Liberation Technology

Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy

Edited by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore
© 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press and the National Endowment for Democracy
All rights reserved. Published 2012
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Chapters in this volume appeared in the following issues of the Journal of Democracy:
chapter 1, July 2010; chapter 2, October 2010; chapters 4, 5, and 6, April 2011; chapter 8,
July 2011. For all reproduction rights, please contact the Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Liberation technology : social media and the struggle for democracy / edited by Larry
Diamond and Marc F. Plattner.
p. cm. — (A journal of democracy book)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4214-0567-4 (hdbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4214-0567-9 (hbk. : alk. pa-
per) — ISBN 978-1-4214-0568-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4214-0568-7 (pbk. : alk.
paper) — ISBN 978-1-4214-0698-5 (electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-0698-5 (electronic)
1. Political participation—Technological innovations. 2. Democratization—Technolog-
ical innovations. 3. Social media—Political aspects. I. Diamond, Larry Jay. II. Plattner,
Marc F., 1945–

JF799.L53 2012
303.48ƍ33—dc23
2012012206
 CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii

Introduction
Larry Diamond ix

I. Liberation vs. Control in Cyberspace

1. Liberation Technology
Larry Diamond 3

2. Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 18

3. International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

Ronald Deibert 33

4. Whither Internet Control?

Evgeny Morozov 47

II. Liberation Technology in China

5. The Battle for the Chinese Internet

Xiao Qiang 63

6. China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

Rebecca MacKinnon 78

III. Liberation Technology in the Middle East

7. Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

Patrick Meier 95

8. Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 110

9. Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

Walid Al-Saqaf 124

10. Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 139
vi Contents

IV. Policy Recommendations

11. Challenges for International Policy

Daniel Calingaert 157

Index 175
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the most immediate sense, this book originated in a conference on

“Liberation Technology in Authoritarian Regimes” held at Stanford
University in October 2010. Eight of our eleven chapters were initially
presented at that conference, and the first chapter in this volume helped
to frame the conference. We are indebted to the Center on Democracy,
Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford for organizing
and hosting that conference, to Steven Kahng for his financial support
of the meeting, and to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for
its generous support of the Liberation Technology Program at CDDRL.
We would also like to thank Larry Diamond’s faculty colleagues in that
program, Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd, for their role in helping to
shape the research agenda and the conference, and Anna Davies for her
research and programmatic assistance in launching the program, as well
as in helping to organize the conference itself.
In a deeper sense, however, we were pushed, prodded, and inspired
into producing this book by our students and our younger colleagues and
fellows, who became deeply immersed in social media well before we,
as editors and scholars, appreciated the political and social significance
and the liberating potential of these burgeoning technologies. They are
too numerous to name, but we would like to thank them all. In particu-
lar, we thank the following Stanford students: Taylor Dewey, for his
critical editorial assistance and organizational and research support in
the preparation of this manuscript; Astasia Myers, for her superb re-
search and editorial assistance; Blake Miller, for his eye-opening field
research and subsequent assistance on China; and Lucinda Gibbs, who
also provided energetic research assistance and support for the Libera-
tion Technology Program.
As with the two dozen earlier books in this series (particularly those
that have included previously unpublished chapters along with articles
that had already appeared in the Journal of Democracy), the Journal
staff has had to juggle the editing and production of this new material
viii Acknowledgments

with its work on quarterly issues of the Journal. For his patient and
artful management of the production and layout, we once again thank
most heartily Managing Editor Brent Kallmer. Assistant Editor Marta
Kalabinski conducted the final editing of two of the previously unpub-
lished chapters with intelligence and skill, under pressure of time. Ex-
ecutive Editor Phil Costopoulos and Associate Editor Tracy Brown once
again left a deep imprint on our book, not only by editing previously
unpublished manuscripts, but also by helping to make the Journal ar-
ticles published here considerably more lucid and accessible than they
might otherwise have been. Together, these four individuals constitute
a great editorial team, and we have been privileged to work with them
for several years. We also once again thank Dorothy Warner for her care
and precision in compiling the index.
This is the last book we will produce as part of our two-decades-long
collaboration with Henry Y.K. Tom, who directed social science book
publishing at the Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP), and in that
capacity recruited and steered to publication many of the most influen-
tial works in comparative democratic studies. We discussed the idea for
this book with Henry, and he was enthusiastic about its prospects, but he
passed away suddenly in January 2011, well before it took final shape.
We are very indebted to his successor as editor of JHUP’s books on de-
mocratization, Suzanne Flinchbaugh, who immediately recognized the
urgent importance of the topic and encouraged us to bring the project to
a timely completion. We also thank our colleagues at JHUP’s Journals
Division, Bill Breichner and Carol Hamblen, for our continuing valued
partnership with them in the production of the Journal of Democracy.
There are many others whom we are pleased to thank for their con-
tribution to our efforts, beginning with NED’s president Carl Gershman
and its Board of Directors (chaired by Richard A. Gephardt), who have
given us steady support along with the utmost respect for the Journal’s
editorial independence and integrity. We also want to express our thanks
to the many members of the NED staff who have lent the Journal their
expertise in editorial matters large and small, and to NED’s Center for
International Media Assistance, which has helped us to understand the
contribution of the new digital media to democratization. And we remain
especially grateful for the financial support that the Journal has received
since its inception from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
 INTRODUCTION
Larry Diamond

Few, if any, developments in recent decades have more profoundly

transformed politics and civil society than the emergence of digital in-
formation and communication technologies (ICTs). Prominent among
these have been the Internet; the sprawling blogosphere that it has
spawned; the proliferating array of social-media tools such as Face-
book, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr; and the galloping growth in access
to these digital media through mobile phones. These electronic tools
have provided new, breathtakingly dynamic, and radically decentralized
means for people and organizations to communicate and cooperate with
one another for political and civic ends.
The surge in use of these digital ICTs has been dizzying. In fact, most
of them have become pervasive only in the last few years. The number
of Facebook users in the world exploded from 12 million in December
2006 to 100 million in August 2008, to half a billion in July 2010. By
early 2012, it was well in excess of 800 million.1 By the time you are
reading this book, more than a billion people will likely be using Face-
book, with most of the recent growth coming in emerging-market coun-
tries. The number of tweets (Twitter messages) per day has increased
from 300,000 in early 2008 to 2.5 million in 2009, 35 million in 2010,
and 200 million by mid-2011.2 YouTube went from 8 million views of
its videos per day when it launched in December 2005 to 100 million
per day in July 2006, to a billion views per day in October 2009—and
twice that by May 2010, just seven months later.3 A year after that, You-
Tube’s daily views were at three billion. As Peter Diamandis, chairman
of the X Prize Foundation and author of the new book Abundance notes,
a Masai warrior standing on the Kenyan plains with an ordinary mobile
phone has better access to mobile communications than U.S. president
Ronald Reagan had in the mid-1980s, and if he has a smart phone he has
wider access to information online than President Bill Clinton had in the
mid-1990s.4
Most of those who use ICTs for political and civic purposes are not
political activists. Rather, they consume and exchange information and
x Introduction

opinions online. But in the digital age, the lines between reader and re-
porter, news and opinion, and information and action have all become
blurred. Between late 2006 and the end of 2011, the number of blogs in
the world increased fivefold, from 35 million to 181 million.5 Most blog-
gers and tweeters focus not on politics but on family, friends, culture, con-
sumption, and other personal and parochial matters. In the last six years,
however, social media have become essential to election campaigns in
developed and emerging democracies alike. In the United States, Barack
Obama may well owe his presidency to his campaign’s use of the Internet,
social media, and mobile-phone messaging to raise money and mobilize
and connect grassroots volunteers in ways more effective than any of his
rivals—or any candidate in history—could manage.
Digital communication technologies are transforming elections, po-
litical debate, civic advocacy, philanthropy, and the structure of the
mass media in contemporary democracies. Today, the arena for political
commentary and competition is more fast-paced, more decentralized,
and more open to new voices and social entrepreneurs than ever before.
Yet many observers worry that it is also more fragmented and polarized,
as people sort themselves into ideologically exclusive milieus in which
they are seldom if ever exposed to sharply divergent points of view.
Thus, there is an ongoing analytic debate about whether the digital age
is improving or diminishing the quality of democratic politics. Probably
it is doing some of both.
A parallel debate is occurring over the impact of digital ICTs on au-
thoritarian regimes. Do the Internet, social media, mobile phones, and
their exploding array of applications empower citizens to mobilize for
freedom and accountability, or do these technologies empower autocra-
cies to better monitor and effectively neutralize prodemocracy move-
ments and dissidents? What are the roles and responsibilities of private
companies that sell Internet surveillance and control technology to au-
thoritarian states, and also increasingly monitor and shape the online
activity of individual users? Do digital tools distract citizens from po-
litical action by promoting personal entertainment, or otherwise weaken
democratic resistance by giving people a seemingly safe but superficial
illusion of political action through digital means? And if digital ICTs
do indeed represent potent new tools for both democrats and autocrats,
which force—regime or opposition—is gaining the upper hand?
It is to this second set of questions that this volume is addressed.
Several years ago, as I was completing a work on the worldwide struggle
for democracy, I became struck by the growing use of the Internet, the
blogosphere, social media, and mobile phones to expose and challenge
the abuses of authoritarian regimes; to provide alternative channels
through which information and communication could flow outside the
censorship and controls imposed by dictatorships; to monitor elections;
and to mobilize people to protest.
Introduction xi

By 2007—which now seems like a generation ago in terms of the

speed with which these technologies have developed—digital ICTs
had already registered some stunning successes. The new technologies
had enabled Philippine civil society to fill the streets to drive a corrupt
president (Joseph Estrada) from power; facilitated the rapid mass mo-
bilizations against authoritarianism mounted by the Orange Revolution
in Ukraine and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, respectively; docu-
mented the rigging of the 2007 elections in Nigeria; exposed (via satel-
lite photography) the staggering inequality embodied in the vast palace
complexes of Bahrain’s royal family; and forced the suspension of an
environmentally threatening chemical plant in Xiamen, China, through
the viral spread of hundreds of thousands of impassioned mobile-phone
text messages. I called the ICTs that these citizens were using “libera-
tion technology” because of their demonstrated potential to empower
citizens to confront, contain, and hold accountable authoritarian re-
gimes—and even to liberate societies from autocracy.6
The term “liberation technology” has since become widely used and
hotly contested. Critics assert that it contains an analytic bias in presum-
ing that digital ICTs are intrinsically “liberating”—that is, inherently
good for promoting freedom, accountability, and democracy. Yet, as I
argue in the next chapter, we can apply the term to any form of ICT “that
can expand political, social, and economic freedom,” while remaining
agnostic and evidence-driven in seeking to determine whether and under
what conditions it actually does so. In this volume—which had its ori-
gins in a Stanford University conference on “Liberation Technology in
Authoritarian Regimes”—we maintain this empirical and open-minded
approach. Some of the contributors to this volume—particularly Xiao
Qiang, Patrick Meier, Philip Howard and Muzammil Hussain, Walid Al-
Saqaf, and Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi—view the ques-
tion from the standpoint of the users themselves. On the whole, these
authors take heart from the tenacity and innovative spirit that individu-
als and civil society groups in China and the Middle East have shown
in using liberation technology to find ways around authoritarian con-
straints. Others among the present volume’s authors—Ronald Deibert,
Rafal Rohozinski, Evgeny Morozov, Rebecca MacKinnon, and in some
respects Walid Al-Saqaf—take authoritarian regimes as their starting
point, and express concern at how fast such regimes are moving as they
innovate, build capacity, and harden resolve to control digital tools.
Yet all the authors share a common normative perspective—that the
Internet should be a universal, open, and essentially free space; and that
people should be able to use digital ICTs to report, document, advocate,
exchange, and organize peacefully for political change, while having
their rights (including the right to privacy) respected. This means not
that regulation should be absent, but rather that it should be careful-
ly constrained—used to protect intellectual property rights and shield
xii Introduction

vulnerable groups such as children, for example. The intersection of

this normative perspective and the many empirical developments docu-
mented in this book generates a diffuse agenda for international policy,
which is the subject of Daniel Calingaert’s concluding chapter.

Liberation vs. Control in Cyberspace

My opening chapter sets the scene for the later chapters by introduc-
ing the phenomenon of liberation technology. Technology is liberating,
I argue, to the extent that it can “empower individuals, facilitate inde-
pendent communication and mobilization, and strengthen an emergent
civil society.” Empowerment is not only political. To the extent that
ICTs better enable individuals to manage their health, educate their chil-
dren, locate resources, be secure in their persons, or sell their produce at
competitive rates, ICTs may also be profoundly empowering. In some
of the world’s poorest places, liberation technologies, using the mobile
phone as a platform, are helping to lift people out of poverty by giving
them valuable information and improving the openness and efficiency
of markets. This engages the vast, burgeoning field of “ICT4D”—where
the “4D” means “for development.”7 In this volume, we are limiting our
focus to the impact of ICTs on the “other D”—democracy.
Over the past decade, we have seen a vast array of instances in which
people have used ICTs and the new social media to report, expose,
organize, and protest outside of the normal authoritarian constraints.
The chapters that follow are replete with examples from China and the
Middle East, but I also note the important role that alternative online
journalism is playing in countries such as Malaysia to undermine the
authoritarian regime’s monopoly of information and to expose corrup-
tion, human-rights abuses, ethnic discrimination, and police brutality. In
Africa and throughout the developing world, the mobile phone is trans-
forming politics by enabling more efficient and comprehensive election
monitoring; improving budget transparency and accountability; inform-
ing citizens about efforts to combat corruption and human-rights abuses;
and mapping such abuses as well as outbreaks of interethnic violence.
A crucial facilitator of these efforts has been the rapid development and
diffusion of open-source software such as FrontlineSMS (which enables
large-scale, two-way text messaging) as well as the Ushahidi “crisis-
mapping” platform described by Patrick Meier in Chapter 7.
I stress, as in one way or another do most of this volume’s authors,
that “technology is merely a tool, open to both noble and nefarious pur-
poses.” This book does not much address (beyond Chapter 2) the dark
sides of ICT usage—for online crime, child pornography, terrorism, cy-
berwarfare, and the theft of corporate and government secrets. We do
deal extensively with the ways in which governments are using these
technologies, or turning them inside out, to monitor online opposition,
Introduction xiii

suppress dissent, censor and remove “harmful content,” and identify and
arrest leading critics. Indeed, one can find a disturbing pattern in the use
of liberation technology in highly authoritarian contexts such as Burma
in 2007, Iran in 2009, and Bahrain in 2011. Citizens use mobile phones
and social media to mobilize protests and to film them, thereby expand-
ing domestic and international support. Then the regime cracks down
brutally and protests shrivel, while state security services mine online
photographs and films, heighten Internet filtering and surveillance, and
even use ICTs proactively to track down and arrest protest leaders.
The balance of potency between ICTs as democracy-boosters and
ICTs as repression-enablers remain dynamic and fluid. One key fac-
tor is the ability of opposition groups to acquire, master, and improve
censorship-evading tools such as those that Walid Al-Saqaf discusses in
Chapter 9. I remain, on balance, optimistic about liberation technolo-
gies’ potential to raise democratic consciousness and capacities and ul-
timately to promote democratic transitions in authoritarian regimes. At
the same time, however, I am also keenly aware that “there is now a
technological race underway between democrats seeking to circumvent
Internet censorship and dictatorships that want to extend and refine it.”
As Daniel Calingaert explains at length in Chapter 11, much will depend
on what international actors (especially democratic governments) do or
fail to do to ensure free and unfettered access to the Internet and to
restrict authoritarian access to advanced filtering and surveillance tech-
nologies.
In Chapter 2, Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski illuminate the
dark side of liberation technologies and challenge the dominant liberal-
democratic vision of them by showing how they are increasingly used
for malicious purposes. For example, al-Qaeda remains viable largely
because of jihadi websites—“jihadists and militants mobilize around a
common ‘imagined community’ that is nurtured online.” It is not that
cyberspace is an “ungoverned realm,” but rather that it is a weakly gov-
erned space filled by a complex and rapidly evolving mix of actors with
widely divergent motives. Their analogy is “to a gangster-dominated
version of New York: a tangled web of rival public and private authori-
ties, civic associations, criminal networks, and underground econo-
mies.” In this cyberstew, liberation and control, transparency and de-
ception, cooperation and predation, tolerance and extremism all vie with
one another, just as they do in physical space. But we should not assume
that benign and liberating purposes will trump repression and exploita-
tion in cyberspace. Deibert and Rohozinski report that the production of
“malware” (malicious software that can gain control of an unsuspecting
user’s computer for the purposes of crime, surveillance, or sabotage) “is
now estimated to exceed that of legitimate software,” and the growth of
malware is increasing at an alarming rate.
Authoritarian governments are not only monitoring, filtering, and
xiv Introduction

censoring the Internet, they may also have launched or encouraged the
coordinated attacks that human-rights and prodemocracy groups have
experienced in recent years in China, Burma, Tibet, and numerous
countries of the former Soviet Union. Moreover, as democratic gov-
ernments themselves regulate the Internet and establish cyberwarfare
capacities, authoritarian governments find it easier to justify their more
radical measures. And they have at their disposal a growing variety of
“next-generation” controls that go well beyond Internet filtering. These
include legal measures to restrict, intimidate, and prosecute independent
reporting and critical commentary online; pressuring private Internet
service providers (ISPs) to do the dirty work of monitoring online activ-
ity, removing challenging content, and blocking troublesome organiza-
tions; selective, “just-in-time” blocking, including through distributed
denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to cripple opposition orga-
nizations at key political moments; as well as “patriotic hacking” (by
Chinese and Iranian cybermilitants, for example), targeted surveillance,
and social-malware attacks. Deibert and Rohozinski conclude that the
quest for liberal governance of cyberspace, where freedom and indi-
vidual privacy and security are effectively protected, “will not come
overnight with the invention of some new technology. Instead, it will
require a slow process of awareness-raising, the channeling of ingenuity
into productive avenues, and the implementation of liberal-democratic
restraints.”
In Chapter 3, Ronald Deibert widens the optic of repression to ex-
amine the international mechanisms and dynamics of cyberspace con-
trols. While most efforts to monitor controls in cyberspace (including
the OpenNet Initiative [ONI], for which Deibert is a principal inves-
tigator8) have focused on the policies and actions of individual states,
Deibert emphasizes that states compete with one another, and that they
also “borrow and share best practices, skills, and technologies.” The
technical tools of Internet filtration appear to be diffusing across bor-
ders, and numerous states appear to have taken a cue from one another
by disabling SMS (short-message service, or mobile-phone text messag-
ing) and instant-messaging services during periods of intense opposi-
tion challenge or protest. By the same token, civil society organizations
increasingly cooperate and share technologies and best practices across
borders, and many civil society networks seeking to promote human
rights, freedom, and democracy are truly international. Then there are
the private-sector actors—not least the US$80-billion-per-year cyberse-
curity market—who seek commercial opportunities and profit through-
out the world. The international trend, Deibert finds with concern, is “a
growing norm worldwide for national Internet filtering.” And as noted
in the previous chapter, “the private-sector actors who own and operate
the vast majority of cyberspace infrastructure are being compelled or
coerced to implement controls on behalf of states.” Part of the work of
Introduction xv

the OpenNet Initiative is to document the collusion of Internet compa-

nies in restricting access in authoritarian states and to bring “pressure
on those companies to become more accountable.” The same goes for
companies that are eagerly producing the hardware and software for an
“exploding market” in Internet surveillance, control, and sabotage, in-
cluding “deep packet inspection and traffic shaping capabilities” that
violate principles of network neutrality.
Deibert urges new analytic attention to the international institutions
for Internet governance: the International Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU), and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Increasingly,
governments that want to restrict Internet access are taking these forums
“seriously as vectors of policy formation and propagation,” and scholars
must to do the same. Countries such as China and Russia now engage in
these various international forums in order “to reassert the legitimacy of
national sovereign control over cyberspace by promoting such a norm
at international venues.” As a result, deliberations in these bodies are
increasingly being politicized and infused with national-security con-
siderations, an ominous new trend. Deibert also shows how regional
bodies like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are helping to co-
ordinate and advance these authoritarian national strategies of Internet
surveillance and control, and he observes a growing pattern of bilateral
cooperation, with China serving as a major source of export or diffusion
of filtering and surveillance technologies.
Governments also legitimize far-reaching Internet-control policies
under the guise of merely doing what democracies like the United States
do to monitor and combat terrorism or protect copyrights. No less worri-
some is the “arms-race spiral in cyberspace,” as dozens of governments
build up cyberwarfare capabilities in response to what they see other
states, particularly China and the United States, to be doing. Deibert
concludes with a warning: “General statements about the ‘war on terror’
or ‘copyright controls’ can be turned into excuses for a broad spectrum
of otherwise nefarious actions by authoritarian regimes,” and therefore
democratic regimes must set an international example of consistency,
transparency, accountability, and fidelity to their own liberal values.
Deibert’s concerns are shared by Evgeny Morozov, who warns in
Chapter 4 of a number of ominous trends that not only threaten Inter-
net freedom but utilize new breakthroughs in digital technology to im-
peril freedom more generally. Technological forms of Internet control
are not only growing in power and subtlety, but they are being supple-
mented by sociopolitical forms of control that can have an even more
chilling effect—for example, by holding blogging platforms legally
responsible for all the content on their sites, or arresting and even tor-
turing those who exercise their personal freedom on the web. Framing
the challenge as simply a technological arms race in which more re-
xvi Introduction

sources for additional technical innovations will advantage advocates

of freedoms can be a dangerous delusion, Morozov cautions. Techni-
cal fixes, including censorship-circumvention software like Tor, do
nothing to restrain autocracies from other methods of repressing free-
dom online, many of which are much harder to document and trace
than Internet filtration. One example is the rising incidence of DDoS
attacks, which “target individuals or entire organizations by flooding
their websites with crippling volumes of artificially generated Internet
traffic.” These not only shut down the targeted site for all users for
some period of time, they also impose heavy psychological, financial,
and operational costs on the organization attacked, while leaving few
if any clear footprints as to responsibility. They may thus be even more
effective than censorship.
Wily and resourceful authoritarian regimes, like Vladimir Putin’s in
Russia, are also perfecting the dark and subtle arts of socially infiltrat-
ing online networks with saboteurs “to create artificial splits within
the community” and provoke “community administrators to take harsh
and unpopular measures.” States are also asserting “informational sov-
ereignty,” in essence moving to detach their national cyberspace from
the global Internet by constructing their own national e-mail systems,
search engines, and versions of social media like Twitter and Face-
book, as China has already done to a considerable extent.
Like Deibert, Morozov worries about the trend toward commercial
outsourcing of Internet control to private companies that are forced
to take on a broad “self-policing” role as the price of doing business
in the country. This may even prove more effective than direct state
control, he observes, because the commercial Internet companies “are
more likely to catch unruly content, as they are more decentralized and
know their own online communities better than do the state’s censors.”
Moreover, in the intense competition for lucrative profits, private com-
panies are rapidly innovating in the development of Orwellian tools of
surveillance, such as powerful new software for indexing and search-
ing video-surveillance footage, and face-recognition software that can
identify individuals and then search social-networking or other web-
sites for photos of the same person.
As search-engine companies such as Google and a wide variety
of other Internet firms develop the capacity to permanently store and
mine vast amounts of data on the Internet behavior—and thus beliefs
and preferences—of tens or hundreds of millions of individuals, the
possibilities grow for game-changing leaps forward in the depth and
sophistication of Internet censorship and control. These new forms
“marry artificial intelligence and basic social-networking analysis” in
order to fine-tune control in ways that do not broadly impede econom-
ic competitiveness, as the cruder instruments of censorship do. Thus
Morozov, like Deibert, urges the governments of the United States
Introduction xvii

and other democracies to be mindful of how their own legal efforts

to control crime, piracy, and warfare on the Internet might create “an
enabling environment for authoritarian governments that are keen on
passing similar measures, mostly for the purpose of curbing political
freedom.”

Liberation Technology in China

If any one country is going to weigh decisively in settling the debate
about whether digital ICTs are more liberating or controlling, it will be
China. Some of the reasons are obvious. China is by far the most populous
authoritarian country in the world. It is also widely seen as a model of
rapid development (and political stability) without democracy. The Chi-
nese Communist Party (CCP) claims to have found a better way, outside
the Western democratic model, of effective and responsive governance
without the conflict, messy delays, and periodic political deadlock that
often go with democracy. Yet as the next two chapters reveal, political
protest is rising in China—not least on the Internet. And Chinese who
are seeking to defend their rights, challenge corruption and collusion, and
extend accountability are making intensive use of the Internet, SMS, and
various social media.
Moreover, China now has the largest number of Internet users in the
world, over half a billion. That is roughly twice as many as in the United
States, more than four times as many as in India, and nearly a quarter
of all Internet users in the world. While the proportion of the Chinese
population using the Internet (a little less than 40 percent) is still low by
the standards of developed economies (where Internet penetration tends
to be around 75 to 80 percent), it is now sizeable and growing fast (by
more than 50 million users in 2011 alone). And a large number of these
users—an estimated 350 million—are able to access the Internet with
their mobile phones.9 By one estimate, China has nearly 200 million
“microbloggers” (who post short blog posts, rather like Twitter updates,
except that Twitter itself is banned in China).10
In Chapter 5, Xiao Qiang, founder and chief editor of China Digi-
tal Times, examines how Chinese Internet users—“netizens”—are us-
ing digital tools to extend the boundaries of expression and generate
new, autonomous forms of political participation and dissent, thereby
“changing the rules of the game between state and society.” While mo-
nopoly control of information has been a major pillar of CCP rule since
1949, this has altered with the rapid emergence of networked digital
communications that make total censorship and control impossible.
For Xiao, the 2007 grassroots environmental protests against a pro-
posed chemical factory in the coastal city of Xiamen, Fujian Province—
organized and spread through e-mail, instant messages, SMS, and cell-
phone photos—marked the rise of a new phenomenon in China: popular
xviii Introduction

opinion. For the first time, but certainly not the last, ordinary Chinese
citizens were able to help shape the policy agenda by using digital media
(with an important assist from sympathetic elements in the traditional
media). “The rise of blogging, instant messaging, social-networking
services,” search engines, RSS (web feeds of syndicated content), and
Internet bulletin-board systems “have given netizens an unprecedented
capacity for communication” in China, he writes. This has enabled the
rise of an autonomous “quasi-public space,” where “millions of users
can generate, distribute, and consume content,” and where social and
political issues can be discussed “in far bolder language than would be
permitted in the official media.” And it has inspired the kinds of local
protests that halted construction of the chemical plant in Xiamen.
Xiao does not downplay the extraordinary scope and vigor of online
censorship—“a complex web of regulations, surveillance, imprison-
ment, propaganda, and the blockade of hundreds of thousands of inter-
national websites” that has come to be known as the “Great Firewall of
China.” Indeed, it can black out a story when it acts totally and preemp-
tively (as with Liu Xiaobo’s award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize). But
Xiao documents a variety of ways in which Chinese netizens evade state
censors, reveal sensitive information about officials, play on words and
symbols, employ metaphors and coded language, and employ various
forms of popular culture (satire, jokes, songs, and so on) to criticize and
even ridicule the ruling party. These can cascade uncontrollably—“like
water gushing through a hole in the dam.” Even if some of the estimated
fifty-thousand Internet police purge them from one place, they crop up
in another, quickly becoming “public knowledge”—to the point where
the government must sometimes acknowledge and redress a scandal.
Thus, he believes that digital ICTs will in the long run liberate China.
“Already,” he observes, “we are starting to see compromise, negotia-
tion, and rule-changing behavior” in response to grassroots digital mo-
bilization. As grassroots online voices converge with “liberal elements
within the established media . . . they are creating a substantial force that
is slowly wearing away at the CCP’s ideological and social control.”
Rebecca MacKinnon shares Xiao Qiang’s hopes, but not his op-
timistic assessment. In Chapter 6, she sees in contemporary China a
new model of “networked authoritarianism,” in which, for some time
to come, digital ICTs are more likely to sustain than erode the hege-
mony of the CCP (and possibly of other repressive regimes that can
copy its techniques). The key innovation of networked authoritarian-
ism is the coexistence of extensive digital communications, including
limited space on websites and social-networking services to criticize
government policies and social problems, with systematic and techni-
cally sophisticated state surveillance and control. The CCP, she argues,
has “adapted to the Internet much more successfully than most Western
observers realize.” The Chinese regime has a relationship with the In-
Introduction xix

ternet like that of a human being’s with water, a substance that is both
“vital and dangerous.” Learning as they go, China’s Internet police go to
great and creative lengths to minimize the danger of the Web. “All Inter-
net companies operating within Chinese jurisdiction—domestic or for-
eign—are held liable for everything appearing on their search engines,
blogging platforms, and social-networking services.” This provides a
strong incentive for companies to police and censor their own Internet
users around the clock.
China deploys a wide range of other repressive tactics: cyberattacks;
device and network controls to track and block Internet activity at more
localized points; domain-name controls to expunge unauthorized and,
especially, anonymous websites; localized disconnection and restriction
of the Internet during moments of protest; relentless surveillance of In-
ternet and mobile-device users; and “proactive efforts to steer online
conversations.” All of these methods serve a common purpose: to pre-
empt, purge, and punish politically threatening digital activity.
At the same time, China’s leaders are of course also using digital
tools energetically to push their own propaganda. Under this new model
of authoritarianism, “the average person with Internet or mobile access
has a much greater sense of freedom,” and abundant digital fun, but
“even most of China’s best and brightest are not aware of the extent to
which their understanding of their own country—let alone the broader
world—is being blinkered and manipulated.” And when individuals
do press on matters of real political significance, rights of expression
and organization are still severely constrained. “Those whom the rulers
see as threats are jailed; truly competitive, free, and fair elections are
not held; and the courts and legal system are tools of the ruling party.”
China’s emergent civil society may be winning some local battles for
accountability and justice, but the authoritarian party-state is winning
its war for political survival.
MacKinnon is not only worried about the trends in China. She sees
networked authoritarianism as a model of rule that can be replicated,
and whose tools and strategies (particularly the legal, regulatory, and
political tools beyond Internet filtration) are in fact being replicated by
Russia, other post-Soviet republics, and some Middle Eastern regimes,
as the authors of previous chapters have noted. Like Deibert, Rohozin-
ski, and Morozov, MacKinnon stresses the importance of democratic
governments setting a good example by avoiding pernicious practices
like intermediary liability and warrantless surveillance, and by adopting
Internet and telecommunications policies that are “transparent, account-
able, and open to reform” by both the courts and the political process.
Without these international standards, democratic movements “will
face an increasingly uphill battle against progressively more innovative
forms of censorship and surveillance.”
To some extent, the debate between Xiao and MacKinnon is a classic
xx Introduction

instance of whether one sees the glass as half full or half empty. Neither
expects the imminent demise of authoritarian rule. Each sees in China
today a mixed picture, in which a rapidly growing body of “netizens”
enjoys some autonomy to generate and share information. But while
Xiao believes that digital ICTs are truly empowering citizens and erod-
ing the foundations of Communist Party control, MacKinnon sees a new
era—and indeed a new model—of much more sophisticated, adaptive,
and thus resilient authoritarian rule.

Liberation Technology in the Middle East

If China’s Communist rulers remain obsessed with the threat that dig-
ital media pose to their rule, it is not without good reason. During 2011,
youth-based opposition movements used these digital tools to mobilize
popular outrage and protests that quickly brought down two of the oldest
and seemingly most stable autocracies in the Arab world, in Tunisia and
Egypt. So shaken were the Chinese authorities by these rapidly unfold-
ing events that (as Xiao Qiang reports) they blocked the word “Egypt”
from a major Chinese search engine and then, when netizens began to
call online for prodemocracy demonstrations like those in Tunisia’s Jas-
mine Revolution, authorities blocked the word “Jasmine” as well.
It is hard to tell how much of a difference liberation technology made
to the popular movements that in 2011 toppled long-ruling autocrats in
Tunisia and Egypt and stirred widespread protest and revolt in Bahrain,
Yemen, Libya, and Syria; or to the movement that had nearly toppled
Iran’s Islamist authoritarian regime two years earlier after fraudulent
elections prompted street protests on an unprecedented scale. Each
chapter in this section of our book, however, shows that digital tools
played an important, even crucial role, in enabling previously weak op-
position forces to rapidly mobilize challenges to authoritarian rule.
In Chapter 7, Patrick Meier focuses on a specific digital tool, crisis
mapping, and the role that it played in Egypt’s November–December
2010 parliamentary elections. This polling, which the regime shame-
lessly manipulated to pad its already outsized legislative majority,
formed the immediate prelude to the popular revolt against President
Hosni Mubarak that broke out on 25 January 2011. Meier, a social sci-
entist who also serves as Director of Crisis Mapping for the web-based
mapping platform Ushahidi, seeks to determine whether Ushahidi made
a difference in deterring electoral fraud. A digital tool that has been used
to map human-rights violations, electoral malpractices, natural-disaster
damage, corruption instances, and many other dimensions of crisis and
trouble, Ushahidi “is a free and open-source mapping software that al-
lows anyone to create a live and rich multimedia map of an event or situ-
ation.” Originally developed to map and document Kenya’s postelection
violence in January 2008, using SMS reports from eyewitnesses, it has
Introduction xxi

since been used to generate more than ten thousand live, event-centered
maps in more than forty countries. Having been upgraded over time, it
can now be integrated with a wide variety of other digital tools, includ-
ing Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as e-mail and voicemail.
Meier analyzes the efforts of a Cairo-based civil society group,
the Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC), to
use what it named “U-Shahid” (shahid means “witness” in Arabic) to
monitor the parliamentary elections. DISC’s specific goals were to help
Egyptians learn more about the electoral process, report on violations
of electoral laws, and empower local partners to advocate for fair prac-
tices during election campaigning and voting. At a minimum, the project
seems to have increased civic participation in election monitoring and
raised political awareness more generally.
After applying his analytical framework and conducting interviews
with DISC’s U-Shahid users in Egypt, Meier concludes that while the
project was not operating at a scale of visibility necessary to achieve
significant governmental change, it “helped to reverse or at least fight
back against this government-constructed panopticon, and this may have
helped to pave the way for the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak.”
Moreover, U-Shahid was part of a broader landscape of intensive use
of social media, including Facebook and blogs, “which filled the vacu-
um created by the lack of a real political debate in Egypt” and enabled
young people “to engage in a political context in which physical elimi-
nation of the opposition was the norm.”
One sees in Meier’s case study as well the deficiencies of Egypt’s
authoritarian regime, which was significantly less adroit at using and
constraining (or even fully understanding) these digital information and
communication tools than its counterpart in China. As a result, it was
caught flat-footed and outmaneuvered. This presaged to some extent the
desperation of the Mubarak regime the following February, when its
only response to the gathering, digitally driven crisis was to shut down
Internet access altogether, a tactic which, it is generally now agreed,
backfired.
In Chapter 8, Philip Howard and Muzammil Hussain come to bolder
conclusions. They argue that digital media played a decisive role in the
recent upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia. They find persuasive “the con-
sistent narratives” from Arab civil society activists that “the Internet,
mobile phones, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter made
the difference this time. Using these technologies, people interested in
democracy could build extensive networks, create social capital, and
organize political action with a speed and on a scale never seen before.”
Each of the catalytic events of these revolutions was made so by libera-
tion technology. When Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set
himself on fire after being humiliated by security officials, social media
swiftly and powerfully publicized his horrific plight. What could have
xxii Introduction

remained a local or individual tragedy was transformed into a national

narrative of outrage by the viral cascade of YouTube videos, impas-
sioned blogs, and SMS jokes about the decadent corruption and wanton
abuses of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s rule. When the Tunisian
government moved to ban Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, activists
got support from international hacker communities to circumvent the
state’s firewalls, while also coordinating efforts mostly via SMS. Tar-
geted arrests of bloggers did little to stem a fluid and leaderless revolu-
tion, which toppled Ben Ali on January 14, less than a month after the
initial spark.
Campaigns of protest and civil disobedience quickly spread to a num-
ber of other Arab states, but Howard and Hussain stress that Egypt had
one distinction that set it apart from the others: a more active and wired
civil society. (Indeed, Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement had already
used Facebook to organize a stunningly successful general strike in the
spring of 2008.) Egypt’s online public sphere was aroused by the rapidly
escalating events in Tunisia as well as by the creation of a Facebook
group, “We Are All Khaled Said,” to sustain the memory of a young
Egyptian who in June 2010 was dragged out of an Internet café and
beaten to death by police after he exposed their corruption. That memo-
rial page, launched by Google executive Wael Ghonim, “became a focus
for collective dissent and commiseration,” as well as “a logistical tool
and, at least temporarily, a strong source of community.”
Disaffected Egyptian youth readily identified with Said, “found soli-
darity through digital media, and then used their mobile phones to call
their social networks into the streets.” The breadth, speed, and discipline
of protest mobilization disarmed both the regime and its domestic and
international backers. When Mubarak tried to shut off Internet access
in late January, it was too late. The shutdown was unevenly executed,
and in any case it prompted many middle-class Egyptians who had here-
tofore stayed home to come into the streets. As digital media inspired,
sustained, enlarged, and coordinated the peaceful protests, Mubarak’s
support base crumbled and he was forced to resign on 11 February 2011.
Elsewhere in the region, autocrats hung on in the face of similar digi-
tally inspired protests, but in Bahrain and Syria it was only through
extensive violent repression, and in Libya even that was not enough in
the end. While Howard and Hussain give due weight to the underlying
social and political sources of disaffection that destabilized Arab au-
thoritarian regimes, they stress that “social discontent is not something
ready-made” but must gestate and then be mobilized and organized into
effective protest. In a number of Arab countries since late 2010, digi-
tal media have furnished the means for translating diffuse disenchant-
ment “into workable strategies and goals,” then a “structured movement
with a collective consciousness,” and then a mushrooming and nimble
movement that “used Facebook, Twitter, and other sites to communi-
Introduction xxiii

cate plans for civic action.” Mobile-phone photographs and videos up-
loaded to social media intensified domestic and international support
for the protestors and raised the costs to the regime of blatant repression
(though that has so far failed to restrain the Bashar al-Assad regime in
Syria). Even the traditional media, such as the Arab satellite station Al
Jazeera, relied heavily on digital media to collect information and im-
ages from countries in turmoil. Regimes fought back by trying to use
or suppress these digital media, and in some instances (notably that of
Saudi Arabia) they appeared to have the technological advantage over
opposition forces from the very start.
Internet controls in the Arab world, and tools to help users circum-
vent them, form the subject that Walid Al-Saqaf addresses in Chapter
9. Al-Saqaf, a Yemeni journalist and software developer, is not only
a scholar of online activity in the Arab world but also an activist and
digital social entrepreneur. In 2007, he launched an online portal for his
native Yemen that aggregated news, opinion articles, videos, blog posts,
and other forms of online discussion. Although Yemen Portal brought
together all sources of information—government, opposition, and in-
dependent media—it quickly became a “go-to” place for oppositional
content, and almost as quickly the government built a firewall to block
Internet access to it within Yemen. This prompted Al-Saqaf to develop
a tool to evade censorship: “Alkasir,” which means (literally) “the cir-
cumventor” in Arabic. Like similar tools, Alkasir works by having Inter-
net “tunnels” access blocked websites through various proxy servers, so
that the tunneled users can access the Internet as if they were connecting
directly (save that the speed of connection can be much slower).
By January 2012, Alkasir had received more than a hundred-thou-
sand reports of blocked websites in the Arab world. In engaging Arab
netizens seeking this free software, Al-Saqaf was able to gather data that
informs our understanding of the state of Internet censorship in Arab
countries. Internet censorship, he finds, is “pervasive” and growing in
many Arab countries. Not surprisingly, in addition to general social-
media and multimedia-sharing sites such as Facebook and YouTube,
the most frequently blocked sites contained independent news, dissident
views, “criticism of the government, reports of human-rights violations,
and similar content historically censored by autocratic governments in
traditional media.” And also not surprisingly, Syria and Saudi Arabia
topped the list in terms of the number of web addresses reported blocked
(along with Yemen, understandably, given his preexisting Internet con-
stituency in that country).
While most analyses of Internet censorship are circumstantial and
impressionistic, Al-Saqaf is able to present hard data demonstrating its
scope and showing that Arab governments “have heavily invested in
firewall software to suppress news and opinion content, social networks,
and multimedia sharing.” Yet he remains hopeful. By January of 2012,
xxiv Introduction

his software had been used more than three-million times by more than
30,000 users in Arab countries (two-thirds of them from Syria) and over
30,000 other users to access banned sites. He expects “the familiar cat-
and-mouse game between ISPs in authoritarian Arab states” and the de-
velopers of circumvention tools to continue for years to come.
Mehdi Yahyanejad, the coauthor of our study of the use of social
media by the Green Movement in Iran, also bridges the divide between
analysis and Internet activism. He is the founder of the most popular
Persian-language social news website, Balatarin.com. In Chapter 10,
Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi show how social-media tools such
as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Balatarin, and (to a lesser extent than was
claimed at the time) Twitter were instrumental in informing Iranians
and mobilizing protest following the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential
election. Because they provided a secure and quick method for sharing
news and information, “the new social media facilitated the exchange of
ideas, fostered democratic political culture, and ultimately became an
effective tool for mobilization” by the Green Movement.
In the years prior to the dramatic events of 2009—which saw the
Islamic Republic conduct a deeply flawed presidential election and then
suppress popular protest against the fraud—liberation technology tilled
the soil for democratic change. In particular, “the Persian-speaking
blogosphere,” one of the ten largest in the world, raised the profile of
opposition forces and “helped to create the discourse for democracy,
pluralism, and tolerance in the years prior to the election.” During the
election campaign itself, the reformist presidential campaigns made in-
tensive use of the Internet and social media, taking advantage of the re-
gime’s temporary unblocking of Facebook and Twitter, and mobilizing
Iranian youth in unprecedented numbers.
Then, when politics shifted to the streets in protest of the stolen elec-
tion, the widespread prevalence of ICTs in Iran and the relatively high
level of Iranians’ familiarity with digital tools (including circumven-
tion tools) enabled protestors to use social media intensively to recruit
their fellow citizens and to get the message out to the world, despite the
government’s physical and virtual crackdowns. A crucial dimension of
this digital campaign was the uploading of video footage from mobile
devices documenting the “the Iranian government’s violent repression
of its citizens’ nonviolent protest movement.” The iconic symbol for
this brutality was the horrific image of an unarmed young woman, Neda
Agha-Soltan, bleeding to death from gunshot wounds on a Tehran street.
SMS and satellite-TV broadcasts were important supplements to web-
based tools (with the BBC and Voice of America rebroadcasting You-
Tube content that was difficult to view online in Iran).
All these electronic media, along with creative nonviolent tactics,
helped to sustain mass protests for months after the election campaign.
But liberation technology could not, by itself, liberate Iran. The authori-
Introduction xxv

tarian regime, already adept at Internet censorship, showed that it, too,
could learn and adapt. It used the same media to monitor tactical debates.
Then it took back control of the streets and gradually arrested many of
the protestors, using intercepted online communications to prosecute
them. Yahyanejad and Gheytanchi take heart from the persistence of
nonviolent resistance to the regime and remain hopeful about the role
that social media can play in ultimately fostering democratic change in
Iran. But they also recognize a sobering lesson: “Such media (with their
open, horizontal nature) can also breed confusion when there is a need
to deal with complex issues and tactics that require discipline, strategy,
and a degree of central leadership.” Iran’s Green Movement, sadly, was
deficient in all these respects.
In Chapter 11, Daniel Calingaert explains the opportunities and chal-
lenges for international policy to defend and promote Internet freedom.
He is encouraged that “U.S. support for Internet freedom now is clearly
articulated, identified as a priority in U.S. foreign policy, and backed by
significant resources.” He praises Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
the Obama Administration for pushing the policy agenda, supporting
censorship circumvention and privacy-protection technologies, aiding
digital activists, and integrating Internet freedom issues into the main-
stream work of U.S. diplomacy. He believes, however, that the United
States and the European Union both need to take stronger, more con-
certed action, because current policy “is inadequate to stem—let alone
reverse—the trend of declining Internet freedom.” Calingaert stresses
what many of the authors in this volume have demonstrated—that au-
thoritarian regimes such as those in China and Iran have become “highly
adept at controlling the Internet.” And he cites Freedom House reports
showing that “threats to online freedom are growing and are increas-
ingly diverse,” as more countries begin to censor political content on the
web and employ more tools and strategies for doing so.
To counteract these disturbing trends, Calingaert recommends a
number of policy steps and approaches. First, the advanced democracies
must do more to defend bloggers and cyberdissidents at risk in authori-
tarian regimes. Second, like other authors in this volume, he hopes that
the United States will avoid civilian and military policy initiatives that
might further fracture the Internet or legitimate authoritarian states’ of-
fensive and repressive actions on the web. These include the creation of
technical “backdoors” to enable the U.S. government—but eventually
also repressive governments—to intercept protected or encrypted mes-
sages. Third, he appeals for concrete assistance to U.S. (and European)
media companies so that they may effectively respond to the urging of
Secretary of State Clinton that they “take a proactive role in challeng-
ing foreign governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance.” He
also views with favor banning exports of surveillance and censorship
technology to highly authoritarian regimes, or at a minimum requiring
xxvi Introduction

U.S. corporations to disclose requests from foreign governments to filter

web content or hand over personal data of users. Fourth, he recommends
challenging Internet censorship in appropriate international forums as
both a human-rights issue and a restriction on free trade. Fifth, he seeks
“targeted diplomatic initiatives to challenge restrictive Internet laws and
practices” before they become entrenched. And finally, he urges the ma-
jor democracies to act in concert to promote and protect digital freedom
and to coordinate their assistance policies.

