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WIRED UK: Government and the net serve us, not vice versa

May 17, 2012 by

The UK print edition of WIRED is running a piece that distills my core argument from the book into “manifesto” form. An excerpt:

We have come to depend on digitally networked platforms, services and devices for almost all aspects of our lives, including our relationship with our physical governments. But these technologies are created, owned and operated mainly by a private sector whose decisions are driven primarily by business considerations, then further shaped by government regulation. It is important for netizens to have access to non-commercial, non-governmental and open-source digital tools, services and spaces that we can build, shape, use and encrypt. But this alone will not solve the problem of government or corporate abuse of power through digital networks.

Despite some activists’ utopian hopes to the contrary, the reality is that governments and companies are going to remain intertwined with our digital lives — for the same reasons that they are part of most people’s physical lives. Citizens continue to demand government help in fighting cybercrime, defending children from stalkers and bullies, and protecting consumers. And it could be argued that the world’s experiments with communism during the last century showed that economies without private enterprise lack innovation.

It is therefore urgent that we — the netizens of the world — do everything in our power to constrain the abuse of power and defend human rights on the corporate- and government-dominated internet, even as we work to build our own independent enclaves and tools when and where we can.

Read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: Articles, Chapter 14

Foreign Policy: The Rise of Europe’s Private Internet Police

May 17, 2012 by

This week in Foreign Policy I examine the debate in Europe over whether and how private Internet companies should be expected to police people’s activities on the Internet. An excerpt:

European governments may not have intended to create a “privatized police state,” but that is what digital rights activists in Europe warn is happening, due to growing government pressure on companies to police themselves. As Joe McNamee, director of the Brussels-based nonprofit European Digital Rights Initiative (EDRI), puts it, “We are sleepwalking further and further along a road on which we’ve decided that our right to communication and privacy shall be put in the hands of arbitrary decisions of private companies.”

Read the whole commentary here.

Filed Under: Articles, Chapter 05, Chapter 06 Tagged With: , , , , ,

Does Internet Activism Work?

May 13, 2012 by

The Cato Institute’s online publication Cato Unbound is running a discussion about the effectiveness of Internet activism. Libertarian thinker and writer Berin Szoka argues that the Internet does make activism easier, but it can also be manipulated by governments. My response, “Internet Activism? Let’s Look at the Specifics” unpacks some of the offline, political, and economic factors behind the success and failure of different online movements. Ironically, I conclude: “Activism is urgently required—nationally and globally—to ensure that the Internet remains compatible with activism.”

Filed Under: Articles, Chapter 03, Chapter 04

Collateral damage: news organizations, free speech, and the Internet

May 13, 2012 by

Last month I delivered the 2012 Hearst New Media Lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, I argued that in pursuit of commercial self-interest, many news organizations are supporting business practices, technologies, and legislation that will diminish the Internet’s openness and freedom. While this might be good for business in the short term, in the long run everybody will lose – especially journalists.

Check out a summary of my key points on the CJR.org. Read the full text here, or watch the video here.

Filed Under: Speaking, Video

Netizen Report: Raise Your Voice Edition

May 13, 2012 by

Last week’s Netizen Report, published on Global Voices Advocacy, begins with the story of dedicated activists in India who are fighting against unreasonable government censorship and surveillance powers. Here is how the report begins:

Internet activists in India are fuming over the country’s sweeping new Internet restrictions on objectionable content, and are beginning to take extreme action to combat the law. This week we recognize Aseem Trivedi and Alok Dixit from Save Your Voice, who have begun a hunger strike in protest of the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ which were quietly issued by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in April 2011.

One of the flaws of the new rules is that they mandate that website or domain owners must take down material within 36 hours when a third party issues a complaint, without giving a chance for content owners to defend the material. The Bangalore-based advocacy group Centre for Internet & Society also pointed out that the rule leads to a general chilling effect on freedom of expression over the Internet.

Member of Parliament Shri P. Rajeev has moved to have the rules annulled amid widespread protests by India’s netizen community. As a growing number of MP’s become aware of the issue some see some hope that the censorship law will be discarded. For more details, analysis and links see this post on Global Voices.

From there we survey the global state of censorship, surveillance, activism, corporate actions and government regulation. Click here to read the whole thing.

Filed Under: Globalvoices Tagged With:

Foreign Policy: The Shawshank Prevention

May 5, 2012 by

In Chapter 3 of my book I described how Internet censorship works in China. Foreign social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and many Google services are blocked by the “Great Firewall” of China, so most Chinese Internet users spend their time on social media services run by Chinese companies which are required to carry out heavy political censorship. Most recently, the name of the blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng  has been censored on the Chinese social media platform Weibo – and so was the name of the Hollywood movie Shawshank Redemption. Why? Because once it became impossible to mention Chen’s name directly, Chinese netizens used the movie about a prison break to allude to Chen’s dramatic escape from house arrest.

