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
• What is “Internet Freedom”?
• Why is this being talked about now?
• Are we naïve about the role of the
Internet in closed societies?
• Should the U.S. Govt align itself with
U.S. tech companies? (and vice versa?)
• Who does the net empower more?
Governments or activists? Why?

3. Texts from Hillary

4. Texts from Hillary
• “a new nervous system for
our planet”
• “the more freely info flows,
the stronger societies
become”
• “equal access to
knowledge and ideas”
• “the internet is a network
that magnifies the power
and potential of all others”
• “freedom to connect is like
freedom of assembly, only
in cyberspace”

5. More Texts from Hillary
• “Internet has become
the public space of the
21st c”
• “Freedoms of
expression, assembly,
and association online
comprise what I’ve
called the freedom to
connect”
• “Without security, liberty
is fragile; without liberty
security is oppressive”

6. Hold this thought…
“The WikiLeaks incident “And 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 country’s 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.” policies regarding WikiLeaks were
not at the direction of the Obama
Administration.”

7. Critiquing “Internet Freedom”
• Google Doctrine: “the
enthusiastic belief in the
liberating power of
technology
accompanied by the
irresistible urge to enlist
Silicon Valley start-ups
in the global fight for
freedom”
• Cyber-utopianism: “the
idea that the Internet
favors the oppressed
rather than the
oppressor”

8. Morozov’s Good Questions
• Iran: What “Twitter revolution”?
• Did State Dept endanger dissidents by
embracing US tech (like Twitter?)
• 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
• Is the “dictator’s dilemma” truly that bad--or
does greater internet access allow for better
surveillance and control?

9. Assessing “Internet Freedom” From
an Arab Democracy Perspective
• “U.S official and corporate
involvement in the Internet
Freedom movement is harmful
for that same freedom.”
• “When 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 ‘stability’ of the
dictatorial Arab order.”
• “Foreign money delegitimizes
political and social activism”
• “Money has always corrupted
activism”

11. Abu Gharbia’s Advice
“For 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.”
“If 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.”

12. Critiquing Morozov: Cory Doctorow
“When Morozov talks about the security risks
arising from dissidents' use of Facebook
– which neatly packages up lists of
dissidents to be targeted by oppressive
nations' secret police – he does so
without ever mentioning the protracted,
dire warnings of exactly this problem that
have come from the ‘cyber-utopian’
vanguard.”
“There 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.”

13. Strong Crypto for Dissidents
“It is vastly easier to scramble a message than it is to
break the scrambling system and gain access to the
message without the key.
“Poorly 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 world… In this sense, at least, the
technological deck is stacked in favour of dissidents –
who have never before enjoyed the power to hide
their communiques beyond the reach of secret police
– over the state, who have always enjoyed the power
to keep secrets from the people.”