Liberation or Control?
It is far too soon to know whether digital ICTs will come to be seen
more as instruments of liberation or as tools for social and political con-
trol. Even in liberal democracies, there are concerns that citizens are
permanently losing their privacy to both state and corporate actors, and
that elected governments are subverting liberal norms of constitutional-
ism and individual rights in a headlong rush for technological advantage
in the war on terrorism, the war on cybercrime, and indeed the reconcep-
tualization of war itself. In authoritarian regimes, as this volume shows,
the balance of technological prowess does matter; in Egypt and Tunisia
it seemed to favor youthful democratic oppositions. Yet these two re-
gimes, and those in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, suffered a crisis
of legitimacy beyond anything that Chinese Communist rule now faces.
Should China’s Communist Party lose “the Mandate of Heaven” as thor-
oughly as Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak had lost the support
of their respective peoples, it is unlikely that it will be saved merely by
the breadth and sophistication of its Internet controls. Just as the army
defected or stood aside in Tunisia and Egypt, so the loyalty of China’s
vast network of Internet police and information censors might also wa-
ver catastrophically in a crisis. Even if China has gradually constructed
a more diffuse, subtle, and multilayered architecture of digital control,
that system is only as effective as the people who maintain it. As I argue
in the first chapter, “It is not technology, but people, organizations, and
governments that will determine who prevails.”
In the words of an Egyptian digital activist interviewed by Patrick
Meier, it is possible to find grounds for hope: “Technology by nature
is a very neutral tool. But the most important thing is information. In-
formation is the key that drives political discourse and media debates.
Information wants to be found. Those who want to suppress it will have
a harder time. So people in favor of spreading information are going to
win.”
Introduction xxvii

NOTES

1. See www.benphoster.com/facebook-user-growth-chart-2004-2010.

2. See http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html; http://blog.twitter.com

/2011/06/200-million-tweets-per-day.html.

3. See www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/05/17/youtube-facts-and-figures-
history-statistics.

4. Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You
Think (New York: Free Press, 2012).

5. “Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Blog Readers,” Nielsenwire, 8
March 2012, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/buzz-in-the-blogosphere
-millions-more-bloggers-and-blog-readers.

6. Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies
Throughout the World (New York: Times Books, 2008), 340–44.

7. A useful gateway to and clearinghouse for innovations in ICT4D can be found at the
website of Infodev, a partnership program of the World Bank Group, www.infodev.org.

8. See http://opennet.net.

9. As of mid-2011, China had an estimated 485 million Internet users: www.inter-

networldstats.com/top20.htm. However, in its January 2012 Statistical Report, the Chi-
na Network Information Center, the official Chinese body tracking Internet use, put
the number of users at 513 million, as of the end of 2011: www1.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/
pdf/2012/2/27/112543.pdf. This is also the source for the number of mobile-phone users.
These are all estimates based on sample surveys.

10. See www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/19/jon-huntsman/jon-

huntsman-says-internet-use-china-forum-discon.
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 I

Liberation vs. Control

in Cyberspace
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 1

LIBERATION TECHNOLOGY
Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Free-
man Spogli Institute for International Studies, director of Stanford Uni-
versity’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and
founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy. This essay originally
appeared in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

In March 2003, police in Guangzhou (Canton), China, stopped 27-year-

old Sun Zhigang and demanded to see his temporary living permit and
identification. When he could not produce these, he was sent to a deten-
tion center. Three days later, he died in its infirmary. The cause of death
was recorded as a heart attack, but the autopsy authorized by his parents
showed that he had been subjected to a brutal beating.
Sun’s parents took his story to the liberal newspaper Nanfang Dushi Bao
(Southern Metropolis Daily), and its investigation confirmed that Sun had
been beaten to death in custody. As soon as its report appeared on April 25,
“newspapers and Web sites throughout China republished the account, [Inter-
net] chat rooms and bulletin boards exploded with outrage,” and it quickly be-
came a national story.1 The central government was forced to launch its own
investigation and on June 27, it found twelve people guilty of Sun’s death.
Sun’s case was a rare instance in China of official wrongdoing being
exposed and punished. But it had a much wider and more lasting impact,
provoking national debate about the “Custody and Repatriation” (C&R)
measures that allowed the police to detain rural migrants (typically in ap-
palling conditions) for lacking a residency or temporary-living permit. In
the outrage following Sun’s death, numerous Chinese citizens posted on
the Internet stories of their own experiences of C&R, and the constitution-
ality of the legislation became a hotly debated topic in universities. An
online petition asking the Standing Committee of the National People’s
Congress to reexamine C&R quickly garnered widespread popular sup-
port, and in June 2003 the government announced that it would close all
of the more than eight-hundred C&R detention centers.2
4 Liberation Technology

Sun’s case was seen as a watershed—the first time that a peaceful

outpouring of public opinion had forced the Communist Chinese state
to change a national regulation. But Sun’s case also soon became that
of muckraking editor Cheng Yizhong, whom local officials jailed (along
with three of his colleagues) in retaliation for their efforts to ferret out the
wrongdoing that led to Sun’s death. The legal defense that Xu Zhiyong
mounted on behalf of the four journalists itself became a cause cél`ebre.
As their fellow journalists launched an unprecedented campaign for their
release, using among other means an Internet petition, Xu established a
website, the Open Constitutional Initiative, to post documents and legal
arguments about the case. All of this reflected a burgeoning weiquan
(“defend-rights”) movement. But while Cheng and his deputy editor were
released from prison without charge, they lost their jobs and the authori-
ties closed down Xu’s site. Xu continued his work in defense of rights
until July of last year, when his organization was shut down and he was
arrested on politically motivated charges of tax evasion.
Optimists discern in these events a striking ability of the Internet—
and other forms of “liberation technology”—to empower individuals,
facilitate independent communication and mobilization, and strengthen
an emergent civil society. Pessimists argue that nothing in China has
fundamentally changed. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains
firmly in control and beyond accountability. The weiquan movement
has been crushed. And the Chinese state has developed an unparalleled
system of digital censorship.
Both perspectives have merit. Liberation technology enables citizens
to report news, expose wrongdoing, express opinions, mobilize protest,
monitor elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and ex-
pand the horizons of freedom. But authoritarian states such as China,
Belarus, and Iran have acquired (and shared) impressive technical capa-
bilities to filter and control the Internet, and to identify and punish dis-
senters. Democrats and autocrats now compete to master these technolo-
gies. Ultimately, however, not just technology but political organization
and strategy and deep-rooted normative, social, and economic forces will
determine who “wins” the race.
Liberation technology is any form of information and communication
technology (ICT) that can expand political, social, and economic freedom.
In the contemporary era, it means essentially the modern, interrelated
forms of digital ICTs—the computer, the Internet, the mobile phone, and
countless innovative applications for them, including “new social media”
such as Facebook and Twitter. Digital ICTs have some exciting advantages
over earlier technologies. The Internet’s decentralized character and ability
(along with mobile-phone networks) to reach large numbers of people very
quickly, are well suited to grassroots organizing. In sharp contrast to radio
and television, the new ICTs are two-way and even multiway forms of
communication. With tools such as Twitter (a social-networking and mi-
Larry Diamond 5

croblogging service allowing its users to send and read messages with up
to 140 characters), a user can instantly reach hundreds or even thousands
of “followers.” Users are thus not just passive recipients but journalists,
commentators, videographers, entertainers, and organizers. Although most
of this use is not political, the technology can empower those who wish to
become political and to challenge authoritarian rule.
It is tempting to think of the Internet as unprecedented in its potential
for political progress. History, however, cautions against such hubris. In
the fifteenth century, the printing press revolutionized the accumulation
and dissemination of information, enabling the Renaissance, the Prot-
estant Reformation, and the scientific revolution. On these foundations,
modern democracy emerged. But the printing press also facilitated the rise
of the centralized state and prompted the movement toward censorship.3
A century and a half ago, the telegraph was hailed as a tool to promote
peace and understanding. Suddenly, the world shrank; news that once
took weeks to travel across the world could be conveyed instantly. What
followed was not peace and freedom but the bloodiest century in human
history. Today’s enthusiasts of liberation technology could be accused of
committing the analytic sins of their Victorian forebears, “technological
utopianism” and “chronocentricity”—that is, “the egotism that one’s own
generation is poised on the very cusp of history.”4
In the end, technology is merely a tool, open to both noble and nefarious
purposes. Just as radio and TV could be vehicles of information pluralism
and rational debate, so they could also be commandeered by totalitarian
regimes for fanatical mobilization and total state control. Authoritarian
states could commandeer digital ICTs to a similar effect. Yet to the extent
that innovative citizens can improve and better use these tools, they can
bring authoritarianism down—as in several cases they have.
Mobilizing against authoritarian rule represents only one possible
“liberating” use of digital ICTs. Well before mobilization for democracy
peaks, these tools may help to widen the public sphere, creating a more
pluralistic and autonomous arena of news, commentary, and information.
The new ICTs are also powerful instruments for transparency and account-
ability, documenting and deterring abuses of human rights and democratic
procedures. And though I cannot elaborate here, digital ICTs are also lib-
erating people from poverty and ill health: conveying timely information
about crop prices, facilitating microfinance for small entrepreneurs, map-
ping the outbreaks of epidemics, and putting primary healthcare providers
in more efficient contact with rural areas. 5

Malaysia: Widening the Public Sphere

A crucial pillar of authoritarian rule is control of information. Through
blogs (there are currently more than a hundred million worldwide), blog
sites, online chatrooms, and more formal online media, the Internet pro-
6 Liberation Technology

vides dramatic new possibilities for pluralizing flows of information and

widening the scope of commentary, debate, and dissent.
One of the most successful instances of the latter type is Malaysiakini,
an online newspaper that has become Malaysia’s principal alternative
source of news and commentary.6 As Freedom House has documented,
Malaysia lacks freedom of the press. The regime (both the state and the
ruling Barisan Nasional [BN] coalition) dominates print and broadcast
media through direct ownership and monopoly practices. Thus it can
shape what Malaysians read and see, and it can punish critical journal-
ists with dismissal. Repressive laws severely constrain freedom to report,
publish, and broadcast. However, as a rapidly developing country with
high literacy, Malaysia has witnessed explosive growth of Internet ac-
cess (and recently, broadband access), from 15 percent of the population
in 2000 to 66 percent in 2009 (equal to Taiwan and only slightly behind
Hong Kong).7 The combination of tight government control of the con-
ventional media, widespread Internet access, and relative freedom on the
Internet created an opening for online journalism in Malaysia, and two
independent journalists—Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran—ventured
into it. Opponents of authoritarian rule since their student days, Gan and
Chandran became seized during the 1998 reformasi period with the need
to reform the media and bring independent news and reporting to Malay-
sia. Using about US$9,000 of their own money (a tiny fraction of what
it would take to start a print newspaper), they launched Malaysiakini in
November 1999. Almost immediately, they gained fame by exposing how
an establishment newspaper had digitally cropped jailed opposition leader
(and former deputy prime minister) Anwar Ibrahim from a group photo of
ruling-party politicians.
From its inception, Malaysiakini has won a loyal and growing reader-
ship by providing credible, independent reporting on Malaysian politics
and governance. As its readership soared, that of the mainstream news-
papers fell. Suddenly, Malaysians were able to read about such long-ta-
boo subjects as corruption, human-rights abuses, ethnic discrimination,
and police brutality. Now the online paper posts in English about fifteen
news stories a day, in addition to opinion pieces, letters, readers’ com-
ments, and daily satire (in Cartoonkini), plus translations and original
material in Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Malaysiakini reports scandals
that no establishment paper would touch, such as massive cost overruns
related to conflicts of interest at the country’s main port agency and
ongoing financial misconduct at the government-supported Bank Islam
Malaysia. With the regime’s renewed legal assault on Anwar Ibrahim,
Malaysiakini is the only place where Malaysians can turn for indepen-
dent reporting on the legal persecution of the opposition leader. In July
2008, it became Malaysia’s most visited news site with about 2.5 mil-
lion visitors per month. Yet, like many online publications worldwide,
it still strives for financial viability.
Larry Diamond 7

While Malaysia today is no less authoritarian than when Malaysiakini

began publishing a decade ago, it is more competitive and possibly closer
to a democratic breakthrough than at any time in the last four decades. If
a transition occurs, it will be mainly due to political factors—the coales-
cence of an effective opposition and the blunders of an arrogant regime.
In addition, economic and social change is generating a better-educated
and more diverse population, less tolerant of government paternalism and
control. Polling and other data show that young Malaysians in particular
support the (more democratic) opposition. But it is hard to disentangle
these political and social factors from the expansion of the independent
public sphere that Malaysiakini has spearheaded. In March 2008, the BN
made its worst showing at the polls in half a century, losing its two-thirds
parliamentary majority for the first time since independence. Facilitating
this was the growing prominence of online journalism, which diminished
the massive BN advantage in media access and “shocked the country” by
documenting gross police abuse of demonstrators, particularly those of
Indian descent.
Malaysiakini and its brethren perform a number of democratic func-
tions. They report news and convey images that Malaysians would not
otherwise see. They provide an uncensored forum for commentary and
debate, giving rise to a critical public sphere. They offer space and voice
to those whose income, ethnicity, or age put them on the margins of so-
ciety. They give the political opposition, which is largely shut out of
the establishment media, a chance to make its case. In the process, they
educate Malaysians politically and foster more democratic norms. Many
online publications and Internet blog sites perform similar functions in
other semi-authoritarian countries, such as Nigeria, and in emerging and
illiberal democracies. But is it possible for these functions to take root in
a country as authoritarian as China is today?

Opening a Public Sphere in China

The prevailing answer is no: China’s “Great Firewall” of Internet filter-
ing and control prevents the rise of an independent public sphere online.
Indeed, China’s policing of the Internet is extraordinary in both scope and
sophistication. China now has the world’s largest population of Internet
users—more than 380 million people (a number equal to 29 percent of the
population, and a sixteen-fold increase since the year 2000). But it also
has the world’s most extensive, “multilayered,” and sophisticated system
“for censoring, monitoring, and controlling activities on the internet and
mobile phones.”8 Connection to the international Internet is monopolized
by a handful of state-run operators hemmed in by rigid constraints that
produce in essence “a national intranet,” cut off from anything that might
challenge the CCP’s monopoly on power.
Access to critical websites and online reporting is systematically
8 Liberation Technology

blocked. Google has withdrawn from China in protest of censorship,

while YouTube, Facebook, and Blogspot, among other widely used sites,
are extensively blocked or obstructed. Chinese companies that provide
search and networking services agree to even tighter self-censorship than
do international companies. When protests erupt (as they did over Ti-
bet in 2008, for instance) or other sensitive political moments approach,
authorities preemptively close data centers and online forums. Now the
party-state is also trying to eliminate anonymous communication and net-
working, by requiring registration of real names to blog or comment and
by tightly controlling and monitoring cybercafés. Fifty-thousand Internet
police prowl cyberspace removing “harmful content”—usually within 24
to 48 hours. Students are recruited to spy on their fellows. And the regime
pays a quarter of a million online hacks (called “50-centers” because of
the low piece rate they get) to post favorable comments about the party-
state and report negative comments.
Such quasi-Orwellian control of cyberspace is only part of the story,
however. There is simply too much communication and networking on-
line (and via mobile phones) for the state to monitor and censor it all.
Moreover, Chinese “netizens”—particularly the young who are growing
up immersed in this technology—are inventive, determined, and cynical
about official orthodoxy. Many constantly search for better techniques to
circumvent cybercensorship, and they quickly share what they learn. If
most of China’s young Internet users are apolitical and cautious, they are
also alienated from political authority and eagerly embrace modest forms
of defiance, often turning on wordplay.
Recently, young Chinese bloggers have invented and extensively
lauded a cartoon creature they call the “grass mud horse” (the name in
Chinese is an obscene pun) as a vehicle for protest. This mythical equine,
so the narrative goes, is a brave and intelligent animal whose habitat is
threatened by encroaching “river crabs.” In Chinese, the name for these
freshwater crustaceans (hexie) sounds very much like the word for Hu
Jintao’s official governing philosophy of “harmony”—a label that critics
see as little more than a euphemism for censorship and the suppression of
criticism. Xiao Qiang, editor of China Digital Times, argues that the grass
mud horse

has become an icon of resistance to censorship. The expression and cartoon

videos may seem like a juvenile response to unreasonable rule. But the fact
that the vast online population has joined the chorus, from serious schol-
ars to usually politically apathetic urban white-collar workers, shows how
strongly this expression resonates.9

In order to spread defiance, Chinese have a growing array of digital

tools. Twitter has become one of the most potent means for political and
social networking and the rapid dissemination of news, views, and with-
ering satire. On April 22 at People’s University in Beijing, three human-
Larry Diamond 9

rights activists protested a speech by a well-known CCP propaganda of-

ficial, Wu Hao. Showering him with small bills, they declared, “Wu Hao,
wu mao!” (“Wu Hao is a fifty-center!”). Twitter flashed photographs of
the episode across China, delighting millions of students who revel in
mocking the outmoded substance, tortured logic, and painfully crude style
of regime propagandists.
When Google announced in late March 2010 it was withdrawing its
online search services from mainland China (after failing to resolve its
conflict with the government over censorship and cyberattacks), the
Chinese Twitter-sphere lit up. Many Chinese were upset that Google
would abandon them to the more pervasive censorship of the Chinese
search-engine alternatives (such as Baidu), and they worried that the
Great Firewall would block other services such as Google Scholar and
Google Maps. Others suspected Google of doing the U.S. government’s
bidding. But the company’s decision provoked a wave of sympathy and
mourning, similar to what happened in January when Google first an-
nounced that it was considering withdrawing: “Citizen reporters posted
constant updates on . . . Twitter, documenting the Chinese netizens who
endlessly offered flowers, cards, poems, candles, and even formal bows
in front of the big outdoor sign ‘Google’ located outside the company’s
offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.”10 Security guards chased
the mourners away, declaring the offerings “illegal flower tributes.” The
term quickly spread in China’s online forums, symbolizing the suppres-
sion of freedom.
The public sphere in China involves much more than “tweets,” of
course. Those often link to much longer blogs, discussion groups, and
news reports. And many thought-provoking sites are harder to block be-
cause their critiques of CCP orthodoxy are subtler, elucidating democratic
principles and general philosophical concepts, sometimes with reference
to Confucianism, Taoism, and other strains of traditional Chinese thought
that the CCP dares not ban. Full-scale blog posts (not subject to Twitter’s
severe length limits) are far likelier to criticize the government (albeit art-
fully and euphemistically). Rebecca MacKinnon finds that China’s blogo-
sphere is a “much more freewheeling space than the mainstream media,”
with censorship varying widely across the fifteen blog-service providers
that she examined. Thus, “a great deal of politically sensitive material
survives in the Chinese blogosphere, and chances for survival can likely
be improved with knowledge and strategy.”11
Despite the diffuse controls, China’s activists see digital tools such as
Twitter, Gmail, and filtration-evading software as enabling levels of com-
munication, networking, and publishing that would otherwise be unimag-
inable in China today. With the aid of liberation technology, dissident
intellectuals have gone from being a loose assortment of individuals with
no specific goal or program to forming a vibrant and increasingly visible
collaborative force. Their groundbreaking manifesto—Charter 08, a call
10 Liberation Technology

for nineteen reforms to achieve “liberties, democracy, and the rule of law”
in China—garnered most of its signatures through the aid of blog sites
such as bullog.cn. When Charter 08 was released online on 10 December
2008, with the signatures of more than three-hundred Chinese intellectu-
als and human-rights activists, the government quickly moved to suppress
all mention of it. But then, “something unusual happened. Ordinary peo-
ple such as Tang [Xiaozhao] with no history of challenging the govern-
ment began to circulate the document and declare themselves supporters,”
shedding their previous fear. Within a month, more than five-thousand
other Chinese citizens had signed the document. They included not just
the usual dissidents but “scholars, journalists, computer technicians, busi-
nessmen, teachers and students whose names had not been associated with
such movements before, as well as some on the lower rungs of China’s
social hierarchy—factory and construction workers and farmers.”12
Officials shut down Tang’s blog soon after she signed the Charter, and
did the same to countless other blogs that supported it (including the entire
bullog.cn site). But the campaign persists in underground salons, elliptical
references, and subversive jokes spread virally through social media and
instant messaging. One such joke imagines a testy Chinese president Hu
Jintao complaining about the Charter’s democratic concepts such as fed-
eralism, opposition parties, and freedom of association. “Where do they
all come from?” he demands. His minions run down the sources and bring
him the bad news: The troublesome notions can be traced to Mao Zedong,
Zhou Enlai, the CCP, the official newspaper (the Xinhua Daily), and the
constitution of the People’s Republic itself. A flustered Hu wonders what
to do. His staff suggests banning all mention of these names. “You idi-
ots!” shouts Hu. “If you ban them, you might as well ban me too!” “Well,”
his staff retorts, “People do say that if they ban you, at least the Charter
will be left alone.”13

Monitoring Governance, Exposing Abuses

Liberation technology is also “accountability technology,” in that it pro-
vides efficient and powerful tools for transparency and monitoring. Digital
cameras combined with sites such as YouTube create new possibilities for
exposing and challenging abuses of power. Incidents of police brutality
have been filmed on cellphone cameras and posted to YouTube and other
sites, after which bloggers have called outraged public attention to them.
Enter “human rights abuses” into YouTube’s search box and you will get
roughly ten-thousand videos showing everything from cotton-growers’
working conditions in Uzbekistan, to mining practices in the Philippines,
to human-organ harvesting in China, to the persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran.
A YouTube video of a young Malaysian woman forced by the police to do
squats while naked forced the country’s prime minister to call for an inde-
pendent inquiry. When Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez forced Radio
Larry Diamond 11

Caracas Television off the air in May 2007, it continued its broadcasts via
YouTube. No wonder, then, that authoritarian states such as Iran and Saudi
Arabia completely block access to that video-posting site.
Across much of the world, and especially in Africa, the quest for ac-
countability makes use of the simplest form of liberation technology: text
messaging via mobile phone. (Mobile-phone networks have proven partic-
ularly useful in infrastructure-starved Africa since they can cover vast areas
without requiring much in the way of physical facilities beyond some cell
towers.) Around the world, the reach and capabilities of cellphones are be-
ing dramatically expanded by open-source software such as FrontlineSMS,
which enables large-scale, two-way text messaging purely via mobile
phones. In recent years, the software has been used over mobile-phone
networks to monitor national elections in Nigeria and Ghana, to facili-
tate rapid reporting of human-rights violations in Egypt, to inform citizens
about anticorruption and human-rights issues in Senegal, and to monitor
and report civil unrest in Pakistan. A Kenyan organization, Ushahidi (Swa-
hili for “testimony”), has adapted the software for “crisis-mapping.” This
allows anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a
mobile phone, e-mail, or online-contact form, and then aggregates the in-
formation and projects it onto a map in real time. It was initially developed
by citizen journalists to map reports of postelection violence in Kenya in
early 2008, drawing some 45,000 Kenyan users. It has since been used to
report incidents of xenophobic violence in South Africa; to track violence
and human-rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and to
monitor elections in Afghanistan, India, Lebanon, and Mexico.
The largest funder of both Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS is the Omidyar
Network (ON), a philanthropic investment firm established six years ago
by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam. It extends into the
worlds of political and social innovation the eBay approach: giving every-
one equal access to information and opportunity to leverage the potential
of individuals and the power of markets. This innovative effort—which
comprises both a venture-capital fund directed at for-profit start-ups and
a nonprofit grant-making fund—has committed more than $325 million
in investments and grants in two broad areas: “access to capital” (micro-
finance, entrepreneurship, and property rights), and “media, markets and
transparency” (which supports technology that promotes transparency,
accountability, and trust across media, markets, and government). The
ON supports national partners in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya that are us-
ing information technology to improve governance and free expression.
These include Infonet—a web portal that provides citizens, media, and
NGOs with easy-to-access information on national- and local-government
budgets in Kenya—and Mzalendo, a comprehensive site that enables Ke-
nyans to follow what their members of parliament are doing.
The ON’s support for transparency initiatives also extends to other
countries and to U.S.-based organizations. These include Global Integrity,
12 Liberation Technology

which harnesses the Internet and other sources of information in order to

generate detailed assessments of corruption in more than ninety countries;
and the Sunlight Foundation, which utilizes the Internet and related tech-
nology in order to make information about federal-government spending,
legislation, and decision making more accessible to U.S. voters.

Mobilizing Digitally
One of the most direct, powerful, and—to authoritarian regimes—
alarming effects of the digital revolution has been its facilitation of fast,
large-scale popular mobilizations. Cellphones with SMS text messaging
have made possible what technology guru Howard Rheingold calls “smart
mobs”—vast networks of individuals who communicate rapidly and with
little hierarchy or central direction in order to gather (or “swarm”) at a cer-
tain location for the sake of protest. In January 2001, Philippine president
Joseph Estrada “became the first head of state in history to lose power to
a smart mob,” when tens of thousands and then, within four days, more
than a million digitally mobilized Filipinos assembled at a historic protest
site in Manila.14 Since then, liberation technology has been instrumental
in virtually all of the instances where people have turned out en masse for
democracy or political reform.
Liberation technology figured prominently in the Orange Revolution
that toppled the electoral authoritarian regime in Ukraine via mass protests
during November and December 2004. The Internet newspaper Ukrains-
kaya Pravda provided a vital source of news and information about both
the regime’s efforts to steal the presidential election and the opposition’s
attempts to stop it. By the revolution’s end, this online paper had become
“the most widely read news source of any kind in Ukraine.”15 Website
discussion boards gave activists a venue for documenting fraud and shar-
ing best practices.16 Text messaging helped to mobilize and coordinate
the massive public protests—bringing hundreds of thousands to Kyiv’s
Independence Square in freezing weather—that ultimately forced a new
runoff, won by the democratic opposition.
These digital tools also facilitated the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Leba-
non (which drew more than a million demonstrators to demand the with-
drawal of Syrian troops); the 2005 protests for women’s voting rights in
Kuwait; the 2007 protests by Venezuelan students against the closure of
Radio Caracas Television; and the April 2008 general strike in Egypt,
where tens of thousands of young demonstrators mobilized through Face-
book.17 In September 2007, the “Internet, camera phones, and other digital
networked technologies played a critical role” in Burma’s Saffron Revo-
lution, so called because of the involvement of thousands of Buddhist
monks. Although digital technology did little directly to mobilize the
protests, it vividly informed the world of them, and revealed the bloody
crackdown that the government launched in response: “Burmese citizens
Larry Diamond 13

took pictures and videos, many on their mobile phones, and secretly up-
loaded them from Internet cafes or sent digital files across the border to
be uploaded.” This international visibility may have saved many lives by
inhibiting the military from using force as widely and brutally as it had
in 1988.18
In China, pervasive text messaging has been a key factor in the
mushrooming of grassroots protests. In 2007, an eruption of hundreds
of thousands of cellphone text messages in Xiamen, a city on the Tai-
wan Strait, generated so much public dismay at the building of an en-
vironmentally hazardous chemical plant that authorities suspended the
project.19 The impact of the text messages was magnified and spread
nationally as bloggers in other Chinese cities received them and quickly
fanned the outrage. The technology is even seeping into North Korea,
the world’s most closed society, as North Korean defectors and South
Korean human-rights activists entice North Koreans to carry the phones
back home with them from China and then use them to report what
is happening (via the Chinese mobile network).20 In the oil-rich Gulf
states, text messaging allows civic activists and political oppositionists
“to build unofficial membership lists, spread news about detained activ-
ists, encourage voter turnout, schedule meetings and rallies, and develop
new issue campaigns—all while avoiding government-censored news-
papers, television stations, and Web sites.”21
The most dramatic recent instance of digital mobilization was Iran’s
Green Movement, following the egregious electoral malpractices that
appeared to rob opposition presidential candidate Mir Hosein Musavi
of victory on 12 June 2009. In the preceding years, Iran’s online pub-
lic sphere had been growing dramatically, as evidenced by its more
than “60,000 routinely updated blogs” exploring a wide range of so-
cial, cultural, religious, and political issues;22 the explosion of Facebook
to encompass an estimated 600,000 Persian-language users;23 and the
growing utilization of the Internet by news organizations, civic groups,
political parties, and candidates.
As incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s election victory was
announced (complete with claims of a 62 percent landslide) on June 13,
outraged accounts of vote fraud spread rapidly via Internet chatrooms,
blogs, and social networks. Through Twitter, text messaging, Facebook,
and Persian-language social-networking sites such as Balatarin and Don-
bleh, Iranians quickly spread news, opinions, and calls for demonstrations.
On June 17, Musavi supporters used Twitter to attract tens of thousands
of their fellow citizens to a rally in downtown Tehran. Internet users or-
ganized nationwide protests throughout the month, including more large
demonstrations in the capital, some apparently attended by two to three
million people. YouTube also provided a space to post pictures and videos
of human-rights abuses and government crackdowns. A 37-second video
of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during Tehran’s violent protests on
14 Liberation Technology

June 20 quickly spread across the Internet, as did other images of the po-
lice and regime thugs beating peaceful demonstrators. Neda’s death and
the distressing images of wanton brutality decimated the remaining legiti-
macy of the Islamic Republic domestically and internationally.
To date, the Green Movement illustrates both the potential and limits
of liberation technology. So far, the Islamic Republic’s reactionary es-
tablishment has clung to power through its control over the instruments
of coercion and its willingness to wield them with murderous resolve.
Digital technology could not stop bullets and clubs in 2009, and it has not
prevented the rape, torture, and execution of many protestors. But it has
vividly documented these abuses, alienating key pillars of the regime’s
support base, including large segments of the Shia clergy. While the re-
gime has tortured dissidents to get their e-mail passwords and round up
more opponents, the Internet has fostered civic and political pluralism in
Iran; linked the opposition within that country to the Iranian diaspora and
other global communities; and generated the consciousness, knowledge,
and mobilizational capacity that will eventually bring down autocracy in
Iran. A key factor affecting when that will happen will be the ability of
Iranians to communicate more freely and securely online.

Breaking Down the Walls

Even in the freest environments, the new digital means of informa-
tion and communication have important limits and costs. There are fine
lines between pluralism and cacophony, between advocacy and intoler-
ance, and between the expansion of the public sphere and its hopeless
fragmentation. As the sheer number of media portals has multiplied,
more voices have become empowered, but they are hardly all rational
and civil. The proliferation of online (and cable) media has not uni-
formly improved the quality of public deliberation, but rather has given
rise to an “echo chamber” of the ideologically like-minded egging each
other on. And open access facilitates much worse: hate-mongering, por-
nography, terrorism, digital crime, online espionage, and cyberwarfare.
These are real challenges, and they require careful analysis—prior to
regulation and legislation—to determine how democracies can balance
the great possibilities for expanding human freedom, knowledge, and
capacity with the dangers that these technologies may pose for indi-
vidual and collective security alike.
Still the overriding challenge for the digital world remains freedom of
access. The use of Internet filtering and surveillance by undemocratic re-
gimes is becoming both more widespread and more sophisticated. And
some less-sophisticated efforts, using commercial filtering software, may
block sites even more indiscriminately. Currently, more than three-dozen
states filter the Internet or completely deny their citizens access.24 Enter-
prising users can avail themselves of many circumvention technologies,
Larry Diamond 15

but some require installation of software and so will not be available if the
Internet is accessed from public computers or Internet cafes; many of the
Web-based applications are blocked by the same filters that block political-
ly sensitive sites; and most of these means require some degree of technical
competence by the user.25 Not all circumvention methods protect netizens’
privacy and anonymity, which can be a particularly acute problem when
state-run companies provide the Internet service. The free software Tor,
popular among Iranians, promises anonymity by “redirecting encrypted
traffic through multiple relays . . . around the world,” making it difficult for
a regime to intercept a transmission.26 But if it effectively monopolizes the
provision of Internet service, a desperate regime such as Burma’s in 2007
can always respond by shutting down the country’s Internet service or, as
Iran’s government did, by slowing service to a paralyzing crawl while au-
thorities searched electronic-data traffic for protest-related content.27
Even in liberal democracies, issues of access arise. Recently netizens
worldwide—and the U.S. government—have become concerned over ex-
cessively broad legislative proposals in Australia that would force Inter-
net service providers to blacklist a large number of sites for legal and
moral considerations (including the protection of children). The Chinese
practice of forcing Internet providers to assume liability for the content to
which they provide access is seeping into European legal and regulatory
thinking regarding the Internet.28
There is now a technological race underway between democrats seek-
ing to circumvent Internet censorship and dictatorships that want to extend
and refine it. Recently, dictatorships such as Iran’s have made significant
gains in repression. In part, this has happened because Western companies
like Nokia-Siemens are willing to sell them advanced surveillance and
filtering technologies. In part, it has also been the work of dictatorships
that eagerly share their worst practices with one another. A host of new
circumvention technologies are coming onto the market, and millions of
Chinese, Vietnamese, Iranians, Tunisians, and others fervently want ac-
cess to them. Rich liberal democracies need to do much more to support
the development of such technologies, and to facilitate (and subsidize)
their cheap and safe dissemination to countries where the Internet is sup-
pressed. More could be done to improve encryption so that people in au-
thoritarian regimes can more safely communicate and organize online.
Breakthroughs may also come with the expansion of satellite access that
bypasses national systems, if the cost of the satellite dishes and monthly
usage rates can be reduced dramatically. Western governments can help
by banning the export of advanced filtering and surveillance technologies
to repressive governments, and by standing behind Western technology
companies when dictatorships pressure them “to hand over Internet users’
personal data.”29 And finally, liberal democracies should stand up for the
human rights of bloggers, activists, and journalists who have been ar-
rested for peacefully reporting, networking, and organizing online.
16 Liberation Technology

It is important for the United States to have declared, as Secretary of

State Hillary Clinton did in a historic speech on 21 January 2010, that
“We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to
knowledge and ideas.” But the struggle for electronic access is really just
the timeless struggle for freedom by new means. It is not technology, but
people, organizations, and governments that will determine who prevails.

NOTES

The author thanks Anna Davies, Blake Miller, and Astasia Myers for their truly superb
research assistance on this article; and also Lian Matias, Galen Panger, Tucker Herbert,
Ryan Delaney, Daniel Holleb, Sampath Jinadasa, and Aaron Qayumi for their prior research
assistance on this project.

1. Sophie Beach, “The Rise of Rights?” China Digital Times, http://chinadigitaltimes.

net/2005/05/rise-of-rights.

2. Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet State and Society in

China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 147–51.

3. Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press,

1983), 251.

4. Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet (New York: Berkley, 1998), 210, 213.

5. For various accounts, see http://fsi.stanford.edu/research/program_on_liberation_

technology.

6. This account draws heavily from a student research paper conducted under my su-
pervision: Astasia Myers, “Malaysiakini: Internet Journalism and Democracy,” Stanford
University, 4 June 2009.

7. Figures on the growth of Web use in Malaysia and China are available at www.inter-
networldstats.com/stats3.htm.

8. Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital
Media,” 1 April 2009, 34; available at www.freedomhouse.org.

9. Private email message from Xiao Qiang, May 2009. Quoted with permission.

10. S.L. Shen, “Chinese Forbidden from Presenting Flowers to Google,” UPI Asia On-
line, 15 January 2010; available at www.upiasia.com/Politics/2010/01/15/chinese_forbid-
den_from_presenting_flowers_to_google/4148.

11. Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s Censorship 2.0: How Companies Censor Bloggers,”
First Monday, 2 February 2009; available at http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/
index.php/fm/article/view/2378/2089. See also Ashley Esarey and Xiao Qiang, “Below the
Radar: Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere,” Asian Survey 48 (September–Oc-
tober 2008): 752–72.

12. Ariana Eunjung Cha, “In China, a Grass-Roots Rebellion,” Washington Post, 29
January 2009.

13. “Charter 08 Still Alive in the Chinese Blogosphere,” China Digital Times, 9 Febru-
ary 2009.
Larry Diamond 17

14. Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (New York: Basic
Books, 2003), 158.

15. Michael McFaul, “Transitions from Postcommunism,” Journal of Democracy 16

(July 2005): 12.

16. Robert Faris and Bruce Etling, “Madison and the Smart Mob: The Promise and Limi-
tations of the Internet for Democracy,” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 32 (Summer 2008):
65.

17. Cathy Hong, “New Political Tool: Text Messaging,” Christian Science Monitor, 30
June 2005; Jóse de Córdoba, “A Bid to Ease Chávez’s Power Grip; Students Continue Pro-
tests in Venezuela; President Threatens Violence,” Wall Street Journal, 8 June 2007.

18. Mridul Chowdhury, “The Role of the Internet in Burma’s Saffron Revolution,” Berk-
man Center for Internet and Society, September 2008, 14 and 4; available at http://cyber.
law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Chowdhury_Role_of_the_Internet_in_
Burmas_Saffron_Revolution.pdf_0.pdf.

19. Edward Cody, “Text Messages Giving Voice to Chinese,” Washington Post, 28 June
2007.

20. Choe Sang-Hun, “North Koreans Use Cell Phones to Bare Secrets,” New York Times,
28 March 2010. Available at www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/world/asia/29news.html.

21. Steve Coll, “In the Gulf, Dissidence Goes Digital; Text Messaging is the New Tool
of Political Underground,” Washington Post, 29 March 2005.

22. John Kelly and Bruce Etling, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture
in the Persian Blogosphere,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society, April 2008; avail-
able at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Kelly&Etling_Map-
ping_Irans_Online_Public_2008.pdf.

23. Omid Habibinia, “Who’s Afraid of Facebook?” 3 September 2009; available at

http://riseoftheiranianpeople.com/2009/09/03/who-is-afraid-of-facebook.

24. In addition to Freedom House, Freedom on the Net, see Ronald Deibert, John Pal-
frey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zitrain, Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of
Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008). For the ongoing excellent work of
the OpenNet Initiative, see http://opennet.net.

25. University of Toronto Citizen Lab, “Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Cen-
sorship,” September 2007; available at www.civisec.org/guides/everyones-guides.

26. Center for International Media Assistance, National Endowment for Democracy,
“The Role of New Media in the 2009 Iranian Elections,” July 2009, 2; available at http://
cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/cima-role_of_new_media_in_iranian_elections-
workshop_report.pdf.

27. Rory Cellan-Jones, “Hi-Tech Helps Iranian Monitoring,” BBC News, 22 June 2009.
Available at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8112550.stm.

28. Rebecca MacKinnon, “Are China’s Demands for Internet ‘Self-Discipline’ Spread-
ing to the West?” McClatchy News Service, 18 January 2010; available at www.mcclatchy-
dc.com/2010/01/18/82469/commentary-are-chinas-demands.html.

29. Daniel Calingaert, “Making the Web Safe for Democracy,” ForeignPolicy.com, 19
January 2010; available at www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/19/making_the_web_
safe_for_democracy.
 2
LIBERATION VS. CONTROL:
THE FUTURE OF CYBERSPACE
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski

Ronald Deibert is professor of political science and director of the

Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at
the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Rafal
Rohozinski is a principal with the SecDev Group and former direc-
tor of the Advanced Network Research Group of the Cambridge Se-
curity Programme. They are cofounders of the OpenNet Initiative and
the Information Warfare Monitor. Their forthcoming book is Ghost in
the Machine: The Battle for the Future of Cyberspace. The following
essay is adapted from their “Cyber Wars” in the Index on Censorship
(2010), available at www.indexoncensorship.org. This version origi-
nally appeared in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

E very day there seems to be a new example of the ways in which hu-
man ingenuity combines with technology to further social change. For
the Green Movement in Iran, it was Twitter; for the Saffron Revolution
in Burma, it was YouTube; for the “color revolutions” of the former
Soviet Union, it was mobile phones. No matter how restrictive the regu-
lations or how severe the repercussions, communities around the world
have exhibited enormous creativity in sidestepping constraints on tech-
nology in order to exercise their freedoms.
Looking at the seemingly endless examples of social innovation, one
might easily assume that cybertechnologies possess a special power,
that they are “technologies of liberation.”1 No other mode of communi-
cation in human history has facilitated the democratization of commu-
nication to the same degree. No other technology in history has grown
with such speed and spread so far geographically in such a short period
of time. Twitter, to take just the latest cyberapplication as an example,
has grown from an average of 500,000 tweets a quarter in 2007 to more
than four-billion tweets in the first quarter alone of 2010. The continual
innovations in electronic communications have had unprecedented and
far-reaching effects.
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 19

Yet some observers have noted that the very same technologies
which give voice to democratic activists living under authoritarian
rule can also be harnessed by their oppressors. 2 Cybercommunication
has made possible some very extensive and efficient forms of social
control. Even in democratic countries, surveillance systems penetrate
every aspect of life, as people implicitly (and perhaps unwittingly)
consent to the greatest invasion of personal privacy in history. Digital
information can be easily tracked and traced, and then tied to specific
individuals who themselves can be mapped in space and time with a
degree of sophistication that would make the greatest tyrants of days
past envious. So, are these technologies of freedom or are they tech-
nologies of control?
This dichotomy is itself misleading, however, as it suggests a clear-cut
opposition between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. In fact,
the picture is far more nuanced and must be qualified in several ways.
Communications technologies are neither empty vessels to be filled with
products of human intent nor forces unto themselves, imbued with some
kind of irresistible agency. They are complicated and continuously evolv-
ing manifestations of social forces at a particular time and place. Once
created, technologies in turn shape and limit the prospects for human
communication and interaction in a constantly iterative manner. Compli-
cating matters further is the inescapable presence of contingency. Tech-
nical innovations may be designed for specific purposes but often end
up having wildly different social uses and effects than those intended by
their creators. Yet these “alternative rationalities”— systems of use based
on local culture and norms, particularly those that originate outside the
developed world—often become the prevailing paradigm around which
technologies evolve, until they in turn are disrupted by unanticipated uses
or new innovations.3
The concepts of “liberation” and “control” also require qualification.
Both are socially constructed ideas whose meaning and thus applica-
tion can vary widely depending on the context in which they appear.
Different communities work to be free (or “liberated”) from different
things—for example, colonial rule or gender or religious discrimination.
Likewise, social control can take many forms, and these will depend
both on the values driving them as well as what are perceived to be the
objects of control. Countless liberation movements and mechanisms of
social control coexist within a shared but constantly evolving communi-
cations space at any one time. This makes any portrayal of technology
that highlights a single overarching characteristic biased toward either
liberation or control seem fanciful.
This social complexity is a universal characteristic of all technologi-
cal systems, but it is especially marked in the communications arena for
several reasons. Processes of globalization, which are both products of
and contributors to cyberspace, intensify the mix of actors, cultures, in-
20 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

terests, and ideas in the increasingly dense pool of communications. Al-

though it may seem clichéd to note that events on one side of the planet
can ripple back at the speed of light to affect what happens on the other
side, we must not underestimate the proliferation of players whose ac-
tions help to shape cyberspace and who in turn are shaped by their own
interactions within cyberspace. This “dynamic density” also accelerates
the pace of change inherent in cyberspace, making it a moving target.4
Innovations, which potentially may come from any of the millions of
actors in cyberspace, can occur daily. This means that rather than be-
ing a static artifact, cyberspace is better conceptualized as a constantly
evolving domain—a multilevel ecosystem of physical infrastructure,
software, regulations, and ideas.
The social complexity of cyberspace is compounded by the fact that
much of it is owned and operated by thousands of private actors, and some
of their operations cross national jurisdictions. Guided by commercial
principles, these enterprises often make decisions that end up having sig-
nificant political consequences. For example, an online chat service may
handle or share user data in ways that put users in jeopardy, depending on
the jurisdiction in which the service is offered. Such considerations are
especially relevant given the current evolution toward “cloud computing”
and software-as-a-service business models. In these models, information
and the software through which users interact are not physically located
on their own computers but are instead hosted by private companies, often
located in faraway jurisdictions. As a result, we have the curious situation
in which individuals’ data are ultimately governed according to laws and
regulations over which they themselves have no say as citizens. This also
accelerates existing trends toward the privatization of authority.5
Although the decisions taken by businesses—the frontline operators
in cyberspace—play a critical role, cyberspace is also shaped by the
actions of governments, civil society, and even individuals. Because
corporations are subject to the laws of the land in which they oper-
ate, the rules and regulations imposed by national governments may
inadvertently serve to carve up the global commons of information. Ac-
cording to the OpenNet Initiative research consortium, more than forty
countries, including many democracies, now engage in Internet-content
filtering.6 The actions of civil society matter as well. Individuals, work-
ing alone or collectively through networks, can create software, tools,
or forms of mobilization that have systemwide implications—not all of
them necessarily benign. In fact, there is a hidden subsystem of cyber-
space made up of crime and espionage.
In short, the actions of businesses, governments, civil society, crimi-
nal organizations, and millions of individuals affect and in turn are af-
fected by the domain of cyberspace. Rather than being an ungoverned
realm, cyberspace is perhaps best likened to a gangster-dominated ver-
sion of New York: a tangled web of rival public and private authori-
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 21

ties, civic associations, criminal networks, and underground economies.

Such a complex network cannot be accurately described in the one-di-
mensional terms of “liberation” or “control” any more than the domains
of land, sea, air, or space can be. Rather, it is composed of a constantly
pulsing and at times erratic mix of competing forces and constraints.

Liberation: From What and for Whom?

