Like it or not, the Internet has had an impact on your life. Whether you live in a global metropolis or the deepest corner of the Amazon jungle, chances are that the latest of humanity’s great inventions has affected you in some way. That being said, most of us don’t realize the extent to which the web impacts our lives, or how much it has changed in its short existence. The speed and profundity of those changes was precisely what motivated Google, in cooperation with the Central European University, to hold the international conference “Internet at Liberty-2010: the promise and peril of online free expression,” in the decrepit yet majestic city of Budapest.
The conference brought together some of the world’s top experts on new media, human rights, and political transformation, with journalists, bloggers, activists, dissidents, politicians and businesspeople. The security measures taken during the conference were somewhat alarming — many of those present came from authoritarian countries and thus risked negative repercussions should their participation in the conference become widely known. Photos without consent were prohibited, and discussion areas included wide “off camera” sections (some parts of the discussions were broadcast online), so that people could participate without the fear of being identified. Moreover, some of the more sensitive discussions took place under Chatham House rules — one was allowed to relate what topics were discussed, but not who said what.
THE INTERNET IN SHACKLES
Overall, the current trend is nothing to celebrate. Masashi Crete-Nishihata, a member of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs (University of Toronto), explained how Internet censorship had spread over the past decade: “While in 2002 we saw three or four countries engage in Internet filtering, this number rose to 26 in 2007.
At present there are nearly 40 countries around the world filtering Internet content [that is available to their citizens]. They explain their motives on different grounds: security, morality, religious sensitivities or cultural factors.” Crete-Nishihata then went on to explain that this had led to a parallel phenomenon — the nearly exponential growth of the use of circumvention tools: programs and techniques that can be used to bypass government blockades.
The phenomenon has indeed spread throughout the world. Walid al-Saqqaf, a Yemeni currently residing in Sweden, explained how he had set up a news aggregator bringing together news from both opposition and pro-governmental websites. After a spike in the number of visitors to his site, the government took notice and decided to block it. When questioned about this, they waffled and made excuses, blaming the server or internet connection. Rather than bow down, Mr. al-Saqqaf went on the offensive, creating a site containing links to all banned Yemeni sites, as well as developing an innovative technique for circumventing blockades.
Walid al-Saqqaf had the fortune not to have been personally affected, but others were not so lucky. Mehdi Saharkhiz, an Iranian blogger, told the story of his father Isa Saharkhiz, a prominent journalist and former head of the press service of the Ministry of Culture, who had been tracked down by the Iranian government using technology sold by Nokia Siemens, which his family is currently suing. Last year Mehdi tweeted the information about the arrest of his father and the fact that several of his ribs had been broken whilst in prison. This created international pressure, eventually forcing the Iranian government to admit to their misdeeds (though not to release Mr. Saharkhiz). Three days before his arrest, Isa Saharkhiz had told Der Spiegel that he is on the run and that he only turns on his mobile phone for an hour each day. That the Iranian government was able to use that hour to track him down is a terrifying testament to the times we live in. Incidentally, there was near unanimous agreement amongst experts that new smart and 3G phones are much more dangerous for personal security than any previously used appliance.
FORCE FOR DEMOCRATIZATION?
On the second day the discussion turned to one of the most important questions of the 21st century: Is and will the internet be a force for democratization? In order to challenge this thesis, upon which many activists and experts alike had pinned their hopes, the conference organizers brought in the realism heavy-weight Evgeny Morozov, a Belarus-born contributing editor to Foreign Policy and fellow at Georgetown University. Mr. Morozov put forth his thesis that the Internet is not a force for political transformation, and that the hype accorded to this theory is counter-productive and even dangerous. He explained that there are two ways of looking at the Internet: “as an autonomous force that is changing the environment in which we all operate — governments, journalists, dissidents, etc., and as a tool of power.” He also emphasized that instead of attributing some specific purpose to the Internet, we should instead focus on the various forces that affect how it is used, and only then predict its potential impact. These forces are religion, culture, nationalism and others. In order to understand their importance simply consider that banning Nazi-websites may not be seen as outrageous in our part of the world, as it does not conflict with our basic values, but the banning atheist-websites promoting the use of logic in fundamentalist countries would not be seen with so tolerant an eye.
