This week, the clerics of Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body, declared Virtual Private Networks to be effectively un-Islamic. VPNs are typically used by individuals to bypass government restrictions on particular websites and to avoid surveillance.

Pakistan is the latest in a series of countries – from Türkiye to the UAE – seeking to clamp down on or outright ban VPNs. In Russia, Apple has been actively aiding this censorship effort by removing over 60 VPN services from its app store between July and September alone. Apple, reports show, have removed nearly 100 VPN services from its app store in Russia without explanation. Russian authorities claim they have only asked for the removal of 25 such services.

Restricting VPN services is increasingly becoming a vital tool of state control. In September, it was reported that Russia has budgeted $660 billion over the next five years to expand its capacity to censor the internet. The Kremlin, while not banning VPNs, has worked to block them off and curtail their use. VPNs are only banned in a handful of countries, including North Korea, Iraq, Oman, Belarus and Turkmenistan. But in several others, such as China, Russia, Türkiye and India, governments must approve of VPN services, thus enabling the monitoring and surveillance of users.    

Last month, the Washington D.C.-based Freedom House published its annual Freedom of the Net report, concluding that “global internet freedom declined for the 14th consecutive year.” The report named Myanmar (alongside China) as having the “world’s worst environment for internet freedom.” It specifically noted that the country’s military regime had “imposed a new censorship system that ratcheted up restrictions on virtual private networks (VPNs).” In desperation, anti-regime forces have tried to set up Starlink systems in areas under their control, though the Elon Musk-owned service isn’t licensed in Myanmar.

VPN use typically surges in countries which seek to control access to the internet. In Mozambique, for example, demand for VPNs grew over 2,000% in just the week up to November 5, following a ban on social media in the wake of a disputed election. And in Brazil, demand for VPNs grew over 1,000% in September, after the country’s Supreme Court formally blocked access to X. Posting on X, owner Elon Musk called for Brazilians to use VPNs and millions did even at the risk of incurring thousands of dollars of fines each day. Brazil’s Supreme Court also called on Apple and Google to drop VPNs from their app stores before dropping that requirement, though there were allegations that Apple had already begun to comply.

The United Nations has described universal access to the internet as a human right rather than a privilege, which means countries seeking to deny citizens access to information are denying them their fundamental rights. For people in countries beset by crisis or controlled by authoritarian governments, VPNs are a “lifeline,” as one young Bangladeshi wrote after the government cut off the internet and began to violently suppress protests in July,

In September, The White House met with Big Tech representatives, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Cloudflare, and urged them to make more server bandwidth available to VPN services partially funded by the U.S. government through the Open Technology Fund. The OTF claims users of VPNs it funds, particularly in Iran and Russia, have grown by the tens of millions since 2022 and it is struggling to keep up with demand.

With governments around the world now eager to keep tabs on and control VPN use, many internet security and freedom advocates back Mixnet technology, which hides user identities within a chain of proxy servers, as a more effective means to evade snooping. But in a world that appears to be turning towards more authoritarian governments and leaders, can internet freedom continue to escape the clutches of determined censors?
Back in Pakistan, VPN services will now have to be registered with the government by November 30 or be considered illegal. It is a decision that the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan described from his cell as “a direct assault on the rights of people.” Ironically, on November 6, when the current Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, congratulated Donald Trump on his election win, he did it on X. Something he could have only done, as Pakistanis around the world scornfully pointed out, if he used a VPN.

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