Much of the popular reporting about cyberspace and social mobiliza-
tion is biased toward liberal-democratic values. If a social movement
in Africa, Burma, or Iran employs a software tool or digital technology
to mobilize supporters, the stories appear throughout the global media
and are championed by rights activists.7 Not surprisingly then, these ex-
amples tend to be generalized as the norm and repeated without careful
scrutiny. But social mobilization can take various forms motivated by
many possible rationales, some of which may not be particularly “pro-
gressive.”8 Due to both media bias and the difficulties of conducting
primary research in certain contexts, these alternative rationalities tend
to be obscured from popular view by the media and underexplored by
academics.9 Yet they are no less important than their seemingly more
benign counterparts, both for the innovations that they produce and the
reactions that they generate.
Consider, for example, the enormous criminal underworld in cy-
berspace. Arguably at the cutting edge of online innovation, cyber-
criminals have occupied a largely hidden, parasitic ecosystem within
cyberspace, attacking the insecure fissures that open up within this
constantly morphing domain. Although most cybercrime takes the
form of petty spam (the electronic distribution of unsolicited bulk
messages), the sophistication and reach of cybercriminals today are
startling. The production of “malware”—malicious software—is now
estimated to exceed that of legitimate software, although no one really
knows its full extent. About a million new malware samples a month
are discovered by security engineers, with the rate of growth increas-
ing at a frightening pace.
One of the more ingenious and widespread forms of cybercrime is
“click fraud,” whereby victims’ computers are infected with malicious
software and redirected to make visits to online pay-per-click ads oper-
ated by the attackers. Although each click typically generates income
on the order of fractions of a penny, a “botnet” (a group of thousands
of infected computers referred to as “zombies”) can bring in millions of
dollars for the criminals.
One such cybercriminal enterprise called Koobface (an anagram of
Facebook) exploits security vulnerabilities in users’ machines while
also harvesting personal information from Facebook and other social-
networking services. It creates thousands of malicious Facebook ac-
22 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

counts every day, each of which is then directed toward click fraud or
malicious websites that prompt the download of Trojan horses (malware
downloads that appear legitimate). With the latter, Koobface can ex-
tract sensitive and confidential information such as credit-card account
numbers from the infected computers of unwitting users, or deploy the
computers as zombies in botnets for purposes of distributed computer-
network attacks. Like the mirror universe on the television series Star
Trek, in which parallel Captain Kirks and Spocks were identical to the
originals except for their more malicious personalities, these phony ac-
counts are virtually indistinguishable from the real ones. The Koobface
enterprise demonstrates extraordinary ingenuity in social networking,
but directed entirely toward fraudulent ends.
Just as software, social-networking platforms, and other digital me-
dia originally designed for consumer applications may be redeployed for
political mobilization, innovations developed for cybercrime are often
used for malicious political activity. Our research reveals the deeply
troubling trend of cybercrime tools being employed for espionage and
other political purposes.
Twice in the last two years, the Information Warfare Monitor has
uncovered major global cyberespionage networks infiltrating dozens
of high-level political targets, including foreign ministries, embas-
sies, international organizations, financial institutions, and media
outlets. These investigations, documented in the reports “Tracking
GhostNet” and “Shadows in the Clouds,” unearthed the theft of highly
sensitive documents and the extensive infiltration of targets ranging
from the offices of the Dalai Lama to India’s National Security Coun-
cil. The tools and methods used by the attackers had their origins in
cybercrime and are widely available on the Internet black market. 10
Indeed, “Gh0st Rat,” the main device employed by the cyberespio-
nage network, is available for free download and has been translated
into multiple languages. Moreover, although the networks examined
in both studies are almost certainly committing politically motivated
espionage rather than crime per se, our research suggests that the at-
tackers were not direct agents of government but were probably part
of the Chinese criminal underworld, either contracted or tolerated by
Chinese officials.
Likewise, the OpenNet Initiative analyzed the cyberattacks waged
against Georgian government websites during the August 2008 war with
Russia over South Ossetia. The computers that were harvested together
to mount distributed denial-of-service attacks were actually botnets al-
ready well known to researchers studying cybercrime and fraud, and had
been used earlier to attack pornography and gambling sites for purposes
of extortion.11
The most consistent demonstrations of digital ingenuity can be
found in the dark worlds of pornography, militancy, extremism, and
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 23

hate. Forced to operate in the shadows and constantly maneuvering to

stay ahead of their pursuers while attempting to bring more people into
their folds, these dark networks adapt and innovate far more rapidly
and with greater agility than their more progressive counterparts. Al-
Qaeda persists today, in part, because of the influence of jihadist web-
sites, YouTube channels, and social-networking groups, all of which
have taken the place of physical meeting spaces. Just as disparate hu-
man-rights groups identify with various umbrella causes to which they
belong through their immersion in social-networking services and chat
platforms, so too do jihadists and militants mobilize around a common
“imagined community” that is nurtured online.
Perhaps even more challenging to the liberal-democratic vision of
liberation technology is that much of what is considered criminal and
antisocial behavior online increasingly originates from the young on-
line populations in developing and postcommunist countries, many of
whom live under authoritarianism and suffer from structural economic
inequalities. For these young “digital natives,” operating an email scam
or writing code for botnets, viruses, and malware represents an opportu-
nity for economic advancement. It is an avenue for tapping into global
supply chains and breaking out of conditions of local poverty and politi-
cal inequality—itself a form of liberation.
In other words, regardless of whatever specific characteristics ob-
servers attribute to certain technologies, human beings are unpredictable
and innovative creatures. Just because a technology has been invented
for one purpose does not mean that it will not find other uses unforeseen
by its creators. This is especially true in the domains of crime, espio-
nage, and civil conflict, where innovation is not encumbered by formal
operating procedures or respect for the rule of law.

Enclosing the Commons: Next-Generation Controls

Arguments linking new technologies to “liberation” must also be
qualified due to the ongoing development of more sophisticated cyber-
space controls. Whereas it was once considered impossible for govern-
ments to control cyberspace, there are now a wide variety of technical
and nontechnical means at their disposal to shape and limit the online
flow of information. Like the alternative rationalities described above,
these can often escape the attention of the media and other observers.
But these control mechanisms are growing in scope and sophistication
as part of a general paradigm shift in cyberspace governance and an
escalating arms race in cyberspace.
To understand cyberspace controls, it is important first to consider
a sea-change in the ways in which governments approach the domain.
During the “dot-com” boom of the 1990s, governments generally took
a hands-off approach to the Internet by adhering to a laissez-faire eco-
24 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

nomic paradigm, but a gradual shift has since occurred. While market
ideas still predominate, there has been a growing recognition of serious
risks in cyberspace.
The need to manage these risks has led to a wave of securitization
efforts that have potentially serious implications for basic freedoms.12
For example, certain security measures and regulations have been put
in place for purposes of copyright and intellectual-property protection.
Although introduced as safeguards, these regulations help to legitimize
government intervention in cyberspace more generally—including in
countries whose regimes may be more interested in self-preservation
than in property protections. If Canada, Germany, Ireland, or another in-
dustrialized democracy can justifiably regulate behavior in cyberspace
in conformity with its own national laws, who is to say that Belarus,
Burma, Tunisia, or Uzbekistan cannot do the same in order to protect
state security or other national values?
The securitization of cyberspace has been driven mainly by a “defen-
sive” agenda—to protect against threats to critical infrastructures and
to enable law enforcement to monitor and fight cybercrime more effec-
tively. There are, however, those who argue that “offensive” capabilities
are equally important. In order to best defend key infrastructures, the
argument goes, governments must also understand how to wage attacks,
and that requires a formal offensive posture. Most of the world’s armed
forces have established, or are in the process of establishing, cyber-
commands or cyberwarfare units. The most ambitious is the U.S. Cyber
Command, which unifies U.S. cyber-capabilities under a separate com-
mand led by General Keith Alexander of the National Security Agen-
cy. Such an institutional innovation in the armed forces of the world’s
leading superpower provides a model for similar developments in other
states’ armed forces, who feel the need to adapt or risk being left behind.
Not surprisingly, there have been a growing number of incidents
of computer-network attacks for political ends in recent years, includ-
ing those against Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan human-rights organi-
zations, as well as political-opposition groups in the countries of the
former Soviet Union. It would be disingenuous to draw a direct line
between the establishment of the U.S. Cyber Command and these in-
cidents, especially since many of these practices have been pioneered
through innovative and undeclared public-private partnerships between
intelligence services in countries such as Burma, China, and Russia and
their emergent cybercriminal underclasses. Yet it is fair to argue that the
former sets a normative standard that allows such activities to be toler-
ated and even encouraged. We should expect these kinds of attacks to
grow as governments explore overt and declared strategies of offensive
action in cyberspace.
Further driving the trend toward securitization is the fact that private-
sector actors, who bear the brunt (and costs) of defending cyberspace’s
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 25

critical infrastructures against a growing number of daily attacks, are

increasingly looking to their own governments to carry this burden as
a public good. Moreover, a huge market for cybersecurity services has
emerged, estimated to generate between US$40 and $60 billion annu-
ally in the United States alone. Many of the companies that now fill this
space stand to gain by fanning the flames of cyberwar. A few observers
have questioned the motivations driving the self-serving assessments
that these companies make about the nature and severity of various
threats.13 Those criticisms are rare, however, and have done little to stem
fear-mongering about cybersecurity.
This momentum toward securitization is helping to legitimize and
pave the way for greater government involvement in cyberspace. Else-
where, we have discussed “next generation” controls—interventions
that go beyond mere filtering, such as those associated with the Great
Firewall of China.14 Many of these controls have little to do with tech-
nology and more to do with inculcating norms, inducing compliant be-
havior, and imposing rules of the road, and they stem from a multitude
of motivations and concerns. Any argument for the liberating role of
new technologies needs to be evaluated in the wider context of these
next-generation controls.

Legal measures. At the most basic level, government interventions

in cyberspace have come through the introduction of slander, libel,
copyright-infringement, and other laws to restrict communications and
online activities.15 In part, the passage of such laws reflects a natural
maturation process, as authorities seek to bring rules to cyberspace
through regulatory oversight. Sometimes, however, it also reflects a de-
liberate tactic of strangulation, since threats of legal action can do more
to prevent damaging information from surfacing than can passive filter-
ing methods implemented defensively to block websites. Such laws can
create a climate of fear, intimidation, and ultimately self-censorship.
Although new laws are being drafted to create a regulatory frame-
work for cyberspace, in some cases old, obscure, or rarely enforced
regulations are cited ex post facto to justify acts of Internet censorship,
surveillance, or silencing. In Pakistan, for example, old laws concern-
ing “blasphemy” have been used to ban access to Facebook, ostensibly
because there are Facebook groups that are centered around cartoons of
Muhammad.16 Governments have also shown a willingness to invoke
national-security laws to justify broad acts of censorship. In Bangla-
desh, for example, the government blocked access to all of YouTube be-
cause of videos clips showing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina defending
her decision to negotiate with mutinous army guards. The Bangladesh
Telecommunications Commission chairman, Zia Ahmed, justified the
decision by saying: “[T]he government can take any decision to stop
any activity that threatens national unity and integrity.”17 In Lebanon,
26 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

infrequently used defamation laws were invoked to arrest three Face-

book users for posting criticisms of the Lebanese president, in spite of
constitutional protections of freedom of speech.18 In Venezuela, sev-
eral people were arrested recently after posting comments on Twitter
about the country’s banking system. The arrests were made based on
a provision in the country’s banking laws that prohibits the dissemina-
tion of “false information.”19 Numerous other examples could be cited
that together paint a picture of growing regulatory intervention into cy-
berspace by governments, shaping and controlling the domain in ways
that go beyond technical blocking. Whereas at one time such regulatory
interventions would have been considered exceptional and misguided,
today they are increasingly becoming the norm.

Informal requests. While legal measures create the regulatory context

for denial, for more immediate needs, authorities can make informal “re-
quests” of private companies. Most often such requests come in the form
of pressure on Internet service providers (ISPs) and online hosting ser-
vices to remove offensive posts or information that supposedly threatens
“national security” or “cultural sensitivities.” Google’s recent decision to
reconsider its service offerings in China reflects, in part, that company’s
frustration with having to deal with such informal removal requests from
Chinese authorities on a regular basis. Some governments have gone so
far as to pressure the companies that run the infrastructure, such as ISPs
and mobile phone operators, to render services inoperative in order to
prevent their exploitation by activists and opposition groups.
In Iran, for example, the Internet and other telecommunications ser-
vices have slowed down during public demonstrations and in some in-
stances have been entirely inaccessible for long periods of time or in
certain regions, cities, and even neighborhoods. While there is no of-
ficial acknowledgement that service is being curtailed, it is noteworthy
that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard owns the main ISP in Iran—the
Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI).20 Some reports indicate
that officials from the Revolutionary Guard have pressured TCI to tam-
per with Internet connections during the recent crises. In authoritarian
countries, where the lines between public and private authorities are
often blurred or organized crime and government authority mingle in a
dark underworld, such informal requests and pressures can be particu-
larly effective and nearly impossible to bring to public account.

Outsourcing. It is important to emphasize that cyberspace is owned

and operated primarily by private companies. The decisions taken by
those companies about content controls can be as important as those
taken by governments. Private companies often are compelled in some
manner to censor and surveil Internet activity in order to operate in a
particular jurisdiction, as evidenced most prominently by the collusion
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 27

of Google (up until January 2010), Microsoft, and Yahoo in China’s

Internet censorship practices. Microsoft’s Bing, which tailors its search
engine to serve different countries and regions and offers its services in
41 languages, has an information-filtering system at the keyword level
for users in several countries. According to research by the OpenNet
Initiative’s Helmi Noman, users located in the Arab countries where he
tested are prevented from conducting Internet searches relating to sex
and other cultural norms in both Arabic and English. Microsoft’s expla-
nation as to why some search keywords return few or no results states,
“Sometimes websites are deliberately excluded from the results page to
remove inappropriate content as determined by local practice, law, or
regulation.” It is unclear, however, whether Bing’s keyword filtering
in the Arab world is an initiative of Microsoft or whether any or all of
the Arab states have asked Microsoft to comply with local censorship
practices and laws.21
In some of the most egregious cases, outsourced censorship and mon-
itoring controls have taken the form either of illegal acts or of actions
contrary to publicly stated operating procedures and privacy protections.
This was dramatically illustrated in the case of Tom-Skype, in which
the Chinese partner of Skype put in place a covert surveillance system
to track and monitor prodemocracy activists who were using Skype’s
chat function as a form of outreach. The system was discovered only
because of faulty security on the servers operated by Tom Online. In
May 2009, the Chinese government introduced new laws that required
personal-computer manufacturers to bundle a filtering software with all
of the computers sold in the country. Although this was strongly resisted
by many companies, others willingly complied. While this requirement
seems to have faded over time, it is nonetheless indicative of the types of
actions that governments can take to control access points to cyberspace
via private companies.
Access points such as Internet cafes are becoming a favorite regula-
tory target for authoritarian governments. In Belarus, ISPs and Internet
cafes are required by law to keep lists of all users and turn them over to
state security services.22 Many other governments have similar require-
ments. In light of such regulations, it is instructive to note that many
private companies collect user data as a matter of course and reserve the
right in their end-user license agreement to share such information with
any third party of their choosing.
Presumably, there are many still undiscovered acts of collusion be-
tween companies and governments. For governments in both the de-
veloped and developing worlds, delegating censorship and surveillance
to private companies keeps these controls on the “frontlines” of the
networks and coopts the actors who manage the key access points and
hosting platforms. If this trend continues, we can expect more censor-
ship and surveillance responsibilities to be carried out by private com-
28 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

panies, carrier hotels (ISP co-location centers), cloud-computing ser-

vices, Internet exchanges, and telecommunications companies. Such a
shift in the locus of controls raises serious issues of public account-
ability and transparency for citizens of all countries. It is in this context
that Google’s dramatic announcement to end censorship of its Chinese
search engine should be considered a watershed moment. Whether other
companies follow Google’s lead, and how China, other countries, and
the international community as a whole will respond, are critical open
questions that may help to shape the public accountability of private ac-
tors in this domain.

“Just-in-time blocking.” Disabling or attacking critical information

assets at key moments in time—during elections or public demonstra-
tions, for example—may be the most effective tool for influencing po-
litical outcomes in cyberspace. Today, computer-network attacks, in-
cluding the use of distributed denial-of-service attacks, can be easily
marshaled and targeted against key sources of information, especially
in the developing world, where networks and infrastructure tend to be
fragile and prone to disruption. The tools used to mount botnet attacks
are now thriving like parasites in the peer-to-peer architectures of in-
secure servers, personal computers, and social-networking platforms.
Botnets can be activated against any target by anyone willing to pay a
fee. There are cruder methods of just-in-time blocking as well, such as
shutting off power in the buildings where servers are located or tamper-
ing with domain-name registration so that information is not routed to
its proper destination. This kind of just-in-time blocking has been em-
pirically documented by the OpenNet Initiative in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan,
and Tajikistan, as well as in numerous other countries.
The attraction of just-in-time blocking is that information is disabled
only at key moments, thus avoiding charges of Internet censorship and
allowing for plausible denial by the perpetrators. In regions where In-
ternet connectivity can be spotty, just-in-time blocking can be easily
passed off as just another technical glitch with the Internet. When such
attacks are contracted out to criminal organizations, determining attribu-
tion of those responsible is nearly impossible.

Patriotic hacking. One unusual and important characteristic of cyber-

space is that individuals can take creative actions—sometimes against
perceived threats to their country’s national interest—that have system-
wide effects. Citizens may bristle at outside interference in their coun-
try’s internal affairs or take offense at criticism directed at their govern-
ments, however illegitimate those governments may appear to outsiders.
Those individuals who possess the necessary technical skills have at
times taken it upon themselves to attack adversarial sources of infor-
mation, often leaving provocative messages and warnings behind. Such
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 29

actions make it difficult to determine the provenance of the attacks: Are

they the work of the government or of citizens acting independently? Or
are they perhaps some combination of the two? Muddying the waters
further, some government security services informally encourage or tac-
itly approve of the actions of patriotic groups.
In China, for example, the Wu Mao Dang, or 50 Cent Party (so named
for the amount of money its members are supposedly paid for each In-
ternet post), patrols chatrooms and online forums, posting information
favorable to the regime and chastising its critics. In Russia, it is widely
believed that the security services regularly coax hacker groups to fight
for the motherland in cyberspace and may “seed” instructions on promi-
nent nationalist websites and forums for hacking attacks. In late 2009
in Iran, a shadowy group known as the Iranian Cyber Army took over
Twitter and some key opposition websites, defacing the home pages
with their own messages. Although no formal connection to the Iranian
authorities has been established, the groups responsible for the attacks
posted pro-regime messages on the hacked websites and services.

Targeted surveillance and social-malware attacks. Accessing sen-

sitive information about adversaries is one of the most important tools
for shaping political outcomes, and so it should come as no surprise
that great effort has been devoted to targeted espionage. The Tom-
Skype example is only one of many such next-generation methods now
becoming common in the cyber-ecosystem. Infiltration of adversarial
networks through targeted “social malware” (software designed to in-
filtrate an unsuspecting user’s computer) and “drive-by” Web exploits
(websites infected with viruses that target insecure browsers) is ex-
ploding throughout the dark underbelly of the Internet. Among the
most prominent examples of this type of infiltration was a targeted
espionage attack on Google’s infrastructure, which the company made
public in January 2010.
These types of attacks are facilitated by the careless practices of
civil society and human-rights organizations themselves. As Nart Vil-
leneuve and Greg Walton have shown in a recent Information Warfare
Monitor report, many civil society organizations lack simple training
and resources, leaving them vulnerable to even the most basic Inter-
net attacks. 23 Moreover, because such organizations generally thrive
on awareness-raising and advocacy through social networking and
email lists, they often unwittingly become compromised as vectors
of attacks, even by those whose motivations are not political per se.
In one particularly egregious example, the advocacy group Report-
ers Without Borders unknowingly propagated a link to a malicious
website posing as a Facebook petition to release the Tibetan activ-
ist Dhondup Wangchen. As with computer network attacks, targeted
espionage and social-malware attacks are being developed not just
30 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

by criminal groups and rogue actors, but also at the highest levels of
government. Dennis Blair, the former U.S. director of national intel-
ligence, recently remarked that the United States must be “aggressive”
in the cyberdomain in terms of “both protecting our own secrets and
stealing those of others.”24

A Nuanced Understanding
There are several theoretical and policy implications to be drawn
from the issues we raise. First, there needs to be a much more nuanced
understanding of the complexity of the communications space in which
we operate. We should be skeptical of one-dimensional or ahistorical de-
pictions of technologies that paint them with a single brush. Cyberspace
is a domain of intense competition, one that creates an ever-changing
matrix of opportunities and constraints for social forces and ideas. These
social forces and ideas, in turn, are imbued with alternative rationalities
that collide with one another and affect the structure of the communica-
tions environment. Unless the characteristics of cyberspace change radi-
cally in the near future and global culture becomes monolithic, linking
technological properties to a single social outcome such as liberation or
control is a highly dubious exercise.
Second, we must be cautious about promoting policies that support
“freedom” software or other technologies presented as magic solu-
tions to thorny political problems. Early on, the Internet was thought
to be a truly democratic arena beyond the reach of government control.
Typically, the examples used to illustrate this point related to heavy-
handed attempts to filter access to information, which are relatively
easy to bypass. This conventional wisdom has, in turn, led to efforts
on the part of governments to sponsor “firewall-busting” programs and
to encourage technological “silver bullets” that will supposedly end
Internet censorship once and for all. This viewpoint is simplistic, as it
overlooks some of the more important and powerful next-generation
controls that are being employed to shape the global commons. Lib-
eration, freedom, and democracy are all socially contested concepts,
and thus must be secured by social and political means. Although the
prudent support of technological projects may be warranted in spe-
cific circumstances, they should be considered as adjuncts to com-
prehensive strategies rather than as solutions in and of themselves.
The struggles over freedom of speech, access to information, privacy
protections, and other human-rights issues that now plague cyberspace
ultimately pose political problems that are grounded in deeply rooted
differences. A new software application, no matter how ingenious,
will not solve these problems.
Third, we need to move beyond the idea that cyberspace is not regulated
or is somehow immune to regulation. Nothing could be further from the
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski 31

truth. If anything, cyberspace is overregulated by the multitude of actors

whose decisions shape its character, often in ways that lack transparency
and public accountability. The question is not whether to regulate cyber-
space, but rather how to do so—within which forum, involving which
actors, and according to which of many competing values. The regulation
of cyberspace tends to take place in the shadows, based on decisions taken
by private actors rather than as a result of public deliberation. As the trend
toward the securitization and privatization of cyberspace continues, these
problems are likely to become more, rather than less, acute.
Finally, for the governance of cyberspace to be effective, it must un-
cover what is going on “below the surface” of the Internet, largely in-
visible to the average user. It is there that most of the meaningful limits
on action and choice now operate, and they must be unearthed if basic
human rights are to be protected online. These subterranean controls
have little to do with technology itself and more to do with the complex
nature of the communications space in which we find ourselves as we
enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. Meaningful change
will not come overnight with the invention of some new technology.
Instead, it will require a slow process of awareness-raising, the chan-
neling of ingenuity into productive avenues, and the implementation of
liberal-democratic restraints.

NOTES

1. Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy 21 (July 2010):

70–84.

2. Elia Zureik et al., eds., Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal
Information (McQuill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).

3. Our conception of “alternative rationalities” is inspired by Ulrich Beck et al., Re-

flexive Modernization (Cambridge: Polity, 1994). The concept of alternative rationalities
has its origins in Max Weber’s work and is further developed in critical and postmodern
theories.

4. For the concept of “dynamic density,” see John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity and
Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 35
(January 1983): 261–85.

5. A. Claire Cutler, Virginia Haufler, and Tony Porter, Private Authority and Interna-
tional Affairs (New York: SUNY Press, 1999).

6. Ronald J. Deibert et al., eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and
Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).

7. See, for example, “Iran’s Twitter Revolution,” Washington Times, 16 June 2009;
available at www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/16/irans-twitter-revolution.

8. Chrisanthi Avgerou, “Recognising Alternative Rationalities in the Deployment of

Information Systems,” Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Coun-
tries 3 (2000); available at www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/view/19.
32 Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace

9. Rafal Rohozinski, “Bullets to Bytes: Reflections on ICTs and ‘Local’ Conflict,” in

Robert Latham, ed., Bombs and Bandwidth: The Emerging Relationship between Informa-
tion Technology and Security (New York: New Press, 2003), 222.

10. Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation, Shadows in the

Cloud: Investigating Cyber Espionage 2.0, JR03-2010, 6 April 2010; Information War-
fare Monitor, Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network, JR02-2009,
29 March 2009.

11. Ronald Deibert, Rafal Rohozinski, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, “Cyclones in Cy-
berspace: Information Shaping and Denial in the 2008 South Ossetia War,” ms. forthcom-
ing.

12. Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, “Risking Security: The Policies and Para-
doxes of Cyberspace Security,” International Political Sociology 4 (March 2010): 15–32.

13. Stephen Walt, “Is the Cyber Threat Overblown?” Foreign Policy, 3 March 2010;
available at http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/30/is_the_cyber_threat_over-
blown.

14. Deibert et al., Access Controlled.

15. The following section draws from an earlier article of ours: “Cyber Wars,” Index
on Censorship, March 2010; available at www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/03/cyber-
wars-technology-deiber.

16. See http://en.rsf.org/pakistan-court-orders-facebook-blocked-19-05-2010,37524.

html.

17. See www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/4963823/YouTube-

blocked-in-Bangladesh-after-guard-mutiny.html.

18. See www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jul/03/lebanon-facebook-

president-insult.

19. See www.latimes.com/technology/sns-ap-lt-venezuela-twitter,0,6311483.story.

20. “IRGC Consortium Takes Majority Equity in Iran’s Telecoms,” 5 October 2009,
www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidv52n40-3NC06/IRGC%20Consortium%20Takes%20
Majority%20Equity%20In%20Iran%26rsquo%3Bs%20Telecoms.

21. See http://opennet.net/sex-social-mores-and-keyword-filtering-microsoft-bing-

arabian-countries.

22. See http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article

1391469.ece.

23. See www.infowar-monitor.net/2009/10/0day-civil-society-and-cyber-security.

24. See www.govinfosecurity.com/p_print.php?t=a&id=1786.

 3
INTERNATIONAL MECHANISMS
OF CYBERSPACE CONTROLS
Ronald Deibert

Ronald Deibert is professor of political science and director of the

Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at
the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. He is a
cofounder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and
Information Warfare Monitor projects. His forthcoming book (with
Rafal Rohozinski) is Ghost in the Machine: The Battle for the Future
of Cyberspace.

One of the burgeoning areas of Internet research is the study of cy-

berspace controls—the implementation of government-mandated or
privately implemented filtering, surveillance, and other means of shap-
ing cyberspace for strategic ends. Whereas it was once assumed that
cyberspace was immune to government regulation because of its swiftly
changing nature and distributed architecture, a growing body of scholar-
ship has shown convincingly how governments can shape and constrain
access to information and freedom of speech online within their juris-
dictions.
Today, more than thirty countries engage in Internet filtering, not all
of them authoritarian regimes.1 Internet-surveillance policies are now
widespread and bearing down on the private-sector companies that own
and operate the infrastructure of cyberspace, including Internet Service
Providers (ISPs). Likewise, a new generation of second- and third-order
controls complements filtering and surveillance, creating a climate of
self-censorship.2 There is a very real arms race in cyberspace that threat-
ens to subvert the Internet’s core characteristics and positive network
effects.
The study of cyberspace controls has tended to focus on the nation-
state as the primary unit of analysis, and has examined the deepening
and widening of these controls within domestic contexts. For example,
the leading international research organization dedicated to studying In-
ternet filtering—the OpenNet Initiative (ONI)—has published an annual
34 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

series of country and regional reports that are based on an empirical

examination of country-level controls.3 Its reports have become touch-
stones for information and analysis of Internet filtering and are impor-
tant empirical contributions to the study of cyberspace controls.
Largely unexamined so far, however, are the international dynamics
by which such controls—and the resistance to them—may spread. These
dynamics and mechanisms are important to consider because states do
not operate in a vacuum; they are part of an international system that
has important implications for what they do and how they behave. This
can have both “positive” and “negative” characteristics.4 In a positive
sense, states learn from and imitate each other. They borrow and share
best practices, skills, and technologies. They take cues from what like-
minded states are doing and implement policies accordingly.
On the negative side, states compete against one another. Their per-
ceptions of adversarial intentions and threats can affect the decisions
that they take. This dynamic has been characterized in the international-
relations literature as the logic of the “security dilemma.” One can see
this logic at work today in the domain of cyberspace with the develop-
ment of national military capabilities to fight and win wars in cyber-
space.
The international system also comprises transnational actors—
namely, civil society networks and private-sector firms—that serve as
conduits and propagators of ideas and policies. Civil society networks
educate users within countries about best practices and networking strat-
egies, and operate largely irrespective of national boundaries.5 The net-
works that tend to get the most attention are those promoting human
rights, such as access to information, freedom of speech, and privacy
rights. These networks come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are
independent and largely grassroots in origin; others have been drawn
into a support structure synchronized to the foreign-policy goals of ma-
jor powers such as the United States and the European Union. But very
few of them, especially the more important ones, operate only in a do-
mestic policy setting.
Private-sector actors are responsive to and seek to develop commer-
cial opportunities across national boundaries, and they are increasingly
a part of the international system’s mechanisms and dynamics of cy-
berspace controls. Particularly relevant in this respect is the cyberse-
curity market, estimated at up to US$80 billion annually. Commercial
providers of networking technology have a stake in the securitization
of cyberspace and can inflate threats to serve their more parochial mar-
ket interests.6 Private actors also own and operate the vast majority of
the infrastructure and services that we call cyberspace. For that reason
alone, the decisions that they take can have major consequences for the
character of cyberspace worldwide. It is not too far a stretch to argue
that some companies have the equivalent of “foreign policies” for cy-
Ronald Deibert 35

berspace, in some ways going beyond individual governments in terms

of scope and influence.
In this chapter, I first provide a brief summary of prior research on
cyberspace controls, drawing primarily from the experiences of the
ONI. I then lay out a research framework for the study of international
mechanisms and dynamics of cyberspace controls. The aim is not to pro-
vide an exhaustive analysis of these mechanisms and dynamics as much
as it is to sketch out a conceptual and analytical framework for further
research. I lay out several areas where such mechanisms and dynamics
might be found and investigated further. I turn in the conclusion to a
consideration of some of the reasons why further research in this area is
important for the study of cyberspace.

From Access Denied to Access Controlled

Studies of cyberspace controls have developed and matured as these
practices have spread worldwide. Early in the Internet’s history, it was
widely assumed that the Internet was difficult for governments to man-
age and would bring about major challenges to authoritarian forms of
rule. Over time, however, these assumptions have been called into ques-
tion, as governments (often in coordination with the private sector) have
erected a variety of information controls. It is now fair to say that there
is a growing norm worldwide for national Internet filtering, although
the rationale for implementing filtering varies widely from country to
country.
Some justify Internet filtering to control access to content that vio-
lates copyright, exploits children, or promotes hatred and violence.
Other countries filter access to content related to minority rights, reli-
gious movements, political opposition, and human-rights groups. Levels
of government transparency and accountability as well as the filtering
methods themselves vary broadly across the globe. Invariably, the pri-
vate-sector actors who own and operate the vast majority of cyberspace
infrastructure are being compelled or coerced to implement controls on
behalf of states. In short, a sea change has occurred over the last decade
in terms of cyberspace controls. But how did these norms of cyberspace
control spread internationally?
The most authoritative research on Internet filtering is from the ONI,
which uses a combination of technical interrogation, field research, and
data-analysis methods to test for filtering in more than sixty countries
on an annual basis.7 The ONI’s methods were developed very much in
response to the predominant question circulating at the time of its incep-
tion (2002): Could governments control access to information online
within their jurisdictions? To answer this question, the ONI built a glob-
al-level, but nationally based, testing regime. Researchers from the ONI
download specially designed software that connects back to databases
36 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

at the University of Toronto. The databases contain categorized lists

of URLs, domains, keywords, and Internet services that are tested on a
regular basis across each of the major ISPs of each of the countries un-
der consideration. The categorized lists are broken down into two main
groups: 1) a global list, which is tested in all countries and is used as a
basis to make comparative judgments across countries; and 2) a “local”
or “high-impact” list that contains URLs, domains, and keywords that
are relatively unique to a particular country context and are suspected of
being targeted for filtering in that jurisdiction.
The ONI reports provide a “snapshot” of accessibility at the time
of testing from the perspective of national information environments.
Among the findings of the ONI is that Internet filtering is growing in
scope, scale, and sophistication. The latest ONI reports indicate that
more than thirty countries engage in some form of Internet filtering, a
growing number of them being democratic, industrialized countries. The
ONI has also presented evidence of the range of techniques that states
employ to filter access to information. Some of the nondemocratic re-
gimes that engage in Internet filtering do so using commercial filtering
products developed in the United States. Others have developed more
homegrown solutions.
The ONI has also captured the range of transparency practices through
its research. Some states provide “block pages” for banned content that
explain the rationale and legal basis for the blocking; others provide
only error pages, some of which are misleading and meant to obscure
the states’ intentions. The ONI has also subjected Internet services to
scrutiny, in particular comparing the results obtained from major search
engines by requests in different countries. This has helped to expose the
collusion of Internet companies with regimes that violate human rights,
while putting pressure on those companies to become more accountable.
Recently, ONI researchers have described growing trends away from
“Chinese-style” firewall-based filtering to more subtle and fluid forms
of information control.8 The ONI describes these as “next-generation”
methods of cyberspace controls; they include pressures on the commer-
cial sector, outsourcing controls to private actors, and more offensive
methods, such as just-in-time attacks on key information sources and
targeted malware against opposition or adversarial groups. ONI re-
searchers have noted that these new and subtle forms of information
control challenge the ONI’s core methodology and are difficult to docu-
ment empirically.

International Mechanisms and Dynamics

What is missing from the ONI’s research, as well as from the grow-
ing body of scholarship on cyberspace controls, is a consideration of the
international mechanisms and dynamics of such controls. The field of
Ronald Deibert 37

international relations is premised on the notion that there are factors

that affect state behavior at the international systemic level. Put simply,
states are embedded in an international order that affects what they do
and how they do it. Although some of this scholarship has been rightly
criticized in the past for reifying the international system and ignoring
domestic-level processes, it nonetheless identifies an important dimen-
sion of political behavior that needs to be considered.9 States’ policies
are formed in interaction with other states in the international system.
However much domestic struggles and local threats motivate what states
do, their interactions with one another, their perceptions of adversarial
actions and intentions, and their placement in the international order
matter as well.

International institutions. The most obvious places to look for such

international dynamics are the main forums of Internet governance: the
International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),
the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Internet Gover-
nance Forum (IGF), and others. These international institutions are im-
portant touchstones for the identification of the mechanisms and dynam-
ics that interest us here.10 They have been studied by scholars of Internet
governance who have examined the stakeholders, processes, and policy
outputs of these various forums in detail for many years.11 Yet these
institutions are increasingly under new pressures as governments assert
themselves more forcefully in cyberspace. As a consequence, the main
issues that are addressed in these forums are changing, and previously
unpoliticized or mostly technical issues are becoming the objects of in-
tense political competition. These institutions, which may have been
dismissed in the past as irrelevant or overly technical, deserve renewed
attention from scholars, if only because some governments are now tak-
ing them seriously as vectors of policy formation and propagation.
For example, a loose coalition of like-minded countries has begun
to develop strategic engagements with international institutions such
as the ITU and the IGF in ways that are quite novel. Most strikingly,
Russia and the Russian-speaking countries of the former Soviet Union
have adopted a wide-ranging engagement with these forums to promote
policies that synchronize with national-level laws related to information
security.12 Recently, China has explicitly stated not only that states have
sovereign control over national information space, but also that global
cyberspace should be governed by international institutions operating
under the United Nations.13 Not surprisingly, policies reflecting these
views have been vocally supported by Hamadoun Touré, the secretary-
general of the ITU, who has called for a state-based cyberarms-control
treaty that would imply significant renationalization of the Internet.14
He has also been a vocal supporter of India, Indonesia, the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), and other countries that have pressured companies like
38 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian maker of Blackberry products,

to share encrypted data under the rubric of national-security protec-
tions.15 Every year since 1998, Russia has put forward resolutions at the
United Nations to prohibit “information aggression,” which is widely
interpreted to mean ideological attempts—or the use of ideas—to un-
dermine regime stability.16 At least 23 countries now openly support
Russia’s interpretation of information security.
Sometimes engagement at these forums is intended to stifle or stone-
wall instead of to promote certain policies. For example, Chinese del-
egations have been quite prominent at IGF meetings, ironically as a
means to stall this forum from gaining credibility and to undermine the
broadening of Internet governance to civil society and other nonstate
stakeholders. At the November 2009 IGF meeting in Egypt, for exam-
ple, UN security officials disrupted a book launch of the ONI’s recent
volume, Access Controlled, because the Chinese delegation objected to
a poster that contained a reference to the “Great Firewall of China.”17
The propagation of norms internationally can be facilitated not only by
promoting them but also by the obstruction of contrary tendencies.
What is perhaps most interesting is that the international institu-
tions whose missions are primarily focused on the technical coordina-
tion of the Internet—ICANN, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA), and the regional naming authorities—have become increas-
ingly politicized and subject to securitization pressures. For example,
attendees at recent meetings of regional Internet registries have noticed
the presence of government military and intelligence personnel in ways
that are largely unprecedented. Governments whose strategic interests
are oriented around legitimization of national controls are viewing these
technical forums, once generally ignored except by specialists, as im-
portant components of a broader, more comprehensive policy engage-
ment. For example, a coalition of Russian-speaking countries, supported
by China and India, has put forward a proposal through a submeeting of
the ITU to give governments veto power over ICANN decisions.18
Generally speaking, these countries are seen as attempting to reassert
the legitimacy of national sovereign control over cyberspace by promot-
ing such a norm at international venues. Ironically, in other words, inter-
national institutions are perceived by policy makers of these countries as
vehicles of nationalization.

Policy coordination through regional organizations. Although in-

ternational institutions are important conduits of norm propagation and
legitimization, they can also be unwieldy and diffuse. As a consequence,
coalitions of like-minded states are increasingly operating through more
manageable lower-level organizations, such as regional institutions.
Some of these forums attract little attention and meet in relative obscu-
rity. Thus the actions that they take rarely see the light of day and are
Ronald Deibert 39

ignored or overlooked by activists and others concerned with Internet

freedom and cyberspace governance. But the participants treat them se-
riously and use them as vehicles of policy coordination and information-
sharing.
One example is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a re-
gional organization made up of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.19 India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan have
observer status, and Belarus and Sri Lanka are considered “dialogue
partners.” Iran is engaged in the SCO but prevented from formally join-
ing because of UN sanctions. It is considered an active participant in the
SCO summits, however, which have been held regularly throughout the
region since the early 2000s. The SCO aims to share information and
coordinate policies around a broad spectrum of cultural, economic, and
security concerns, among them cyberspace policies. In 2010, the SCO
issued a statement on “information terrorism” that drew attention to the
way in which these countries have a shared and distinct perspective on
Internet-security policy. The SCO has also engaged in joint military
exercises and missions, described by some observers as simulations of
how to reverse “color” revolutions and popular uprisings.20 Unfortunate-
ly, the SCO’s meetings tend to be highly secretive affairs and thus not
easily subject to outside scrutiny. But they are likely to become impor-
tant vehicles of policy coordination, giving unity, normative coherence,
and strength to the individual countries beyond the sum of their parts.

Bilateral cooperation. Norms can diffuse internationally in the most

direct way by governments sharing resources and expertise with each
other in bilateral relationships. There has been longstanding speculation
that China and Chinese companies are selling technology to regimes
that import China’s filtering and surveillance system. For example, of-
ficials from China’s IT ministry recently visited Sri Lanka, ostensibly
to offer advice on how to filter the Internet.21 These discussions and ar-
rangements are rarely transparent, however, and are typically shrouded
in the type of secrecy that accompanies matters of national security, law
enforcement, and intelligence. They are likely to become more impor-
tant vehicles for the promotion of these states’ strategic interests as they
seek to propagate practices internationally that are supportive of their
own domestic policies.

Informal Mechanisms
Although these forums and bilateral relations are important, by no
means do they exhaust the dynamics and mechanisms of cyberspace con-
trols at play in the international system. Here it is important to underline
the many different means by which norms, behaviors, and policies are
propagated internationally. Although formal sites of governance such as
40 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

those above are important, norms can propagate through the international
system in a variety of ways. Norm diffusion is the process through which
norms are socialized and shared and then become internalized, accepted,
and implemented by national actors. This process is uneven and mixed,
and can vary in different contexts depending on the depth to which the
norm penetrates societies. Norms enter into and are accepted into national
contexts depending on preexisting belief systems of a national society
that support or constrain their acceptance. Norms can be propagated in-
ternationally by norm entrepreneurs (transnational actors, NGOs, and
businesses acting as conveyor belts or conduits) or through imitation,
learning, socialization, and competition.22 The latter processes are often
difficult to document empirically because of their epistemic or cognitive
foundations, but they are important factors in explaining the spread and
adoption of policies such as Internet filtering. To understand the growth
of cyberspace controls over the last decade, we need to better understand
the mechanisms and dynamics of this diffusion internationally.

Imitation and learning. Among international-relations theories of

all stripes, there is a basic understanding that government policies are
formed on the basis of dynamic relations with other states in the interna-
tional system.23 Governments are outward-looking as much as they are
inward-looking. When one government sees another doing something,
pressures may build to do likewise or risk being left behind. Studies of
learning and imitation in the field of international relations offer a num-
ber of hypotheses and data that can be collected and imported into the
study of cyberspace controls.24 A wealth of anecdotes suggests that this
is a potentially fruitful area of inquiry.
In the most elemental sense, states learn from and imitate each oth-
er’s behaviors, practices, and policies. They borrow and share best
practices, skills, and technologies. They take cues from what like-
minded states are doing and implement policies accordingly. Fear and
“self-help” are among the most important and perennial drivers of imi-
tation and learning. States implement policies based on reactions to
what other governments are doing for fear of being left behind or over-
taken by adversaries. A current example of such a dynamic can be seen
clearly in the rush by many countries to pressure RIM to cooperate
with local law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. After the UAE
went public with its concerns that RIM might have made an arrange-
ment with the U.S. National Security Agency that the UAE wanted
extended to its own security services, numerous other governments
chimed in and joined the queue, including Bahrain, India, Indonesia,
and Saudi Arabia.25
The most intense forms of imitation and learning occur around na-
tional-security issues because of the high stakes and urgency involved.
For example, in reaction to revelations of Chinese-based cyberespio-
Ronald Deibert 41

nage against U.S. companies and government agencies, Dennis Blair,

the former U.S. director of national intelligence, argued that the United
States needs to be more aggressive in stealing other countries’ secrets.
After major compromises to the Indian national-security and defense
establishment were traced back to the Chinese criminal underground,
some members of the Indian government proposed legislation to give a
safe haven and stamp of approval for Indian hackers to do the same.26
India also blocked imports of Chinese telecommunications equipment,
and moved swiftly to set up cyberwarfare capabilities within its armed
forces.27 In what will be no surprise to international-relations theorists,
we are now entering into a classic “security-dilemma,” arms-race spiral
in cyberspace, as dozens of governments look to other states’ actions to
justify the need to set up or bolster offensive cyberwarfare capabilities.
The message sent by the establishment of the U.S. Cyber Command can-
not be overemphasized in this regard. Such an institutional innovation in
the armed forces of the world’s largest superpower sends a major signal
to the international defense community.
The imitation and learning process is not uniform, but mixes with
national interests and local culture to create a warp and woof. 28 Gov-
ernments can look to other states in the international system to lend
legitimacy to slightly modified or even altogether different policies.
For example, after the United States and other industrialized countries
adopted antiterror legislation, many countries of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) did likewise. Their policies, however,
were much more far-reaching and oriented toward the stifling of
minority-independence and political-opposition movements and the
shoring up of regime stability rather than to fighting international
terrorism.
A similar process can be seen in the spread of cybercrime and copy-
right-protection legislation. Under the umbrella of an international norm
intended for one purpose, states can justify policies and actions that
serve more parochial aims. Russia and other authoritarian regimes have
used the excuse of copyright policing to seize opposition and NGO com-
puters—in at least once instance with the assistance of companies like
Microsoft.29 Similarly, the now widespread belief that it is legitimate to
remove videos containing “offensive” information from websites can be
interpreted broadly in various national contexts. Pakistani authorities
have repeatedly pressured video-hosting services to remove embarrass-
ing or politically inflammatory videos under this rubric.
Some regimes that are geographically remote appear to be learning
from one another’s “best practices” when it comes to dealing with cy-
berspace controls over opposition groups. For example, a growing list
of countries have banned SMS and instant-messaging services prior to
national crises or significant events such as elections or public demon-
strations. Although it is possible that each of these countries is doing
42 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

so in isolation, it seems more likely that they have been inspired by the
actions of other countries. Cambodia,30 Egypt,31 India,32 Iran,33 Mozam-
bique,34 and Turkmenistan,35 have all disabled SMS and text messaging
during or leading up to recent elections, events, and public demonstra-
tions as a way to control social mobilization.
Imitation and learning are major components of norm propagation, but
they are processes that are difficult to document empirically. Unless gov-
ernment representatives or policy makers specifically point to an instance
or act from which they are drawing inspiration, imitation and learning
processes can be obscure and have to be deduced from behavior.

Commercial conduits. Norms can spread internationally via pri-

vate actors, in particular companies offering a service that supports
the norm. For example, a major market for cybersecurity tools and
technologies has exploded in recent years, estimated at between $60
and 80 billion annually. Companies are naturally gravitating to this
expanding market in response to commercial opportunities. But they
can also influence the market itself by the creation of products and
tools that present new opportunities for states. There are, for example,
a wide range of new products that offer “deep packet inspection” and
traffic-shaping capabilities, even though such activities are contrary
to fading norms of “network neutrality.” There are also companies
that offer services and products designed for offensive cybernetwork
attacks. Naturally, the principals of these companies have a vested
interest in ensuring that the market continues to expand, which can, in
turn, influence government policies.
The market for surveillance and offensive computer operations that
has emerged in recent years was preceded by a relatively smaller market
for filtering technologies. The latter were developed initially to serve
business environments but quickly spread to governments looking for
solutions for Internet-censorship demands. ONI research throughout the
2000s documented a growing number of authoritarian countries using
U.S.-based commercial-filtering products, including Smartfilter in Iran
and Tunisia, Websense in Yemen, and Fortinet in Burma. Some of these
products appear to have been tailored to meet the unique requirements
of authoritarian regimes. For example, the Websense product had built-
in options for filtering categories that included human-rights and non-
governmental organizations. In one case, a PowerPoint presentation by
Cisco (the maker of telecommunications-routing equipment) surfaced
which made the argument that a market opportunity had presented itself
for the company to work in collusion with China’s security services.36
Commercial solutions such as these can help to structure the realm of
the possible for governments. Whereas in the past it might have been
difficult or even inconceivable to engage in deep packet inspection or
keyword-based filtering on a national scale, commercial solutions open
Ronald Deibert 43

up opportunities for policy makers looking to deal with vexing political

problems on a fine-grained scale.