Activists quickly responded with countless tales of how the availability of Internet-based tools had allowed them to communicate with each other, to spread information within their societies, and to get information out. Mehdi pointed to the impact of those tools on the policies of major companies. CNN had previously refused to use his videos citing copyright laws; within 72 hours of the highly publicized death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a girl whose death by shooting was captured on amateur video and became a rallying point during the 2009 protests in Iran, they began accepting videos from around the world.
This argument, however, was easily countered by Morozov, who admitted that “yes, the Internet can be a useful tool on the micro-level, but on the macro-level it does not have an impact on the world’s polities. Moreover, the Internet gives many tools to dictators on the micro-level as well, which may very well outweigh the positive aspects.” In this Morozov was certainly correct — authoritarian regimes around the world have now learned to use tools (usually sold by companies based in Western countries) to track and observe the activities of their citizens. In some cases defective software used by dissidents turns out to be at fault. This was most famously the case with Haystack, an overhyped and quite lavishly funded project that was meant to “hide” the user accessing banned content like a needle in a haystack. It turned out that the program was so poorly written that it practically provided governments with a magnet to find rebellious needles. Even without such complex techniques, however, despots can easily manipulate Internet users through so-called astroturfing — a technique based on paying numerous fake grassroots activists to smear real dissidents and spread pro-governmental messages. One of the most notorious cases of this technique is the Chinese 50-cent army, allegedly paid 50 US cents for each blog post they make.
FSU CATCHING UP
Somewhat surprisingly, the semi-authoritarian countries and outright dictatorships of the former Soviet territory have lagged behind their developing counterparts in terms of high-tech methods to curtail civic freedoms. Generally speaking countries in this region continue to use old-school methods: journalists are intimidated and killed, media licenses are revoked, show trials are held, and experts and academics are harassed. Up until recently Russia has perhaps been the biggest exception — the Kremlin tracks down digital activists and has aptly used pro-governmental bloggers in the creation of what Morozov refers to as the “spinternet” (combining spindoctoring and the internet. – Author). However, CIS countries seem set on making up lost time.
In July 2009, Azerbaijan shocked the world by putting the so-called “donkey bloggers” in prison. Following the governmental purchase of two donkeys for 41 thousand dollars each, two activists posted a hilarious video of a donkey enumerating the various amenities that donkeys enjoy in Azerbaijan. Adnan Hajizada and Emin Milli were tried on charges of hooliganism after being severely beaten in a Baku restaurant, and received 24 and 30 months in prison respectively. This was a great surprise to the local blogger community. “They were not really bloggers, one was the son of an opposition leader, the other was doing some business” said Shahin, a well-known Azerbaijani blogger, “they were not part of our community in any case. In Azerbaijan we have few political bloggers, and we all meet regularly.” Asked about whether he feared persecution of some form, Shahin stoically responded “Not really. I blog under my own name, anyone can find me.” Nevertheless, he consented that the actions against Adnan and Emin may have been a message of more dire times to come.
Until recently Ukrainian cyberspace had been a relatively free and safe area. This appears to be changing. On September 17 Artem Furmaniuk, editor of the Protest news website which reports on corruption and abuse of power in the Donetsk region, was beaten up by police officers, suffering from broken ribs and a severe eye injury as a result. While attacks on journalists are nothing new in the region (Henadii Berezovsky, the head of the local Union of Professional Journalists, was attacked on September 12), this case stood out by the fact that it targeted a creator of online content. On September 21, Kostiantyn Alekseienko, editor of the Zaporizhia-based ZaBor website, complained to Telekrytyka about mounting pressure on his site, including hacker attacks aimed at removing undesirable content. But it is not just bloggers and new media actors that are pressured by the authorities — the integrity of the whole system is threatened. On October 22, 2009, the Verkhovna Rada voted through Law No. 327, which included restrictions on Internet freedom and allowing Internet service providers to monitor users and block access to certain websites. The law was somewhat justified by the fallout of the Artek scandal and the usual arguments against pornographic content. Nevertheless, it is easy to imagine it being used by the authorities to block opposition voices.