In Chapter 12 I described the political fights in Washington that came to a head in 2010 and 2011 over  the State Department’s “Internet freedom” policy and, specifically, which projects should receive U.S. government funding to build tools that help people in China and elsewhere circumvent Internet censorship.  My latest article published Wednesday on ForeignPolicy.com gives an update on how circumvention tools are used in China. I conclude:

Whether or not the U.S. government funds circumvention tools, or who exactly it funds and with what amount, it is clear that Internet users in China and elsewhere are seeking out and creating their own ad hoc solutions to access the uncensored global Internet. In China today, thanks to the government’s success in nurturing a domestic commercial walled garden, circumvention technology has not been a direct driver of political change. Yet circumvention tools of various kinds have provided a lifeline for a small core of tech-savvy liberals who are becoming more active online as political uncertainty grows. Meanwhile, the recent political uncertainty is driving new demand for circumvention technology, which could make it just that much more difficult than in the past for the government to control what the Chinese public learns — or believes — about Chen Guangchen and this week’s delicate diplomatic dance between Washington and Beijing.

Read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: Articles, Chapter 03, Chapter 12 Tagged With: , , , ,

Netizen Report: Follow What You Believe Edition

May 2, 2012 by

This week, the Global Voices Netizen Report launches its first weekly edition, by honoring Ms. Chiranuch Premchaiporn, who was arrested in 2009 for violating Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act because she failed to delete a user comment insulting the King of Thailand quickly enough. Also covered, censorship, surveillance, copyright and other net freedom issues from around the world. Click here to read the whole thing.

Filed Under: Globalvoices Tagged With:

Preaching Internet Freedom, Practicing Surveillance

April 27, 2012 by

In Foreign Affairs this week, I argue that while Washington preaches global Internet freedom, its practices are facilitating the global spread of unaccountable surveillance. An excerpt:

In the Internet age, it is technically trivial for corporations and governments to gain access to people’s private communications and track their movements. The Obama administration recognizes that online freedom requires not only an open and uncensored Internet, but also one on which government and corporate surveillance powers are appropriately constrained, so that citizens are protected against abuse, and abusers are held accountable. Without strong global standards of public transparency and accountability in how surveillance technologies are deployed, the empowering potential of the Internet diminishes quickly.

Yet, even as the White House clamps down in Iran and Syria, other parts of the U.S. government are driving the development of policies, regulatory norms, and business practices that make a mockery of Washington’s well-meaning efforts to expand Internet freedom abroad. Put another way, although the State Department funnels millions of dollars to nonprofits fighting censorship and surveillance beyond U.S. borders, repressive digital surveillance around the world continues to expand in scope and sophistication.

Read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: Articles, Chapter 05, Chapter 12 Tagged With: , ,

Netizen Report: Firewall Edition

April 27, 2012 by

The latest edition of the Netizen Report on Global Voices Advocacy begins with the story of how, on April 12, the Chinese Internet was cut off from the global Internet for about two hours, for reasons that remain unknown. Meanwhile, netizens around the world have been busy fighting threats to their freedom of all kinds. For a full roundup of the latest developments in the global struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace, click here.

Filed Under: Globalvoices

Containing Weapons of Mass Surveillance

April 25, 2012 by

My latest article in Foreign Policy argues that President Obama is on the right track with Monday’s executive order, but the United States needs to get tougher on the global digital arms race. I conclude:

President Obama has certainly taken a step in the right direction with Monday’s executive order. But the executive branch and Congress will need to do much more if they want to stem electronic abuses against activists in Iran and Syria — let alone anywhere else. It’s time to take decisive action to stop American and other multinationals from aiding and abetting the wrong side in the global digital arms race.

Read the whole thing here.

The article contains a late-breaking update. After my deadline had passed, I managed to reach a spokesperson at the Department of Commerce, who confirmed that an investigation of Blue Coat is “ongoing.” Blue Coat is the California-based company whose surveillance and censorship devices turned up in Syria last year. I described the circumstances in the article as follows:

Last October, the international activist group Telecomix published log files taken from 13 Blue Coat devices deployed by the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment to monitor and block users’ activity. Facing scrutiny over apparent violation of a strict U.S. embargo against technology sales to Syria, Blue Coat later told the Wall Street Journal that these devices were shipped to a Dubai reseller that claimed the final destination as Iraq. In December, the U.S. Department of Commerce placed restrictions on a person and an entity in the United Arab Emirates for having sold the devices to Syria. But questions remain about what Blue Coat really knew or didn’t know, because after installation in Syria the devices transmitted regular automatic status messages back to the company’s computer servers. Blue Coat claims that it doesn’t monitor the origin of such messages.

Filed Under: Articles, Chapter 04 Tagged With: , , , ,
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