International Vacuums (horror vacui)

One of the least obvious mechanisms of norm propagation is the ab-
sence of restraints. Policies and behaviors can spread internationally
when there are no countervailing safeguards or checks. Norm diffusion
through the absence of restraints might be likened to the principle of
nature abhorring a vacuum. Practices and behaviors fill a void in the
policy arena. This mechanism is perhaps the most difficult to pin down
empirically because it lacks any identifiable source or location. Yet it
may be among the most important international dynamics of cyberspace
controls.
One might hypothesize that norm diffusion via the absence of re-
straints is most amenable to the diffusion of “bad” norms precisely be-
cause there are no countervailing restraints. For example, the spread of
cybercrime and the blurring of cybercrime and espionage can be ex-
plained in part by the ways in which the perpetrators are able to exploit
fissures in the international system. Bad actors act globally and hide
locally in jurisdictions where state capacity is weak and they are beyond
the reach of the victims’ local law enforcement. Some governments,
through their inaction, may even be deliberately cultivating a climate
favorable for crime and espionage to flourish. For example, major cy-
berespionage networks and acts of cybercrime have been traced back
to China, Russia, and other countries that take few or, at best, symbolic
measures in response, in part because of the strategic benefits that ac-
crue to these countries from the flourishing of those activities. These
governments can reap windfalls from the ecology of crime and espio-
nage through the black market while maintaining a relatively credible
position of plausible deniability.37
Focusing on the international dynamics and mechanisms of cyberspace
controls is important for several theoretical and practical reasons. First,
there are unique processes that occur at the international level that are
distinct from what happens domestically. These mechanisms and dynam-
ics help to explain why a norm for Internet filtering and surveillance is
spreading internationally. States do not operate in isolation; they are part
of a dense network of relations that influences their decisions and actions.
Without considering these mechanisms and dynamics, we may miss some
of the more important explanations for growing cyberspace controls,
which have until now been primarily attributed to domestic-level causes.
The framework laid out above is meant to be a first step in identifying
some of the most important sources of those mechanisms and dynamics.
The focus on the spread of cyberspace controls, as outlined here, may
offer an important contribution to the study of international norm diffu-
44 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

sion more generally. Up until now, scholarship in this area has been fo-
cused almost entirely on the propagation and diffusion of “good” norms,
such as landmine and chemical-weapons bans, the abolition of slavery,
and the spread of democratic values.38 The examples laid out here show
that the propagation and diffusion of “bad” norms can happen along the
same lines, employing some of the same mechanisms and dynamics. Fur-
ther research into the spread of cyberspace controls may shed light on
some unique mechanisms and dynamics employed by authoritarian and
competitive authoritarian regimes. It is sometimes assumed that these
governments are by definition inward-looking and have an aversion to in-
ternationalism and multilateralism. Some of the examples pointed to here
show that, to the contrary, these regimes have very active international
and regional engagements that are likely to continue to grow.
Finally, a focus on international mechanisms and dynamics under-
scores the iterative and relational quality of state behavior. States’ actions
and behaviors are formed very much in response to other states’ decisions,
often in unintended ways. This observation has important policy impli-
cations for democratic industrialized countries. The policies that these
governments implement may be used by authoritarian regimes to legiti-
mize their actions at home in ways considerably different than democratic
countries originally intended. Unfortunately, there is not a lot that can be
done to guard against this dynamic. But it is important to be aware of it and
recognize it when it occurs. General statements about the “war on terror”
or “copyright controls” can be turned into excuses for a broad spectrum
of nefarious actions by authoritarian regimes. These dynamics also under-
score the importance of consistency, transparency, and accountability on
the part of democratic regimes. For example, shortly after U.S. secretary
of state Hillary Clinton admonished governments for pressuring RIM to
collude with security services, the Obama administration introduced leg-
islation that would put in place precisely the same procedures as those
requested by India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. Governments are
embedded in an international system and thus a dynamic network of rela-
tions. One cannot understand the spread of cyberspace controls without
understanding its international mechanisms and dynamics.

NOTES

1. Ronald J. Deibert et al., eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global
Internet Filtering (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).

2. Ronald J. Deibert et al., eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and
Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).

3. The author is one of the founders and principal investigators of the ONI.

4. By “positive” and “negative,” I do not mean to imply a normative judgment of the

policies, but rather to describe the processes around which policies are formed.
Ronald Deibert 45

5. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn A. Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy

Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

6. Stephen M. Walt, “Is the Cyber Threat Overblown?” ForeignPolicy.com, 30 March

2010, available at http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/30/is_the_cyber_threat_
overblown.

7. See http://opennet.net.

8. Deibert et al., Access Controlled.

9. For criticism along these lines, see Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Crit-
ics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

10. For a discussion of how international organizations can influence state behavior
in ways not intended as part of their original design, see Michael Barnett and Martha
Finnemore, “The Politics, Power and Pathologies of International Organizations,” Inter-
national Organization 53 (Autumn 1999): 699–732,

11. See, in particular, Milton L. Mueller, Networks and States: The Global Politics of
Internet Governance (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).

12. Policy statement made by Igor Shchegolev, Russian minister of telecommunica-

tion and mass communications, on 4 October 2010 at the International Telecommunica-
tion Union plenipotentiary conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, available at www.itu.int/
plenipotentiary/2010/statements/russian_federation/shchegolev-ru.html.

13. See Brenden Kuerbis, “Reading Tea Leaves: China Statements on Internet Policy,”
Internet Governance Project, 8 June 2010, available at http://blog.internetgovernance.org/
blog/_archives/2010/ 6/8/4548091.html.

14. Tim Gray, “U.N. Telecom Boss Warns of Pending Cyberwar,” TechNewsDaily,
10 September 2010, available at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39102447/ns/technology_and_
science-security.

15. “RIM Should Open Up User Data: UN Agency,” CBC News, 2 September 2010,
available at www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/09/02/rim-user-data-un.html.

16. Tom Gjelten, “Seeing the Internet as an ‘Information Weapon,’’’ NPR, 23 Sep-
tember 2010, available at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130052701&
sc=tw&cc=share.

17. Jonathan Fildes, “UN Slated for Stifling Net Debate,” BBC News, 16 November
2009, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8361849.stm, accessed 6 Oct.
2010.

18. Gregory Francis, “Plutocrats and the Internet,” CircleID, 4 October 2010, available
at www.circleid.com/posts/20101004_plutocrats_and_the_internet.

19. See Andrew Scheineson, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Council on

Foreign Relations, 24 March 2009, available at www.cfr.org/publication/10883/shanghai_
cooperation_organization.html.

20. Richard Weitz, “What’s Happened to the SCO?” The Diplomat, 17 May 2010, avail-
able at http://the-diplomat.com/2010/05/17/what’s-happened-to-the-sco/.

21. Bandula Sirimanna, “Chinese Here for Cyber Censorship,” Sunday Times, 14 Feb-
ruary 2010, www.sundaytimes.lk/100214/News/nws_02.html.
46 International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls

22. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Po-
litical Change,” International Organization 52 (Autumn 1998): 887–917.

23. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-

Wesley, 1979); and Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics.

24. Benjamin E. Goldsmith, “Imitation in International Relations: Analogies, Vicari-

ous Learning, and Foreign Policy,” International Interactions 29, no. 3 (2003): 237–67.

25. “Factbox: BlackBerry Under Fire from States Seeking Access,” Reuters, 13 Au-
gust 2010, www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/13/us-blackberry-access-factbox-idUS-
TRE67B22T20100813.

26. Harsimran Singh and Joji Thomas Philip, “Spy Game: India Readies Cyber Army to
Hack into Hostile Nations’ Computer Systems,” Economic Times, 6 August 2010, available at
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-08-06/news/27590170_1_computer-
systems-spy-game-hackers.

27. Rhys Blakely, “India Blocks Deals with Chinese Telecoms Companies over Cyber-
Spy Fears,” Times Online, 10 May 2010, available at http://citizenlab.org/2010/05/india-
blocks-deals-with-chinese-telecoms-companies-over-cyber-spy-fears/.

28. For a general discussion, see Jeffrey Legro, “Which Norms Matter? Revisiting
the ‘Failure’ of Internationalism,” International Organization 51 (Winter 1997): 31–63.

29. Clifford J. Levy, “Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent,” New York Times,
22 September 2010.

30. Prerna Mankad, “Cambodia Bans Text Messaging,” ForeignPolicy.com, 30 March

2007, http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2007/03/30/cambodia_bans_text_messaging.

31. See www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/restrictions-placed-sms-messages-avert-

promoting-anti-regime-incitations.

32. Harmeet Shah Singh, “India’s Top Court Delays Decision on Holy Site,” CNN, 23
September 2010, available at http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/23/india.
holy.verdict/index.html.

33. Nazila Fathi, “Iran Disrupts Internet Service Ahead of Protests,” New York Times,
11 February 2010, available at www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/middleeast/11tehran.
html?ref=global-home.

34. Janet Gunter, “Mozambique: Government Interference in SMS Service,”

Global Voices, 21 September 2010, available at http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.
org/2010/09/21/mozambique-government-interference-in-sms-service/.

35. Annasoltan, “Technology and Tradition Are Not Enemies: Agent.mail.ru Banned
in Turkmenistan!” 1 September 2010, available at http://www.neweurasia.net/media-and-
internet/technology-and-tradition-are-not-enemies-agentmailru-banned-in-turkmenistan.

36. Brad Reese, “Powerpoint Presentation Appears to Implicate Cisco in China,” Net-
workWorld, available at www.networkworld.com/community/node/27957.

37. See Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation, “Shadows in the
Cloud: Investigating Cyber Espionage 2.0,” joint report, 6 April 2010.

38. One exception is Ryder McKeown, “Norm Regress: US Revisionism and the Slow
Death of the Torture Norm.” International Relations 23 (March 2009): 5–25.
 4

WHITHER INTERNET CONTROL?

Evgeny Morozov

Evgeny Morozov is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New

America Foundation and a contributing editor of Foreign Policy,
where he runs the “Net Effect” blog (http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.
com). He is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet
Freedom (2011). This essay originally appeared in the April 2011 issue
of the Journal of Democracy.

L eading liberal democracies such as the United States have begun pro-
moting “Internet freedom” and, by extension, opposing “Internet con-
trol.” But what exactly is this control, and how best may it be combated?
As a category, it is broad, encompassing both censorship (which violates
the right to free expression) and surveillance (which violates the right to
privacy). This dual character of control explains why it is often so hard
to assess innovations such as social networking in the abstract: They
work in favor of freedom of expression by making it easier for us to ex-
press ourselves, but at the same time they also tend to work in favor of
surveillance by making more of our private information public.
In addition to its ability to manifest itself as both censorship and
surveillance, “Internet control” has a technological dimension and a so-
ciopolitical dimension that often overlap in practice even though they
are analytically distinct from each other. A good example of the tech-
nological control would be a national-level scheme in which govern-
ment-sanctioned Internet filters automatically banned access to all sites
whose URLs contained certain sensitive keywords. A good example of
sociopolitical control would be a law that treated blogging platforms
such as WordPress or LiveJournal as mass-media organs and made them
screen all user-submitted online content prior to publication. In the for-
mer case, a government would be using technology to chill the freedom
of expression directly; in the latter case, the sought-after effect would be
the same, but would be indirect and mediated through the power of law
rather than sought through the direct application of technology alone.
48 Whither Internet Control?

Most talk of “liberation technologies” as ways of weakening “Inter-

net control” turns out to be about the technological rather than the socio-
political dimension. But what if success in that area is met with larger
and more sophisticated efforts at exerting sociopolitical control? Schol-
ars still know little about the factors that influence the dynamics and
the distribution of the two kinds of control. As technological methods
lose efficacy, sociopolitical methods could simply overtake them: An
authoritarian government might find it harder to censor blogs, but still
rather easy to jail bloggers. Indeed, if censorship becomes infeasible,
imprisonment may become inevitable.
Thus, if the technological dimension of Internet control were one day
to be totally eliminated, the upshot could be a set of social and political
barriers to freedom of expression that might on balance be worse—not
least because “liberation technologies” would be powerless to overcome
them. It would be a cruelly paradoxical outcome indeed should libera-
tion technology’s very success spur the creation of a sociopolitical envi-
ronment in which there would be nothing for technology to “liberate.”
But suppose that we could set such concerns aside. What are the ways
to minimize the technological dimension of Internet censorship? On
first sight, this looks like a mere engineering challenge. It may even be
tempting to reframe this question as follows: Given what we know about
how the Internet works, what can we do to help bypass such technologi-
cal restrictions as authoritarian governments might put in place?
The proliferation of numerous censorship-circumvention technolo-
gies over the last decade suggests that even the most sophisticated Inter-
net-filtering schemes are not immune to the ingenuity of the engineering
community. The porousness and decentralization that are basic to the
Internet’s design make it hard to come up with a firewall that works 100
percent of the time. Unless they are forced to deal with a national Intra-
net featuring a fixed number of government-run websites, those with the
requisite know-how will always be able to circumvent government bans
by connecting to third-party computers abroad and using them to browse
the uncensored Internet.
It might seem, then, that the only outstanding problems are technolog-
ical in nature: making sure that tools deliver on their promises—includ-
ing promises to keep their users safely undetected and anonymous—and
that they remain cheap and easy to use. It might also seem that money
and engineering talent would be all that is needed to solve such prob-
lems. For example, Shiyu Zhou, the founder of a Falun Gong technology
group that designs and distributes software for accessing sites banned by
the Chinese government, says that “the entire battle over the Internet has
boiled down to a battle over resources.”1
This is a misleading view. The sociopolitical environment will al-
ways affect the scope and intensity of technology-based efforts to get
around Internet controls. Some of the constraints on the use and pro-
Evgeny Morozov 49

liferation of such tools are anything but technological in origin, and

are not traceable to resource scarcity. A tool that can help dissidents in
authoritarian states to access websites that authoritarian governments
have banned may also allow terrorists or pedophiles to access online
resources that democratic governments have placed off-limits in keep-
ing with their own laws and systems of due process. Similarly, any tool
that allows dissidents to hide their digital doings from the prying eyes of
an unfree regime’s secret police may also be used by criminals to evade
the legal monitoring efforts of legitimate law-enforcement agencies in
liberal-democratic states. Technology and engineering, in other words,
do not operate in a vacuum. The social and political environment will
inevitably have much to do with determining how, where, how quickly
and widely, and to what ends they are brought to bear, as well as what
the public thinks about them and their uses.
Considering that many such tools are developed by activists (often
working as volunteers) who have a stake in many different projects—
not all of them viewed altogether favorably by governments or pub-
lics—it is unsurprising that the going can be tough. When we consider
that at least one of the key people doing work on Tor—a much-cele-
brated system of servers and software that is designed to ensure us-
ers’ online anonymity and that enjoys U.S.-government funding—has
also collaborated with WikiLeaks, 2 we are not shocked to learn that
the U.S. government may be having some second thoughts about this
particular surveillance-evading tool. Although this has not so far had
a tangible impact on the level of support that the U.S. government has
been giving to Tor, that may change in the future—especially as com-
peting projects acquire powerful backers and lobbyists eager to defend
their cause in Washington.
At a minimum, any policy initiative that aims to address the tech-
nological dimension of “Internet control” needs to find a way to model
the sociopolitical environment—including the tricky human element—
in which such tools are designed and distributed. At this point, it is hard
to predict how Western governments will react if Tor solves its func-
tionality problems and suddenly becomes more user-friendly and faster.
Nor do we know how upcoming legislation aimed at forcing Internet
companies to create “backdoors” through which U.S. law-enforcement
and intelligence agencies can secretly access online services such as
Skype and Gmail may impede the wider deployment of a tool such as
Tor, which would probably help to keep these “backdoors” closed.3 This
is not only, or even mainly, a battle for resources; there are many un-
resolved political issues involved here. The U.S. State Department, as
Hillary Clinton announced in a widely publicized January 2010 speech,4
may back an Internet-freedom agenda, but can the same be said for all
arms of the U.S. government?
One possible solution would be to design specialized tools that would
50 Whither Internet Control?

tackle Internet censorship only in particular countries such as China,

Iran, or Kazakhstan. Such tools would not abet the terrorists and crimi-
nals that worry U.S. authorities—unless, of course, the bad actors man-
aged to set up shop in one or more of those countries. Another disad-
vantage is that any tool with a particular geographic focus will end up
becoming far more politicized than would any generic solution such as
Tor.
The focus on abetting censorship circumvention in a particular coun-
try may only result in the government aiming sharper scrutiny at such
tools and those who wield them. A case in point is Haystack, an anticen-
sorship tool that U.S. “hacktivists” devised for Iranian dissidents to use
in the wake of their country’s 2009 “Green Wave” postelection protests.
Since Haystack’s users were presumed to be dissidents downloading
Human Rights Watch reports rather than illegal online pornography (a
common use of general-purpose tools such as Tor), the Iranian govern-
ment had a particularly strong incentive to monitor them. (Haystack shut
down in September 2010 after proving to be less reliable than its inven-
tors had claimed.)
The further segmentation of this market, with the appearance of
tools specific to Fiji and Tajikistan, for instance, would also make it
hard to vouch for the security of each tool. Ideally, any effort to create
a new country-specific tool would conform to appropriate standards
and procedures, so that its technical merits could be independently
assessed by third parties and subjected to peer review. The Haystack
debacle suggests the pitfalls that lie in wait if such rigorous protocols
are ignored.

The Sociopolitical Dimension

Internet-filtering is just one of the many options available to gov-
ernments. It is also the one that is easiest to document. Moreover, it
lends itself nicely to straightforward assessments by Freedom House,
the OpenNet Initiative, and Herdict Web, a Harvard-based initiative that
seeks input from Internet users worldwide in order to “crowdsource”
real-time data regarding Internet control. Because of this relative trans-
parency, and because being known for Web-filtering looks bad (few
countries want to be spoken of in the same sentence with phrases such
as the “Great Firewall of China”), governments are now experimenting
with more sophisticated ways of exerting control that are harder to de-
tect and document. These include:

Distributed denial-of-service attacks. Although reliable statistical data

is scarce, anecdotal evidence suggests that politically motivated “distrib-
uted denial-of-service” (DDoS) attacks are on the rise.5 These target indi-
viduals or entire organizations by flooding their websites with crippling
Evgeny Morozov 51

volumes of artificially generated Internet traffic. This effectively shuts

down the targeted site for a time and denies access to legitimate users.
The publishers of a site that comes under DDoS attack must not
only scramble for ways to keep content available (especially if the as-
sault comes at a sensitive moment such as during a period of postelec-
tion protests), but must also cope with the anger of the Internet-hosting
companies that are often the ones left dealing with the consequences of
such attacks. Repeated DDoS attacks on a site may eventually make it
“unhostable”—no hosting company will touch it for fear of the costly
cyberassaults that it will draw.
For content producers, DDoS attacks could have far worse conse-
quences than would attempts to filter their websites in a given jurisdic-
tion. First, a successful DDoS attack makes content unavailable any-
where and everywhere, not just in this or that place with a Web-filtering
system in place. Second, DDoS assaults put heavy psychological pres-
sure on content producers, suddenly forcing them to worry about all
sorts of institutional issues such as the future of their relationship with
their Internet-hosting company, the debilitating effect that the unavail-
ability of the site may have on its online community, and the like.
From the perspective of those ordering the attacks—it is a fair as-
sumption that in some cases this means authoritarian governments—
DDoS assaults beat censorship by virtue of being far harder to trace to
their source. Indeed, it can sometimes be hard to say if a DDoS attack
has taken place at all. Websites go down all the time for a variety of rea-
sons: legitimate spikes in traffic, server failures, power outages, and nu-
merous other causes that have nothing to do with cyberattacks. Among
other things, this means that there are still no reliable ways to gauge the
frequency and intensity of DDoS attacks. They might be a worse threat
to global freedom of expression than we currently realize.
Unfortunately, things will probably get worse, as there has already
emerged a black market in DDoS attacks (you can go to eBay to “rent”
the ability to launch one). This seems to be happening mainly because
DDoS attacks can also be used to target businesses for the purposes of
cyberextortion. Yet a recent survey by the computer-security firm Sy-
mantec indicates that 53 percent of critical-infrastructure providers re-
port experiencing what they perceive as politically motivated cyberat-
tacks against their networks. Those who reported having been attacked
further reported an average of ten incidents over the preceding five
years, with an average total cost across all five years of US$850,000.6

Deliberate erosion of online communities’ social capital. Among

the things about the Internet that make authoritarian rulers uneasy are its
powers to boost civic associations of all kinds and to connect previously
unconnected people and organizations with one another. Governments
fearful of Internet-enabled “connectivity” have learned that censorship
52 Whither Internet Control?

is too blunt an instrument to be their best weapon against communi-

ties that begin online and remain outside the state’s control. Censorship
can be too easily circumvented and it can backfire if the presence of
a threat from the state ends up strengthening rather than weakening a
target community’s internal bonds. There are numerous ways to weaken
community ties more effectively.
One option may be the launching of DDoS attacks as a means of shut-
ting sites down periodically and, worse, forcing them to find a way to pay
for better hosting services. Even simpler methods may include trolling
or dispatching new members to create artificial splits within the com-
munity as well as intentionally provoking community administrators to
take harsh and unpopular measures. These last two stratagems are labor-
intensive and costly ways to hamstring and manipulate online communi-
ties, but they are more likely to prove effective than censorship.
The Chinese government has become notorious for its “fifty-
centers”—people who are paid piece rates to post progovernment com-
ments on message boards and other widely read online forums. Their
work is plainly meant to influence the intellectual dynamics of online
communities and sow doubts within their ranks. Vladimir Putin’s Rus-
sia, likewise, has plenty of Kremlin-friendly youth movements whose
members will defend the government and its policies online, including
on the websites of critics.

The “nationalization” of cyberspace. In the months since Hillary

Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom, many governments seem to have
woken up to the possibility that the United States might be keen to ex-
ploit its existing dominance of cyberspace in order to promote a certain
political agenda. Whether or not their concerns are justified, the gov-
ernments of China, Iran, Russia, and many other countries have sud-
denly realized the degree to which their own citizens are dependent on
Internet services offered by U.S. companies. Editorials in their state-
owned newspapers increasingly speak of “informational sovereignty,”
by which they mean the ability of their digital economies to function
independent of foreign service providers.
In keeping with this, these governments have begun bolstering their
domestic Internet enterprises at the expense of foreign competitors. Tur-
key made the first move into this space with its late-2009 launch of the
Anabena project, which is meant to create a national search engine that
better caters to “Turkish sensibilities,” with a national e-mail system to
follow. Iran quickly followed suit, banning Gmail in February 2010 and
announcing its own national e-mail system. Later in the same year, Rus-
sia announced plans similar to Turkey’s, including the establishment of
a national e-mail service and the allocation of $100 million to explore
the feasibility of a national search engine.
It would not be surprising to see the Chinese, Russian, and other
Evgeny Morozov 53

governments declare that Internet-search services are a “strategic in-

dustry” like energy and transport and move to block foreign companies
in this area. If the impression that Twitter and Facebook can facilitate
political revolutions continues to gain currency, social-networking and
microblogging services may end up in the “strategic” category as well.
This will almost certainly be bad news for users, since local alterna-
tives to Google, Facebook, and Twitter are likely to have more restric-
tive attitudes toward freedom of expression and privacy. Even if we see
no new national search engines, existing local competitors to Google
(China’s Baidu and Russia’s Yandex, for instance) may grow stronger
as a result.

The outsourcing of Internet control to third parties. One way for

governments to avoid direct blame for exercising more Internet control
is to delegate the task to intermediaries. At a minimum, this will involve
making Internet companies that offer social-networking sites, blogging
platforms, or search engines take on a larger self-policing role by hold-
ing them accountable for any content that their users post or (in the case
of search engines) index and make available.
Being able to force companies to police the Web according to state-
dictated guidelines is a dream come true for any government. The com-
panies must bear all the costs, do all the dirty work, and absorb the us-
ers’ ire. Companies also are more likely to catch unruly content, as they
are more decentralized and know their own online communities better
than do the state’s censors.
It would be a mistake to think that only authoritarian governments
harbor such ambitions. The Italian government has been holding You-
Tube accountable for the videos that are published on its site. This cre-
ates an enabling environment in which authoritarian governments can
justify their actions by referring to similar developments in democratic
societies.
Other ways in which third parties abet Internet control are appearing
as well. Thailand’s strict laws against l`ese majesté ban the publication
of anything (even a Twitter post) that may offend the country’s royal
family. When the Thai blogosphere’s rapid expansion began outstrip-
ping the authorities’ monitoring capacities, a member of parliament pro-
posed a solution in early 2009. A site called ProtectTheKing.net was set
up so that Thai users could submit links to any website that they deemed
offensive to the monarchy. According to the BBC, the government
blocked five-thousand submitted links in the first twenty-four hours.
Not surprisingly, the site’s creators “forgot” to provide a way in which
to complain about sites that were blocked in error.7
Similarly, Saudi Arabia allows its citizens to report to the Commu-
nications and Information Technology Commission any links that they
find offensive; citizens do so at an average rate of about 1,200 times per
54 Whither Internet Control?

day. This allows the Saudi government to achieve a certain efficiency in

the censorship process. According to Business Week, in 2008 the Com-
mission’s censorship wing employed only 25 people, although many
of them were graduates of top Western universities such as Harvard
and Carnegie Mellon.8 But many similar efforts are also emerging and
flourishing organically, without any apparent state involvement. Thus,
a well-coordinated group of two-hundred culturally conservative volun-
teers that calls itself “Saudi Flagger” regularly monitors all Saudi Ara-
bia–related videos uploaded to YouTube. Their practice is to complain
en masse about any videos that they do not like—mostly these contain
criticisms of Islam or Saudi rulers—by “flagging” them for YouTube’s
administrators as inappropriate and misleading.9 A member, Mazen Ali
Ali, described this in 2009 as “perform[ing] our duty towards our reli-
gion and homeland.”10

Private-sector innovations. The Internet-control activities of secret-

police officials in authoritarian states are increasingly getting a boost
from breakthroughs in data analysis that the Web itself is making cheap-
er to obtain. It is not only text-messaging traffic that is becoming easier
to search, organize, and act on: Video footage is moving in that direction
as well, thus paving the way for even more video surveillance. This ex-
plains why the Chinese government keeps installing video cameras in its
most troubling cities. Not only do such cameras remind passers-by about
the panopticon that they inhabit, they also supply the secret police with
useful clues. In mid-2010, there were 47,000 cameras scanning Urumqi,
the capital of China’s restive Xinjiang Province, and that number was
projected to rise to 60,000 by the end of the year.11
Such an expansion of video surveillance could not have happened
without the involvement of Western partners. Researchers at UCLA,
funded in part by the Chinese government, have managed to build sur-
veillance software that can automatically annotate and comment on
what it sees, generating text files that can later be searched by humans,
obviating the need to watch hours of video footage in search of one
particular frame.12 (To make that possible, the researchers had to recruit
twenty graduates of local art colleges in China to annotate and classify
a library of more than two-million images.) Such automated systems are
crucial in order for video surveillance to be massively “scaled up” in a
useful way, since it makes sense to add new cameras only if their foot-
age can be rapidly indexed and searched.
The maddening pace of innovation in data analysis is poised to make
surveillance far more sophisticated, with new features that seem straight
out of science fiction. Digital surveillance will receive a significant
boost as face-recognition techniques improve and enter the consumer
market. The trade in face-recognition technologies is so lucrative that
even giants such as Google cannot resist getting into the game as they
Evgeny Morozov 55

feel the growing pressure from smaller players such as Face.com, a

popular tool that allows users to find and automatically annotate unique
faces as these appear throughout their photo collections. In 2009,
Face.com launched a Facebook application that first asks users to
identify a Facebook friend in a photo and then proceeds to search the
entire social-networking site for other pictures in which that friend
appears. By early 2010, the company was boasting of having scanned
nine billion pictures and identified 52 million individuals.
Applications go far beyond finding photos of one’s friends on Face-
book. Imagine advanced face-recognition technology in the hands of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards as they seek to ferret out the identities of
people photographed during Tehran street protests. That said, govern-
ments had been using face-recognition technologies (the legitimate law-
enforcement applications are obvious) for some time before these tools
became commercially viable. What is most likely to happen in the case
of Iran is that widely accessible face-recognition technologies will em-
power various solo agents, cybervigilantes who may not be on the payroll
of the Islamic Republic, but who would like to help its cause. Just as
Thai royalists surf the Web in search of sites criticizing the monarchy or
progovernment Chinese go on the lookout for problematic blog posts, so
we can predict that Islamist hard-liners in Iran will be checking photos of
antigovernment protests against those in the massive commercial photo
banks, populated by photos and names harvested from social-networking
sites, that are sure to pop up, not always legally, once face-recognition
technology goes fully mainstream. The cybervigilantes may then continue
stalking the dissidents, launch DDoS attacks against their blogs, or simply
report them to authorities.
Search engines capable of finding photos that contain a given face any-
where on the Internet are not far off. For example, SAPIR, an ambitious
project funded by the European Union, seeks to create an audiovisual
search engine that would automatically analyze a photo, video, or sound
recording; extract certain features to identify it; and use these unique
identifiers to search for similar content on the Web. An antigovernment
chant recorded on the streets of Tehran may soon be broken down into
individual voices, which in turn can then be compared to a universe of all
possible voices that exist on amateur videos posted on YouTube.
Or consider Recognizr, the cutting-edge smartphone application de-
veloped by two Swedish software firms that allows anyone to point their
mobile phone at a stranger and immediately query the Internet about
what is known about that person (or, to be more exact, about that per-
son’s face). Its developers are the first to point to the tremendous priva-
cy implications of their invention, promising that strict controls would
eventually be built into the system.13 Nevertheless, it is hard to believe
that once the innovation genie is out of the bottle, no similar rogue ap-
plications would be available for purchase and download elsewhere.
56 Whither Internet Control?

The rise of online “publicness.” If there is a clear theme to much of the

Internet innovation of the last decade, it is that being open to sharing one’s
personal information can carry big benefits. More and more of our Internet
experience is customized: Google arranges our search results in part based
on what we have searched for in the past, while our Facebook identity can
now “travel” with us to different sites (for example, those who visit music-
streaming sites such as Pandora while logged into Facebook will be able to
see what music their Facebook friends like and recommend).
When Jeff Jarvis, a professor of new media at the City University of
New York and a leading Internet pundit, points out the benefits of pub-
licness, he is right: There are, indeed, tremendous advantages to sharing
our location, favorite music, or reading lists with the rest of the world.
The problem is that a world where such publicness can be turned
against us is not so hard to imagine—and Internet pundits are usually
the last to point out that all the digital advantages come at a price. Just
as Amazon recommends books to us based on the books that we have
already purchased, it is not hard to think of a censorship system that
makes decisions based on the pages that we have visited and the kinds
of people whom we list as our friends on social-networking sites. Might
it be possible that in the not-so-distant future, a banker who peruses
nothing online but Bloomberg News and the Financial Times, and who
has only other bankers as her online friends, will be left alone to do
anything she wants, even browse Wikipedia pages about human-rights
violations? In contrast, a person of unknown occupation, who occasion-
ally reads the Financial Times but who is also linked to five well-known
political activists through Facebook and who has written blog comments
containing words such as “democracy” and “freedom,” will only be al-
lowed to visit government-run websites (or, if he is an important intel-
ligence target, he will be allowed to visit other sites, with his online
activities closely monitored).
If online advertising is anything to judge by, such behavioral preci-
sion is not far away. Google already bases the ads that it shows us on our
searches and the text of our e-mails; Facebook aspires to makes its ads
much more fine-grained, taking into account what kind of content that
we have previously “liked” on other sites and what our friends are “lik-
ing” and buying online. Imagine censorship systems that are as detailed
and as fine-tuned to their “users” (targets) as the behavioral advertising
that we now see every day. The only difference between the two is that
one system learns everything about us in order to show us more relevant
advertisements, while the other one learns everything about us in order
to ban us from accessing relevant pages.
By paying so much attention to the most conventional and blandest
of Internet-control methods (blocking access to particular URLs), we
risk missing more basic shifts in the field. Internet censorship is poised
Evgeny Morozov 57

to grow in depth, looking ever more thoroughly into what we do online

and even offline. It will also grow in breadth, incorporating more and
more information indicators before the “censor or do not censor” deci-
sion is made. Arguably, Green Dam Youth Escort—the Chinese soft-
ware that made a lot of noise in mid-2009—was a poor implementation
of an extremely powerful and dangerous concept: Green Dam analyzed
the kinds of activities that the user was engaged in and made a decision
about what to block or not based on such analysis rather than on a list
of banned sites. A censorship scheme that manages to marry artificial
intelligence and basic social-networking analysis would not only be ex-
tremely powerful; it would also help to limit the threat that censorship
currently poses to economic development, thereby removing one of the
major reasons that currently impels governments to avoid censorship.

The Future of Internet Control

The forces that are shaping the future of Internet control come from the
realms of politics, society, and business. In the political realm, the U.S.
government and its initiatives will be the biggest single force shaping the
actions of other governments. Among the key developments to watch will
be those concerning the future of the “Internet freedom” agenda and the
evolution of the U.S. State Department’s approach to the Internet. Hillary
Clinton’s speech was ambitious and idealistic, but also highly ambivalent.
It is unclear how far the State Department is prepared to go in speaking
up on behalf of bloggers who are jailed in countries whose rulers serve
U.S. interests. Nor is it clear what the broader “Internet freedom” strat-
egy is to be or which projects will receive priority funding. (Some vocal
activists from the Middle East have already expressed concerns about the
increased U.S.-government funding in this space.)
It remains to be seen whether “Internet freedom” means primarily de-
fending the “freedom of the Internet” (that is, ensuring that governments
and corporations avoid increasing censorship and surveillance) or promot-
ing “freedom via the Internet” (that is, using the Internet and new media
to facilitate anti-authoritarian movements such as Iran’s “Green Wave”).
Many governments around the world worry that the latter approach will
predominate. Clinton’s references to the role that technology played in the
protests in Iran (and earlier in Moldova) did nothing to allay those fears.
The tight relationship between the State Department and U.S. tech-
nology companies may also prove problematic for both sides, and its
future looks uncertain. As European governments and the UN take on
“Internet freedom” issues, the State Department may find itself fight-
ing on too many fronts, as those other governments and organizations
would probably push to establish new treaties and laws, moves on which
Washington is not very keen.
While the State Department promotes a vague notion of “Internet
58 Whither Internet Control?

freedom” abroad, a number of domestic law-enforcement and intelli-

gence agencies plus the Commerce Department are pushing for signif-
icant changes that amount to “Internet control” initiatives. Taken to-
gether, concerns in the areas of cyberwarfare and cybercrime, electronic
wiretapping, and Internet piracy and copyright reform may drive the
U.S. government toward seeking significant sway over the Internet.
Whatever the democratic merits of such government initiatives, they
will have the drawback of creating an enabling environment for author-
itarian governments that are keen on passing similar measures, mostly
for the purpose of curbing political freedom. In addition, concerns about
cybercrime may lead to the proliferation and legitimization of practices
such as “deep packet inspection” (when network operators scrutinize the
the contents of data packets that pass through their networks), driving
down the costs for tools and services associated with it. This, in turn, may
abet authoritarian governments (such as Iran’s) that are already relying on
technology supplied by European companies such as Nokia-Siemens to
analyze the traffic passing through national networks.
It is possible that social attitudes toward “publicness” and privacy
may become more cautious over time. So far, however, all the indica-
tors are that Internet companies will continue to promote the practice of
sharing more and more private data online. Short of U.S. and European
policy makers passing new privacy-related legislation—though a few
proposals are already in the pipeline—it is unrealistic to expect wider
social and cultural shifts away from “publicness.” In the business realm,
some Internet service providers (ISPs) in Germany and the Netherlands
are moving to make DDoS attacks costlier and more difficult to mount
by informing any customer whose computer has become infected by a
“botnet” (the mass of hijacked computers that makes a DoS attack “dis-
tributed”), by requiring corrective measures whenever a botnet infection
is detected on a customer’s machine, and by urging preventive measures
to stop such infections before they start. Absent such interventions, the
cost of DDoS attacks will continue to decline as botnets proliferate.
Whether all ISPs will accept the potentially expensive task of fighting
botnets remains to be seen, however.
Similarly, the software used for analyzing and “mining” data is be-
coming more powerful as businesses and intelligence agencies demand
it. Whether the use of such software could be limited only to democratic
states and business contexts remains to be seen; in the worst-case sce-
nario, such tools may end up strengthening the surveillance apparatus of
authoritarian states.
Authoritarian governments control the Internet through the combina-
tion of technological and sociopolitical means. It is unclear what the
most potent combination of those types is; an Internet-control system
that wields mainly the sociopolitical means may end up being more
draconian than one that relies on technological means only. The great
Evgeny Morozov 59

paradox is that the rising profile of “liberation technology” may push

Internet-control efforts into nontechnological areas for which there is
no easy technical “fix.”
Both types of control are made possible by a number of social, po-
litical, and technological factors, many of which have their roots in the
economies and government policies of democratic states. Any ambitious
effort to promote “Internet freedom” should therefore begin by generat-
ing a typology of those factors as well as outlining some strategies for
dealing with them. The U.S. government’s current “Internet freedom”
policy has yet to face this challenge, though it needs to do so.

NOTES

1. John Markoff, “Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors,” New York Times, 30 April
2009.

2. Virginia Heffernan, “Granting Anonymity,” New York Times Magazine, 17 Decem-

ber 2010.

3. Charlie Savage, “U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet,” New York
Times, 27 September 2010.

4. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on Internet Freedom,” 21 January 2010, avail-

able at www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm.

5. Erica Naone, “Political Net Attacks Increase,” Technology Review, 13 March 2009.

6. See “Politically Motivated Cyber Attacks,” Help Net Security, 6 October 2010,
available at www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=9957.

7. “Thai Website to Protect the King,” BBC News, 5 February 2009, available at http://
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7871748.stm.

8. Peter Burrows, “Internet Censorship, Saudi Style,” Business Week, 13 November

2008.

9. Soren Billing, “Saudi Campaign to Clean Up YouTube,” ITP.net, 13 August 2009,

available at www.itp.net/564689-saudi-campaign-to-clean-up-youtube.

10. Billing, “Saudi Campaign to Clean Up YouTube.”

11. Michael Wines, “In Restive Chinese Area, Cameras Keep Watch,” New York
Times, 2 August 2010.

12. Tom Simonite, “Surveillance Software Knows What a Camera Sees,” Technology
Review, 1 June 2010.

13. Maija Palmer, “Face Recognition Software Gaining a Broader Canvas,” Financial
Times, 22 May 2010.
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 II

Liberation Technology in China

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 5
THE BATTLE FOR
THE CHINESE INTERNET
Xiao Qiang

Xiao Qiang is adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journal-

ism of the University of California–Berkeley, principal investigator
at CounterPower Lab, and founder and chief editor of China Digital
Times. This essay originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of the
Journal of Democracy.

S cholars, journalists, and other commentators have extensively ex-

plored censorship in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but much
remains to be learned. In particular, we need a better grasp of the “cy-
berpolitics” of expanding online discourse and the capacity of the In-
ternet to advance free speech, political participation, and social change.
We also need to know more about the implications of (and limits on) the
state’s efforts to control what people can see, say, and do online. These
issues are crucial to our understanding of China and Chinese society and
the role of the Internet under an authoritarian, one-party regime.
It was in 2007—dubbed “Year One of Public Events (Gonggong Shi-
jian Yuannian)” by one commentator1—that the Internet first helped to
propel certain happenings into the official media despite resistance from
censors. By doing so, Internet activity effectively set the agenda for
public discourse. That year, stories about protests against the Xiamen
chemical plant, slave labor at brick kilns, and the abuse of individual
property rights spread rapidly online, generating so much public interest
and debate that censors and the official media had little option but to
report on them as well.
A look at the explosive growth of Internet access and use across Chi-
na, the tools and methods used by the authorities to control the content
and flow of information, and the emerging dynamics between Chinese
Internet users, or “netizens,” and censors shows that the expansion of
the Internet and Web-based media is changing the rules of the game
between state and society: Authorities are increasingly taking note and
responding to public opinion as it expresses itself online. This trend will
64 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

surely continue, with online public-opinion formation playing an impor-

tant role in the future development of Chinese society.
Beginning in March 2007, blogger Lian Yue posted a series of articles
warning the people in his hometown, Xiamen in Fujian Province, of the
potentially disastrous environmental impact of a proposed paraxylene
(PX) chemical factory in the city. He urged his fellow residents to speak
out against the plant. Although provincial and city authorities vigor-
ously deleted anti–PX factory messages on servers within their jurisdic-
tion, the offending posts on Lian Yue’s blog remained because its server
was in another province. Word of the PX plant soon spread throughout
the city via e-mail, instant messages (IMs), and text messages on mo-
bile phones. A few months later, in defiance of warnings from local
authorities, several thousand people showed up to protest in front of city
hall. Participants reported the event live, uploading cellphone photos
and texts directly to their blogs. Six months later, following two public
hearings on the matter, city authorities decided to relocate the lucrative
project. The official Xinhua News Agency praised the turnaround as in-
dicating “a change in the weight given to the views of ordinary Chinese
in recent years.”2
The Xiamen story marks the rise of a remarkable new force in China’s
contemporary social and political life: popular opinion (communicated
online) setting the public agenda together with liberal elements in the tra-
ditional media. According to the January 2008 blue book on social devel-
opment produced by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, more than
fifty-million Chinese read blogs regularly, making them “an important
channel for people to voice their opinions about important events.”
The government-run China Internet Network Information Center
(CNNIC) found that by the end of 2009, the number of Internet users in
China had skyrocketed to 384 million, with 53 million new users going
online in the last half of that year alone.3 CNNIC’s 2010 statistics show
that users are disproportionately young—more than 60 percent are under
25, and about 70 percent are under 30—and relatively well educated,
with more than 40 percent holding postgraduate degrees.4
The rise of blogging, instant messaging, social-networking servic-
es such as QQ, and search-engine and RSS aggregation tools such as
Baidu.com and Zhuaxia.com have given netizens an unprecedented ca-
pacity for communication. Internet bulletin-board systems (BBSs)—the
primary way in which Chinese netizens access and transmit information
online to a large number of people—play a vital role in Chinese online
life. By early 2009, China had more than 13 million BBS users, with
two-million posts published every day.5 The Tianya Club (www.tianya.
cn), based in Hainan Province, has 33.4 million total registered accounts
and between 100,000 and 500,000 users online at any one time. This on-
line community has 200,000 daily online users, hundreds of thousands
of new posts, and millions of commentaries a day. Another online forum
Xiao Qiang 65

that is popular among university students, Mop.com, is thought to be

even larger, with more than fifty-million visits a day. Users discuss cur-
rent events by posting comments on the bulletin boards of these major
forums as well as in smaller virtual communities. Even when the subject
is politically taboo or sensitive, under the cover of anonymity or using
coded euphemisms, participants can express particular views—and in
far bolder language than would be permitted in the official media.
The “blogosphere” has likewise expanded. Like BBSs, blogs exact
only a very low cost of entry—anyone with Internet access can start a
blog on a hosting service. According to CNNIC, the number of Chinese
with blogs reached 221 million by the end of 2009. Of those, the number
of active bloggers had risen to 145 million, a 37.9 percent increase from
just six months before.6
Although most posts are personal in nature, more and more blog-
gers are writing about public affairs and becoming local opinion leaders.
Blogs usually allow readers to comment, and because they often contain
links to other blogs and sites, they act as units in a dynamic community.
Together they form an interconnected whole—the blogosphere. While
the popular BBSs often become forums where public opinion regard-
ing various topics crystallizes, the redundancy of clusters and links in
the blogosphere forms a networked information environment that makes
absolute top-down control of content nearly impossible.
In addition to BBSs and blogs, chatrooms and IM services, such as
those of QQ and MSN, are also popular channels of communication. On
5 March 2010, Tencent (owner of QQ) announced that the number of
simultaneous online QQ users had reached a hundred-million.7 These
IM services play a crucial role in connecting Internet users, facilitat-
ing the spread of information, and coordinating actions through social
networks. Finally, new photo- and video-sharing sites such as Youku
and Tudou are the fastest-growing online applications. The richness of
online images, video, and sound has created a powerful media space
where millions of users can generate, distribute, and consume content.
Before the Internet, opportunities for unconstrained public self-
expression and access to uncensored information were extremely
limited. The new online freedoms have developed in spite of strin-
gent government efforts at control and containment. Three Chinese
characters may best describe the dynamic between authorities and ne-
tizens in Chinese cyberspace: feng (“block” or censor), shai (“place
under the sun” or reveal), and huo (“set on fire” or rapidly spread).

