carried out morning raids at
regional government offices in Barcelona, arresting several Catalan
officials involved in preparations for the referendum. In addition,
websites have been shutdown or blocked, and .CAT domain technical staff
have been detained. Also, the magazines of an important independentist
association (Omnium Cultural) have been denied delivery by the Spanish
postal service.

Regardless of what you might think of the Catalan political process,
independentist movements in Europe, or else, there are some things I wanted
to bring to your attention.

*The Internet:* Right now, this conflict has definitively spilled over
Internet Freedom of Expression, human rights, and the right to an open
Internet:

.CAT domain has been intervened by the Spanish Police (Guardia Civil:
https://twitter.com/puntcat/status/910446518494269440) All web pages under
that domain that have information about the referendum have been suspended.

The technical staff of .CAT has been detained by the police (including one
ISOC-CAT member).

This was the webpage calling for the catalan referendum:
http://ref1oct.cat/. nic.EU
is now hosting the webpage, but there are reports that Spanish authorities
have ordered ISPs to block the DNSs: ref1oct.eu

There are large DDoS attacks on some websites (apparently Cloudflare is
under attack, as per some reports), and there is traffic manipulation by
the ISPs (DNS blocking on certain domains).

In addition, there has been confiscation of personal goods of the Catalan
politicians, police searches in newspapers and printing plants, some email.

This is Western Europe in 2017 that we are talking about. We should be
worried.

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*Gus Rossi*
Global Policy Director (202) 861-0020 (x123) | (202) 651 1337
<(202)%651-1337> (mobile) | @agustinrs <https://twitter.com/agustinrs>
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