The Committee to Nuke Elysium

..tonight, I am watching a country in the throes of a populist uprising turn off the internet as a protective measure. And I can’t help but wonder: If I were one of eighty million people living in a country in the midst of a nascent political upheaval whose access to the rest of the world was being antagonistically removed, would I start to think that maybe those simple packets that transport Facebook updates and Twitter status messages and mass emails are perhaps something more than the byproduct of business but a fundamental right of human beings to communicate with other human beings?

I have nothing more trenchant to offer than that as I get ready to go to sleep in my warm, secure bed. So I pass the buck to you: Is access to the internet a human right? And if so, to what end should we expect others to go to maintain it?