Online Censorship
Since the PRC’s 1949 founding, information control has been an es-
sential component of the governing strategy of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). The CCP has a monopoly on political power and has ex-
66 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

erted firm control over all mass media, from newspapers and magazines
to television channels and radio stations, making them mouthpieces for
the Party line. As the reform-minded journalist Lu Yuegang once wrote,
the CCP “must depend on two weapons: guns and pens. . . . The logic
behind this philosophy is not only to control the pen but to have this
control backed by the gun.”8
Since the introduction of the Internet in China in 1987, the govern-
ment has employed a multilayered strategy to control and monitor (feng)
online content and activities. Authorities at various levels use a com-
plex web of regulations, surveillance, imprisonment, propaganda, and
the blockade of hundreds of thousands of international websites at the
national-gateway level (the “Great Firewall of China”).
Several offices govern Internet content—most notably, the CCP’s
Central Propaganda Department (CPD), which ensures that media and
cultural content toe the party line, and the State Council Information
Office (SCIO), which oversees all news-providing websites, both of-
ficial and independent. Municipal, provincial, and county offices of the
CPD and SCIO are responsible for overseeing all media published or
hosted within their various jurisdictions. CPD officials frequently issue
censorship directives to their local counterparts, who have some leeway
to implement them as they see fit, and local officials sometimes issue
their own censorship directives and fine, threaten, or shut down media
outlets that report information which authorities would prefer to keep
from the public.9
Officials use a number of tactics—keyword filtering, for example—
to control online content. The Berkeley China Internet Project obtained
a list of more than a thousand words that are automatically banned in
China’s online forums, including dictatorship, truth, and riot police.
Censors customarily do not make clear exactly what content they in-
tend to ban. The government’s primary strategy for shaping content is to
hold Internet service providers (ISPs) and access providers responsible
for the behavior of their customers; thus business operators have little
choice but to censor the content on their sites proactively. For example,
regulations posted by the Guangdong Provincial Communications Ad-
ministration state:

The system operator will be responsible for the contents of his/her area,
using technical means as well as human evaluation to filter, select, and
monitor. If there should be any content in a BBS area that is against the
regulations, the related supervisory department will hold the BBS as well
as the individual operator responsible.10

Business owners must use a combination of their own judgment and

direct instructions from propaganda officials to determine what content
to ban. In an anonymous interview with this author, a senior manager at
one of China’s largest Internet portals acknowledged receiving instruc-
Xiao Qiang 67

tions from either SCIO or other provincial-level propaganda officials at

least three times a day.
Additionally, both the government and numerous websites employ
people to read and censor content manually. Tens of thousands of web-
sites hosted overseas are also blocked at the level of the nine national
gateways that connect the Chinese Internet to the global network.11 Web-
sites hosted inside China can be warned or shut down if they violate rules
of acceptable content, and individual Internet users who spread informa-
tion that authorities deem harmful have been threatened, intimidated, or
thrown in jail, most often on charges related to national security, such
as “subversion.” Speaking to the CCP Politburo in January 2007, Presi-
dent Hu Jintao called for improved technologies, content controls, and
network security for monitoring the Internet, saying, “Whether we can
cope with the Internet is a matter that affects the development of social-
ist culture, the security of information, and the stability of the state.”12
Of course the government was already proving creative in its polic-
ing of the Internet. For example, since 2007 two cartoon characters,
Jingjing and Chacha (from jingcha, the Chinese word for police), have
popped up on Internet users’ screens to provide links to the Internet
Police section of the Public Security website, where readers can report
illegal online information. A Shenzhen police officer explained: “This
time we publish the image of Internet Police in the form of a cartoon,
to let all Internet users know that the Internet is not a place beyond the
law . . . The main function of Jingjing and Chacha is to intimidate, not
to answer questions.”13
Throughout 2008, Internet control was increasingly tightened in
order to present a harmonious image to the world during the Beijing
Olympics. Beginning in early 2009, the government further ratcheted up
its efforts at control. The initiatives included a campaign against “vul-
garity” (which encompasses not just pornography, but also dirty words,
slang, and socially and politically unacceptable images) that aimed at
search engines, Web-hosting services, and online communities.14 Ac-
cording to official Chinese media reports, thousands of websites were
closed as a result.
Likewise, as the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
massacre neared that year, the government temporarily shut down
countless websites—including Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia—
ostensibly for “technical maintenance.” Then, right around the anni-
versary on June 4, the Ministry of Information Technology announced
plans to require the preinstallation of a filtering software called Green
Dam Youth Escort on all computers made or sold in China. After pub-
lic outcry, however, these plans were scrapped. On July 5, in the after-
math of interethnic riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang Province—home to most
of China’s Uyghur population—the government again blocked Twitter
and other microblogging sites.
68 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

Even with the censors’ constant presence, the ephemeral, anony-

mous, and networked nature of Internet communication limits their im-
pact. Moreover, a number of factors make the censors’ work particularly
daunting. First, the Internet is a many-to-many communication platform
that has very low barriers to entry (and risks of use) for anyone who has
an Internet connection. Second, with the complicated network topol-
ogy—the blogosphere and the whole Internet with its redundant con-
nections, millions of overlapping clusters, self-organized communities,
and new nodes growing in an explosive fashion—traditional methods
of content control such as putting pressure on a publisher to self-censor
become nearly impossible.
The Chinese government’s Internet-control system mainly aims to
censor content that openly defies or attacks CCP rule or contradicts the
official line on such taboo topics as the Tiananmen Square massacre or
Tibet. Most important, however, is preventing the widespread distribu-
tion of information that could lead to collective action such as mass
demonstrations or signature campaigns.

The Digital Resistance

The results of government censorship efforts are mixed at best. In
early 2009, a creature named the “Grass Mud Horse” appeared in an on-
line video that became an immediate Internet sensation.15 Within weeks,
the Grass Mud Horse—or cao ni ma, the homophone of a profane Chi-
nese expression—became the de facto mascot of Chinese netizens fight-
ing for free expression. It inspired poetry, videos, and clothing lines. As
one blogger explained, the Grass Mud Horse represented information
and ideas that could not be expressed in mainstream discourse.
The Grass Mud Horse was particularly suited to the contested space of
the Chinese Internet. The government’s pervasive and intrusive censor-
ship has stirred resentment among Chinese netizens, sparking new forms
of social resistance and demands for greater freedom of information and
expression, often conveyed via coded language and metaphors adopted
to avoid the most obvious forms of censorship. As a result, the Internet
has become a quasi-public space where the CCP’s dominance is ex-
posed, ridiculed, and criticized, often by means of satire, jokes, songs,
poems, and code words.
Such coded communication, once whispered in private, is not new
to China. Now, however, it is publicly communicated rather than mur-
mured behind the backs of the authorities. For example, since censor-
ship is carried out under the official slogan of “constructing a harmoni-
ous society,” netizens have begun to refer to the censoring of Internet
content as “being harmonized.” Furthermore, the word “to harmonize”
in Chinese (hexie) is a homonym of the word for “river crab.” In folk
language, crab also refers to a bully who exerts power through violence.
Xiao Qiang 69

Thus the image of a crab has become a new satirical, politically charged
icon for netizens who are fed up with government censorship and who
now call themselves the River Crab Society. Photos of a malicious crab
travel through the blogosphere as a silent protest under the virtual noses
of the cyberpolice. Even on the most vigorously self-censored Chinese
search engine, Baidu.com, a search of the phrase “River Crab Society”
will yield more than 5.8 million results.
In China, the nebulous nature of the Internet allows information not
easily accessible elsewhere to be revealed (shai). Anyone who goes on-
line will be exposed to multifarious sources of information and have
unprecedented opportunities to exchange ideas and opinions on social,
political, and personal issues. Simultaneously, the interaction between
information and communications technology and the traditional media
creates a dynamic that is challenging the boundaries of the existing cen-
sorship system and thereby the official media as well.
Netizens have launched endless so-called shai activities on bulletin
boards, blogs, and video- and photo-sharing services: For “shai sala-
ries,” people post their own or others’ salaries for comparison; for “shai
vacations,” users share vacation photos and experiences; and for “shai
corruption,” “shai bosses,” and “shai riches,” netizens publish informa-
tion and opinions online about the elite that would otherwise go unsaid.
The feng and shai processes are constantly at odds with each other.
Even when information is censored at a high level, it often makes its way
through online cracks to spread among netizens. In addition, foreign web-
sites and news media that provide Chinese-language services—including
the BBC, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and newspapers based in Hong Kong
and Taiwan—frequently publish information that is censored in China,
which is then often redistributed inside the country by a small but active
group of tech-savvy “information brokers” who know how to circumvent
the Great Firewall and circulate the news via BBSs, mass e-mailings, and
other online channels. Thus banned publications such as dissident news-
letters and Voice of America updates can reach Chinese readers despite
the government’s use of advanced filtering technology.
The last character, huo (“fire” or information cascade), describes the
phenomenon of news reports, comments, photos, or videos that spread
through cyberspace like wildfire. The original item may appear on a bul-
letin board or blog post, or even in a local paper, and can generate thou-
sands of subsequent comments and posts. Like water gushing through
a hole in a dam, if the speed and volume of the dissemination is great
enough, any attempt to stanch the flow will be in vain. Driven by dense
clusters of interested netizens, the spread of controversial information
can outpace the control of censors and quickly become public knowl-
edge—a state of affairs that has huge political implications. When a huo
phenomenon occurs, the Internet plays the role of a massive distribution
platform that denies the government its agenda-setting power.
70 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

The huo process is especially potent when a local issue resonates

with a broader audience and spreads beyond the limited jurisdiction of
local officials, sometimes even making it into the national media. When
corruption or environmental damage, for example, are exposed, local
authorities implicated in the scandal often crack down on news websites
hosted within their respective jurisdictions. But when such news finds
its way to a website based outside the relevant local jurisdiction, the of-
ficials of that jurisdiction will have no means of directly suppressing it
and no guarantee that their counterparts in other locales will choose to
do so. Central authorities may likewise choose not to impose a blackout
of online news about a problematic local issue or event. This gap in
control between local authorities as well as between local and central
authorities opens a space for netizens to transmit information.
For example, when drunken 22-year-old Li Qiming ran down two
roller-blading college students on the campus of Hebei University—
killing one and injuring the other—and was arrested after leaving the
scene, he shouted: “Go ahead, sue me if you dare. My dad is Li Gang!”
Li Gang was the deputy director of the local public-security bureau. Four
days later, Mop.com ran an online contest asking entrants to incorporate
the sentence “My father is Li Gang” into classical Chinese poems. The
contest garnered more than six-thousand entries. A few days after that,
the CPD issued a directive to prevent any further “hype regarding the
disturbance over traffic at Hebei University.” But the phrase “my father
is Li Gang” has since become a popular Internet meme in China.16
The huo phenomenon also plays a critical role in the interplay between
Internet expression and changes in the traditional media. Many Chinese
journalists are leading double lives—reporters for the state-controlled
media by day, bloggers by night. When covering touchy subjects—such
as natural disasters, major industrial accidents, or official-corruption
cases—print reporters must follow the lead of official sources before
conducting interviews and publishing their findings. But journalists can
now evade such guidelines by collecting and distributing information
online, making it harder for censors to hush up sensitive stories. In fact,
when such information becomes huo online, the traditional media have
a legitimate reason to cover it. Some even follow breaking develop-
ments as these are reported in the online realm. Southern Weekend, for
example, has an editorial section called Net Eye that picks up interesting
online stories and publishes them in print.

An Avenue for Feedback and Accountability

In recent years, the processes of feng, shai, and huo have been at work,
helping the Internet to drive public opinion. In early 2007, a netizen from
Chongqing posted a photograph of a house, dubbed “China’s Most Incred-
ible Nail House,” being threatened by a new development.17 The image
Xiao Qiang 71

touched on problems of urban construction, property rights, and forced

evictions, and the official media soon jumped on the story, which hap-
pened to break just as the National People’s Congress was passing a new
property-rights law that purported to protect individual homeowners.
Even as the official media began to carry the story, Sina.com (Chi-
na’s largest Internet portal) offered to pay for images and videos of the
nail house, and Mop.com ran a real-time monitoring page. A local court
ruled against the homeowners, but public opinion, swayed by poignant
online images, heavily favored the nail-house owners. After they dis-
obeyed the court order and refused to move, the central government
issued orders to limit reporting, but the story lived on through photo-
graphs posted online by netizens. Ultimately, the developer bowed to
public pressure, settling the case and compensating the couple for their
property, which was eventually destroyed.
Sometimes the government has official reasons to acknowledge cer-
tain elements of a story while censoring others, as with news of the
widespread use of slave labor at brick kilns in Shanxi Province in mid-
2007. The story, which involved the kidnapping of children, slave labor,
and the collusion of local police, Party officials, and kiln owners, spread
through the Chinese blogosphere and ignited national outrage. Reports
in the official media followed, and soon top Party officials—including
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao—publicly expressed con-
cern over the issue. Details continued to emerge, and the story only got
uglier, eventually spurring the Internet Bureau of the SCIO (also called
the CCP External Communication Office) to instruct its subordinate
offices and the main Internet news portals to stick to “positive propa-
ganda,” to emphasize the government’s responsiveness in the brick-kiln
matter, to ramp up the monitoring of websites, and to quickly delete
information that could be harmful to the government.18
Although these cases show that official Internet censorship is not al-
ways automatically and fully employed nor always successful, in gen-
eral the government is able to exert near-total control over information
distributed online, particularly when officials make this control a prior-
ity. For example, when dissident writer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the
2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the CPD ordered all websites not to create or
post stories about the prize and to delete any that already existed. The
SCIO also issued a directive forbidding all interactive online forums,
including blogs and microblogs, from transmitting prohibited words
relating to the prize.19 As a result, hardly any mention of last year’s
Nobel Peace Prize can be found on the Chinese Internet, let alone Liu
Xiaobo’s name or writings.
Nonetheless, there is a changing dynamic afoot: Some big stories are
breaking online first only to be carried later by traditional media, there-
by making bloggers and netizens information agenda setters. Moreover,
despite government censorship efforts, the sheer speed and number of
72 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

messages and Internet posts are making it ever harder, and in some cases
impossible, for censors to stay ahead. The time lapse between the in-
formation cascade and top-down censorship instructions is critical, as
is the gap in control between central and local authorities, which has
allowed local events to become national news reported by the centrally
controlled media. Once sensitive stories appear in the official media,
the Internet amplifies and keeps them alive, preventing the government
from ignoring or suppressing inconvenient news.
Since traditional media outlets still remain under CCP control, even
the more progressive and outspoken publications such as Southern Me-
tropolis Daily or Southern Weekend have only a very limited ability to
push the envelope on political reporting. When mass protests, health
epidemics, or official-corruption cases occur, the Internet is now the
first place people go to find the latest news and to share experiences and
opinions. For the first time, citizens are able to participate in a public
dialogue about issues of crucial importance to their lives.
In 2007, Xinhuanet surveyed the most popular topics (not including
those that had been deleted by monitors) in the three most influential on-
line communities—Strong Country Forum (bbs.people.com.cn), Tianya
Club, and Kaidi (club2.cat898.com).20 In addition to the big stories that
year, the study also found that other “sensitive social events” were pop-
ular, including those relating to governance, police violence, environ-
mental protection, public health, judicial reform, and natural disasters. It
also suggested that netizens’ consciousness of rights is rising, as expres-
sions such as “right to know,” “right to express,” and “right to monitor
[the government]” are often used in connection with those large online
public events. Furthermore, participants cited as concerns the credibility
and responsiveness of various levels of government as well as issues of
public morality and the crisis of values in society.
As Beijing-based Internet expert Hu Yong has written: “Since China
never had mechanisms to accurately detect and reflect public opinion,
blogs and BBS have become an effective route to form and communi-
cate such public opinions of the society.”21 One of the direct impacts of
this new information landscape is that negative reports and criticism of
local officials—especially relating to corruption, social justice, or peo-
ple’s daily experiences—are now being exposed and nationally dissemi-
nated online and resonating across society. Sometimes such a process is
tolerated by central authorities to keep lower officials in check and to
allow the public to let off steam before it erupts uncontrollably, perhaps
resulting in public protests. Such Internet-generated public opinion is
sometimes the sole channel for providing feedback to officials.
Online oversight has an especially large impact on local officials in
charge of administrative, legal, law-enforcement, and propaganda agen-
cies. Once local officials lose control and information spreads beyond
their jurisdiction, the vehemence of an aroused public may force them
Xiao Qiang 73

to change policies. In the words of a local propaganda official, for the

government, “it was so much better when there was no Internet.”22
Internet-driven public events have also helped to highlight issues
that originate locally—or even abroad—but have wider implications for
Chinese society. For individuals advocating political reform and social
change, the Internet and the more reform-minded parts of the traditional
media offer outlets to discuss topics that had before been taboo. For
example, as prodemocracy protests erupted in Egypt in January 2011,
Chinese authorities ordered that only Xinhua’s account of events be dis-
seminated. Yet even as Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, blocked
the word “Egypt” from its search engine,23 hundreds of thousands of
posts on Sina Weibo remained available to savvy users, and netizens
continued to spread the news from Egypt and discuss its implications
for China’s political reality. Eventually, in the wake of online calls for
prodemocracy demonstrations inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt,
the word “Jasmine” was also barred from Sina Weibo.24

Citizen Mobilization
Often, the next step after public dialogue is collective mobilization
and organization around issues of common concern. This is an area
where Internet-based public opinion has the potential to make a power-
ful impact on Chinese society and politics. While authorities stifle civil
society and independent social organizations, various grassroots groups
that depart from the official line with regard to such social issues as the
environment, women’s rights, and homosexuality rely on the Internet to
organize and distribute information. The expanded space for discussion
of public affairs has allowed civil society to push the boundaries of as-
sociative and communicative freedoms.
The Xiamen anti-PX protests are now considered a milestone. One
protester told a foreign reporter covering the story that at last, the people
“can be heard.” The city government, in return, listened to public opin-
ion and adjusted its decision accordingly. This was a first in China and a
very encouraging sign. The state-run Xinhua News Agency concluded,
“The suspended controversial Xiamen city PX plant probably will not
become a landmark wherever it finally stands, but it may have helped
lay a cornerstone that boosts ordinary Chinese people’s participation in
policy making.”25 Of course the ruling CCP has not shown any sign of
giving up its monopoly on political power and is still highly sensitive to
the growing political impact of the Internet.
Online mobilization and protests have also made an impact beyond
China’s borders, becoming a significant factor influencing Chinese di-
plomacy and the country’s image abroad. In November 2009, to com-
memorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a
German nonprofit created a virtual “Berlin Twitter Wall” where indi-
74 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

viduals could post their thoughts on the occasion through use of the
Twitter hashtag “#FOTW.” The site’s introduction further invited par-
ticipants to “let us know which walls still have to come down to make
our world a better place!” In response, Chinese comments blasting the
Great Firewall and Internet censorship dominated the virtual Berlin Wall
for weeks. Alluding to Ronald Reagan’s famous speech before Berlin’s
Brandenburg Gate, Chinese bloggers also waged a “Tear Down This
Firewall!” campaign prior to U.S. president Barack Obama’s visit to
China in November 2009. Largely due to such efforts, President Obama
addressed the issue of online freedom of speech at a town-hall meeting
with students in Shanghai.
Not all online mobilization is as spontaneous and anonymous as the
campaign against the Great Firewall was. Influential bloggers may also
mobilize their fellow netizens by acting as spokespersons for certain
issue positions, or by giving personal authentication to messages that
resonate with the people, or by articulating what others could not say
in the face of political censorship. Bestselling author, race-car driver,
and blogger Han Han is one such figure. Han is an outspoken critic of
government censorship, and his blog posts are often deleted by censors.
Nevertheless, his main blog received more than three-hundred million
hits between 2006 and 2009. In April 2010, Time magazine listed Han
Han as a candidate for the hundred “most globally influential people.”
Han Han subsequently wrote a blog post asking the Chinese govern-
ment “to treat art, literature, and the news media better, not to impose
too many restrictions and censorship, and not to use the power of the
government or the name of the state to block or slander any artist or
journalist.”26 This post generated some 25,000 comments from his read-
ers and was viewed by more than 1.2 million people. The article has
also been widely reposted online; in May 2010, a Google search found
more than 45,000 links reposting all or part of the essay. Despite of-
ficial efforts to use the Great Firewall to block Chinese netizens from
voting for Han Han on Time’s website, he came in second in the final
tally, showing the mobilizational power of his writing.
Government officials have begun to recognize that the Internet has
set an irreversible trend toward a society that is more transparent, a citi-
zenry that is more eager to participate in public life, and a public whose
opinion carries more weight. Some officials advocate the need for po-
litical reform to adapt to these forces. In a long 2007 article published
in the official press, Xin Di, director of the Research Department of the
Central Party School, listed five concrete examples to show the “incre-
mental progress” taking place in China’s political system.27 Four of his
five examples were not top-down efforts at political reform, but rather
were related to official government reactions to Internet-driven public
events. Although genuine political reform did not appear on the leader-
ship’s agenda at the CCP National Congress that year, some lower-level
Xiao Qiang 75

officials did recognize the important role of the Internet as a catalyst for
political change in Chinese society.
These more forward-looking officials believe that the government
should selectively tolerate or even welcome Internet expression as a ba-
rometer for public opinion. Permitting such expression allows the gov-
ernment to collect information about society, to be more responsive to
citizens’ concerns, and to provide a safety valve for the release of public
anger. The Internet can also help to hold local officials more account-
able—to the central authorities as well as to the public. In addition, the
Internet plays a role in promoting political change when the interests and
agendas of different government agencies or administrative levels do not
align. In such a case, public opinion may help to bolster one side over the
other.
A 2009 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences study of the Internet’s
impact on public opinion identifies netizens as a “new opinion class”
that can swiftly influence society and describes the dual methods used by
the government to cope with the growing challenge of online activism—
clamping down on the Internet while also responding quickly to public
opinion.28 Indeed, this rising online public participation is an indicator
that the rules of the political game in China may have started to change.
The CCP’s censorship of both the traditional media and the Internet is
certain to continue. Yet the increasing influence of online public opinion
shows that the CCP and the government can no longer maintain absolute
control over the spread of information. The Internet is already one of
the most influential media spaces in China—no less so than traditional
forms of print or broadcast media. Underlying ever-stronger measures
aimed at bolstering state control is a rising level of public information
and awareness in Chinese society. Furthermore, through online social
networks and virtual communities, the Chinese Internet has become a
substantial communications platform for aggregating information and
coordinating collective action.
The conflicting forces of feng, shai, and huo will remain in tension
with one another. The result is an emerging pattern of public opinion and
citizen participation that represents a shift of power in Chinese society.
The Internet allows citizens to comment on certain (albeit limited) top-
ics, and to move them out of purely local arenas to the point where they
can become national concerns. Moreover, these “public events” now
play a role in promoting human rights, freedom of expression, the rule
of law, and governmental accountability. An entire generation of online
public agenda setters has emerged to become influential opinion leaders.
Surely they will have an important role to play in China’s future.
Furthermore, certain somewhat progressive media outlets such as
Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekend are also actively ex-
pressing more liberal political ideas and pushing the envelope whenever
they can. Before the Internet, such reform-minded discourse could gain
76 The Battle for the Chinese Internet

little ground against CCP propaganda. Now, as these liberal elements

within the established media converge with independent, grassroots
voices online, they are creating a substantial force that is slowly wear-
ing away at the CCP’s ideological and social control.
China is becoming an increasingly transparent and mobile society
with more pluralistic values. The Internet has become a training ground
for citizen participation in public affairs: It creates a better informed
and more engaged public that is demanding more from its government.
The CCP regime is learning to adapt to these new circumstances and
becoming more responsive. Already we are starting to see compromise,
negotiation, and rule-changing behavior in the regime’s response to this
challenge, indicating the possibility of better governance with greater
citizen participation. From this perspective, the Internet is not just a
contested space, but a catalyst for social and political transformation.

NOTES

1. “Xiao Shu: Hoping Xiamen PX Event Became the Milestone,” Nanfang Zhoumo
[Southern Weekend] (Guangzhou), 20 December 2007.

2. See Xinhuanet at http://news.xinhuanet.com/comments/2007-12/23/content_7297065.

htm.

3. China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), “25th Statistical Report on the
Development of China’s Internet,” January 2010; available at www.cnnic.net.cn/upload-
files/pdf/2010/1/15/101600.pdf.

4. CNNIC, “25th Statistical Report,” and CNNIC, “20th Statistical Report on the Develop-
ment of China’s Internet,” June 2007. Since July 2007, CNNIC has counted as “Internet us-
ers” anyone over six years old who visited the Internet from any terminal (including a mobile
phone), at least once in six months. Before July 2007, an Internet user was defined as anyone
who spent at least an hour a week online. As a result of this change, more low-income us-
ers, such as migrant workers and rural residents, who use mobile phones instead of personal
computers as their main communications interface, are now being included as netizens.

5. “New Media Clash,” Xinhua News Agency, 16 February 2009, available at http://
news.xinhuanet.com/zgjx/2009-02/16/content_10825818.htm.

6. CNNIC, “25th Statistical Report.”

7. “Tencent Announces QQ Users Reached 100 Million,” 5 March 2010, see http://
tech.qq.com/a/20100305/000528.htm.

8. “A Bold New Voice—Lu Yuegang’s Extraordinary Open Letter to Authorities,”

China Digital Times, 20 July 2004.

9. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Hearing on Access to In-

formation in the People’s Republic of China, testimony by Xiao Qiang, 31 July 2007.

10. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Hearing on China’s State
Control Mechanisms and Methods, testimony by Xiao Qiang, 14 April 2005.

11. Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, “Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering
Xiao Qiang 77

in China,” working paper, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School,
2003; available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china.

12. “Hu Jintao Asks Chinese Officials to Better Cope with Internet,” People’s Daily,
Beijing, 24 January 2007.

13. “Starting from September 1, New Virtual Cops Will ‘Cruise’ All Thirteen Internet
Portals in Beijing,” Beijing News, 22 August 2007.

14. The other agencies are the State Administration for Industry and Commerce
(SAIC), State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), and General Ad-
ministration of Press and Publication (GAPP).

15. See http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/02/music-video-the-song-of-the-grass-dirt-

horse.

16. Michael Wines, “China’s Censors Misfire in Abuse-of-Power Case,” New York
Times, 17 November 2010, available at www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18li.
html.

17. See www.flickr.com/photos/scorpico7/2765449045 for a photograph of the nail

house.

18. “A Notice from the Central Government to Censor News Related to Shanxi Brick
Kilns Event,” China Digital Times, 15 June 2007, available at http://chinadigitaltimes.
net/2007/06/a-notice-from-the-central-government-to-censor-news-related-to-shanxi-
brick-kilns-event.

19. “New Directives from the Ministry of Truth (RE: Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace
Prize),” China Digital Times, 8 October 2010, available at http://chinadigitaltimes.
net/2010/10/new-directives-from-the-ministry-of-truth-october-8-2010-re-liu-xiaobo-
wins-nobel-peace-prize.

20. “Study Report of Online Public Opinions in 2007,” Xinhuanet, 5 February 2008.

21. Hu Yong, “Blogs in China,” China Media Project Case Study (on file at the Jour-
nalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong), 4 August 2005.

22. “Director of Propaganda Department of Shuide, Shanxi Province: Those Years

Without Internet Were So Much Better!” Southern News.net, 30 January 2008, available
at http://news.qq.com/a/20080130/000639.htm.

23. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, “China Blocks ‘Egypt’ on Sina Weibo, Its Twitter
Clone,” Business Insider SAI, 29 January 2011, available at www.businessinsider.com/
china-blocks-egypt-on-sina-weibo-its-twitter-clone-2011-1.

24. Kathrin Hille, “China Authorities Block Democracy Campaigns,” Financial Times,
25 February 2011.

25. “Common Chinese Have More Say in Policy-Making,” Xinhuanet, 3 January 2008.

26. See “Han Han . . . Comes in at Number Two in Time 100 Poll: ‘Let the Sunshine
In,’” China Digital Times, 29 April 2010, available at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/04/
han-han-let-the-sunshine-in.

27. “Political Civilization in Detail,” Xinhua News Agency, 4 February 2008.

28. Zhu Huaxin, Shan Xuegang, and Hu Jiangchun, “2009 China Internet Public Opin-
ion Analysis Report,” in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “2010 Society Blue Paper,”
22 December 2009.
 6
CHINA’S “NETWORKED
AUTHORITARIANISM”
Rebecca MacKinnon

Rebecca MacKinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the

New America Foundation. She is cofounder of Global Voices Online
(www.globalvoicesonline.org), a global citizen-media network. This
essay, which draws on testimony that she gave before the U.S. Con-
gressional-Executive Commission on China (www.cecc.gov) on 24
March 2010, originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of the Journal
of Democracy.

To mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Ger-
man arts organization launched a website called the “Berlin Twitter
Wall.” Anyone anywhere on the Internet could use Twitter to post a com-
ment into one of the speech bubbles. Within a few days of its launch, the
website was overrun by messages in Chinese. Instead of talking about
the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism in Europe, Chinese
Twitter users accessed the site to protest their own government’s Internet
censorship. One wrote: “My apologies to German people a million times
[for taking over this site]. But I think if Germans learn about our situation,
they would feel sorry for us a million times.” Twitter is blocked in China.
Still, a growing community is so determined to gain access to the widely
used social-networking service and hold uncensored conversations with
people around the world that these Chinese Internet users have acquired
the technical skills to circumvent this censorship system—widely known
as the “Great Firewall of China,” a filtering system that blocks websites
on domestic Internet connections.
In late January 2010, U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton—who
two months earlier had stood at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate with other
world leaders to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the
Wall—gave a 45-minute speech on “Internet Freedom.” She spelled out
how one single, free, and open global Internet is an essential prerequi-
site for freedom and democracy in the twenty-first century. “A new in-
formation curtain is descending across much of the world,” she warned.
Rebecca MacKinnon 79

“And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the
samizdat of our day.”1
But can we assume that Chinese authoritarianism will crumble just
as the Iron Curtain crumbled two decades ago? It is unwise to make the
assumption that the Internet will lead to rapid democratization in China
or in other repressive regimes. There are difficult issues of government
policy and corporate responsibility that must be resolved in order to en-
sure that the Internet and mobile technologies can fulfill their potential
to support liberation and empowerment.
When an authoritarian regime embraces and adjusts to the inevitable
changes brought by digital communications, the result is what I call
“networked authoritarianism.” In the networked authoritarian state, the
single ruling party remains in control while a wide range of conversa-
tions about the country’s problems nonetheless occurs on websites and
social-networking services. The government follows this online chat-
ter, and sometimes people are able to use the Internet to call attention
to social problems or injustices and even manage to have an impact on
government policies. As a result, the average person with Internet or
mobile access has a much greater sense of freedom—and may feel that
he has the ability to speak and be heard—in ways that were not possible
under classic authoritarianism. At the same time, in the networked au-
thoritarian state, there is no guarantee of individual rights and freedoms.
Those whom the rulers see as threats are jailed; truly competitive, free,
and fair elections are not held; and the courts and the legal system are
tools of the ruling party.
As residents of a networked authoritarian society, China’s more than
four-hundred million Internet users are managing to have more fun, feel
more free, and be less fearful of their government than was the case
even a mere decade ago. At the same time, however, the government
has continued to monitor its people and to censor and manipulate online
conversations to such a degree that no one has been able to organize a
viable opposition movement. According to the Dui Hua Foundation, a
human-rights advocacy organization, arrests and indictments on charges
of “endangering state security”—the most common charge used in cases
of political, religious, or ethnic dissent—more than doubled in 2008
for the second time in three years.2 Average Chinese citizens, however,
rarely hear of such trends—an “information gap” which makes it much
less likely that a critical mass of them will see the need for rapid politi-
cal change. The system does not control all of the people all of the time,
but it is effective enough that even most of China’s best and brightest
are not aware of the extent to which their understanding of their own
country—let alone the broader world—is being blinkered and manipu-
lated. All university students in China’s capital now have high-speed In-
ternet access. But when a documentary crew from U.S. public television
recently went onto Beijing university campuses and showed students the
80 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

iconic 1989 photograph of a man standing in front of a tank in Tianan-

men Square, most did not recognize the picture at all.
The Chinese experience teaches us a globally applicable lesson: In-
dependent activists and prodemocracy movements may have won some
early skirmishes against censorship, but one cannot assume that their
adversaries will remain weak and unskilled in the navigation and ma-
nipulation of digital communications networks. In fact, governments
and others whose power is threatened by digital insurgencies are learn-
ing quickly and pouring unprecedented resources into building their
capacity to influence and shape digital communications networks in
direct and indirect ways. As Larry Diamond put it: “It is not technol-
ogy, but people, organizations, and governments that will determine
who prevails.”3
In the public discourse about the Internet and repressive regimes,
Western policy makers and activists frequently use Cold War–era meta-
phors in ways that are similar to Clinton’s likening of blogs to Soviet-
era samizdat. Such metaphors are strongest in the policy discourse about
the Great Firewall of China. The Hong Kong–based communications
scholar Lokman Tsui has criticized this “Iron Curtain 2.0” lens through
which many in the West seek to understand the Chinese government’s
relationship with the Internet. “Strategies to break down the Great Fire-
wall,” he writes, “are based on the belief that the Internet is a Trojan
Horse (another metaphor!) that eventually will disempower the Chi-
nese state from within and topple the authoritarian government, as the
barbarians in previous times have done for China, and as international
broadcasting has done with regard to ending communism in the Cold
War.” Tsui argues that this framework for understanding the impact of
the Internet on Chinese politics is not consistent with the growing body
of empirical research and is therefore likely to result in failed policy and
activism strategies.4
Guobin Yang, who began researching Chinese online discourse even
before the Internet first became commercially available there in 1995,
has concluded that in spite of China’s increasingly sophisticated system
of censorship and surveillance, the Chinese Internet is nonetheless a
highly “contentious” place where debate is fierce, passionate, and also
playful. After analyzing numerous cases in which Chinese Internet us-
ers succeeded in bringing injustices to national attention or managed to
cause genuine changes in local-government policies or official behav-
ior, Yang argues that the Internet has brought about a “social revolution,
because the ordinary people assume an unprecedented role as agents of
change and because new social formations are among its most profound
outcomes.”5 Note that the revolution he describes is being waged mainly
by Chinese people posting and accessing information on websites and
services operated by Chinese companies—in other words, acting inside
the Great Firewall.
Rebecca MacKinnon 81

In examining the use of information and communications technolo-

gies (ICTs) by China’s “have-less” working classes, Jack Linchuan Qiu
documents how Internet and mobile-phone use has spread down to the
“lower strata” of Chinese society. This development has given birth to
a new “working-class network society” that provides China’s less fortu-
nate people with tools for mobility, empowerment, and self-betterment.
Yet he also describes how “working-class ICTs” provide new levers
for government and corporations to organize and control a new class of
“programmable labor.” While Chinese workers have been able to use In-
ternet and mobile technologies to organize strikes and share information
about factory conditions in different parts of the country, Qiu concludes
that “working-class ICTs by themselves do not constitute a sufficient
condition for cultural and political empowerment.”6

Can Online Activism Help Authoritarians?

In his book Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and
Society in China, Yongnian Zheng points out that the success or failure
of online activism in China depends on its scope and focus, and that
some online activism—particularly that which is at the local level or
targets specific policy issues over which there are divisions or turf
wars between different parts of the government—can actually serve
to bolster regime legitimacy. The least successful online movements
tend to be those that advocate various forms of political “exit,” includ-
ing calls for an end to one-party rule by the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) and greater political autonomy or independence for particular
ethnic or religious groups. “When the regime is threatened by chal-
lengers,” Zheng writes, “the soft-liners and hard-liners are likely to
stand on the same side and fight the challengers.” On the other hand,
successful online movements in China are usually characterized by
what Zheng (following Albert O. Hirschman) calls the “voice” option,
or what other political scientists call the “cooperation option.” Such
online insurgencies actually provide ammunition to reformist leaders
or liberal local bureaucrats in their power struggles against hard-line
conservative colleagues. Voice activism helps reduce political risks to
reformist officials, who can point to online sentiment and argue that
without action or policy change there will be more unrest and public
unhappiness.7
Thus, rising levels of online activism in China cannot automati-
cally be interpreted as a sign of impending democratization. One
must examine what kind of online activism is succeeding and what
kind is failing. If voice activism is for the most part succeeding while
exit activism is systematically being stifled and crushed—thanks to
high levels of systematic censorship and surveillance, in addition to
the lack of an independent or impartial judiciary—one can conclude
82 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

that the CCP has adapted to the Internet much more successfully than
most Western observers realize. The Iron Curtain 2.0 mentality criti-
cized by Tsui may indeed have blinded many Western policy makers,
human-rights activists, and journalists to what is really happening in
China. In 2005, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote
breathlessly: “it’s the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the
Communist Party’s grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband.” 8
Zheng’s analysis, however, supports the opposite conclusion: The In-
ternet may actually prolong the CCP’s rule, bolstering its domestic
power and legitimacy while the regime enacts no meaningful political
or legal reforms.
Public-policy discourse and deliberation are not exclusive features
of democracies. Political scientists have identified varying amounts of
public discourse and deliberation in a range of authoritarian states. In
2008, Baogang He and Mark Warren coined the term “authoritarian de-
liberation” to explain how China’s authoritarian regime uses “delibera-
tive venues” to bolster regime legitimacy. While it is possible that the
deliberation now taking place within Chinese authoritarianism might
bring about eventual democratization, Baogang He and Warren believe
that this is only one of two possibilities. The other is that the delib-
erative practices embraced by the state could stabilize and extend the
CCP’s authoritarian rule.9
Min Jiang applies the concept of authoritarian deliberation specifi-
cally to Chinese cyberspace, identifying four main deliberative spaces:
1) “central propaganda spaces,” meaning websites and forums built and
operated directly by the government; 2) “government-regulated com-
mercial spaces,” meaning websites and other digital platforms that are
owned and operated by private companies but subject to government
regulation, including elaborate requirements for content censorship
and user surveillance; 3) “emergent civic spaces,” meaning websites
run by nongovernmental organizations and noncommercial individuals,
which are censored less systematically than commercial spaces but are
nonetheless subject to registration requirements as well as intimidation,
shutdown, or arrest when authors cross the line or administrators fail
to control community conversations; and 4) “international deliberative
spaces,” meaning websites and services that are hosted beyond Chi-
nese-government jurisdiction—some of which are blocked and require
circumvention tools to access—where content and conversations not
permitted on domestic websites can be found, and where more interna-
tionally minded Chinese Internet users seek to conduct conversations
with a broader global public.
It is important to note that the Great Firewall is meant to control
only the fourth category of deliberative space, the one that is lo-
cated outside China. Yet it is the first two categories, as Jiang points
out, that have the greatest impact on Chinese public opinion. The
Rebecca MacKinnon 83

state uses much more direct and proactive means to control the first
three deliberative spaces, all of which operate within the jurisdic-
tion of the Chinese government. Undesirable or “sensitive” content
is either deleted from the Internet altogether or blocked from being
published. 10

The Web as Waterworks

Chinese scholar Li Yonggang has suggested that, instead of using a
“firewall” metaphor, it is more helpful to think of Chinese Internet con-
trols—which include not only censorship but surveillance and manipu-
lation of information—as something like a hydroelectric water-manage-
ment system. Managers have both routine and crisis-management goals:
managing daily flows and distribution on the one hand and managing
droughts and floods on the other. It is a huge, complex system with
many moving parts, and running it requires flexibility. It is impossible
for the central government to have total control over every detail of wa-
ter level or pressure at any given time. The system’s managers learn and
innovate as they go along.11
Recent Chinese-government statements show that, like water, the In-
ternet is viewed as simultaneously vital and dangerous. According to the
2010 government white paper “The Internet in China,” rapid, nationwide
expansion of Internet and mobile-device penetration is a strategic prior-
ity. The Internet is seen as indispensible for education, poverty allevia-
tion, and the efficient conveyance of government information and ser-
vices to the public. The development of a vibrant, indigenous Internet and
telecommunications sector is also considered critical for China’s long-
term global economic competitiveness.12 Globally, the Internet is rapidly
evolving away from personal computers and toward mobile devices, ap-
pliances, and vehicles, with the most rapid rate of growth in Internet and
mobile-phone use taking place in Africa and the Middle East. The Chi-
nese government’s strategy is for Chinese companies to be leaders in mo-
bile Internet innovation, particularly in the developing world. Last year,
Premier Wen Jiabao spoke on multiple occasions about the importance of
“the Internet of things,” encouraging breakthroughs by Chinese compa-
nies in what the government has designated as a strategic industry.13
Although the government has direct control over websites run by
state-operated media as well as its own national- and provincial-level
websites, by far the largest portion of the Chinese Internet is run by the
private sector (or “government-regulated commercial spaces” according
to Min Jiang’s taxonomy of Chinese deliberative digital spaces). Chi-
nese networked authoritarianism cannot work without the active coop-
eration of private companies—regardless of the origin of their financing
or where they are headquartered. Every year a group of Chinese Inter-
net executives is chosen to receive the government’s “China Internet
84 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

Self-Discipline Award” for fostering “harmonious and healthy Internet

development.”
In Anglo-European legal parlance, the legal mechanism used to im-
plement such a “self-discipline” system is “intermediary liability.” It
is the mechanism by which Google’s Chinese search engine, Google.
cn, was required to censor itself until Google redirected its simplified
Chinese search engine offshore to Hong Kong. All Internet companies
operating within Chinese jurisdiction—domestic or foreign—are held
liable for everything appearing on their search engines, blogging plat-
forms, and social-networking services. They are also legally responsible
for everything their users discuss or organize through chat clients and
messaging services. In this way, the government hands many censorship
and surveillance tasks to private companies that face license revocations
and forced shutdowns should they fail to comply. Every one of China’s
large Internet companies has a special department full of employees
whose sole job is to police users and censor content.
In 2008, I conducted a comparative study examining how fifteen dif-
ferent Chinese blog-hosting services censored user-created content. The
tests revealed that each company used slightly different methods and
approaches in its censorship. The specific content censored also varied
from service to service. In a number of tests, when I tried to post politi-
cally sensitive material such as an article about the parents of students
killed in Tiananmen Square, or a recent clash in a remote town in West-
ern China, internal site software would block publication of the post
entirely. Other posts could be saved as drafts but were “held for modera-
tion” until a company staffer could make a decision about whether they
should be allowed. Other postings simply disappeared within hours of
publication.

Lifting the Veil

In June 2010, a report giving Internet users a peek behind the veil of
secrecy surrounding corporate complicity in Chinese Internet censor-
ship appeared on the popular Chinese website Sina.com for a few hours
before, ironically, being censored. It quoted Chen Tong, the editor of Si-
na’s Twitter-like microblogging service, who described his company’s
censorship system in some detail: round-the-clock policing; constant
coordination between the editorial department and the “monitoring de-
partment”; daily meetings to discuss the latest government orders listing
new topics and sensitive keywords that must either be monitored or de-
leted depending on the level of sensitivity; and finally, systems through
which both editors and users report problematic content and bring it
to the attention of company censors.14 In April 2009, an employee of
Baidu, China’s leading search engine, which also runs user-generated
content services, leaked a set of detailed documents from Baidu’s in-
Rebecca MacKinnon 85

ternal monitoring and censorship department confirming the company’s

longstanding reputation as an industry leader not only as a search engine
and online-services company, but also in censoring both search-engine
results and user-generated content. The documents included censorship
guidelines; lists of specific topics and words to be censored; guidelines
on how to search for information that needs to be deleted, blocked, or
banned; and other internal information from November 2008 through
March 2009.15
In its efforts to manage what the Chinese people can learn, discuss,
and organize online, the government deploys a range of other tactics as
well. They include:

Cyberattacks: The sophisticated, military-grade cyberattacks launched

against Google in late 2009 were targeted specifically at the Gmail ac-
counts of human-rights activists who are either from China or work on
China-related issues. Websites run by Chinese exiles, dissidents, and hu-
man-rights defenders (most of whom lack the training or resources to pro-
tect themselves) have been the victims of increasingly aggressive cyber-
attacks over the past few years—in some cases, compromising activists’
computer networks and e-mail accounts. Domestic and foreign journalists
who report on politically sensitive issues and academics whose research
includes human-rights problems have also found themselves under aggres-
sive attack in China, with efforts to expose their sources, making it much
more risky to work on politically sensitive topics.

Device and network controls: In May 2009, the Ministry of Industry

and Information Technology (MIIT) mandated that by July 1 of that
year a specific software product called Green Dam Youth Escort was
to be preinstalled on all computers sold in China. While Green Dam
was ostensibly aimed at protecting children from inappropriate content,
researchers outside and within China quickly discovered that it not only
censored political and religious content but also logged user activity and
sent this information back to a central computer server belonging to the
software developer’s company. The software had other problems that
created opposition to it within U.S. companies. It contained serious pro-
gramming flaws that increased the user’s vulnerability to cyberattack.
It also violated the intellectual property rights of a U.S. company’s fil-
tering product. Faced with uniform opposition from the U.S. computer
industry and strong protests from the U.S. government, the MIIT backed
down on the eve of its deadline, making the installation of Green Dam
voluntary instead of mandatory.
The defeat of Green Dam, however, did not diminish other efforts
to control and track Internet-user behavior at more localized levels—
schools, universities, apartment blocks, and citywide Internet Service
Providers (ISPs). In September 2009, news reports circulated that local
86 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

governments were mandating the use of censorship and surveillance

products with names such as “Blue Shield” and “Huadun.” The pur-
pose of these products appeared similar to Green Dam’s, though they
involved neither the end user nor foreign companies.16 Unlike Green
Dam, the implementation of these systems has received little attention
from foreign media, governments, or human-rights groups.

Domain-name controls: In December 2009, the government-affili-

ated China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) announced
that it would no longer allow individuals to register Internet domain
names ending in “.cn.” Only companies or organizations would be able
to use the .cn domain. While authorities explained that this measure
was aimed at cleaning up pornography, fraud, and spam, a group of
Chinese webmasters protested that it also violated individual rights.
Authorities announced that more than 130,000 websites had been shut
down in the cleanup. In January 2010, a Chinese newspaper report-
ed that self-employed individuals and freelancers conducting online
business had been badly hurt by the measure.17 In February, CNNIC
backtracked somewhat, announcing that individuals would once again
be allowed to register .cn domains, but all applicants would have to
appear in person to confirm their registration, show a government ID,
and submit a photo of themselves with their application. This elimi-
nated the possibility of anonymous domain-name registration under
.cn and has made it easier for authorities to warn or intimidate website
operators when “objectionable” content appears.