A BLEAK FUTURE
Major companies exerting an impact on the development of the Internet have at times pledged to do their utmost to provide services to users throughout the world while at the same time avoiding conflicts with governments that can completely isolate their citizens. This is an inherently difficult and morally ambiguous task. Nevertheless, David Drummond, vice-president of Google, promised to engage with citizen activists even more in the future, and welcomed all proposals on how to address Google’s main criticisms: about privacy violations linked to various Google-based programs and the dangers of possessing information about half the planet; caving in to demands of despotic regimes, and about its growing monopolistic position. The company thus aims to stay true to its slogan: “do no evil.” Proof of Google’s good intentions came soon after Mr. Drummond’s speech, during the presentation of the company’s newest tools — a transparency reporter that indicates when governments around the world ask for Internet content to be removed and how often are they complied with (this tool can be accessed at http://www.google.com/transparencyreport – Author).
Google was fairly easily let off the hook, and some of its more controversial moves were glossed over. Conversely, Facebook’s director of European Public Policy Richard Allan faced a hostile crowd. He was verbally attacked by dissidents from Syria, Tunisia, Iran and Pakistan for Facebook’s failure to properly secure the privacy of user data, and for caving into the demands of authoritarian governments. One of the main problems raised was linked to the Pakistani ban of Facebook following the creation of a controversial group called “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” which supported the Danish cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. To this, Allan replied that the problem was that the Pakistani government had blocked the whole service without consulting them at all. He insisted that Facebook was constantly trying to perfect its policy, and it will deal with various governments demanding that content be removed or blocked — but only when preceded by a court order.
However, it is not the censorship of either old or new media, or even the targeting of specific activists, that is the main threat to the Internet’s democratization potential. The success of China’s Great Firewall, and similar systems in other countries, is that they make looking for banned information onerous, and hence uninteresting for most people. The remainder can then be more easily scrutinized with the appropriate software (or thanks to booby-trapped programs like Haystack), as their online activity stands out more. At the end of The Day, it turns out that the greatest danger to democratization is a lack of interest. Alas, the world has many nations that enjoy relative freedom of information, and yet do not express any profound desire to free themselves from their shackles.
During the discussion Mozorov pointed out that even with the highest levels of broadband penetration and iPads for every member of society, change is far from guaranteed. Indeed, without the will for change among the general populace no political transformation will take place. By providing information about the true state of the country — something that is traditionally concealed by low-level bureaucrats in authoritarian regimes, and by spurring the sophistication of a given country’s economy, the internet may actually help dictatorships modernize without succumbing to political liberalization. Moreover, it gives many more tools to infiltrate and identify the truly problematic actors, and thus better targeting repressive measures. Instead of being a tool helping activists it becomes their bane. We live in a world of dynamic technological changes that can facilitate our lives in many ways. But we should not expect them to be our salvation.
He (Periander) had sent a herald to Thrasybulus and inquired in what way he would best and most safely govern his city. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field. As he walked through the corn, continually asking why the messenger had come to him from Cypselus, he kept cutting off all the tallest ears of wheat which he could see, and throwing them away, until he had destroyed the best and richest part of the crop. Then, after passing through the place and speaking no word of counsel, he sent the herald away. When the herald returned to Cypselus, Periander desired to hear what counsel he brought, but the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none. The herald added that it was a strange man to whom he had been sent, a madman and a destroyer of his own possessions, telling Periander what he had seen Thrasybulus do. Periander, however, understood what had been done, and perceived that Thrasybulus had counselled him to slay those of his townsmen who were outstanding in influence or ability; with that he began to deal with his citizens in an evil manner.
