Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have expanded the scope of their joint presidential regime’s censorship of the Internet. Thus, in Nicaragua, the last bastion of freedom of expression and the press is surrounded by dissenting voices. With the new General Converged Communications Law coming into force, the two-headed administration is only imposing a technical change in how networks, antennas and the Internet are regulated in the Central American country, strengthening the scheme of comprehensive censorship in the last space that existed for the expression of dissent.
According to opposition groups, dubbed the “Mordaza Law,” one of the most troubling aspects is the full authority given to the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Correspondence (TELCOR). At the head of this body is Nahima Díaz Flores, daughter of the head of the National Police, Commissioner Francisco Díaz, and sister-in-law of one of the children of the presidential couple. According to Regulation No. 1223, among many broad concessions, the regulatory body may request statistical and geo-referenced data from operators and providers of audio-visual services.
Service providers must be allied with the police – the main repressive arm of the presidential couple – and the intelligence services, which are working to consolidate a digital surveillance system capable of reconstructing who is communicating with whom, from where, with what frequency and at what time. Alexa Zamora, author of the report “Convergent Communications Law and its Impact on the Practice of Human Rights,” is one of the most cited experts in Nicaraguan communications media these days. “The Convergence Communications Act, along with reforms to the Cybersecurity Law and the addition to the UN Convention on Cybersecurity, could establish a legal framework that makes it easier to restrict freedom of expression and other digital rights in Nicaragua,” she warned.
“Although regulating communications and combating cybercrime are legitimate goals, it is essential that these laws are implemented with respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, which are clearly not met in a context like Nicaragua,” the expert warns.
Entry monitoring
This new system, approved last week, is in addition to other punitive laws imposed by the Sandinista regime since 2018, the year of social protests, which have been used to silence every critical voice, especially the voice of the press, which – despite systematic persecution and exile – is still resisting and using the Internet and social networks as its main tool.
These laws relate to cybercrime, where the presidential spouse decides this is fake news and can impose himself for eight years in prison. The Foreign Agents Law criminalizes international cooperation and “treason of the homeland,” which includes loss of citizenship and confiscation of property. Prior to the entry of Convergent Telecommunications, the Sandinista regime began harassing the network by blocking .com.ni domains for independent media outlets, pressuring cable television companies to remove important channels from the network, and TELCOR threats against local radio and television stations, including political imprisonment and harassment that caused more than 250 journalists to be exiled.
The law sells itself as modern
Judging from the official dice, Law 1223 appears to be a need to modernize the entire communications framework: fixed and mobile telephones, the Internet, cable TV, streaming services, use of the radio spectrum, satellites, and up to a number of digital platforms. However, in Articles 1 and 3, the law hides the truth: on the ground it regulates public telecommunications services, but also audiovisual communications services, the use of radio spectrum, numbering resources, and satellite signals landing in the country for any person or company importing equipment. Telecommunications.
TELCOR, the same institution that finances and regulates the government’s trolley farms that Meta shut down, orders and decides everything. “I say this in a simple way: If the regime now controls all content – closing media outlets, blocking websites, intimidating journalists – then Law 1223 aspires to control them as well. Pipe shops Where information is transmitted. “No matter what is said, but because of what is said, in what quality, what facilitates it, and in what circumstances it presents me with narratives,” warns journalist Néstor Arce, media director. far apart And one of the greatest experts on technological topics.
“Where the law most clearly shows that its horrific aim of control is in the mass dedicated to the provision of information, supervision and inspection,” explains Arce. “Article 110 obliges operators of public telecommunications services and providers of audio-visual communications services to provide ‘all required information’, including statistical and geo-referenced information, periodically or upon specific requests from Telcor.”
Experts know that the impact of surveillance will be noticeable on aspects such as identifying people’s networks, without reading a single message. Telcor, by requesting all communications from the user, and crossing them with the surveillance and intelligence services recently condemned by the UN Group of Experts, can reconstruct a map of someone’s relationships or a geographical map of the movements and activities of sponsors of opponents or those considered suspicious.
This way, you can track rivals’ regional meetings and map independent information consumption. “Now we assume that an exiled media broadcaster broadcasts news via YouTube, and receives, every afternoon, a peak of traffic from Nicaragua. From a network point of view, there is a group of devices that are connected, at the same time, to the same domain or server,” Arce explains in his article. “But if Telcor had access to aggregated statistical data, it could know which areas of the country the average audience is concentrated in. If it compared this information with socio-economic data or records from the Supreme Electoral Council, it could determine what type of population is consuming important content. In a more intrusive scenario, it could even draw up lists of phones that frequently access ‘inappropriate’ domains and then selectively block these sites in certain areas or direct specific advertising campaigns against these audiences.”
Before this law on converged communications came into effect, Nicaraguans’ paranoia tripled and forced them not only to connect, but to take the use of tools like VPNs and other types of digital precautions seriously. This is what is said, surreptitiously, on social networks and closed messaging groups.
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