Localized disconnection and restriction: In times of crisis, when

the government wants to ensure that people cannot use the Internet or
mobile phones to organize protests, connections are shut down entirely
or heavily restricted in specific locations. The most extreme case is in
the far-northwestern province of Xinjiang, a traditionally Muslim region
that borders Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan. After ethnic riots
took place in July 2009, the Internet was cut off in the entire province
for six months, along with most mobile text messaging and international
phone service. No one in Xinjiang could send e-mail or access any web-
site—domestic or foreign. Business people had to travel to the bordering
province of Gansu to communicate with customers. Internet access and
phone service have since been restored, but with severe limitations on
the number of text messages that people can send on their mobile phones
per day, no access to overseas websites, and very limited access even
to domestic Chinese websites. Xinjiang-based Internet users can only
access watered-down versions of official Chinese news and informa-
tion sites, with many of the functions such as blogging or comments
disabled.18
Rebecca MacKinnon 87

Surveillance: Surveillance of Internet and mobile users is conducted

in a variety of ways, contributing to an atmosphere of self-censorship.
Surveillance enables authorities to warn and harass Internet users ei-
ther via electronic communications or in person when individuals are
deemed to have transgressed certain standards. Detention, arrest, or im-
prisonment of selected individuals serves as an effective warning to oth-
ers that they are being watched. Surveillance techniques include:
“Classic” monitoring: While surveillance measures are justified to
the public as antiterrorism measures, they are also broadly used to iden-
tify and harass or imprison peaceful critics of the regime. Cybercafés—
the cheap and popular option for students and the less affluent—are re-
quired to monitor users in multiple ways, including identity registration
upon entry to the café or upon login, surveillance cameras, and monitor-
ing software installed on computers.
“Law-enforcement compliance”: In China, where “crime” is defined
broadly to include political dissent, companies with in-country opera-
tions and user data stored locally can easily find themselves complicit
in the surveillance and jailing of political dissidents. The most noto-
rious example of law-enforcement compliance gone wrong was when
Yahoo’s local Beijing staff gave Chinese police account information of
activist Wang Xiaoning in 2002 and journalist Shi Tao in 2004, leading
to their imprisonment. In 2006, Skype partnered with a Chinese com-
pany to provide a localized version of its Internet-based phone-calling
service, then found itself being used by Chinese authorities to track and
log politically sensitive chat sessions by users inside China. Skype had
delegated law-enforcement compliance to its local partner without suf-
ficient attention to how the compliance was being carried out.19

“Astroturfing” and public outreach: The government increasingly

combines censorship and surveillance measures with proactive efforts
to steer online conversations. In 2008, the Hong Kong–based research-
er David Bandurski determined that at least 280,000 people had been
hired at various levels of government to work as “online commenta-
tors.” Known derisively in the Chinese blogosphere as the “fifty-cent
party,” these people are paid to write posts that show their employers in
a favorable light in online chatrooms, social-networking services, blogs,
and comments sections of news websites.20 Many more people do simi-
lar work as volunteers—recruited from the ranks of retired officials as
well as college students in the Communist Youth League who aspire
to become Party members. This approach is similar to a tactic known
as “astroturfing” in U.S. parlance, now commonly used by commercial
advertising firms, public-relations companies, and election campaigns
around the world in order to simulate grassroots enthusiasm for a prod-
uct or candidate. In many Chinese provinces, it is now also standard
practice for government officials—particularly at the city and county
88 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

level—to coopt and influence independent online writers by inviting

them to special conferences and press events.
The central government has also adopted a strategy of using of-
ficial interactive portals and blogs, which are cited as evidence both
at home and abroad that China is liberalizing. In September 2010, the
CCP launched an online bulletin board called “Direct to Zhongnan-
hai,” through which the public was invited to send messages to China’s
top leaders. Since 2008, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao
have held annual “web chats” with China’s “netizens.” An official
“E-Parliament” website, on which citizens are invited to post policy
suggestions to the National People’s Congress, was launched in 2009.
The 2010 official government white paper lists a variety of ways in
which the Chinese government solicits public feedback through the
Internet. It states: “According to a sample survey, over 60 percent of
netizens have a positive opinion of the fact that the government gives
wide scope to the Internet’s role in supervision, and consider it a
manifestation of China’s socialist democracy and progress.” 21
All of this is taking place in the context of the Chinese government’s
broader policies on information and news control. In December 2009,
the Committee to Protect Journalists listed China as the world’s worst
jailer of journalists. In recent testimony before the U.S. Congress, Josh-
ua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation presented an array of statis-
tics to support a grim conclusion:

Over the past two-and-a-half years in particular, roughly since the beginning
of 2008, there has been a palpable sense that earlier progress towards rule of
law in China has stalled, or even suffered a reversal, and there is mounting
evidence that a crackdown is underway, one particularly targeting members
of ethnic minorities, government critics, and rights defenders.22

Thus online public discourse is indeed expanding—with government

encouragement. The government is creating and promoting the impres-
sion both at home and abroad that China is moving in the direction of
greater democracy. At the same time, the Chinese people’s ability to
engage in serious political dissent or to organize political movements
that might effectively challenge the CCP’s legitimacy has actually di-
minished, and the consequences for attempting such activities are more
dire than they were ten years ago.

Networked Authoritarianism Beyond China

In their most recent book surveying Internet censorship and con-
trol around the world, Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski warn that
“the center of gravity of practices aimed at managing cyberspace has
shifted subtly from policies and practices aimed at denying access to
content to methods that seek to normalize control and the exercise
Rebecca MacKinnon 89

of power in cyberspace through a variety of means.” This article has

described a range of ways in which China is near the forefront of this
trend. Deibert and Rohozinski divide the techniques used by govern-
ments for Internet censorship and control into three “generations”: The
“first generation” of techniques focuses on “Chinese-style” Internet
filtering and Internet-café surveillance. “Second-generation” tech-
niques include the construction of a legal environment legitimizing
information control, authorities’ informal requests to companies for
removal of information, technical shutdowns of websites, and comput-
er-network attacks. “Third-generation” techniques include warrantless
surveillance, the creation of “national cyberzones,” state-sponsored
information campaigns, and direct physical action to silence individu-
als or groups.23
While Deibert and Rohozinski characterize Chinese cybercontrols
as being largely first generation, the Chinese government aggressively
uses all the second- and third-generation techniques and has been doing
so for quite some time. Indeed, the second- and third-generation tech-
niques are essential because the Great Firewall alone is ineffective and
permeable.
Deibert and Rohozinski point out that a number of governments, par-
ticularly those in Russia and several former Soviet republics, have by-
passed the first-generation controls almost completely and instead are
concentrating their energies on second- and third-generation controls,
most of which (with the jarring exception of “direct physical action to
silence individuals or groups”) are more subtle, more difficult to detect,
and more compatible with democratic or pseudodemocratic institutions.
The Russian-language Internet, known by its denizens as “RUNET,” is
thus on the cutting edge of techniques aimed to control online speech
with little or no direct filtering.24
Research in the Middle East and North Africa shows that while In-
ternet filtering is more common and pervasive throughout that region,
governments are increasing the use of second- and third-generation
techniques. Many governments in the region have cracked down on
online dissent through the skillful use of family-safety measures and
antiterrorism laws. At the same time, they have made substantial in-
vestments in Internet and telecommunications infrastructure, recog-
nizing that connectivity is essential for economic success.25
Some second- and third-generation controls are also used by dem-
ocratically elected governments, including those of South Korea and
India.26 Intermediary censorship is deployed in a range of political sys-
tems to silence antiregime speech, fight crime, or protect children. The
concept of holding service providers liable has become increasingly
popular among lawmakers around the world, including in Western Eu-
rope—where the main goals are to combat intellectual-property theft
and protect children. In the United States, activists are concerned about
90 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

the weakening of due process, which has allowed government access to

networks owned and run by corporations, all in the name of combating
cybercrime and cyberwarfare. Even the Chinese government has adopt-
ed a very similar language of cybersecurity to justify its Internet-control
structures and procedures. Deibert and Rohozinski are right to warn that
“many of the legal mechanisms that legitimate control over cyberspace,
and its militarization, are led by the advanced democratic countries of
Europe and North America.”27
Chinese authoritarianism has adapted to the Internet Age not mere-
ly through the deployment of Internet filtering, but also through the
skilled use of second- and third-generation controls. China’s brand of
networked authoritarianism serves as a model for other regimes, such
as the one in Iran, that seek to maintain power and legitimacy in the In-
ternet Age. In Russia and elsewhere there is a further, disturbing trend:
Strong governments in weak or new democracies are using second- and
third-generation Internet controls in ways that contribute to the erosion
of democracy and slippage back toward authoritarianism. This situation
is enabled by a weak rule of law, lack of an independent judiciary, weak
guarantees for freedom of speech and other human-rights protections,
heavy or untransparent regulation of industry (particularly the telecom-
munications sector), and weak political opposition that is rendered even
weaker by clever manipulation of the media, legal system, and commer-
cial-regulatory system.
It is clear that simply helping activists to circumvent first-gener-
ation censorship and training them in the use of new technologies
for digital activism without also addressing the second- and third-
generation controls deployed by their governments is insufficient,
sometimes counterproductive, and potentially dangerous for the in-
dividuals involved. Weak rule of law and lack of accountability and
transparency in the regulation of privately owned and operated In-
ternet platforms and telecommunications networks facilitate the use
of second- and third-generation controls, which pose a great threat
to activists. Therefore, strong advocacy work at the policy and leg-
islative level aimed at improving rule of law, transparency, and ac-
countability—in government as well as the private sector—is more
important than ever.
The business and regulatory environment for telecommunications
and Internet services must become a new and important focus of hu-
man-rights activism and policy. Free and democratic political discourse
requires Internet and telecommunications regulation and policy mak-
ing that are transparent, accountable, and open to reform both through
independent courts and the political system. Without such baseline
conditions, opposition, dissent, and reform movements will face an in-
creasingly uphill battle against progressively more innovative forms of
censorship and surveillance.
Rebecca MacKinnon 91

NOTES
1. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on Internet Freedom,” Washington, D.C., 21
January 2010; available at www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm.

2. “Chinese State Security Arrests, Indictments Doubled in 2008,” Dui Hua Human
Rights Journal, 25 March 2009; available at www.duihua.org/hrjournal/2009/03/chinese-
state-security-arrests.html.

3. Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy 21 (July 2010):

82.

4. Lokman Tsui, “The Great Firewall as Iron Curtain 2.0: The Implications of China’s
Internet Most Dominant Metaphor for U.S. Foreign Policy,” paper presented at the sixth
annual Chinese Internet Research Conference, Hong Kong University, 13–14 June 2008;
available at http://jmsc.hku.hk/blogs/circ/files/2008/06/tsui_lokman.pdf.

5. Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 213.

6. Jack Linchuan Qiu, Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology

and the Information Have-Less in Urban China (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 243.

7. Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in

China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 164–65.

8. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Death by a Thousand Blogs,” New York Times, 24 May 2005;
available at www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/opinion/24kristoff.html.

9. Baogang He and Mark Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn

in Chinese Political Development,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Ameri-
can Political Science Association, Boston, 28–31 August 2008; forthcoming, Perspectives
on Politics, June 2011.

10. Min Jiang, “Authoritarian Deliberation on Chinese Internet,” Electronic Journal of

Communication 20 (2010); available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_
id=1439354.

11. Rebecca MacKinnon, “Chinese Internet Research Conference: Getting Beyond

‘Iron Curtain 2.0,’” RConversation, 18 June 2008; available at http://rconversation.blogs.
com/rconversation/2008/06/chinese-inter-1.html.

12. “The Internet in China,” Information Office of the State Council of the People’s
Republic of China (SCIO), 8 June 2010; available at http://china.org.cn/government/
whitepaper/node_7093508.htm.

13. Robert McManus, “Chinese Premier Talks Up Internet of Things,” ReadWriteWeb,

19 January 2010; available at www.readwriteweb.com/archives/chinese_premier_internet
_of_things.php.

14. Jonathan Ansfield, “China Tests New Controls on Twitter-Style Services,” New
York Times, 16 July 2010; available at www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/world/asia/17beijing.
html. The full Chinese-language text of the report (which was deleted by censors from the
original source) was reproduced by Radio France Internationale at www.chinese.rfi.fr.

15. Xiao Qiang, “Baidu’s Internal Monitoring and Censorship Document Leaked,”
China Digital Times, 30 April 2009; available at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/04/
baidus-internal-monitoring-and-censorship-document-leaked/.
92 China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”

16. Owen Fletcher, “China Clamps Down on Internet Ahead of 60th Anniversary,”
IDG News Service, 25 September 2009; available at www.pcworld.com/article/172627/
china_clamps_down_on_internet_ahead_of_60th_anniversary.html; and Oiwan Lam,
“China: Blue Dam Activated,” Global Voices Advocacy, 13 September 2009; available at
http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/09/13/china-blue-dam-activated.

17. Oiwan Lam, “China: More than 100 Thousand Websites Shut Down,” Global
Voices Advocacy, 3 February 2010; available at http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.
org/2010/02/03/china-more-than-100-thousand-websites-shut-down.

18. Josh Karamay, “Blogger Describes Xinjiang as an ‘Internet Prison,’” BBC News, 3
February 2010; available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8492224.stm.

19. Nart Villeneuve, “Breaching Trust: An Analysis of Surveillance and Security Prac-
tices on China’s TOM-Skype Platform,” Open Net Initiative and Information Warfare
Monitor, October 2008; available at: www.nartv.org/mirror/breachingtrust.pdf.

20. David Bandurski, “China’s Guerilla War for the Web,” Far Eastern Economic
Review, July 2008.

21. SCIO, “The Internet in China.”

22. Joshua Rosenzweig, “Political Prisoners in China: Trends and Implications for
U.S. Policy,” Testimony to the Congressional-Executive Committee on China, 3 August
2010; available at www.cecc.gov/pages/hearings/2010/20100803/statement5.php.

23. Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, “Control and Subversion in Russian Cyber-
space,” in Ronald Deibert et al., eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights,
and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), 23.

24. Deibert and Rohozinski, “Control and Subversion in Russian Cyberspace,” in Ac-
cess Controlled, 15–34.

25. “MENA Overview,” Access Controlled, 523–35.

26. Michael Fitzpatrick, “South Korea Wants to Gag the Noisy Internet Rabble,”
Guardian.co.uk, 9 October 2008; available at www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/
oct/09/news.internet; and John Ribeiro, “India’s New IT Law Increases Surveillance
Powers,” IDG News Service, 27 October 2009; available at www.networkworld.com/
news/2009/102709-indias-new-it-law-increases.html.

27. Deibert and Rohozinski, “Beyond Denial: Introducing Next-Generation Informa-

tion Access Controls,” 6.
 III

Liberation Technology
in the Middle East
This page intentionally left blank
 7
USHAHIDI AS A
LIBERATION TECHNOLOGY
Patrick Meier

Patrick Meier serves as Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi and

previously codirected Harvard’s Program on Crisis Mapping and Early
Warning. He also consults extensively for international organizations
in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Meier holds a doctorate from the Fletcher
School and was a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center on
Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

One of the most dramatic and recent innovations in liberation technol-

ogy has been the combination of “geomapping” with other new commu-
nications technologies, allowing citizens to document crises, corruption,
and abuses around the world. In this chapter, I examine one such geo-
mapping liberation technology, Ushahidi, and discuss its role in Egypt’s
2010 parliamentary elections.
Ushahidi (meaning “testimony” in Swahili) is a simple web-based
mapping platform originally designed to map reports of human-rights
abuses using text messages (SMS), e-mails, and information submitted
via an online form. The first Ushahidi map was created to show Kenya’s
postelection violence in January 2008. Bloggers in Kenya and from the
Kenyan diaspora launched the platform to map human-rights violations
that would otherwise have gone completely undocumented by the main-
stream media and official election observers. Ushahidi Inc., a nonprofit
technology company, was created several months after the elections to
improve the mapping platform and make it free and open-source and
thus widely usable. Several subsequent versions of the platform have
since been used to create more than ten-thousand live maps in more
than 140 countries. Those engaged in these mapping projects have in-
cluded humanitarian and human-rights organizations, media companies,
civil society groups, political and environmental activists, and distrib-
uted volunteer networks. The Ushahidi platform saw particular use as
a “liberation technology” in Egypt during the country’s parliamentary
elections in the fall of 2010.
96 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

Why focus on Ushahidi? The platform represents an important con-

vergence of new technologies.1 SMS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,
Flickr, smartphone apps, voicemail, and email can all be combined with
Ushahidi. Examining Ushahidi instead of studying the impact of certain
tweets or YouTube videos in isolation allows for a focus on broader
multimedia content. Focusing on the Ushahidi platform also facilitates
the study of concrete uses of social media, such as election monitoring.
Elsewhere in this volume, Larry Diamond has referred to the Ushahidi
platform as an example of a liberation and accountability technology.2
What is missing, however, is research to support these claims.

Using ICTs in Nonpermissive Environments

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are used in
various ways and with varying degrees of success to promote democ-
racy, development, rule of law, and transparency in nonpermissive en-
vironments. The 2011 revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East
represent the most striking recent uses of ICTs to drive political change
in repressive environments. But ICTs have also been used to monitor
and address issues related to corruption, unemployment, elections, pub-
lic health, and local governance in dozens of countries around the world.
Mobile-communication technology has been the most rapidly adopt-
ed technology in history, far outpacing adoption rates of other technolo-
gies, even the Internet.3 The latest statistics from the International Tele-
communications Union counted more than five-billion mobile phones
worldwide at the end of 2010, a 25 percent increase over just the previ-
ous year. Half a billion people worldwide now access the Internet by
mobile phone, and it is estimated that this number will double by 2015.
By the end of the decade, some expect the number of mobile wireless
devices to pass 50 billion, a staggering tenfold increase. The technolo-
gy-adoption statistics for Africa are equally astounding, with users of
mobile-communication technology soaring from 2 percent to nearly 30
percent of the population in the first decade of this century.
New ICTs are radically different from traditional communication
tools. Radio and television have been owned and controlled by the very
few, and the telephone and telegraph did not have broadcasting capa-
bilities. By contrast, the majority of content created and shared online
today is generated by a vast multiplicity of users, allowing the many to
converse with the many without undue centralization and control. The
scaling of these conversations is where some believe their power lies,
since access to conversations is more important politically than access
to information.4
The use of ICTs figured prominently during the 2011 revolutions in
Tunisia and Egypt. As one Egyptian activist tweeted, “We use Face-
book to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to
Patrick Meier 97

tell the world.”5 These social-media tools are not simply used in the
same way as older technologies to coordinate and document unfolding
events; instead, they are increasingly used to create live maps. Dozens
of live maps were created to monitor the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria,
and Yemen, for example. Indeed, we are starting to witness the rise of
a “mapping reflex.” As one Russian blogger puts it: “If radio gave each
event a sound, TV an image, then this relatively new ‘mapping reflex’
gave each event a geographic location.”6 In many ways, this mapping
reflex resembles the “Wikipedia effect”—the creation and real-time ed-
iting of Wikipedia entries to document live breaking news. In the case of
the Ushahidi platform, contributors edit a map instead of a wiki.
Social media also played a pivotal role during the Libya crisis in
2011. Indeed, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court
(ICC) prosecutor, cited Facebook and other social media as a key influ-
ence on the ICC’s decision to take action in Libya.7 In addition, the UN’s
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched
a live social-media map of Libya (using the Ushahidi platform) to better
inform its humanitarian-relief operations.8 This map was largely based
on reports that were crowdsourced (gathered from the public) through
social-media sources like Twitter and YouTube.
Official election-monitoring organizations are also looking to ICTs
to improve the speed and reliability of their efforts, particularly in con-
tested elections. The National Democratic Institute (NDI) increasingly
uses SMS to monitor elections. Indeed, as Ian Schuler, senior manager
of ICT programs at NDI, writes, “the speed of communication and pro-
cessing, the flexibility, and the coverage SMS can provide give moni-
toring organizations a powerful tool for organizing volunteers and re-
sponding instantly to an evolving election environment.”9

Ushahidi Technology and Its Applications

In the wake of Kenya’s controversial national elections on 27 De-
cember 2007—which were widely seen as riddled with fraud—deadly
riots erupted, claiming eight-hundred lives within a few weeks. Presi-
dent Mwai Kibaki downplayed the scope of the violence and placed
restrictions on the national media’s coverage of it. At the same time,
international election-monitoring organizations refused to share the data
they had collected. The full extent of the violence was largely unknown.
Against this backdrop, Kenya’s most prominent blogger, Ory Okol-
loh, began blogging extensively about the violence. Having a wide read-
ership, she received continuous streams of information from her readers,
who were documenting numerous human-rights violations across the
country. Okolloh was soon overwhelmed with the volume of informa-
tion and could not keep blogging fast enough. She was later forced to
flee to South Africa following a number of death threats. As Okolloh
98 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

continued blogging from Johannesburg, she suggested in a blog post

that a Google map “mashup” be set up to allow others to document
human-rights violations directly, since she could not keep up.10 Fellow
Africa and technology bloggers Erik Hersman, David Kobia, and Juli-
ana Rotich read the post and decided to act on her suggestion. Thus was
born Ushahidi.
The Ushahidi platform is a free and open-source mapping software
that allows anyone to create a live and rich multimedia map of an event
or situation. Unlike the standard Google Maps, the Ushahidi platform
allowed witnesses in Kenya to text in their reports of human-rights vio-
lations using SMS. A simple SMS “short code” was set up with the
telecommunications company Safaricom to make this happen. The blog-
gers shared the map on their blogs to get the word out and thus began to
crowdsource crisis information. They documented information on hu-
man-rights violations that would otherwise have gone largely unnoticed
by mainstream media and election-monitoring organizations.
The Ushahidi software has gone through several important upgrades
over the past three years. The platform can now be integrated with
SMS, Twitter, e-mail, voicemail, Facebook, and soon Flickr and You-
Tube. Ushahidi Inc. has also developed dedicated smartphone apps for
the platform. These are freely available for the iPhone, Android, and
other java-enabled phones. In 2010, the company released Ushahidi
2.0, which allows third-party developers to develop customized apps or
plug-ins for the core platform, thereby extending the platform’s capabil-
ities considerably. This latest version of Ushahidi makes it easier to map
multimedia content such as photographic evidence and video footage. In
addition, Ushahidi recently launched Crowdmap, a hosted version of the
Ushahidi platform that further reduces the barriers to creating live maps.
The Ushahidi platform has been deployed in over forty countries for a
wide range of uses, including election observation, human-rights moni-
toring, disaster response, civil resistance, and environmental-impact
reporting. For example, civil society groups have used the platform to
observe elections in Afghanistan, Burundi, Egypt, India, Kenya, Kyr-
gyzstan, Lebanon, the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique, Sudan, and
Tanzania. Ushahidi has also been used for disaster response and human-
rights monitoring in Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Haiti, Paki-
stan, Poland, South Africa, Tunisia, and the United States, and to map
the protests that unfolded during the recent revolutions in North Africa.
The impact of Ushahidi platforms, however, has been unclear. Very
few evaluations—let alone rigorous ones—have been carried out. Sev-
eral groups that have used the Ushahidi platform claim that its impact
is obvious. But the evidence remains largely anecdotal and the analysis
rather thin.
Egypt was selected as a country case study for this chapter for three
reasons. First, the Ushahidi platform has been used multiple times in
Patrick Meier 99

Egypt since the 2010 parliamentary elections. Thus, insights can also be
drawn from more recent examples, such as the protests during the 2011
revolutions in North Africa. Second, Egypt under Hosni Mubarak quali-
fied as a repressive state—an important criterion given this book’s focus
on liberation technology in authoritarian contexts. Third, the Egyptian
group that has repeatedly deployed the Ushahidi platform is continuing
to do so, not only in Egypt but now also in Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia,
and Yemen. Hence, interested scholars and practitioners will be able to
draw on the findings from this chapter to inform future research on and
applications of the technology in Egypt and beyond.
The U-Shahid (shahid means “witness” in Arabic) project in Egypt—
run by the Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC),
an Egyptian organization based in Cairo—first used Ushahidi during
parliamentary elections in November and December 2010. Just days af-
ter Internet access was restored during the civil-resistance movement in
early 2011, DISC used the platform again to map the protests against the
Mubarak regime and its human-rights abuses. The Egyptian group has
since launched a Ushahidi platform to map feedback on constitutional
amendments, and it plans to use Ushahidi to map corruption as well. A
separate Cairo-based group also began using the Ushahidi platform in
2010 for a project called Harassmap, which enables Egyptian women
to report cases of harassment and increase the visibility of this chronic
problem.

The Use of Ushahidi in Egypt

Until recently, Egyptians had only been able to approve or reject a
presidential candidate appointed by the parliament, which was dominated
by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP).11 Not surprisingly, the
media landscape in Egypt was mostly controlled by the establishment dur-
ing this time. A constitutional amendment approved in a 2005 referendum
paved the way for multiparty presidential elections, and Egyptian youth
became more and more interested in having a voice and an active part in
the political discourse in their country.
The Ministry of Interior was well aware of these changes in political
activism, especially with respect to the use of social networks. It took
steps to level the social media battlefield by adopting a strategy similar
to that of digital activists. On 1 July 2010, the ministry reportedly es-
tablished a special department of fifteen individuals who took shifts in
order to operate 24 hours a day.12 Their main task was to monitor Face-
book content such as groups, pages, and chats and to publish reports
countering online criticism of President Mubarak and his son Gamal. In
addition, the NDP recruited groups of young people to create Facebook
pages and groups to support the president, his son, and the ruling party.
In this political and social-media context, DISC used the Ushahidi
100 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

platform to launch their U-Shahid project. The head of DISC, Kamal

Nabil, had first come across Ushahidi during training in Washington,
D.C., organized by Freedom House in early 2010. The goal of the U-Sha-
hid project was to monitor the parliamentary elections in late 2010. This
independent initiative became particularly important when the Mubarak
regime announced that it would not permit any official international
election-monitoring groups into the country. Despite the pessimism and
despair about the political situation in Egypt, “the undercurrent of digi-
tal activism was tangible,” according to a foreign activist who joined
DISC. The use of social media and Facebook in particular increasingly
enabled the youth to engage in a political context in which the physical
elimination of the opposition was the norm. Blogs and Facebook groups
filled the vacuum created by the lack of a real political debate in Egypt,
and they increasingly emerged as an alternative political scene where a
discourse on democracy and human rights was still possible.
The U-Shahid project was rather simple on paper—use the Ushahi-
di platform to monitor the elections by allowing people to send SMS,
tweets, Facebook comments, voicemail, e-mail, and reports via web-
form to the live map. DISC decided to draw on both crowdsourced re-
porting and “blogger-sourced” information. This meant navigating the
restrictions imposed by Egyptian national-security officials, while get-
ting the word out to the wider public and training a large network of 130
trusted bloggers across the country. Despite the restrictions, training for
the latter took place in five major cities: Cairo, Alexandria, Assiut, Man-
soura, and Port Said. DISC translated its Ushahidi platform entirely into
Arabic, since the U-Shahid project was meant to be “an Egyptian proj-
ect for Egyptians,” as one blogger stated. Egyptian software developers
integrated Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube with Ushahidi. Since Facebook
was and continues to be an important platform for Egyptian youths, the
group also created a feature to enable comments on a Facebook wall to
be easily mapped on the Ushahidi platform.
DISC formulated clear goals for U-Shahid. The first was to help
Egyptian citizens and international observers learn more about the elec-
toral process. Second, the project aimed to report and seek redress when
electoral laws were violated. Third, DISC sought to raise awareness
about citizen rights and the importance of participation in the electoral
process. Finally, DISC wanted to use the U-Shahid project to empower
local partners to advocate for closer adherence to electoral laws and fair
practices during both the campaign and election period.
How did the team do? During the elections, DISC sources mapped
2,700 reports, which included 211 supporting pictures and 323 videos.
The team of Egyptian bloggers was also able to verify more than 90 per-
cent of the content that ended up on the map by using basic journalistic
techniques such as triangulation and follow-up. Most of the “crowd-
sourced” information, however, came from the preestablished network
Patrick Meier 101

of trusted bloggers, and thus did not require immediate verification. In

total, the web-based map received over 40,000 hits, the vast majority of
which came from within Egypt. (Interestingly, the next highest number
originated from Saudi Arabia, with just under 5,000 hits.) The group
proactively disseminated this information, through both new and tra-
ditional media. Their efforts were featured on Egyptian television, on
BBC Arabic, and in dozens of articles in ten different languages.
Even before it was formally launched, the project got the attention of
the Egyptian government. An Egyptian state security official contacted
Kamal Nabil and told him that his name was recurring “too often” in
phone conversations between activists. The Ministry of Interior sub-
sequently shadowed the project in different ways: by tapping the cell
phones of the core team of bloggers; by requesting copies of the agen-
das for all meetings related to U-Shahid; and by requiring that a list of
all individuals trained in the use of the platform be submitted to them.
Email addresses, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts of the core team
were reportedly all under surveillance from the start of the project, and
the Ministry of Interior openly asked Nabil what his reaction would be if
they were to shut down the U-Shahid project before the elections.
Moreover, several new Facebook groups were launched to attack the
core team by accusing its members of being affiliated with the United
States, on the grounds that they had participated in the Freedom House–
organized conference in Washington, D.C., earlier that year. Some of
those Facebook groups called on young Egyptians to “watch out” for
projects that could endanger the political independence and integrity of
the country. Activists reacted to these attacks by waging a virtual battle.
Once a government-supported group was identified, dozens of activists
would write on the group’s wall, basically occupying the entire wall
with contrary opinions.
DISC was well aware that technology alone would not change the
political situation in Egypt. They also knew that Egyptian state se-
curity could shut down the project and block access to the website
whenever it wanted. Furthermore, everyone involved in the project
knew full well that their involvement in U-Shahid could get them ar-
rested. At the end of a training workshop in Cairo, one participant
told a trainer, “You know, we may all end up in jail, but before this I
thought there was no hope to change anything. Now I can even dare to
think it is worth a try.”
The impact of the U-Shahid project on the political space in Egypt
is difficult to assess. According to the lead trainer of the project, more
than 1,500 election complaints were officially submitted to the courts.
It is unclear, however, whether any of these came from or were influ-
enced by the content mapped on the Ushahidi platform. Even overlap
between U-Shahid’s 2,700 reports and the courts’ 1,500 would high-
light the value of the project, since the latter’s data could be used to
102 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

triangulate or bolster evidence submitted to the courts. Unfortunately,

accessing the complaints received by the court has not been possible.
Instead, the reports submitted to the Ushahidi platform during the par-
liamentary elections and civil resistance were analyzed to assess the
potential impact of the project and identify trends or recurring patterns
in the reports.
The topics most frequently addressed in reports submitted to the Ush-
ahidi platform included bribes for votes, police closure of roads leading
to polling centers, the destruction and falsification of election ballots,
evidence of violence in specific locations, the closure of polling cen-
ters before the official time, and the banning of local election observers
from polling centers. Perhaps most striking about the reports, however,
is how specific they were in terms of location and details. For example,
reports that documented the buying of votes often included the amount
paid for the vote. Other reports documented nonfinancial bribes, includ-
ing mobile phones, food, gas, and even “sex stimulators,” “Viagra,” and
“Tramadol tablets.”
Additional incidents mapped on the Ushahidi platform included re-
ports of deliberate power cuts to prevent people from voting. One voter
complained that “in Al Saaida Zaniab election center we could not find
my name in voters’ lists, [even though] I voted in the same committee.
Nobody helped to find my name on [the] list because the electricity cut
out.” Voters also complained about the lack of phosphoric ink for voting
and the fact that they were not asked for their IDs to vote. Reports also
documented harassment and violence by thugs, often against Muslim
Brotherhood candidates, and the busing in of people from the ruling
party. For example, one report noted that “Oil Minister Samih Fahmi,
who is a national nominee for Peoples Council in Al Nassr City, used
his power to mobilize employees to vote for him. The employees used
the company’s buses, which carried the nominee’s pictures, to go to the
election centers.” Several hundred reports included pictures and videos,
some clearly documenting obvious election fraud. There were also some
reports, however, that documented calm (e.g. “everything is ok”) at cer-
tain voting centers.
The evidence documented by the U-Shahid team had the potential
to create greater political accountability by shining more light on the
process of election fraud. It is doubtful, however, that the U-Shahid
project actually deterred fraud. The project was simply not operating at
a scale of visibility sufficient to change behavior. Documenting 2,700
instances of election irregularities is impressive given the many chal-
lenges of operating in a repressive environment and the fact that this
was the first use of the Ushahidi platform in Egypt. But it might have
required 270,000 reports documenting all facets of the election—before,
during, and after—with tens of thousands of original videos and pho-
tographic evidence to deter those planning to commit fraud. While the
Patrick Meier 103

2,700 reports mapped on U-Shahid came from more than 100 individu-
als, this too was insufficient to have a large-scale and long-term impact.
If 100,000 people or more had participated in sending in reports, this
might have reached the scale at which the U-Shahid project could have
had more meaningful impact.

What the Activists Say

According to members of the U-Shahid project, the use of Ushahidi
increased civic participation in election observation, primarily because
the web-based nature of the platform allowed for ideas to be more easily
expressed online. The Ushahidi platform provided an easy and public
way for ordinary Egyptians to share what they were witnessing—fraud,
violence, and the like. One activist noted that the technology allowed
more people to “make small, low-risk contributions, like sending SMS
or an email.”
The lead trainer for the project explained that, in the past, “NGOs had
been more visibly involved in election monitoring, which made it more
dangerous, and observers had to be accredited by formal organizations.
But with Ushahidi, anyone could report, even if they had never been
observers before. They didn’t have to register.” In addition, the training
sessions did not require technological savvy and instead were focused
on political conversations and participation.
When asked why the regime had not shut down the Ushahidi plat-
form, one blogger explained that “many of the activists who began using
Ushahidi had many followers on Facebook and Twitter; they also had
the attention of the international media, which could draw unwanted
attention to the regime’s actions. They were connected with people in
the U.S. Congress, directors of international human-rights NGOs, and
so on.” This explanation is in line with Philip Howard’s finding that
“having an online civil society is a key ingredient of the causal recipe
for democratization.”13
Interviewees also noted that the Mubarak regime had a limited under-
standing of technology, and therefore the relationship between the state
and DISC did not necessarily become more contentious over time. As
one key person at DISC noted, “They [government officials] didn’t quite
understand the technology and were afraid of the Ushahidi platform.”
Another activist added that “the government was nervous; they didn’t
feel in control. And the government is usually behind anyways, they’re
not in the driver’s seat [when it comes to technology].” Another reason
why the relationship did not become more contentious is because DISC
remained fully transparent about the project. “We stressed the technical
aspect of the project, and remained fully open and transparent about our
work. We gave Egyptian National Security a dedicated username and
password [to access the Ushahidi platform], one that we could control
104 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

and [thus use to] monitor [their actions]. This gave them a false sense of
control; we could restore anything they deleted.”
In terms of organizational issues, the team was able to leverage exist-
ing networks of activists and remain flexible. As noted in one interview,
the Egyptian state’s hierarchical organization made it less effective in
responding quickly to a changing situation, while activists could do so
almost in real time since their lines of command were far more diffuse
than the government’s. One activist remarked that government officials
“don’t understand how we work; we can learn very fast, but the govern-
ment has many rules and processes. They have to write up reports, submit
them for approval, and allocate funding to acquire technology. But for us,
we don’t need permission. If we want to use Tor, we simply use Tor.” As
another activist explained:

The government had two mechanisms at its disposal to get in our way:
intimidation and bribes. But to influence these two mechanisms, you have
to access the leadership, and with technology, this connection is a lot
harder to make; it becomes more about distributed [rather than hierarchi-
cal] leadership. The government couldn’t just target one person [i.e., the
director of DISC] to shut down the project—they had to target 100. This
gave a sense of empowerment to the people.

When asked whether the Ushahidi platform led to more or less ac-
cess to the political system in Egypt, all interviewees answered “more
access.” One activist explained that members of the U-Shahid project
“were some of the most interviewed people on TV, [which] gave us
access to the government and the public; we also had a lot more access
to more candidates who wanted to have their representatives trained on
the Ushahidi platform . . . and were also invited to train journalists. . . .
We also got access to other international organizations that promoted
our initiative.” Another activist argued that the use of the Ushahidi
platform “created more transparency around the elections, allowing
easier access than in any previous election.” When asked whether any
of the 2,700 reports submitted to the Ushahidi platform had made their
way to the courts, however, activists replied that it was difficult to
know for sure.
According to some participating bloggers, there was a sense that do-
ing anything more than resorting to online tools would lead to physical
harm. While activists may have felt safer organizing online than in per-
son, they did face some “opportunity costs” in using the Ushahidi plat-
form. “We were afraid that the government would be filtering reports
coming to us and that they would track the reports back to the people
who sent them,” one activist noted. Another added that this fear might
have dissuaded some people from submitting evidence. The lead trainer
said, “Yes, definitely, we faced some serious constraints. For example,
very few people sent in reports via SMS—at most one percent of the
Patrick Meier 105

reports we received. One reason for this was that everyone knew that the
government could track and control SMS.”
In addition, the “timely compilation of reports made a huge differ-
ence. In the past, covering elections would mean the media giving quick
superficial updates, or established organizations giving a comprehen-
sive bigger picture, but only much later. With Ushahidi, you have the
big picture immediately.” As the lead trainer for the project noted, “We
had never seen so many videos on YouTube about the elections. It was
simply the right time [to do a project like U-Shahid]. . . . The Usha-
hidi platform definitely helped contribute to this significant increase [in
user-generated content around the elections].”
On a related note, an activist explained that the U-Shahid project was
able to

cover a lot more information than the traditional media; while they had
their own coverage, we provided more timely information, which is very
important for the media. We gave them evidence: pictures, videos, and
statistics. The media doesn’t have access to all this kind of information,
so the reports on the Ushahidi platform were a treasure for them. Even if
the government was trying to pressure the media, the information was too
valuable for them not to show it.

In a way, the information displayed on the Ushahidi platform not only

circumvented the state media, but also coopted some national media
outlets.
Finally, the launch of U-Shahid inspired some “copycats,” as four
additional Ushahidi platforms sprang up shortly before the elections,
including one launched by the Muslim Brotherhood to document ha-
rassment of their candidates. This proliferation of Ushahidi platforms
helped to frame an alternative discourse during the election period.
All the interviewees stated that the regime was not particularly ef-
fective in using technology to foster patriotism. “If they had been, they
would have stopped the revolution,” one blogger noted. That said, one
activist remarked that the government did try:

They had an army of bloggers who would go to activist websites to lobby

them and to report them so they would have their Facebook pages sus-
pended. They also tried to do that with some websites, but we had a secure
system. There were attempts by the government to overload our website
with many fake reports . . . but we were on it and we were able to delete
them. This happened for a minute or two every three hours or so—attacks,
overload—but eventually they gave up.

Egyptian activists believe that the Ushahidi technology is notably

different from ICTs that they have used to organize and mobilize in the
past. One activist recalled that an election-monitoring NGO had used a
map to monitor previous elections, but the resulting website had a page
106 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

rank of six million, even though the NGO had paid staff thousands of
dollars to create the web-based map. “The map was not easy to use or
to browse,” the activist said. “The people behind the map were profes-
sionals at election monitoring, but they were not professionals in tech-
nology.” In contrast, the Ushahidi map for the U-Shahid project “had a
40,000 ranking worldwide. Plus it was open source and reached tens of
thousands of people.”
Regarding the cat-and-mouse game between the state and the civil
society movements, one activist said,

We did a lot of scenario building, considered many ‘what if’ situations.

The fact that we were so well prepared is why [the regime] could not
touch us. We tried to connect all the data on Facebook and Twitter so
that if they closed our Ushahidi map, we would move to a new domain
name and let all our followers know. We also had a large database of SMS
numbers, which would allow us to text our followers with information on
the new website.

Another blogger noted that “because we were well prepared, we knew

they could not arrest all of us on the day of the election, and just in case,
we trained a group in Lebanon who could take over all operations if we
were stopped.” The team also set up a phone tree in case of arrest and
made multiple copies of the platform.
Another key activist observed:

Technology by nature is a very neutral tool. But the most important thing
is information. Information is the key that drives political discourse and
media debates. Information wants to be found. Those who want to sup-
press it will have a harder time. So people in favor of spreading informa-
tion are going to win.

The lead trainer of the project opined that “regardless of technology,

numbers still matter, and there will always be more citizens than politi-
cians. So I believe in the power of numbers and organization.”

Was U-Shahid Successful?

The activists behind U-Shahid set out to achieve concrete goals:
to inform Egyptians and international observers about the electoral
process, to expose and remedy election violations, to raise awareness
about citizens’ rights and the importance of electoral participation,
and to empower local partners to advocate for fair and clean election
practices.
Did they have the impact that they intended? Largely yes, according
to those interviewed. They were able to publish and widely dissemi-
nate the electoral laws of Egypt, the Egyptian constitution, applicable
human-rights conventions, and up-to-date news on the electoral process
Patrick Meier 107

and campaign. They received some 40,000 hits on their dedicated map,
leveraged the web through Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, and received
a notable amount of national and international media coverage. They
mapped 2,700 reports, with more than 90 percent of them verified. But
the project also fell short of achieving some of its goals. In terms of
the 1,500 cases of reported electoral violations submitted to the Egyp-
tian courts, the lead trainer for the project noted that they “don’t know
if those violation complaints are related to the use of this [U-Shahid]
platform, or what impact the platform has or will have, in any of those
cases.” In addition, the group was unable to involve certain sectors of
society in the project and to overcome all the technical and political bar-
riers. Finally, the lead trainer stated that “We weren’t able to set measur-
able outcomes for the impact of the project in terms of change . . . but
we have time to get better.”
The U-Shahid project had some impact on the political space and dis-
course in Egypt. The use of free and open-source technology meant that
DISC faced lower costs, while the use of Facebook, Twitter, and other
social-networking platforms also helped to shape a sense of collective
identity (although this community largely existed before the elections).
A leading Egyptian activist remarked that thanks to its free and open-
source technology, as well as its distributed, user-generated approach,
the U-Shahid project was less costly than traditional election monitor-
ing. The group was able to generate and to verify the vast majority of
reports they mapped on the Ushahidi platform. In addition, the find-
ings from the interviews clearly show how adept DISC was at adopting
new tactics in order to manage its relationship with the state. In addi-
tion, content analysis of the 2,700 reports demonstrates the high level
of transparency that the project was able to achieve during the country’s
parliamentary elections.
The project did not significantly worsen DISC’s contentious relation-
ship with the state, although activists explained that this was due to the
government being worried about possible blowback if it did crack down
on the U-Shahid team. The group’s connections with international allies
were important, and the state could not rely on public international sup-
port for rigged elections. Despite this, the impact of Ushahidi technol-
ogy on the behavior of ruling elites is less clear. As the content analysis
reveals, elites did not appear to succeed in manipulating U-Shahid’s
independent monitoring of the elections. In terms of state capacity for
repression, it is also unclear what impact the Ushahidi platform might
have had. As for impact on political accessibility, the U-Shahid project
had a strong positive influence, according to findings from the inter-
views.
The Ushahidi platform allowed DISC to circumvent state media and
generate international media coverage. Meanwhile, the Egyptian regime
was unable to successfully generate patriotism using social media, since
108 Ushahidi as a Liberation Technology

it did not know how best to leverage the new media. As one activist ex-
plained “Using technology provides a comparative advantage in many
ways. It makes you stand out [and] gets you lots of media coverage, free
publicity. Everyone was interested in what we were doing, even political
candidates and other NGOs who wanted to share their reports with us.”
The state was largely unable to counter the alternative frames presented
by U-Shahid.
The U-Shahid project had some democratic impact on the political
space and discourse in Egypt. It operated on such a small scale, how-
ever, that it is doubtful that the U-Shahid project actually succeeded in
deterring election fraud in 2010. The documentation of 2,700 instances
of election irregularities was impressive, but only a vastly greater num-
ber of reports could have deterred fraud.
Yet the fact that Egyptian national security was closely monitoring
DISC’s operations reveals that the state was concerned and treated the
project as a potential political threat. The regime refrained from shutting
down the project for fear of blowback. Following the fall of Mubarak
in 2011, protestors stormed the offices of Egyptian national security. In
the files, they found a security report on the U-Shahid project with the
names and contact information (including Skype usernames) of many
activists, both Egyptian and foreign, who were involved in using the
Ushahidi platform.
In many ways, U-Shahid helped to reverse or at least fight back
against this government-constructed panopticon, and this may have
helped to pave the way for the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak.
The Egyptian case demonstrates the value of geomapping as an impor-
tant liberation technology. As John Yemma wrote:

In Tom Stoppard’s 1978 play Night and Day, a photojournalist in Africa

notes how important it is to be able to see into dark places. ‘People do awful
things to each other. But it is worse in places where everybody is kept in the
dark. Information is light. Information, in itself, about anything, is light.’14

NOTES
1. Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York: Viking, 2010).

2. Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy 21 (July 2010):

69–83.

3. Steven Livingston, Africa’s Evolving Infosystems: A Pathway to Security and Sta-

bility (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2011).

4. Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere,
and Political Change,” Foreign Affairs, January–February 2011: 28–41.

5. Philip N. Howard, “The Arab Spring’s Cascading Effects,” 23 February 2011, avail-
able at www.miller-mccune.com/politics/the-cascading-effects-of-the-arab-spring-28575/.
Patrick Meier 109

6. Alexey Sidorenko, “Russia: Unexpected Results of Radiation Mapping,” 25 March

2011, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/03/25/russia-unexpected-results-of-radiation-
mapping/.

7. Olga Werby, “Decision Scaffolding and Crisis Mapping,” 6 March 2011, www.
interfaces.com/blog/2011/03/decision-scaffolding-and-crisis-mapping.

8. A public version of this map was later made available at LibyaCrisisMap.net.

9. Ian Schuler, “SMS as a Tool in Election Observation (Innovations Case Narrative:

National Democratic Institute),” Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization 3
(Spring 2008): 143–57.

