Internet Freedom Archive

The Post has published a couple opinion pieces in the past couple days– one from Fred Hiatt, and a column by Anne Applebaum– both addressing the state of democracy in the world. Applebaum applauds Secretary Clinton for her appearance at the Community of Democracies in Krakow, and issues a call for full-throated support of democracy to return as an objective for American foreign policy.

Hiatt riffs on the work of Freedom House, observing that the forward march of freedom, after decades of remarkable progress, has ground to a halt. In recent years, we have seen the tide recede, with basic freedoms curtailed and many democratic governments slipping away from basic democratic values like rule of law, press freedom, and open markets. Hiatt blames this regression on repressive governments learning from past mistakes and evolving to be smarter and more effective:

Dictators have learned from each other to stamp out any buds of independent civil society by means of tax laws and supposedly neutral regulation. With China in the lead, they learned not only to neutralize the World Wide Web but to turn it into an effective weapon for propaganda, tracking and repression of their own citizens, and attacks against democratic rivals. Taking advantage of their control of television, they mobilized ideologies of nationalism and anti-terrorism to undermine the rhetoric of freedom…

Three assertive powers — China, Russia and Iran — not only resist democratization but actively seek to disseminate their model of authoritarian rule in their spheres of influence.

I think Hiatt is quite right that there is a new trend in authoritarianism, and one that is gaining momentum. But one of the funny things about this resurgence of authoritarianism is that, unlike the communist states of the 20th century, these autocrats aren’t trying to win on the power of their argument. Really, democracy can already boast rhetorical victory, and the fact that these autocrats hold power in part by perpetrating a charade of democracy is a testament to that. As Applebaum writes:

Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of “democracy” — along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled “civil society” organizations — to deflect pressure for change.

These prosperous yet undemocratic states like Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and China offer the trappings of democracy, with few of the freedoms. Their ideology is a daunting competitor, and developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia face a choice between developing as open, free-market democracies, or as closed, statist autocracies. Increasingly, countries are sliding in the wrong direction.

ChinaIn the quote above, Hiatt cites control of the internet as a powerful tool for manipulation and repression by these authoritarian governments. And in truly, madly, deeply authoritarian states like China, North Korea, Belarus, or Syria (or the other 16 countries that grace the pages of Foreign Policy’s review of the 20 least free places on earth), that’s true. But I think that internet and mobile networks actually make it harder for states to put on the “charade of democracy” that lets modern authoritarian governments legitimize themselves to their own people and to international observers.

Up until last June, Iran’s Islamic Republic was a prime example of a repressive, dictatorial government that managed to be seen as legitimate by many of its own people and many in the Islamic world thanks, in part, to a machinery of democracy that they operated. But when it didn’t produce the result they wanted– the wrong guy won the presidential election– the machine started working against them, with the relative free speech and free association they permitted on internet and mobile networks helping to organize an opposition movement.

Iran cracked down, hard. The government gave up its claim to democratic legitimacy, and the state has been pushed out of the middle ground into a position where everyone can see the regime’s true nature. Increasingly in the coming years, new connection technologies will force governments in this phony middle ground to make a choice. With powerful tools for organizing, advocacy and communication in the hands of every individual, you can’t fake democracy. Elections are easier to monitor, movements are easier to organize, and the truth has a lot more routes to the people.

Some countries will follow Iran’s path: give up their claim to democratic legitimacy and tightly control freedoms of speech and assembly on ICT networks. For other governments, that may not be worth it, or may not be possible, and we may see some developing countries, faced with a fork in the road, taking the path toward openness. As these technologies make phony democracy impossible, countries will have to choose their course, and if anything, we can surely expect the chasm that divides open and closed societies in the 21st century to grow still deeper and wider.

We had a great time yesterday with Alec Ross, who came to talk about how connection technologies are shaping societies around the world. He began with the argument that, in the 21st century, the major fault line dividing countries will fall between open and closed societies– rather than the right-left division that defined the 20th century. He offered a compelling historical perspective on the open-closed divide, going back more than two millennia to contrast the progress and vibrancy seen in societies with open, tolerant attitudes, with the intellectual stagnation of closed societies.

He went on to argue that 2009 was the worst year for the internet that we have seen, as far as openness and freedom of information. Increasingly, states see the internet as a force they can control– and will create something like a national intranet to filter out unwanted content. Turkey, Australia, Italy and others have all shown hesitation to embrace a free and open internet. While the global network does hold great potential for promoting openness and freedom, some states are becoming increasingly savvy at using the same technologies to stifle freedoms of expression and information.

Ross concluded by saying that the greatest implications in the open vs. closed debate will be in developing countries.  Latin America, Africa and Asia are now determining what the internet will look like in their own countries, and their decisions will determine whether their societies benefit from the opportunities afforded by the global network, or whether their poverty is perpetuated by shutting off freedom of expression.

A video of Ross’ talk is here (with a full version, including Simon’s intro and the Q&A, coming soon):

I couldn’t agree more with Ross, and all I’ll add now is an observation that the greatest danger posed by China’s censorship may not be domestic, but rather in the example it sets for other countries, particularly in the developing world.  China is offering a whole new model of authoritarianism– the Chinese government has managed to be economically vibrant and geopolitically successful, without relaxing their firm grip on the country.  As poorer countries set out on a path toward development, China offers an unfortunately compelling model for leaders loath to give up any of their power. I applaud the State Department in their efforts to make an even more compelling case for a free and open internet.

Well, I just wrote a long blog post and then accidentally deleted it. But it’s probably just as well, since it was basically a less-good summary of Ethan Zuckerman’s recent essay about the merits and limitations of circumvention technologies– tools that allow people in repressive states like China and Iran to get around their censors by using a remote server to mask their identity– and, more broadly, about how we will actually go about the business of promoting internet freedom around the world.

Point is, go read the post.  But I will quote here a couple of my favorite passages. Here, he lays out the case for internet freedom in deeply convinving language:

I think much work on internet censorship isn’t motivated by a theory of change – it’s motivated by a deeply-held conviction (one I share) that the ability to share information is a basic human right. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” The internet is the most efficient system we’ve ever built to allow people to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, and therefore we need to ensure everyone has unfettered internet access. The problem with the Article 19 approach to censorship circumvention is that it doesn’t help us prioritize. It simply makes it imperative that we solve what may be an unsolvable problem.

And then, at the end, Zuckerman offers a few ideas that begin to answer the question of how we can actually support internet freedom. These three struck me as particularly right, and you may hear me riffing on these themes in coming weeks:

- We need to shift our thinking from helping users in closed societies access blocked content to helping publishers reach all audiences. In doing so, we may gain those publishers as a valuable new set of allies as well as opening a new class of technical solutions.

- If our goal is to allow people in closed societies to access an online public sphere, or to use online tools to organize protests, we need to bring the administrators of these tools into the dialog. Secretary Clinton suggests that we make free speech part of the American brand identity – let’s find ways to challenge companies to build blocking resistance into their platforms and to consider internet freedom to be a central part of their business mission. We need to address the fact that making their platforms unblockable has a cost for content hosts and that their business models currently don’t reward them for providing service to these users.

- The US government should treat internet filtering – and more aggressive hacking and DDoS attacks – as a barrier to trade. The US should strongly pressure governments in open societies like Australia and France to resist the temptation to restrict internet access, as their behavior helps China and Iran make the case that their censorship is in line with international norms. And we need to fix US treasury regulations make it difficult and legally ambiguous for companies like Microsoft and projects like SourceForge to operate in closed societies. If we believe in Internet Freedom, a first step needs to be rethinking these policies so they don’t hurt ordinary internet users.