In this class we studied the "Internet Freedom" speeches of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and then looked at critiques and counter-arguments made by Evgeny Morozov, Sami Ben Gharbia and Cory Doctorow.
1. DPI-665
Politics of the Internet
April 11, 2012
Internet Freedom
And Its Discontents
Micah L. Sifry
Audio: http://bit.ly/HXBsgW
CC-BY-NC-SA
2. Topics for discussion
ā¢ What is āInternet Freedomā?
ā¢ Why is this being talked about now?
ā¢ Are we naĆÆve about the role of the
Internet in closed societies?
ā¢ Should the U.S. Govt align itself with
U.S. tech companies? (and vice versa?)
ā¢ Who does the net empower more?
Governments or activists? Why?
4. Texts from Hillary
ā¢ āa new nervous system for
our planetā
ā¢ āthe more freely info flows,
the stronger societies
becomeā
ā¢ āequal access to
knowledge and ideasā
ā¢ āthe internet is a network
that magnifies the power
and potential of all othersā
ā¢ āfreedom to connect is like
freedom of assembly, only
in cyberspaceā
5. More Texts from Hillary
ā¢ āInternet has become
the public space of the
21st cā
ā¢ āFreedoms of
expression, assembly,
and association online
comprise what Iāve
called the freedom to
connectā
ā¢ āWithout security, liberty
is fragile; without liberty
security is oppressiveā
6. Hold this thoughtā¦
āThe WikiLeaks incident āAnd one final word on this matter:
There were reports in the days
began with a theft, just following these leaks that the United
as if it had been States Government intervened to
coerce private companies to deny
executed by smuggling service to WikiLeaks. That is not the
papers in a briefcase. case. Now, some politicians and
pundits publicly called for
The fact that WikiLeaks companies to disassociate from
used the internet is not WikiLeaks, while others criticized
them for doing so. Public officials
the reason we criticized are part of our countryās public
its actions. WikiLeaks debates, but there is a line between
expressing views and coercing
does not challenge our conduct. Business decisions that
commitment to internet private companies may have taken
to enforce their own values or
freedom.ā policies regarding WikiLeaks were
not at the direction of the Obama
Administration.ā
7. Critiquing āInternet Freedomā
ā¢ Google Doctrine: āthe
enthusiastic belief in the
liberating power of
technology
accompanied by the
irresistible urge to enlist
Silicon Valley start-ups
in the global fight for
freedomā
ā¢ Cyber-utopianism: āthe
idea that the Internet
favors the oppressed
rather than the
oppressorā
8. Morozovās Good Questions
ā¢ Iran: What āTwitter revolutionā?
ā¢ Did State Dept endanger dissidents by
embracing US tech (like Twitter?)
ā¢ Does increasing access to Western info
sources lead to democratization? Or to
depoliticization? (as in, David vs David
Letterman, and Big Brother vs Big Brother
ā¢ Is the ādictatorās dilemmaā truly that bad--or
does greater internet access allow for better
surveillance and control?
9. Assessing āInternet Freedomā From
an Arab Democracy Perspective
ā¢ āU.S official and corporate
involvement in the Internet
Freedom movement is harmful
for that same freedom.ā
ā¢ āWhen putting Internet
freedom at the center of its
foreign policy agenda, the U.S
will be disinclined to engage in
any kind of action which might
endanger the āstabilityā of the
dictatorial Arab order.ā
ā¢ āForeign money delegitimizes
political and social activismā
ā¢ āMoney has always corrupted
activismā
10.
11. Abu Gharbiaās Advice
āFor digital activism in the Arab world to achieve its
noble aspirations, it must remain independent and
homegrown, tapping its financial, logistic and moral
support into the grassroots level or try to seek a
support from neutral parties that do not push for any
kind of political or ideological agenda.ā
āIf the U.S. and other Western governments want to
support Internet Freedom they should start by
prohibiting the export of censor wares and other
filtering software to our countries. After all, most of
the tools used to muzzle our online free expression
and monitor our activities on the Internet are being
engineered and sold by American and Western
corporations.ā
12. Critiquing Morozov: Cory Doctorow
āWhen Morozov talks about the security risks
arising from dissidents' use of Facebook
ā which neatly packages up lists of
dissidents to be targeted by oppressive
nations' secret police ā he does so
without ever mentioning the protracted,
dire warnings of exactly this problem that
have come from the ācyber-utopianā
vanguard.ā
āThere is hardly any mention at all of
history's most prominent internet freedom
fighters, such as the venerable
cypherpunks movement, who have spent
decades building, disseminating and
promoting the use of cryptographic tools
that are purpose-built to evade the kind
of snooping and network analysis he
(rightly) identifies as being implicit in the
use of Facebook, Google and other
centralised, private tools to organise
political movements.ā
13. Strong Crypto for Dissidents
āIt is vastly easier to scramble a message than it is to
break the scrambling system and gain access to the
message without the key.
āPoorly resourced individuals and groups with cheap,
old computers are able to encipher their messages to
an extent that they cannot be deciphered by all the
secret police in the worldā¦ In this sense, at least, the
technological deck is stacked in favour of dissidents ā
who have never before enjoyed the power to hide
their communiques beyond the reach of secret police
ā over the state, who have always enjoyed the power
to keep secrets from the people.ā
Editor's Notes
Hillary Clintonās first speech on Internet Freedom, Jan 2010