10. Ory Okolloh, “Update Jan 3 11:00 pm,” Kenyan Pundit, 3 January 2008 www.
kenyanpundit.com/2008/01/03/update-jan-3-445-1100-pm/.

11. An earlier version of some of the following paragraphs was coauthored with Anahi
Ayala Iacucci for the previous version of this paper, presented at the conference on “Lib-
eration Technology in Authoritarian Regimes,” Center on Democracy, Development, and
the Rule of Law, Stanford University, 11–12 October 2010.

12. Unless otherwise indicated, all other quotations are from the author’s interviews.

13. Philip N. Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Informa-
tion Technology and Political Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 156.

14. John Yemma, “Crowdsourcing Is Good—But Not Enough,” Christian Science Mon-
itor, 3 May 2011, available at www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/editors-blog/2011/0503/
Crowdsourcing-is-good-but-not-enough.
 8
EGYPT AND TUNISIA:
THE ROLE OF DIGITAL MEDIA
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain

Philip N. Howard is associate professor of communication at the Uni-

versity of Washington. He is the author of The Digital Origins of Dic-
tatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam
(2010). Muzammil M. Hussain is a doctoral student in communication
at the University of Washington. This essay originally appeared in the
July 2011 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

As has often been noted in these pages, one world region has been
practically untouched by the third wave of democratization: North Af-
rica and the Middle East. The Arab world has lacked not only democ-
racy, but even large popular movements pressing for it. In December
2010 and the first months of 2011, however, this situation changed with
stunning speed. Massive and sustained public demonstrations demand-
ing political reform cascaded from Tunis to Cairo, Sana‘a, Amman, and
Manama. This inspired people in Casablanca, Damascus, Tripoli, and
dozens of other cities to take to the streets to call for change.
By May, major political casualties littered the ground: Tunisia’s Zine
al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, two of the region’s
oldest dictators, were gone; the Libyan regime of Muammar Qadhafi
was battling an armed rebellion that had taken over half the country
and attracted NATO help; and several monarchs had sacked their cabi-
nets and committed to constitutional reforms. Governments around the
region had sued for peace by promising their citizens hundreds of bil-
lions of dollars in new spending of various kinds. Morocco and Saudi
Arabia appeared to be fending off serious domestic uprisings, but as of
this writing in May 2011, the outcomes for regimes in Bahrain, Jordan,
Syria, and Yemen remain far from certain.
There are many ways to tell the story of political change. But one of
the most consistent narratives from civil society leaders in Arab coun-
tries has been that the Internet, mobile phones, and social media such
as Facebook and Twitter made the difference this time. Using these
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 111

technologies, people interested in democracy could build extensive net-

works, create social capital, and organize political action with a speed
and on a scale never seen before. Thanks to these technologies, virtual
networks materialized in the streets. Digital media became the tool that
allowed social movements to reach once-unachievable goals, even as
authoritarian forces moved with a dismaying speed of their own to de-
vise both high- and low-tech countermeasures. Looking back over the
last few months of the “Arab Spring,” what have we learned about the
role of digital media in political uprisings and democratization? What
are the implications of the events that we have witnessed for our under-
standing of how democratization actually works today?

Tunisian Origins
On 17 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. The
young street vendor in the small Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid had tried
in vain to fight an inspector’s small fine, appealing first to the police,
then to town officials, and then to the regional governor. Each time he
dared to press his case, security officials beat him. Bruised, humiliated,
and frustrated by this cruel treatment, Bouazizi set himself alight in front
of the governor’s office. By the time he died in a hospital on January 4,
his plight had sparked nationwide protests. The news had traveled fast,
even though the state-run media had ignored the tragedy and the seeth-
ing discontent in Sidi Bouzid. During the angry second half of Decem-
ber, it was through blogs and text messages that Tunisians experienced
what the sociologist Doug McAdam calls “cognitive liberation.”1 In
their shared sympathy for the dying man, networks of family and friends
came to realize that they shared common grievances too.The realization
hit home as people watched YouTube videos about the abusive state,
read foreign news coverage of political corruption online, and shared
jokes about their aging dictator over SMS. Communicating in ways that
the state could not control, people also used digital media to arrive at
strategies for action and a collective goal: the deposition of a despot.
For years, the most direct accusations of political corruption had
come from the blogosphere. Investigative journalism was almost sole-
ly the work of average citizens using the Internet in creative ways.
Most famous is the YouTube video showing Tunisia’s presidential jet
on runways near exclusive European shopping destinations, with on-
screen graphics specifying dates and places and asking who was using
the aircraft (the suggestion being that it was Ben Ali’s high-living
wife). Once this video appeared online, the regime cracked down on
YouTube, Facebook, and other applications. But bloggers and activ-
ists pushed on, producing alternative online newscasts, creating vir-
tual spaces for anonymous political discussions, and commiserating
with fellow citizens about state persecution. With Bouazizi’s death,
112 Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

Ben Ali’s critics moved from virtual to actual public spaces. Sham-
seddine Abidi, a 29-year-old interior designer, posted regular videos
and updates to Facebook. Al Jazeera used the content to carry news of
the events to the world. Images of a hospitalized Bouazizi spread via
networks of family and friends. An online campaign called on citizens
and unions to support the uprising in Sidi Bouzid. Lawyers and stu-
dents were among the first to take to the streets in an organized way.
The government tried to ban Facebook, Twitter, and video sites such
as DailyMotion and YouTube. Within a few days, however, people
found a workaround as SMS networks became the organizing tool of
choice. Less than 20 percent of the population actively used social me-
dia, but almost everyone had access to a mobile phone. Outside the
country, the hacker communities of Anonymous and Telecomix helped
to cripple the government by carrying out denial-of-service attacks and
by building new software to help activists get around state firewalls.
The government responded by jailing a group of bloggers in early Janu-
ary. For the most part, however, the political uprising was leaderless in
the classic sense—there was no longstanding revolutionary figurehead,
traditional opposition leader, or charismatic speechmaker to radicalize
the public. But there were prominent nodes in the digital networks,
people whose contributions held sway and mobilized turnout. Slim
Amamou, a member of the copyright-focused Pirate Party, blogged the
revolution (and later briefly took a post in the national-unity govern-
ment). Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian exile, monitored online censor-
ship attempts and advertised workarounds. The middle-class Tunisian
rapper who calls himself El Général streamed digital “soundtracks for
the revolution.”
By early January, urgent appeals for help and mobile-phone videos
of police repression were streaming across North Africa. Ben Ali’s posi-
tion seemed precarious. There were major protests in Algeria, along with
several self-immolations. Again, the state-run news media covered little
about events in neighboring Tunisia. The Algerian government tried to
block Internet access and Facebook use as traffic about public outrage
next door increased. But with all the privately owned submarine cables
running to Europe, Algerian authorities lacked an effective chokepoint
to squeeze. When the government also became a target for Anonymous,
the state’s own information infrastructure suffered.
By the time Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabian exile on January
14, civil-disobedience campaigns against authoritarian rule were grow-
ing in Jordan, Oman, and Yemen. In other countries, such as Lebanon,
Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, minor protests erupted on a range
of issues and triggered quick concessions or had little impact. But even
in these countries, opposition leaders drew inspiration from what they
were tracking in Tunisia. Moreover, opposition leaders across the region
were learning digital tricks for catching a ruling elite off guard. Com-
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 113

pared to Tunisia, only Egypt had a more wired civil society, and the
stories of success in Tunisia helped to inspire the largest protests that
Cairo had seen in thirty years.

Egypt, Inspired
In Egypt, almost everyone has access to a mobile phone. The coun-
try also has the region’s second-largest Internet-using population (only
Iran’s is bigger). News of Ben Ali’s departure spread rapidly in Egypt,
where the state-run media gave his exit grudging coverage even while
continuing to move slowly on reporting the larger story of regionwide
protests, including the demonstrations that were breaking out in Cairo.
Like Tunisia, Egypt has long had a large and active online public
sphere frequented by banned political parties, radical fundamentalists,
investigative journalists, and disaffected citizens. The state could not
shut it down entirely: When the online news service of the Muslim
Brotherhood (MB) was banned, for instance, servers were found in
London and the organization continued to convey its views across the
ether. But more than any established group, what turned anti-Mubarak
vitriol into civil disobedience was a campaign to memorialize a mur-
dered blogger.
Local Google executive Wael Ghonim started the Facebook group
“We are All Khaled Said” to keep alive the memory of the 28-year-old
blogger, whom police had beaten to death on 6 June 2010 for exposing
their corruption. Just as digital images of Bouazizi in the hospital passed
over networks of family and friends in Egypt, an image of Said’s gro-
tesquely battered face, taken by his brother as Khaled’s body lay in the
Alexandria city morgue, passed from one mobile-phone camera to thou-
sands. And just as the 26-year-old Iranian woman Neda Agha-Soltan
became a protest icon after her death at the hands of a regime sniper
during postelection demonstrations in Tehran was caught on camera in
June 2009, so did Said and his memorial Facebook page become a focus
for collective dissent and commiseration. But more than being a digital
tribute to someone from a group long tormented by Egyptian police, the
Said Facebook page became a logistical tool, and at least temporarily, a
strong source of community. Ghonim quickly emerged as Egypt’s lead-
ing voice on Twitter, linking a massive Arabic-speaking social network
with networks of mostly English-speaking observers and well-wishers
overseas.
The first demonstrators to venture into Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation)
Square on 25 January 2011 shared many hopes and aspirations with their
counterparts in Tunis. They were a similar community of like-minded
individuals, educated but underemployed (in a “youth-bulge” society
chronically unable to create enough jobs for its legions of young peo-
ple), eager for change but committed neither to religious fervor nor po-
114 Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

litical ideology. They found solidarity through digital media, and then
used their mobile phones to call their social networks into the streets.
Protests scaled up quickly, leaving regime officials and outside observ-
ers alike surprised that such a large network of relatively liberal, peace-
ful, middle-class citizens would mobilize against Mubarak with such
speed. Islamists, opposition-party supporters, and union members were
there too, but liberal and civil society voices dominated the digital con-
versation. News about and speeches by Mubarak, U.S. president Barack
Obama, and regional leaders were streamed live to the phones and lap-
tops in the square.
In the last week of January, an increasingly desperate Mubarak tried to
unplug his country. His attempt to cut Egyptians off from the global infor-
mation infrastructure met with mixed success. Anticipating the maneuver,
tech-savvy students and civil society leaders had put in place backup sat-
ellite phones and dial-up connections to Israel and Europe, and were able
to maintain strong links to the rest of the world. It appears, moreover, that
some of the telecommunications engineers charged with choking off In-
ternet access were slow to move. The first large Internet service provider
received the shutdown order on Friday, January 28, but took no action
until Saturday. Others responded promptly, but restored normal service
on Monday. For four days, the amount of bandwidth going into Egypt
dropped, but it was far short of the information blackout that Mubarak had
been seeking. The regime had to deal with costs and perverse effects, too.
Government agencies were crippled by being knocked off the grid. And
middle-class Egyptians, denied home Internet access, took to the streets
in larger numbers than ever, many driven by an urge simply to find out
what was going on.
A few days later, the Egyptian security services began using Face-
book and Twitter to anticipate the movements of individual activists.
They abducted Ghonim once his Facebook group topped three-hundred
thousand members (it now has four times that many). Digital media tech-
nologies not only set off a cascade of civil disobedience across Egypt,
but made for a unique means of civic organizing that was replicated
around the region.
Digital media spread the details of successful social mobilization
against the strongmen of Tunisia and Egypt across the region. As had
happened in Tunisia and Egypt, authorities in Algeria, Bahrain, Libya,
Saudi Arabia, and Syria tried to stifle digital conversation about domestic
political change. These governments also targeted bloggers with arrests,
beatings, and harassment. It is clear that digital media have played an im-
portant role. Images of jubilant protesters in Tunisia inspired others across
the region. Facebook provided an invaluable logistical infrastructure for
the initial stages of protest in each country. Text-messaging systems fed
people within and outside these countries with information about where
the action was, where the abuses were, and what the next step would be.
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 115

Within a few weeks, there were widely circulating PDFs of tip sheets
on how to pull off a successful protest. The Atlantic Monthly translat-
ed and hosted an “Activist Action Plan,” boingboing.net provided tips
for protecting anonymity online, and Telecomix circulated the ways of
using landlines to circumvent state blockages of broadband networks.
Through Google Earth, the Shias of Bahrain—many of whom live in
one-room houses with large families—could map and aggregate pho-
tographs of the ruling Sunni minority’s opulent palaces. Digital media
provided both an awareness of shared grievances, and transportable
strategies for action.
The prominent Bahraini human-rights blogger Mahmood al-Yousif
tweeted during his arrest, instantly linking up the existing networks of
local democratization activists such as @OnlineBahrain with interna-
tional observers through @BahrainRights. In Libya, the first assertion
of a competing political authority to that of Muammar Qadhafi came
online, on a website declaring an alternative government in the form of
an interim national council. One of Qadhafi’s senior advisors defected
by tweeting his resignation and urging Qadhafi to leave Libya.
Algerians, goaded by the same sense of economic despair and dis-
satisfaction that drove Tunisians and Egyptians, broke out in similar
demonstrations. Salima Ghezali, a leading Algerian activist, told Al
Jazeera that the protests were “both very local and very global.” Union-
led strikes had been common in Algeria for decades, but nothing like the
unrest of 2011 had been seen since 1991. Algerian protesters were not
among the region’s most tech-savvy, but before the country’s state-run
media reported on local protests or Mubarak’s resignation, many resi-
dents of Algiers received the inspirational news via SMS.

Digital Contexts, Political Consequences

Ben Ali had ruled for almost twenty-five years, and Mubarak for
nearly thirty. Each was tossed out of power by a network of activists
whose core members were twenty-somethings with little experience in
social-movement organizing or open political discourse. Seeing this,
other governments scrambled to make concessions that they hoped
would head off explosions. Algeria’s rulers lifted an almost two-decade-
old state of emergency. Oman’s sultan gave its elected legislature the
authority to pass laws. Sudan’s war-criminal president promised not to
seek reelection. All the oil-rich states committed to wealth redistribution
or the extension of welfare services.
Real-world politics, of course, is about much more than what happens
online. A classically trained social scientist trying to explain the upheav-
als would point to the youth bulge, declining economic productivity, ris-
ing wealth concentration, high unemployment, and low quality of life
as common circumstances across the region. These explanatory factors
116 Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

are typically part of the story of social change, and it does not diminish
digital media’s causal contribution to note their presence. Such media
were singularly powerful in spreading protest messages, driving cover-
age by mainstream broadcasters, connecting frustrated citizens with one
another, and helping them to realize that they could take shared action
regarding shared grievances. For years, discontent had been stirring,
but somehow the drivers of protest never proved sufficient until mobile
phones and the Web began pervading the region. It never makes sense to
look for simple, solitary causes of a revolution, to say nothing of a string
of revolutions, and the precise grievances have varied significantly from
country to country. Yet the use of digital media to rouse and organize
opposition has furnished a common thread.2
It is true that journalists have focused on the visible technological
tactics that seemed to bring so much success, rather than looking at the
root causes of social discontent. Yet this does not mean that analysts
should overcorrect and exclude information technologies from the list
of causes altogether. Indeed, social discontent is not something ready-
made, but must gestate as people come to agree on the exact nature and
goals of their discontent. In the last few years, this gestation process
has gone forward via new media, particularly in Tunisia, Egypt, and
Bahrain. Social discontent can assume organizational form online, and
can be translated into workable strategies and goals there as well. Over
the last few months, this translation process has occurred via mobile
phones and social-networking applications even in countries whose gov-
ernments are very good at coopting or brutally suppressing opposition,
such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen.
In the Middle East and North Africa, dissent existed long before the
Internet. Yet digital media helped to turn individualized, localized, and
community-specific dissent into a structured movement with a collec-
tive consciousness about both shared plights and opportunities for ac-
tion. It may make more sense to think of conjoined causal combinations:
the strength of existing opposition movements, the ability (or inability)
of the regime to buy off opposition leaders, and the use of digital media
to build opposition networks. The precise mixture of causes may have
varied from country to country, but the one consistent component has
been digital media.
It is premature to call these events a “wave” of democratization—
their outcomes are still far too uncertain for that—yet we can say that
opposition to authoritarian rule has been the consistent collective-action
goal across the region. Arab social-movement leaders actively sought
training and advice from the leaders of democratization movements in
other countries, and rhetorical appeals for civil liberty appeared consis-
tently from protest to protest.
As we look back over the first quarter of 2011, the story of digital
media and the Arab Spring seems to have unfolded in five or perhaps six
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 117

parts or phases. The first was a preparation phase that involved activists
using digital media in creative ways to find each other, build solidarity
around shared grievances, and identify collective political goals. The
second was an ignition phase involving an incident that the state-run
media ignored, but which came to wide notice online and enraged the
public. Then came the third phase, a period of street protests made pos-
sible, in part, by online networking and coordination. As these went on,
there came the international buy-in, during which digital-media cover-
age (much of it locally generated) drew in foreign governments, inter-
national organizations, global diasporas, and overseas news agencies.
Matters then built toward a climax as regimes, maneuvering via some
mixture of concession and repression, either got the protesters off the
street; failed to mollify or frighten them and began to crumble before
their demands; or ended up in a bloody stalemate or even civil war as we
are seeing in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. In some cases, such as
those of Tunisia and Egypt, we are seeing an additional phase of follow-
on information warfare as the various players left standing compete to
shape the future course of events by gaining control over the revolution-
ary narrative.
Across the region, the process of building up to political change
involved “building down” the credibility of authoritarian regimes by
investigating their corrupt practices. The best and perhaps the only
place that critics could find for getting their message across was the
Internet. Blogs, news websites, Twitter feeds, and political listservs
offered spaces where women could debate on an equal footing with
men, where policy alternatives could be discussed, and where regime
secrets could be exposed. What set the scene for a dramatic event such
as the occupation of a central square was the undramatic process of
people buying cheap mobile phones or time online at cybercafés. The
arrival of new digital technologies became an occasion for individuals
to restructure the ways in which they produced and consumed content.
When a political crisis flared, the new habits of technology use were
already in place.
After 2000, new communications technologies spread rapidly across
the Arab world. For many Arabs, especially in cities, reading foreign
news online and communicating with friends and relatives abroad be-
came habits. Digital media could become a near-term cause of political
upheaval in 2011 precisely because they were already so popular. It may
seem that digital-media use in times of political crisis is novel. But for
residents of Tunis, Cairo, and other capitals, it was the sheer everyday-
ness and familiarity of mobile phones that made them a proximate cause
of political change. The revolution may be televised, and it is surely
online.
What ignites popular protest is not merely an act of regime violence
such as the police beating Mohamed Bouazizi or Khaled Said, but the
118 Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

diffusion of news about the outrage by networks of family, friends, and

then strangers who step in when the state-run media ignore the story.
When Al Jazeera failed at first to cover digital activism in Syria, civic
leaders there lobbied the influential network into producing a long doc-
umentary and featuring Syrian-activist content on its website. Conse-
quently, interest in homegrown opposition to dictator Bashar al-Assad
grew rapidly both within the country and across the region.
Interestingly, the recent protest ignitions seem to have occurred with-
out recognizable leaders. Charismatic ideologues, labor-union officials,
and religious spokespeople have been noticeably absent (or at least they
were at first). In Tunisia, the igniting event was Bouazizi’s suicide. In
Egypt, it was the Tunisian example. The rest of the region followed as
scenes of demonstrators and fleeing dictators went out over Al Jazeera
and social-media networks.
After ignition, the street battles of political upheaval began, albeit
in a unique manner. Most of the protests in most of the countries were
organized in unexpected ways that made it difficult for states to respond.
The lack of individual leaders made it hard for authorities to know whom
to arrest. Activists used Facebook, Twitter, and other sites to communi-
cate plans for civic action, at times playing cat-and-mouse games with
regime officials who were monitoring these very applications. In Libya,
foes of the Qadhafi dictatorship took to Muslim online-dating sites in
order to hide the arrangements for meetings and protest rallies. In Syria,
the Assad regime had blocked Facebook and Twitter intermittently since
2007, but reopened access as protests mounted, possibly as a way of
entrapping activists. When state officials began spreading misinforma-
tion over Twitter, activists used Google Maps to self-monitor and verify
trusted sources. Then, too, authorities often flubbed their information-
control efforts. Mubarak disabled Egypt’s broadband infrastructure yet
left satellite and landline links alone. Qadhafi tried to shut down his
country’s mobile-phone networks, but they proved too decentralized.
News coverage of events in the region regularly revealed citizens us-
ing their mobile-phone cameras to document events, and especially their
own participation in them. In Tahrir Square, both the crowds and the
crewmen of the tanks that were sent to watch them took pictures of one
another for instant distribution to their various social networks. When
army vehicles were abandoned, people clambered aboard and posed for
pictures to post to their Facebook pages. Arrestees took pictures of them-
selves in custody. Some Egyptians speculated that the army did not act
systematically against protesters because soldiers were made suddenly
aware of their socially proximate connection to the square’s occupants,
and also because the troops knew that they were constantly on camera.
In countries where the armed forces did act with aggression, including
Bahrain and Syria, the resulting carnage was still documented. YouTube
had to add a special waiver to its usual no-gore policy in order to allow
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 119

shocking user content such as a mobile-phone video of unarmed Syrian

civilians—including children—being shot by Assad’s troops.
Sooner or later, regime opponents must seek some form of interna-
tional support, and this, too, has become a digitally mediated process.
Domestic turmoil can eventually capture international attention. Of
course, the degree to which a popular uprising finds an international au-
dience depends on strategic relations with the West, but also on the prox-
imity of social-media networks. Most technology users in most countries
do not have the sophistication to work around state firewalls or keep up
anonymous and confidential communications online. But in each country
a handful of tech-savvy students and civil society leaders do have these
skills, and they used them well during the first months of 2011. Learning
from democracy activists in other countries, these information brokers
used satellite phones, direct landline connections to ISPs in Israel and
Europe, and software tools for protecting user anonymity in order to sup-
ply the international media with pictures of events on the ground—even
when desperate dictators attempted to shut down national ISPs.

Desperate Tactics
When conflicts between a regime and its domestic opposition come to
a head, one or the other may give in, or else a stalemate (often punctuat-
ed by violent clashes) may ensue. Mounting tensions led several govern-
ments to make clumsy attempts at disconnecting citizens from the global
digital “grid.” Banning access to social-media websites, powering down
cell towers, or disconnecting Internet switching points in major cities
were among the desperate tactics to which authoritarian regimes resort-
ed as they strove to maintain control. Even short disruptions of con-
nectivity were costly. Egypt lost at least US$90 million to Mubarak’s
only partly successful efforts to cut off digital communications. Perhaps
even more damaging in the long run, this episode harmed the country’s
reputation among technology firms as a safe place to invest. In Tunisia,
the situation was reversed: It was not the government but rather activist
hackers—or “hacktivists,” as many call themselves—who did the most
economic damage by shutting down the national stock exchange.
When regimes struck back, their counterblows had digital compo-
nents. Bahrain, Morocco, and Syria saw cyberstruggles to dominate
Twitter traffic. Every country that experienced turmoil witnessed
delays or disruptions in mobile-phone and Internet service, but it is
hard to say whether this was due to regime-driven shutdowns or over-
whelming traffic volumes at moments of maximal uncertainty. Quite
likely it was both. The zenith of crisis tended to mark the nadir of
connectivity as regimes cracked down on large telecommunications
providers while skyrocketing traffic was rerouted to a few small avail-
able digital switches.
120 Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

The information wars that followed the protests of the Arab Spring
began with the efforts of regimes to hide their tracks. In Egypt, the State
Security Investigations Service—Mubarak’s political police—did all it
could to destroy its archives, though some records leaked online. The
websites of activists, meanwhile, became portals for criticisms of the
interim government and its leaders.
The victors in a popular uprising generate ever more digital content,
while the supporters of failed dictators produce less and less. Deposed
dictators find only a small audience online, while the entrepreneurial
activists who served as important nodes in the social-movement net-
work find themselves with newfound leadership roles. By the time the
protests are over, a few of the “digerati” such as Wael Ghonim find
that they have become newly prominent public figures. And the public
expectation of being able to use information technology to access politi-
cal figures remains. When U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton was
booked for a Web chat with a popular Egyptian website, around 6,500
questions were submitted in just two days.
Traditional media sources also played an important role in the Arab
Spring. Satellite television forged a strong sense of transnational iden-
tity across the region, and everyone recognized the importance of cover-
age in this medium: Both Mubarak and his information minister called
television anchors personally to berate them for unflattering stories. Of
the existing news organizations, Al Jazeera certainly enjoyed the highest
profile and the most influence regionally. The network’s Dima Khatib, a
native of Syria, was the most prominent commentator on Tunisia when
that country erupted, and she served as a key information broker for the
revolution through her postings on Twitter. Al Jazeera had an excep-
tionally innovative new-media team that converted its traditional news
product for use on social-media sites and made good use of the existing
social networks of its online users. But a key aspect of its success was
its use of digital media to collect information and images from countries
in which its journalists had been harassed or banned. These digital net-
works gave Al Jazeera’s journalists access to more sources, and gave a
second life to their news products. Indeed, the use of social media itself
has become a news peg, with analysts eager to play with the meme of
technology-induced political change.
Regime responses varied in sophistication, but often seemed sever-
al technological paces behind the behavior of civil society. In Febru-
ary, during one of his televised speeches, Qadhafi interrupted his train
of thought when an aide drew his attention to real-time coverage of
his rant. Qadhafi had simply never encountered such instant feedback
from a source that could not easily be silenced or punished. In Bahrain,
the successful suppression of protest by the country’s Sunni-dominat-
ed monarchy gave it an opportunity to plug the security holes in its
telecommunications network. Though never as severely challenged by
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 121

demonstrators, Saudi Arabia’s rulers have reorganized the server infra-

structure of the Kingdom so that all Internet traffic there flows through
exchange points that are physically located in Riyadh.
It is a mistake to build a theory of democratization around a par-
ticular kind of software, a single website, or a piece of hardware, or
to label these social upheavals “Twitter Revolutions” or “WikiLeaks
Revolutions.”3 Nor does it make sense to argue that digital media can
cause either dictators or their opponents to achieve or fall short of their
goals. Technological tools and the people who use them must together
make or break a political uprising.

The Digital Scaffolding for Civil Society

Digital media changed the tactics of democratization movements, and
new information and communication technologies played a major role
in the Arab Spring. We do not know, at the time of this writing in May
2011, where events in the various countries will lead, and whether or
not change will come to the remaining, more recalcitrant authoritarian
governments. But the consistent narrative arc of the uprisings involves
digital media. The countries that experienced the most dramatic pro-
tests were among the region’s most thoroughly wired, and their societies
boasted large numbers of people with the technical knowledge to use
these new media to strong effect.
In times of political crisis, technology firms may “lean forward”
with new tools or applications introduced to serve an eager public
(and in doing so, capture market share). In late January, for example,
Google sped up its launch of its speak-to-tweet service, an application
designed to translate voicemails into tweets as a means of bypassing
Mubarak’s Twitter blockade. Several tech firms built dedicated portals
to allow in-country users to share content. But as Evgeny Morozov
has pointed out, information technologies—and the businesses that
design them—do not always end up supporting democratization move-
ments.4 Opposition leaders in countries where political parties are ille-
gal sometimes use pseudonyms to avoid government harassment. But
doing so on Facebook is a violation of the company’s user agreement,
and so the company actually shut down one of the protest-group pages
in December. Supporters eventually persuaded Facebook to reinstate
the page, but the incident showed how businesses such as Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter may not fully appreciate the way in which their
users treat these tools as public-information infrastructure, and not
just as cool new applications in the service of personal amusement.
Whereas Google has signed the Global Network Initiative—a compact
for preventing web censorship by authoritarian governments—Face-
book has refused to do so. It might be technically possible to require
Facebook users in Western countries to use real identities while allow-
122 Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media

ing people living under dictatorships to enjoy anonymity, but no such

feature currently exists.
Absent digital media, would the Arab Spring still have occurred? It is
hard to say. The Arab world has long had democratic activists, but never
before had any toppled a dictator. Radio and television have long reached
most Arabs, but only 10 to 20 percent of those living in a typical Middle
Eastern or North African country can easily gain access to the Internet.
Yet this minority is a strategic one, typically comprising an elite made
up of educated professionals, young entrepreneurs, urban dwellers, and
government workers. These are the people who formed the networks
that initiated, coordinated, and sustained successful campaigns of civil
disobedience against authoritarian rule. Looking at the other side of the
coin, the countries with the lowest levels of technology proliferation
have also tended to have the weakest democratization movements. As
fascinating as it can be to think of counterfactual scenarios, it would be a
mistake to see these as belonging on an equal footing with actual events
in concrete cases concerning which we have ample empirical evidence.
Counterfactuals and thought experiments can be fun, but in the search
for patterns that is the social scientist’s task, prominence should always
be given to real cases and the real evidence they yield.
As we have noted, it is premature to assert that we are witnessing a
wave of democratization. Several states are still in crisis. In countries
where authoritarian governments have collapsed or made major con-
cessions, it is hard to know whether stable democracies will emerge.
Democratization waves are measured in years, not months. In 1998,
Indonesia’s Suharto fell when students using mobile phones success-
fully mobilized and caught his regime off guard, but it took a decade
of difficult political conversations for democratic practices to become
entrenched. The Arab Spring had a unique narrative arc, involved a par-
ticular community of nations, and caught most autocrats and analysts
alike by surprise. Digital media are important precisely because they
had a role in popular mobilizations against authoritarian rule that were
unlike anything seen before in the region.
It is also noteworthy that a remarkable amount of political change has
occurred in a surprisingly nonlethal manner. In Algeria, Egypt, Jordan,
Morocco, and Tunisia, civil society leaders found that the security ser-
vices showed a remarkable reluctance to move aggressively against pro-
testers (and the Tunisian and Egyptian militaries did not want to move
against them at all). Could this hesitancy have had anything to do with
the large numbers of mobile-phone cameras that demonstrators were
carrying? Sadly, a distaste for the use of deadly violence by regime
forces has not been evident in Bahrain, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and
Yemen. Yet even in those cases, it can at least be said that solid docu-
mentation of regime abuses or even atrocities has reached the interna-
tional community, in no small part thanks to mobile phones.
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain 123

Scholars of social movements, collective action, and revolution must

admit that several aspects of the Arab Spring challenge our theories
about how such protests work. These movements had an unusually wide
or “distributed” leadership. The first days of protest in each country
were organized by a core group of literate, middle-class young people
who had no particular affinities with any existing political parties or any
ideologies stressing class struggle, religious fundamentalism, or pan-
Arab nationalism. Broadcast and print media—long associated with the
mobilization phase of democratization waves—took a decided backseat
to communication via social networks. This communication, moreover,
itself had a strongly distributed or lateral character and did not consist of
one or a few relatively simple ideological messages beamed by an elite
at a less-educated mass public, but had more the character of a many-
sided conversation among more or less equal individuals.
Seeing what has unfolded so far in the Middle East and North Af-
rica, we can say more than simply that the Internet has changed the
way in which political actors communicate with one another. Since the
beginning of 2011, social protests in the Arab world have cascaded from
country to country, largely because digital media have allowed com-
munities to unite around shared grievances and nurture transportable
strategies for mobilizing against dictators. In each country, people have
used digital media to build a political response to a local experience of
unjust rule. They were not inspired by Facebook; they were inspired by
the real tragedies documented on Facebook. Social media have become
the scaffolding upon which civil society can build, and new information
technologies give activists things that they did not have before: informa-
tion networks not easily controlled by the state and coordination tools
that are already embedded in trusted networks of family and friends.

NOTES

1. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–
1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

2. Philip N. Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information

Technology and Political Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

3. Elizabeth Dickinson, “The First WikiLeaks Revolution?” Foreign Policy Online, avail-
able at http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/13/wikileaks_and_the_tunisia_
protests. See also Andrew Sullivan, “Tunisia’s Wikileaks Revolution,” Atlantic Online,
available at www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/01/tunisias-wikileaks-revolu-
tion/177242.

4. Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New
York: PublicAffairs, 2011).
 9
CIRCUMVENTING INTERNET
CENSORSHIP IN THE ARAB WORLD
Walid Al-Saqaf

Walid Al-Saqaf is a Yemeni journalist, software developer, activist

and media scholar, currently directing the Masters in Global Journal-
ism program at Örebro University in Sweden. Al-Saqaf is the founder
of Yemen Portal, a news aggregator, and Alkasir, a software program
aimed at mapping and circumventing censorship worldwide.

In mid-January 2011, successive and massive protests throughout Tu-

nisia forced out President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, one of the Arab
world’s most repressive autocrats. Scholars labeled this dramatic event
the Jasmine Revolution. Others emphasized social networking’s influ-
ence on Ben Ali’s exile, and titled the event the Facebook Revolution.1
This title is also apropos because there are approximately two million
Tunisian Facebook users, roughly 19 percent of the country’s popula-
tion.2 This made local Facebook users a loud, clear, and formidable
voice of the opposition. However, the Tunisian phenomenon would be
best described as a “network revolution,” since it was contingent on
youth and activists utilizing a variety of social-networking tools, not
just Facebook, through a combination of online, cell-phone, and in-the-
flesh social gatherings.
Remarkably, this network revolution occurred in an Arab country
that aggressively censored the Internet under Ben Ali’s direction for
many years. In his refuge in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the ousted president
is likely asking himself, “What went wrong?” It would be understand-
able for Ben Ali to pose such a question, especially since advisors led
him to believe that Tunisia’s Internet was under his control, preventing
opposition forces from organizing and rallying against him. However,
the Tunisian regime underestimated the resilience and innovation of
Arab bloggers and cyberactivists when it came to using technology to
overcome the effects of Internet censorship. Activists such as Sami Ben
Gharbia, an exiled Tunisian journalist, always believed that the Inter-
net could facilitate a transition from dictatorship to democracy despite
Walid Al-Saqaf 125

government censorship. In a tweet following the revolution, Ben Ghar-

bia said, “we won’t be silenced.”3 In short, Tunisia was a battleground
between those who censored and those who circumvented. In the end,
the latter had the upper hand.
Luckily, the story of circumventing Internet censorship does not end
with Tunisia. Within a few weeks of the Tunisian uprisings, demonstra-
tors flooded Egyptian streets on 25 January 2011, the so-called “Day
of Wrath.” Egyptian cyberactivists used Facebook and Twitter to coor-
dinate demonstrations, triggering a series of massive street protests in
which more than a million Egyptians participated.4 Many of the protes-
tors chanted for the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade-
long rule. Authorities quickly resorted to censorship once demonstra-
tions in Egypt began. They jammed mobile-network traffic and blocked
access to Twitter and Facebook.
Soon after this censorship began, several Egyptians contacted me
asking for methods to circumvent it. With my circumvention software,
they succeeded in overcoming Mubarak’s blockades. A Twitter search
for “#jan25 and proxy” on January 26 showed that many Internet users
had already begun sharing information about circumvention methods.
The January 25 rally demonstrated that Egyptians had to use circum-
vention technologies, as the Tunisians had, to help keep users connect-
ed and networked through the various online social-networking plat-
forms. Perhaps realizing that Internet censorship alone was not effec-
tive enough to stop the flow of information, the Egyptian regime took
the extreme approach of completely shutting down the Internet for five
days, from January 27 to February 2.
The Tunisian and Egyptian cases show how circumvention methods
and tools for bypassing Internet-censorship can reduce its impact by
maintaining an unimpeded flow of information and interaction among
users. This technology has great importance and relevance to democra-
cy in the Arab world. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that draws
on both information technology and the social sciences, this chapter
analyzes Internet censorship patterns as well as the effects and use of
circumvention tools in the Arab world.

How It All Started

Although Internet censorship comes in various forms,5 I focus here
on a common form of censorship that limits Internet users’ access to
certain online content: filtering. Internet service providers (ISPs) usu-
ally practice website filtering, but it may also be done on a local router
serving as a gatekeeper that monitors page requests and checks them
against a blacklist of addresses and keywords.
Before delving into the core findings of this study pertaining to fil-
tered content and circumvention in the Arab world, it is useful to pro-
126 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

vide some background on Internet censorship in Arab countries and the

origins of this research.
First, it is important to remember that Tunisia and Egypt were not the
only countries blocking websites from their citizens. Most repressive
Arab regimes restrict access to websites and services, and of course
Internet censorship is also practiced widely by a variety of other coun-
tries, including China, Thailand, and Iran.6
Second, Internet censorship diminishes access to information and
thus the spread of democratic ideals. Ironically, for many (including
myself), exposure to Internet regulation opened individuals’ eyes to the
previously mysterious field of Internet censorship. Observing censor-
ship motivated me to study this phenomenon and develop mechanisms
to circumvent it. Furthermore, evading persistent censorship hones the
skills of cyberactivists and software developers in their battle against
repressive governments.
Third, a disclaimer: I am not neutral on the question of Internet cen-
sorship. I oppose it. I have been a victim of censorship myself and
know how frustrating it is to find thousands of your online readers sud-
denly cut off from your website. Having been confronted with Internet
censorship in the Arab world, the issue resonates with me personally.
Hence, I feel that it is appropriate for me to provide a brief background
about myself, and to explain why I feel the need to pursue the path of
studying and circumventing Internet censorship.
In 2007, I launched a unique online-content aggregator and search
engine for my native country of Yemen. I named it “Yemen Portal”
(yemenportal.net) because I wanted it to be a window to everything that
had to do with Yemen, whether it was news, opinion articles, videos,
blog posts, or other discussions. I wanted to ensure that individuals
would have an equal opportunity to access all sources, whether pro-
government, pro-opposition, or independent. Google News inspired me
to build Yemen Portal to be a place where readers had a panoramic
view of information through a spectrum of news sources and political
parties. Yemen Portal attempted to combat the often-limited perspec-
tive shown on monopolized TV, radio, and print media. I deliberately
launched the website on the seventeenth anniversary of Yemen’s unifi-
cation, 22 May 2007.7
From June 2007 to January 2008, there were more than 200,000 visits
(including 68,000 unique visits) to Yemen Portal from the world over.
Interestingly, visitors to the site clearly preferred nongovernmental or
oppositional and independent content, even though the average number
of published articles per day from government websites was higher.8 In
fact, readers’ first preference was oppositional content, while indepen-
dent media was their second choice, and governmental content a distant
third. I openly shared my results with website administrators and online
journalists involved in opposition, government, and independent web-
Walid Al-Saqaf 127

sites. Soon after, on 19 January 2008, the government of Yemen cen-

sored my website by means of a firewall. Having my website filtered
was a pivotal moment in my career and motivated me to study Internet
censorship and find ways to circumvent it not only in Yemen, but also
in the wider Arab world. When my university supervisor approved my
doctoral dissertation to study Internet censorship in the Arab world, I
felt that it had become both my personal and professional mission to
study this problem with an eye toward finding solutions to it.
In order to identify which websites Arab regimes blocked from us-
ers, I developed a software solution in May 2009 named the “Alkasir
Solution for Internet Censorship Mapping and Circumvention.” Since
the website was a homegrown project intended to help local Arab In-
ternet users, I gave it the name “Alkasir” which means “the circumven-
tor” in Arabic. I also made the website multilingual with an Arabic and
English interface.
Alkasir, like other circumvention technologies, works quite simply.
It loads a list of website addresses that are known to be censored within
a specific country into its central database. This list varies based on
the country in which the users are located and the ISP they use. It also
allows users to report a website or address that they suspect may be
blocked in their country. The system verifies whether the website is
blocked by comparing a locally retrieved version with one retrieved
through a remote server located where there is no censorship. Once this
verification is complete, Alkasir moderators check to see if the website
meets the software’s submission policy, which states that all websites
can be submitted except those with nudity, pirated material, or viruses
and malware. Once approved, the previously blocked websites become
accessible not only to the specific user who submitted the link, but to
all Alkasir users in that country where the link was censored.
I have received some criticism for not allowing content such as por-
nography to be accessible. In a radio interview published on Voice of
America, a commentator questioned whether I was also guilty of cen-
sorship because I was not allowing certain content.9 The interviewer
compared Alkasir to other well-established circumvention solutions
available worldwide such as Tor, Ultrasurf, and Hotspot Shield, which
allow pornography sites. I would offer two rebuttals to this critique:
one technical, the other philosophical. First, it is important to under-
stand that I tailored my circumvention tool primarily for Arab users
who are unable to access blocked social networks, blogs, news, and
other online information. The purpose of the tool is to help users con-
nect with others through Facebook, receive and transmit information
through blogs, and read different perspectives of news from various
parties, including dissident sources. By directing Alkasir’s server and
bandwidth resources to information content rather than massive and
bandwidth-hungry pornographic videos, individuals use the resource
128 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

more efficiently and effectively for the intended purpose. It is also im-
portant to highlight that Alkasir can be used to access websites that
offer additional circumvention tools that can be used to access any
content. Importantly, Alkasir is simply not a filtering system, because
when an individual installs Alkasir it does not prevent access to previ-
ously accessible websites. Additionally, due to technical constraints,
including costly hardware, it would have been impossible for Alkasir
to circumvent all blocked content.
Second, the political and philosophical aim of Alkasir stems from
the belief that the Arab world lacks real democracy, which Arab peo-
ples deserve just as much as people anywhere else in the world.10 For
this reason it is crucial to prioritize news and information over “adult
content.” Also, in order to appeal to Arab users (who are generally
socially conservative) and convince them of the positive contribution
of Alkasir, it had to be clearly stated that it does not facilitate viewing
pornographic websites. Furthermore, it is advantageous not to allow
pornographic sites because an Arab-based circumvention solution al-
lowing this content would provide ammunition to progovernment and
religious figures in the region.
It is worth noting that the project was made possible by utilizing
open-source code available for free online. The software is still exclu-
sive to Windows-based PC platforms, but there are plans to expand to
other operating systems.
Alkasir basically works by having “tunnels” access blocked web-
sites’ traffic through proxy servers that use a split-tunneling technique
inspired by Virtual Point Network (VPN) services. A VPN is basically
a relay point or proxy through which remote users can access the Inter-
net. A designated tunneling proxy, which different Internet Protocols
(IPs) can access based on certain variables, allows Alkasir to preserve
bandwidth on the proxy server while actively circumventing censored
content.11

Use and Demographics

Between 17 September 201012 and 26 January 2011, a total of 7,071
users from 72 countries and territories accessed Alkasir.13 Visitors from
the Arab world constituted the majority at 68 percent with 4,821. As
we see from Figure 1, most Arab Alkasir users during this period were
from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Users from the three countries
totaled 3,812 people (79 percent of all Arab users).
It is important, however, to acknowledge that although there were
many Arab users during the five-month period analyzed, not all of them
accessed the service simultaneously. Based on 26 January 2011 statis-
tics, on average around 800 users used Alkasir daily. Furthermore, the
distribution of access during the day shows that peak usage usually
Walid Al-Saqaf 129

FIGURE 1—ALKASIR USERS IN THE ARAB WORLD

ŗŞŖŖ

ŗŜŖŖ ŗśśŖȱ
ŗśŖŖȱ

ŗŚŖŖ

ŗŘŖŖ

ŗŖŖŖ

ŝŜŘȱ
ŞŖŖ

ŜŖŖ

ŚŖŖ
ŗŞśȱ ŗŝŘȱ
ŘŖŖ ŗřŗȱ
Şşȱ ŞŜȱ ŝŖȱ Ŝŗȱ śśȱ śŖȱ Śşȱ řŗȱ ŘŚȱ Řȱ ŗȱ
Ŗ


Note: Covers the period from May 2010 to January 2011.
occurs between 1500 and 2200 hours Greenwich Mean Time, with an
average of 330 users connected to the server simultaneously.
It is not necessary to be a member of alkasir.com to use Alkasir,
nor is it necessary to download and install Alkasir in order to become
a member. Nonetheless, 5,463 members had joined alkasir.com by 20
January 2011. It should be acknowledged that in order to protect the
privacy of Alkasir users, the server does not archive Alkasir users’ IP
addresses. Alkasir.com also embeds anonymity within the system since
users do not need to provide their real name or country.

Arab Regimes Embracing Internet Censorship

Alkasir’s data confirms that many Arab governments have attempted
to block information on the Internet. Based on data collected from Al-
kasir clients in the Arab world from 10 January 2010 to 28 January
2011, many Arab state-run ISPs were found to have filtered Uniform
Resource Locators (URLs) and websites containing various content,
especially social-networking and political websites. The data proving
this censorship is stored in a central database in a U.S.-based server.
By 31 January 2011, the Alkasir vetting system placed 501 blocked
URLs into 21 categories, based on the content of the websites as de-
termined by me and Alkasir volunteers. (However, there were dozens
of additional websites that were not yet categorized and were not used
in this study. This could affect the analysis here as to which genre of
website Arab governments choose to block most consistently.)
130 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

FIGURE 2—DISTRIBUTION OF BLOCKED URLS IN THE ARAB WORLD

Ž œ ŘŘȱ

˜Œ’Š•ȱŽ ˜›”œ ŗŜȱ

‘Ž› ŗśȱ

ž•’–Ž’Šȱ‘Š›’— ŗŘȱ

˜––Ž›Œ’Š• ŝȱ

’œœ’Ž— ŝȱ

Ž•’’˜— ŝȱ

›˜¡¢ śȱ

ž–Š—ȱ’‘œ Śȱ

  řȱ

Ř Řȱ

Ŗ ś ŗŖ ŗś ŘŖ Řś
Ž›ŒŽ—ȱ

News websites topped the list of blocked content, representing 22

percent of all filtered URLs (Figure 2). Social-networking websites ac-
counted for 16 percent of all blocked websites. The third most blocked
category of website was multimedia sharing, which made up about 12
percent of all blocked URLs. Every other specific category represented
a percentage of blocked websites of less than 10 percent.
The distribution of blocked content is reminiscent of censorship
practices targeting traditional media by an authoritarian regime, such
as the one in Yemen. Alkasir’s website categorization was based on the
service or content offered via the different censored websites. Dissident
views, criticisms of the government, reports of human-rights violations,
and similar content historically censored by autocratic governments in
traditional media certainly figure among the most frequently blocked
online content. This clearly demonstrates that censorship patterns tran-
scend the medium carrying the information. Governments have heavily
invested in firewall software to suppress news and opinion content, so-
cial networks, and multimedia sharing. The fact that those three groups
constitute over 49 percent of all blocked URLs indicates how keen
Arab regimes are to keep their information-suppression techniques up
to date.
From 10 January 2010 to 31 January 2011, Alkasir recorded 13,159
cases from Arab countries where the blocked URL met its approval
policy by not including pornography, viruses, or pirated content. Each
of those entries represented an attempt of an Alkasir client to access a
URL. This reporting process was carried out either manually by hav-
ing the user type in a URL in a designated input box, or automati-
cally through a built-in script that regularly cross-validates the status of
URLs reported by Alkasir users in the same country.
It is important not to confuse the number of verified cases of URL
blocking with the number of blocked URLs. The number of veri-
Walid Al-Saqaf 131

TABLE—URL BLOCKING IN fied URL blocking cases refers to the

ARAB COUNTRIES times a user discovered that an ISP in
Blocked a country blocked a URL. Based on
Country ISPs
URLs this understanding, it is possible for
Syria 52 177 one URL to have dozens of entries
Saudi Arabia 62 175 testifying to blocking. Furthermore,
Yemen 12 84
in the same country, there could be
many individuals reporting the same
U.A.E. 18 45
URL as blocked, creating numerous
Bahrain 20 44 verified but redundant cases for the
Libya 3 11 same URL. For example, if a country
Sudan 7 7 has 200 ISPs reporting an identical
Egypt 14 6 URL, this would indicate 200 entries
in the database but only one blocked
Jordan 16 4
URL.
Qatar 9 3
The study found 413 blocked URLs
Kuwait 8 3 of political, multimedia-sharing, and
Total 221 559 social-networking content, across elev-
en Arab countries. Our data documents
the Arab countries that practice blocking, the number of blocked URLs,
and the number of ISPs that were found to practice such blocking as
of 31 January 2011 (see the Table). This table does not mean that each
of the ISPs blocked all the censored URLs, however. Rather, the table
reports the number of ISPs that blocked at least one URL, and of course
some ISPs blocked a great many more. There could be cases where
only one ISP blocks most of the URLs, while on other occasions many
ISPs may block most of the URLs. However, it is important to note that
a number of the governments conducting censorship represent highly
authoritarian regimes (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Syria, for instance)
that tend to monopolize the Internet-service sector or to tightly control
Internet access through restrictive laws and regulations.14
Syria, which blocked 177 URLs, was the foremost Internet filterer
and was followed closely by Saudi Arabia with 175 blocked URLs (see
Table 1). Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Libya also
practiced censorship to a lesser extent. Blocking of a few websites was
detected in Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and Kuwait. It is important to
note that Egypt only began blocking websites on 25 January 2011, when
it filtered some social-networking websites. These activities continued
until 28 January 2011, when the Egyptian government cut off citizens’
access to the Internet completely. There was no reported blocking by
other Arab countries.
News and social-networking sites were blocked by the highest
number of countries. Nine Arab countries blocked news websites be-
cause the information these websites contained could not be controlled
through license revocation, pre-publishing censorship, or other conven-
132 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

tional censorship techniques. In all Arab countries represented in the

study, there are press laws whose effect is to keep media from pub-
lishing freely, sometimes by means of politically motivated red tape.15
Authoritarian Arab regimes justified Internet censorship as needed
to protect national security, religious sensitivities, and social norms.
These are rationalizations for limiting freedom of speech in print and
broadcast media.
Traditional press laws are largely irrelevant to Internet news because
online content is immediate and decentralized. Although it remains to
be empirically verified, it appears that factors behind blocking news
websites are quite similar to those behind blocking other politically
oriented dissident, human-rights, minority-related, and reformist web-
sites.
Seven Arab countries blocked dating websites, which could be
deemed offensive to religious or cultural traditions. Perhaps the auto-
crats blocked the websites to maintain conservative social values.
Six countries, especially those with strict religious stances, blocked
websites devoted to minority faiths. Governments often describe these
religious websites as insulting to Islam.
Some countries also blocked multimedia-sharing websites such as
YouTube. Since multimedia-sharing websites and blogs are similar to
social-networking sites—all strengthen users’ networks by enabling
them to form groups and frame plans for “real-world” actions—there
is a similar rationale behind blocking them. Such websites are the bed-
rock of network revolutions like those witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt,
making it natural for oppressive Arab regimes to take aim at social-
networking. Furthermore, many social-networking sites are increasing-
ly including multimedia-storage mechanisms. For example, Facebook
allows users to upload videos and pictures. Similarly, YouTube has
adopted features associated with social networking, including a flexible
profile, a comment section, and a messaging service. It seems apparent
that the two website categories are slowly converging.
Six Arab countries blocked proxy and circumvention websites due to
the websites’ capacity to allow users to evade censorship and negate the
effects of filtering. Five countries blocked blogging platforms. As with
social-networking websites, regimes filter blogs because of their inher-
ent ability to allow users to generate and publish unrestricted content.
While this categorization of blocked content is useful and illustra-
tive on its own, it remains difficult to draw conclusions, solely from
the statistics, regarding why different countries are blocking specific
categories and without doing extensive research into each particular
country’s rationale. Some countries block numerous forms of online
political content, though they have different priorities. For example,
Libya appeared interested only in blocking news and opposition web-
sites (e.g., akhbar-libyaonline.com, almanaralink.com)16 that specifi-
Walid Al-Saqaf 133

cally targeted the Libyan regime of the late Muammar Qadhafi. On the
other hand, Bahrain and Yemen aggressively censored all sorts of web-
sites that had political content, including blogs, human-rights reports,
and news sites.17

Do Arabs Support Web Censorship?

Just as Alkasir users actively reported blocked URLs from the Arab
world, they also contributed to this chapter by answering an online sur-
vey regarding Internet censorship and circumvention.
Alkasir developed an online survey with 71 questions. The survey
was published in both English and Arabic on Alkasir’s website on 8
June 2010. Survey questions were formulated to make use of results
from previous research. For example, questions on censorship were split
into technical and nontechnical censorship.18 Furthermore, researchers
used information from the study by the Global Internet Freedom Con-
sortium19 when designing the questions. After researchers received an-
swers to the questions, they conducted quantitative content analysis.
Although Alkasir sent invitations to fill out the survey20 through
channels ranging from email to subscription lists, the majority of re-
spondents were Alkasir users. They included users who are not only in-
terested in viewing online content, but also supposedly eager to pursue
methods to circumvent censorship. Upon installing Alkasir for the first
time, the user is prompted to fill in the survey in order to activate the
program. For this study, analysis considered only the completed survey
results and questions relevant to research questions.
By 31 January 2011, the survey had a completion rate of about 74
percent (and in turn 70 percent of the respondents were from Arab coun-
tries).21 Not surprisingly, there is a positive correlation between the
number of respondents in a country and the number of URLs blocked in
each country. The only exception to this finding is Yemen, which had
a higher number of respondents due to the extra publicity that Alkasir
received there through the Yemen Portal website. Tunisia had no web-
sites reported as blocked since most respondents completed the survey
after the fall of the Ben Ali regime in early 2011, which led to the end
of Internet censorship there.
Analysis of the surveys confirmed the hypothesis that Arab users
were strongly opposed to blocking certain content. This was under-
standable because the survey respondents were those using circumven-
tion software. Of those surveyed, 69 percent of the respondents stated
that it was always or mostly inappropriate to block political content,
while 67 percent stated that blocking circumvention websites was al-
ways or mostly inappropriate. Yet respondents did not mind the block-
ing of other forms of content such as pornography, security-related,
and gambling websites. When compared to results from surveys from
134 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

non-Arab countries, Arabs were much more opposed to the blocking of

political content, while non-Arab respondents were more opposed to
the filtering of copyrighted and hacking content.
When the survey asked Arab users whether they believe censorship
of certain content is appropriate, a pattern emerged whereby Arab users
voiced support for censorship of pornographic and adult content while
they strongly opposed censorship of news content.
About one of every seven of our Arab survey respondents (14 per-
cent) were bloggers or administrators of websites. Nearly a third of
the survey respondents had their website or blog blocked at least once,
while another 8 percent believed that their blog or website would be
blocked eventually. Arab respondents who had suffered from govern-
ments blocking their blogs or websites, as well as those who had indi-
cated that their country practiced filtering, agreed that Internet censor-
ship had negatively affected their online experiences. Slightly more
than two-thirds (68 percent) said that filtering inhibited democratic ex-
pression, while 64 percent said that it inhibited social networking and
also accessing information from diverse sources.
The diminished online experience that results from government
restrictions on web content may explain why 79 percent of those re-
spondents actively use circumvention tools. Survey results indicate
that respondents use a variety of circumvention solutions ranging from
web-based proxies to VPN services. The most common method of cir-
cumvention used by this demographic was Hotspot Shield, which was
used by 35 percent, followed by Ultrasurf with 24 percent, and a variety
of web-based proxies each with less than 18 percent. All these solu-
tions are available free of charge, but Hotspot Shield is a VPN client
allowing the circumvention of a broader number of Internet-censorship
techniques, which may explain why it topped the list.

In the Wake of the Arab Spring

Alkasir usage surged in 2011 as compared with 2010. The reason
may be largely attributed to the Arab Spring, which resulted in more
awareness of the Internet as an effective means of delivering messages
calling for political change and organizing dissident movements.
Based on conversations with some Alkasir users in the Arab coun-
tries that are undergoing revolutions, online censorship was viewed as
the first and biggest hurdle to overcome in order to publish politically
challenging text and multimedia content and to report on rallies, dem-
onstrations, and human-rights violations that the mainstream media
may not be able to cover directly.
In Syria, for example, Alkasir witnessed a tremendous rise in the
number of installations, from a few thousand in 2011 to more than
28,500 in January 2012. The software’s popularity in Syria as a cir-
Walid Al-Saqaf 135

cumvention tool grew steadily after it was discovered by some Egyp-

tian activists trying to circumvent censorship of Twitter.com before
the Internet was shut down at the beginning of the Egyptian revolu-
tion. 22
During 2011, a number of Alkasir users shared with us by e-mail
their reliance on Alkasir for circumventing censorship. Some Syrian
users said that they had tried various circumvention solutions but found
Alkasir to be among the more reliable and less prone to bottlenecks and
disruptions. This may be partly due to its efficient split-tunneling ap-
proach, which sets it apart from other similar solutions.
As of January 2012, Alkasir had been run approximately three-mil-
lion times by more than 67,500 users in 116 countries. Almost half
these users (slightly more than 30,000) were from Arab countries, and
of these, more than two-thirds were from Syria (with over 21,074 in-
stallations), followed by Yemen and Saudi Arabia with about 3,000
each.
By January 2012, there were slightly more than a hundred-thousand
reports of blocked URLs, which consequently allowed Alkasir users to
circumvent the censorship of 3,042 unique URLs in total (about half
in various Arab countries). Not surprisingly, Syria came out on top in
terms of the number of blocked URLs with 734, followed by Yemen
with 318 and Saudi Arabia with 240.
By January 2012, 651 of the blocked URLs had been categorized.23
Among those URLs, more than a third, or 232, belonged to the news
category (but among the blocked URLs in Syria, the proportion of news
sites was even higher, topping 40 percent). The second-largest cate-
gory was social networking with 148 URLs (23 percent) followed by
multimedia with 98 (15 percent). The other categories with a signifi-
cant number of URLs were religion and politics (7 percent each), blog
platforms (5 percent), human rights (4 percent), and minority faiths (2
percent).
A good indicator of what users were interested in is the number of
times that a particular website was reported as blocked. It was found
that users’ interests varied widely depending on the country in which
they were based. If we lump all users together, arabtimes.com, a sa-
tirical news website exposing scandals involving Arab officials and
celebrities, was the URL most frequently reported as blocked. It was
followed closely by Facebook, the world’s leading social-networking
website. Other websites frequently reported ranged from censorship-
circumvention services such as hotspotshield.com to human-rights
websites such as anhri.com.
Upon closer examination of usage patterns in Syria, it was found
that the most commonly reported blocked URL was efrin.net, a Kurdish
website promoting the rights of the Kurdish minority in Syria and sup-
porting the Syrian popular revolution calling for the ouster of President
136 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

Bashar al-Assad. The second most commonly reported blocked URL

was Facebook. From communicating with Alkasir users in Syria, it was
clear that accessing Facebook was of great importance to them. The
second position was also shared by 2shared.com, a multimedia content-
sharing website often used to upload video and images. Other web-
sites that were reported often were Kurdish websites and regional news
websites such as the Lebanese daily annahar.com. Multimedia websites
such as YouTube and social-networking sites such as couchsurfing.com
were also frequently reported as having been blocked.
A conclusion that could be drawn from the usage of Alkasir in Syria
is the apparent focus of users there on websites exposing injustice to
minorities, such as Kurds. But more generally, Syrian Internet users
wanted to express themselves freely and connect with one another,
which is why they sought unimpeded access to social-networking and
multimedia-sharing websites.
Since the Arab Spring began, some Alkasir users have reported that
ISPs in Saudi Arabia and Syria have fine-tuned their filtering software
to render some circumvention tools ineffective. To confront such chal-
lenges, new updated versions of Alkasir have used obfuscation in an at-
tempt to prevent ISPs from identifying traffic patterns connecting users.
Internet censorship—affecting news, opinion, and social-network-
ing sites—is pervasive in many Arab countries. But Arab bloggers and
Internet users are not passively accepting it. The majority of Arab blog-
gers using Alkasir also used additional circumvention technologies. It
is possible to infer from this that Internet censorship is not effective in
preventing them from reaching or publishing online content.
Although circumvention may have helped empower users to escape
autocratic Arab regimes’ complete control of information, it certain-
ly is not a magic bullet. It has several inherent shortcomings such as
lax security and slower connection speeds. Furthermore, circumven-
tion is not helpful when Internet access is completely shut down, as
it was for a brief time in Egypt. Although many remain hopeful that
liberation technology will change the region, more research needs to
be conducted to understand the long-term effects of Internet filtering
and circumvention tools. But this much is clear: If the current trend of
increasing Internet access and online activism continues, the familiar
cat-and-mouse game between ISPs in authoritarian Arab states on the
one hand and censorship-circumvention tool developers and users on
the other will probably continue for years to come.

NOTES
1. Mike Giglio, “Tunisia Protests: The Facebook Revolution,” Daily Beast, 15 January
2011; available at www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-15/tunisa-protests
-the-Facebook-revolution.
Walid Al-Saqaf 137

2. Jaco Maritz, “Top 10 African Countries on Facebook,” How We Made It In Africa,

19 January 2011; available at www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/top-10-african-countries-
on-Facebook/6980.

3. Sami ben Gharbia, Twitter post, 18 January 2011, 4:15 p.m.; available at Twitter.
com/#!/ifikra/statuses/27474214818676736.

4. Kiana Ashtiani, “Egyptian Uprising: A Timeline,” prospectjournal.ucsd.edu, 28 Feb-

ruary 2011; available at prospectjournal.ucsd.edu/index.php/2011/02/egyptian-uprising-
a-timeline.

5. Walid Al-Saqaf, “Internet Censorship Challenged: How Circumvention Technolo-

gies Can Effectively Outwit Governments’ Attempts to Filter Content. Alkasir, a Case
Study,” in SPIDER ICT4D Series No. 3 (2010), 71–93.

6. Ronald J. Deibert et al., eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global
Internet Filtering (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).

7. In addition to my account here, Alkasir has also received extensive media cover-
age. See, for example, Magda Abu-Fadel, “Yemeni Develops Program to Skirt State’s
Web Bans, Gain Access to His News Portal,” Huffington Post, 30 May 2009; available
at:www.huffingtonpost.com/magda-abufadil/yemeni-develops-program-t_b_209321.
html; Duncan Geere, “TED Fellows: Walid Al-Saqaf,” WIRED-UK, 3 September 2010;
available at www.wired.co.uk/news/ted/2010-09/03/ted-fellows-walid-al-saqaf; and
Aleks Krotoski, “The Internet’s Cyberradicals: Heroes of the Web Changing the World,”
Guardian, 28 November 2010; available at www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/
nov/28/internet-radicals-world-wide-web.

8. Walid Al-Saqaf, “Unstoppable Trends: The Impact, Role, and Ideology of Yemeni
News Websites,” Masters dissertation, May 2008.

9. Doug Bernard, “Opening the Middle East Internet,” Voice of America, 1 July 2010;
available at www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Opening-the-Middle-East-
Internet-97310199.html.

10. Larry Diamond, “Why Are There No Arab Democracies?” Journal of Democracy
21 (January 2010): 93–104.

11. For more technical details, visit Alkasir’s official website, alkasir.com.

12. This is the date on which Alkasir version 1.2.457 (stable) was released.

13. The number of Alkasir users does not necessarily mean the number of unique
individuals using the program. It only measures the unique installations of the program.
It may well be that the same program is used by more than one individual or that one
individual may have multiple accounts (e.g., one at home and another at work).

14. Deibert et al., eds., Access Denied.

15. Naomi Sakr, “The Impact of Media Laws on Arab Digital and Print Content,”
background paper, Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive Intercommunica-
tion for Knowledge, Mohammed Ben Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation in collaboration
with UNDP, 2009, available at www.mbrfoundation.ae/English/Documents/AKR-2009-
En/AKR-English.pdf.

16. The complete list of URLs blocked in different countries is available publicly
online at http://alkasir.com/map.

17. Some countries appear less aggressive than others, blocking only websites that
138 Circumventing Internet Censorship in the Arab World

meet a particular criteria (e.g., contain dissident content, reports criticizing the head of
state, etc.), while other countries have an automated censorship solution (like Websense,
Surf Nanny) that can block based on keywords in the URL or metadata.

18. Al-Saqaf, “Internet Censorship Challenged.”

19. Global Internet Freedom Consortium, “New Technologies Battle and Defeat Inter-
net Censorship” (2007); available at www.internetfreedom.org/archive/Defeat_Internet_
Censorship_White_Paper.pdf.

20. The survey still exists online at https://alkasir.com/doc/survey.

21. Specifically, 2,600 of the 3,522 surveys had been fully completed by that date.

22. Jill Dougherty, “Digital Activists Skirt Roadblocks,” CNN.com, 16 February 2011;
available at www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2011/02/16/dougherty.digital.activism.
cnn?iref=allsearch.

23. A particular reported URL is initially approved if it is found to satisfy the policy
at http://alkasir.com/policy, but it may require more effort to specify in which category
it belongs.
 10
SOCIAL MEDIA, DISSENT, AND
IRAN’S GREEN MOVEMENT
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi

Mehdi Yahyanejad is the founder of the website Balatarin.com, the most

popular social news website in Persian, with more than a million and a
half viewers per month. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT, with
expertise in data mining and statistical methods. Elham Gheytanchi
teaches sociology at Santa Monica College. Her research interests are
the women’s movement, social movements, and the use of information
and communication technologies in Iran.

Iran’s 12 June 2009 presidential election—the tenth in the history of

that country’s Islamic Republic—was supposed to show the democratic
face of the Iranian political system. Instead, the events following that
disputed (and widely viewed as fraudulent) balloting inspired Iranians,
and later many others across the broader Middle East, to rise up against
their nondemocratic governments. The Iranian regime’s suppression of
dissent was then, and remains now, largely ineffective because of peo-
ple’s determination and creativity as well as their access to social media,
the Internet, and mobile phones.
This chapter demonstrates that while the Iranian government has con-
tinued to press its censorship efforts, the Green Movement’s activists
have succeeded in using the Internet and social media to their advan-
tage. As Larry Diamond correctly notes, “[I]t is not technology, but peo-
ple, organizations, and governments that will determine who prevails.”1
Some skeptics argue, however, that social media enable autocratic
governments such as Iran’s more than such media empower protesters.
Malcolm Gladwell2 and Evgeny Morozov3 have stated that the Iranian
government stays on top of technological advances and is therefore able
to effectively block protests that originate online. But the protests are
continuing. The existence of a grassroots civil rights social movement,
born after the contested Iranian election of 2009, shows that widespread
discontent and social mobilization will continue in spite of, and perhaps
due to, the government’s virtual and physical suppression.
140 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

This is not to say that censorship is completely ineffective. Starting

on 25 January 2009 and continuing until a few months past the first an-
niversary of the disputed election, the Iranian government intensified its
filtering and cyberattacks. Online suppression and surveillance by the
government have indeed made it difficult to sustain the movement in
Iran, but have failed to eradicate discontent or dismantle the loose net-
works of activists who carry on their nonviolent social struggle.
In their most recent book, Access Contested, and in the pages of
the present volume, Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski describe
three generations of censorship techniques used by governments to
crush dissent.4 The first of these involves tactics such as basic Internet
filtering and monitoring. The more sophisticated second-generation
techniques use legal pretexts for censoring website content or shut-
ting down sites altogether, while third-generation techniques include
surveilling citizens’ online activities and other, more direct means of
silencing dissenters.5 In the aftermath of the presidential election, the
Iranian government utilized such techniques in its attempt to censor
the Internet.
Authoritarian political systems, including those of China and Iran,
monitor the Internet to control the flow of news and information. As
Rebecca MacKinnon explains, “When an authoritarian regime embraces
and adjusts to the inevitable changes brought by digital communica-
tions technologies the result is ‘networked authoritarianism.’” In this
networked authoritarianism, ruling elites use the Internet for their own
purposes while suppressing dissent through the same channels. While
it is increasingly hard to sustain an opposition movement in the face of
networked authoritarianism, Iran, like China, has a vibrant blogosphere
despite government controls, arrests, and intimidation.6
In the months following the election, the Iranian government
banned foreign journalists from reporting in Iran, arrested and jailed
many Iranian journalists, and slowly enforced the monitoring of citi-
zens’ online activism. Even as the government was forcing foreign
journalists to exit the country, however, social media were increas-
ingly providing tools for reporting the news quickly and anonymously.
Thus citizen journalism via social media made it possible for news to
flow from Iran despite government censorship of the Internet and bans
on foreign-media coverage.
This was possible because social media were relatively familiar and
had been used by Iranians before the Green Movement. The Persian-
speaking blogosphere helped to create the discourse for democracy,
pluralism, and tolerance in the years prior to the election. Furthermore,
reformist presidential candidates Mir Hosein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi
and their supporters used the Internet and social media throughout their
campaigns. These campaigns took place on blogs, political websites,
Balatarin (a Persian-language social news aggregator and networking
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 141

site), microblogging sites like Twitter, and other social-networking sites

such as Facebook, which Iranian youth used in great numbers early in
2009, months before the presidential election.7
While new social media played an undeniable role in the Green
Movement, an unjustified emphasis has been placed on Twitter’s role.8
The international media and academia focused on Twitter because of
three main factors. First, the content on Twitter was primarily in English
and easily used for text analysis without a need for Persian-to-English
translation. Second, Twitter has a powerful Application Programming
Interface, which makes it easy to measure different types of activities
such as the number of postings and re-tweets. Finally, the U.S. State
Department’s call for delaying Twitter’s maintenance shutdown in June
2009 resulted in an exaggeration of the role that it performed.
A greater emphasis should be placed on the role of blogs. Blogs
changed the political culture in Iran by allowing views that oppose the
ruling party to appear online. This is important because, as Philip How-
ard has shown in his study of information and communications tech-
nologies (ICTs) in Muslim countries, “the route to democratization is a
digital one.”9 In repressed societies, the online discussion of social, po-
litical, and cultural issues appears crucial to the success of social move-
ments and transitions to democracy. As Howard states, “for democratic
transitions, having a comparatively active online civil society is the
most important ingredient of both necessary and sufficient solutions.”10
Through social media sites such as Balatarin, the Iranian online com-
munity can engage in debates, discuss political or social issues, and plan
strategies for the accommodation of government supporters willing to
compromise.
Iranian activists have used new social media to mobilize protest,
expose injustice, inform fellow citizens as well as the world at large
of human-rights violations, and facilitate transnational ties within the
Iranian diaspora. This study of postelection social protest shows that,
despite government control and censorship of social media, discontent
grew and social mobilization for change occurred.
Furthermore, ICTs such as Balatarin have improved political rights
in Iran and should thus be defined as “liberation technology.” As Larry
Diamond explains, liberation technology “means essentially the mod-
ern, interrelated forms of digital ICTs—the computer, the Internet, the
mobile phone, and countless innovative applications for them, including
‘new social media’ such as Facebook and Twitter.” In Iran, the Balata-
rin social-networking site, along with satellite-TV programs that echoed
the voice of the Balatarin community, acted as “liberation technolo-
gies” because they allowed for the rapid and uncensored broadcasting
of news and information. As the Green Movement’s experience dem-
onstrates, however, social media do have their limitations. Such media
can become effective tools for spreading news and mobilizing people,
142 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

TABLE 1—THE FUNCTION OF DIFFERENT INTERNET PLATFORMS

DURING AND AFTER THE IRANIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Internet Platform Description
YouTube YouTube was the most popular of the video websites. It helped
to provide evidence for the demonstrations and to expose police
brutality and killings. YouTube highlighted the Iranian protests
on the front page of its CitizenTube during the demonstrations.
Facebook The unblocking of Facebook by Iranian authorities before the
election spurred rapid user growth and political activism. Face-
book allowed information to flow outside of Iran and back.
Twitter Twitter had a small following in Iran. However, a handful of Ira-
nian activists and journalists tweeted in English which allowed
foreigners and reporters to track events in Iran.
Political campaign Political websites based in Iran were influential because they
websites inside Iran provided content for discussion and sharing. GhalamNews and
Kaleme, the official websites of Musavi, were reference points
for many Musavi supporters. MowjSevvom, the campaign web-
site of reformist candidates, brought former president Khatami
back to the political scene as the presidential campaigns were
launched. One of their petitions was signed by 450,000 people.
Blogs and Balatarin Blogs were a source of new ideas for the movement and also helped
to expose human-rights violations by the Iranian government dur-
ing and after the election. A number of nonviolent actions origi-
nated from the postings or discussions taking place on Balatarin.
Mowj Camp The Mowj Camp website became very popular after the Iranian
presidential election. It was a source of daily news and ideas for the
Green Movement. Several key members of Mowj Camp were ar-
rested in Iran and the website shut down its operations. The Iranian
authorities waged massive cyberattacks on Mowj Camp and other
dissenting websites in the aftermath of the presidential election.1
News websites A number of news websites based outside of Iran, such as Roozon-
outside of Iran line, Gooya news, Radio Farda, played an important role in expos-
ing human-rights violations and compiling daily updates.
Blogs of New Blogs of major newspapers allowed quick reporting on what was
York Times, CNN, produced by citizen journalists.
Guardian, and
Huffington Post
Mailing groups and Email lists provided the most reliable ways of distributing news
chain emails or calls for protests in Iran.
1
For a report on the intensity of cyberattacks on dissenting websites including Mowj
Camp, see this report in Kalame: www.kaleme.com/1388/11/03/klm-9243/.
but there is no substitute for essential strategic planning and leadership
within a nonviolent social movement.
Balatarin, which means “highest” in Persian, is an online community
website through which registered users can post their favorite website or
blog and can vote to rank other links. Balatarin was launched in 2006 by
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Aziz Ashofteh, and has since been the target of
numerous cyberattacks. Balatarin allows the Iranian online community,
as well as satellite-TV commentators, to aggregate blogs and websites
from all over the Persian blogosphere into one public destination online.
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 143

TABLE 2—OTHER DIGITAL COMMUNICATION CHANNELS/DEVICES IN

USE DURING AND AFTER THE IRANIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Other Communication Channels Description
Short Message Service (SMS) SMS or texting by mobile phones is not reliant on
the Internet. Consequently, it had a much wider
reach in Iran and facilitated the sharing of infor-
mation. The Iranian government blocked SMS
frequently in the aftermath of the election.
Satellite broadcasts: BBC Persian Satellite-TV programs by the Iranian diaspora com-
and Voice of America (VOA) munity, BBC Persian, and VOA have a wide audi-
ence in Iran. However, unlike Internet and social
media forums, these broadcasts are not interactive.
Multi-Media Service (MMS) Multimedia on mobile phones was transferred to
the web, allowing the world to watch events in Iran
despite the government ban on foreign journalists.

Balatarin was not the only social-media tool used by Iranians looking
for information or for ways to mobilize. Facebook and a number of Ira-
nian websites became places for the posting of news during and after the
presidential campaign in Iran. A few journalists and activists used Twit-
ter, but mainly to send information to the international audience. Due to
slow Internet connections, YouTube content was not easy to watch in
Iran, but the videos were broadcast through the BBC’s Persian service,
the Voice of America (VOA), and diaspora-run satellite-TV programs.
Table 1 describes these and other Internet platforms and social media
that were used during and after the Iranian presidential election of 2009.
Table 2 shows that Internet platforms were not the only liberation
technology used during and after the presidential election. Other plat-
forms, such as SMS, MMS, and satellite broadcasts, were important be-
cause they did not rely on the Internet.
Google searches for Balatarin, BBC Persian (the most influential
news network outside Iran), and Fars News Agency (close to the Ira-
nian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC and supportive of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) all peaked following major events. The main
peak occurred on Election Day, 12 June 2009. The second peak occurred
later that year during the Ashura demonstrations of December 27. This
correlation implies more demand for information prior to and during an
event. Demand for news remained high for several days after each event.
Using the Internet as a safe haven for discussion is not a new tac-
tic in Iran. After the Iranian government cracked down on the press in
2000, many Iranian journalists and activists found refuge on the Inter-
net. Many Iranian activists living in Iran or abroad started blogging soon
after that. In 2006, blogs in Persian ranked tenth among all languages
worldwide in the number of posts placed online.11 Journalists and activ-
ists used the Internet to carry on discussions that had begun offline dur-
ing the era of relative press freedom under the presidency of Mohammad
Khatami.12 Whatever the medium of discussion, the content remained
144 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

focused on how to build a civil society, how to work for reform, and how
to promote the rule of law.
The Internet provided a forum where many new ideas and thoughts
were openly shared and discussed. The dominant discussions on the web
revolved around freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and political
reform. These discussions began to receive wider notice. More figures
in the government and the official newspapers referred to blogs than had
done so during the previous decade.13
During Ahmadinejad’s first term (2005–2009), political dissent
continued on the web. The Iranian government quickly moved to limit
freedom of speech on the Internet. Yet as censorship increased, so did
dissent,14 and the government began using the Internet to counter this
dissent for its own purposes, whether these involved spreading propa-
ganda at home and abroad or concerned the internal affairs of Iran’s
factionalized government.
The June 2009 presidential election created an opportunity for the
government to vaunt its tolerance of opposing views. The unblocking of
Facebook and Twitter in January 2009 surprised many Iranian Internet
users, and a large number soon signed up for these services. In less than
a month, Facebook became the fifteenth-most-visited website in Iran.15
Facebook soon became popular with reformists and social activists who
were engaged in nonviolent social movements involving teachers, wom-
en, and students, to name just a few. Facebook registration grew rapidly
until the government blocked it again in June 2009.
The Iranian government’s relationship with social media has been
tenuous and unpredictable. Authorities may at first have perceived so-
cial media as apolitical channels of communication worth leaving alone
because they served to draw attention away from more blatantly po-
litical websites. Another explanation could be that the Iranian govern-
ment viewed social media as a means of collecting information by, for
instance, taking snapshots of users’ profiles (Facebook did not provide
encrypted access at the time).
Yet Facebook and Twitter were not the only players in this game. Re-
formist political activism began on a website called Mowj Sevvom (The
Third Wave), which was devoted to calling on Khatami to run against
Ahmadinejad. The site eventually collected more than 450,000 signa-
tures on a petition urging the former president to run.16 Khatami signed
up for the presidential election and acknowledged the role of this online
campaign in his decision to do so.17 (Khatami would later leave the race
when Musavi announced his candidacy.)
After Musavi’s nomination the political campaign heated up quickly.
Musavi made his campaign slogan “har Irani yek resaneh” (“every Ira-
nian is a media outlet”)18 and called on his supporters to use the Inter-
net to broadcast his message. Musavi maintained an active campaign
website called Ghalam News. The government censored it on 21 June
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 145

2009, after it posted images of a defiant Musavi among cheerful and

nonviolent demonstrators in Tehran the previous day. Not surprisingly,
government-backed television and radio outlets had neglected to report
on this demonstration.
The other reformist candidate, Mehdi Karrubi, was also active online.
His party’s newspaper, Etemad-e Melli, was regularly updated online.
His campaign manager, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, created and main-
tained an active Twitter account. According to an advisor to one of the
candidates, the two reformers even discussed who had enough “senior-
ity points” on Balatarin.com and should be allowed to create the daily
headline news for their campaign.19
Thus, the campaigns, protests, civil disobedience, and mass demon-
strations following the controversial presidential election in 2009 were
planned, reported, and widely discussed online through an already es-
tablished social-media network.

Election Day: Crisis of Legitimacy

On election day, the Internet and social media provided “accountabil-
ity technology,” which, as Diamond explains, “enables citizens to report
news, expose wrongdoings, express opinions, mobilize protest, monitor
elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and expand the
horizons of freedom.” Just as Ushahidi, a free and open source-mapping
software, enabled election accountability in Egypt and Sudan (as Pat-
rick Meier shows in these pages), the Internet, social media, and mobile
phones allowed Iranians to remain vigilant about widespread election
fraud in their country.
The speed of events on 12 June 2009 caught everyone by surprise.
The Iranian government disabled SMS across Iran. This damaged the ef-
forts of political challengers to monitor the election. Musavi’s camp had
more than twenty-thousand observers in different polling locations. The
observers were supposed to send SMS messages to Musavi’s campaign
headquarters in order to report results as well as any voting irregularities
they might witness or suspect. Later, the Musavi campaign cited the in-
terruption of SMS services as one of the primary pieces of evidence for
fraud in the presidential election. The government, on the other hand,
claimed that SMS service was interrupted in order to prevent illegal
election-day campaigning by various candidates and their supporters.
The second event of the day was the widely reported attack by pro-
regime militia forces on one of Musavi’s main campaign offices, lo-
cated in the North Tehran neighborhood of Gheytarieh. The Musavi
campaign had set up a room there to handle webcasts of interviews
with politicians and celebrities who were encouraging people to vote
for Musavi. The hostile militia attacked the building to disrupt this
broadcast. VahidOnline, an Iranian Internet celebrity who remained
146 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

anonymous until that day, was present in the building. He witnessed

the attack and posted his account of it on Twitter and his blog.20 To
document the severity of the situation for his online followers, he used
his mobile phone to broadcast live footage of the attack to a video
website called Qik.21 Eight-thousand users viewed the video within
hours. Meanwhile, the attackers made it to the fifth floor of the cam-
paign headquarters and broke the broadcasting equipment. People in
the building called the police, fought back, and were able to arrest four
of the militia members.
The video of the attack on the Musavi headquarters was later shown on
BBC Persian’s evening news. It provided important evidence of the gov-
ernment’s concerted effort to violently suppress the reformist candidates
and their supporters. Videos, such as the one by VahidOnline, persuaded
the public that a coup was underway. Supporters of the Iranian govern-
ment claimed that security forces went to the headquarters in order to
disable a broadcast that was violating campaign laws.22 VahidOnline went
into hiding and later escaped Iran. He posted an emotional statement on
his blog entitled “The Crime of Being Online” before crossing the border
with the help of smugglers.23
As the events of the day unfolded, the perception of a coup by gov-
ernment-backed militia strengthened. At 6:30 p.m. (all times are lo-
cal), several hours before the polls closed, Fars News Agency, a web-
site close to the IRGC, predicted that Ahmadinejad would win with 60
percent of the vote. The Iranian online community reacted with disbe-
lief. The announcement from Fars News was posted to Balatarin with
the altered title of “Is This Believable: Musavi 28 Percent!! Ahma-
dinejad 69 Percent? (The Biggest Fraud of the Century Has Begun).”
This link was posted on Balatarin a few minutes after midnight, only
three hours after polling stations had closed.24 This posting marked the
establishment of Balatarin as the hub of what would later be called the
Green Movement.

The Case of Neda’s Video

Government-backed militia killed Neda Agha-Soltan at 7:20 p.m. on
20 June 2009. The person who took the video of the unarmed young
woman being shot down and swiftly bleeding to death on a Tehran street
sent it to a contact outside Iran. That person posted it on Facebook at
8:53. The link to the video appeared on Balatarin at 9:45, and within
fifteen minutes had received enough votes to be promoted to the front
page. The video was subsequently posted to YouTube at 10:19. Thus
in less than three hours the video of Neda’s death had been seen by
thousands of viewers worldwide. This video has come to represent the
Iranian government’s violent repression of its citizens’ nonviolent pro-
test movement.25
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 147

Thanks to widespread use of social media and mobile phones and to

the advent of citizen journalism, street-level violations of human rights
by Iranian officials could no longer be kept in the dark. An Iranian dis-
sident whom I shall call S.E. said in an interview,

In 1988, thousands of Iranians were killed in mass executions inside the

Iranian prisons within a short period of time and to this day the prison
massacre has received very little publicity. Now a good number of atroci-
ties have been documented, and the Iranian government is forced to come
up with explanations for them.

Frequently these explanations have been lies. For example, during a

massive nonviolent demonstration in Tehran on 26 December 2009, a
police truck drove over a protester several times.26 The video was imme-
diately posted on YouTube, Balatarin, and Facebook, and was broadcast
in Iran via satellite TV. The government had to provide three different
explanations for the scene.27 Similarly, the government changed its story
regarding Neda’s fate many times.28 At first, the government claimed
that Neda had not died and that the video showed fake blood. Later, of-
ficials made and gave nationwide television airtime to a “documentary”
that portrayed Neda as the victim of a female assassin who ran from the
scene.
In Iran, television and radio broadcasting as well as major newspa-
pers are under the direct supervision of the Supreme Leader. Iranian
press and TV experienced short periods of relative freedom of expres-
sion during the revolutionary days in 1979 and again during Khatami’s
first term (1997–2001). Prior to the presidential election of 2009, satel-
lite broadcasts by BBC Persian and VOA enjoyed a wide reach among
the general public, but there is currently no such thing as free TV, radio,
or press in Iran. Most of the newspapers in Iran are state-owned or be-
long to progovernment politicians.
Students, journalists, and activists use Persian-language websites
as their main source of alternative news. Internet censorship, howev-
er, means that numerous visitors still look at government-owned sites
such as Mehr and Fars News. For example, Fars News Agency has more
visitors than Radio Farda, the Persian-language arm of Radio Free Eu-
rope funded by the U.S. government. Fars also draws more visitors than
Gooya News, Balatarin, or the Green Movement’s Jaras, all of which are
independent websites based outside Iran.
Information from social media and citizen journalists continued to
flow despite the government’s repeated jamming and censorship. News
from these independent sources affected mainstream media coverage.
News networks such as CNN started broadcasting YouTube videos from
Iran. BBC Persian and VOA also began using uploaded videos from
YouTube in their reporting. One could argue that it gradually became
148 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

difficult for these networks to prevent their airtime from becoming a

platform for social action because many of their journalists were sup-
porting the movement.
Nonviolent mass demonstrations on Quds Day (18 September
2009) demonstrated the interaction of satellite-TV programming with
new social media in Iran. The last Friday in the month of Ramadan is
called Quds (Jerusalem) Day and is used by the Iranian government
for state-supported anti-Israel demonstrations. In mid-2009, after the
violent government crackdowns on protests, regime officials believed
that the demonstrations had been stamped out. This belief was wrong.
Online activists called for Green Movement supporters to show up
at the Quds Day demonstrations in order to protest the crackdown.
The Green Movement activists called it “Quds Day, the Green Day
of Iran.” 29
This mobilization had begun several weeks earlier and at first had
drawn no support from opposition figures in Iran. Many of them had felt
hesitant to use demonstrations against Israel as an occasion to protest
against the Iranian government. Only as Quds Day drew near did Kar-
rubi respond to the calls of online activists.30 Musavi waited until the
last day to announce his participation. The Quds Day demonstration,
therefore, was born on the Internet.
Because the government disrupted Internet services on Quds Day, no
YouTube videos of the demonstrations were available for several hours.
This led BBC News to publish an erroneous article that stated,

Reformist opponents of the controversially re-elected President Ahma-

dinejad seem to have been massively outnumbered by system loyalists
eager to demonstrate their support for the president and his patron, the
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.31

In response, Balatarin users posted a link with the title “The weird
claim of international media regarding the low number of the Green
Movement activists in the demonstrations shows there is a need to send
pictures.” Online activists quickly posted links to pictures and new
videos on YouTube to show the large demonstrations by Green Move-
ment supporters.32 The BBC website updated the article without even
acknowledging the correction: “Thousands of opposition supporters
have clashed with security forces during a government-sponsored rally
in Tehran.”33 Thus did social media, acting as a channel for street-level
reporting by viewers, force a major international news outlet to correct
a story.
Far from having given up, the Green Movement protesters were present
in large numbers and subverted the official demonstration.34 In a way, the
Quds Day protest transformed the Green Movement into a longer-lasting
movement. Musavi was well aware of the significance of the demonstra-
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 149

tion. He called it a turning point for the movement.35 In a speech after the
demonstration, he acknowledged social media’s role:

Today, there has been a network created in the virtual space acting very
efficiently when there isn’t any other type of [independent] media avail-
able. The social groups acting within this virtual space are less venerable.
Members of these groups have given dynamism to the movement, which
has made us much more hopeful. There hasn’t been any official call [by
the leaders of the movement] for a demonstration on Quds Day, but we
witnessed this great demonstration. This was at a time when there had
been many, many threats in the past three months and many of the fami-
lies were preventing their children from going [to the demonstrations].
This could have not have been achieved without this [virtual] network.36

The mass protest that followed the 19 December 2009 death (from
natural causes) of reformist ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri again
demonstrated how activists could and did use social media, satellite TV,
SMS, and word of mouth to mobilize. The idea for a major demon-
stration originated on a blog and was publicized through Balatarin. An
anonymous blogger posted a link on Balatarin suggesting that protesters
should gather in Tehran’s Mohseni Square in order to mourn Montaz-
eri publicly. In less than nine hours, about three-thousand people had
shown up at the square.37 It is important to note that the blogger in this
case acted alone and grassroots groups implemented the idea without
prior coordination with reformist leaders Karrubi or Musavi.38
New social media became so pervasive that they were able to utilize
Iranian national TV as an unwilling platform. Take, for example, the
symbolic “green” voting during the most-watched show on Iranian state
TV, a live sports program called “90.” During this program, people are
asked a question and invited to vote for one of several answers—each
one associated with a different color—via SMS. Early in January 2010,
online activists asked people to send an SMS to the next program of
“90” and choose the green option regardless of what the question was.39
The idea for this nonviolent tactic spread quickly through SMS in Iran.
The last choice was chosen because it was usually shown in green. Dur-
ing the program, the host changed the last option from green to yellow,
but people still voted for the last option. More than 1.8 million people
voted and 75 percent of them chose the third option (which was not the
correct answer to the particular question being asked). This simple and
fairly low-risk action proved to all those watching the program that at
least a million Iranians were ready to show their dislike of the govern-
ment by following the campaign of the Green Movement.40
Another effective protest that was entirely conducted online con-
cerned political prisoner Majid Tavakoli, a student activist who had
been arrested after giving a speech in which he criticized Iran’s leaders.
Fars News Agency claimed that Tavakoli was arrested when he tried
150 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

to escape wearing woman’s clothing. It was evident this had been pub-
lished to discredit Tavakoli.41 Masih Alinejad, a journalist and blogger,
posted an article asking men to wear headscarves in solidarity with Ma-
jid and to protest the forced Islamic dress code for women in Iran.42 This
was posted on Balatarin and became the most voted item of the day and
quickly spread to Facebook and other social networks.43 More than 450
men took pictures of themselves with headscarves and posted them on
Facebook in support of Tavakoli.44
While many platforms had a significant impact on the Green Move-
ment, some are ascribed a greater influence than they deserve. Many
people using the phrase “Twitter Revolution” imagined activists run-
ning in the streets of Tehran, coordinating demonstrations and tweeting
about their future plans. That never happened. As mentioned before,
there were not that many Twitter users in Iran, and at critical moments
the Iranian government disabled the SMS system on which Twitter re-
lies. Other forms of social media were used in a number of ways to call
for action, but these calls were not always successful.

When Social Media Failed

When the large demonstrations on the eve of the Shia religious ceremo-
ny of Ashura (27 December 2009) were over, Green Movement activists
began discussing ideas for a similar mass demonstration on the upcoming
February 2010 anniversary of the 1979 revolution. The annual demonstra-
tion, organized by the state, starts from the main street in central Tehran
and leads to the large Azadi (Freedom) Square. Ebrahim Nabavi, a well-
known Iranian satirist and blogger, suggested that the protestors hide their
green signs until arrival at Azadi Square. Once there, he suggested, they
would be able to take over the square and disrupt Ahmadinejad’s speech.
Nabavi posted his idea on Jaras. The idea was debated online and most
commentators agreed with the plan. In a poll conducted a day before Ah-
medinejad’s scheduled speaking date of 11 February 2010, 80 percent of
visitors to Balatarin said they believed that this strategy would succeed.
Many of the Green Movement activists hoped that it would compare to the
day (21 December 1989) in Bucharest when a jeering crowd disrupted a
speech by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauºescu, who fled his capital and
soon thereafter fell from power.
When the day of action arrived, the Iranian government showed that it
had been preparing for this event. Security forces controlled the streets of
Tehran and citizens were afraid to leave their houses. Government support-
ers were bused into the main street leading to Azadi Square. Green Move-
ment supporters who made it to the rally were too spread out and were
unable to find each other and coalesce. Security forces blocked all routes
leading to Azadi Square. Only an already selected group was allowed to
enter and was placed in the front row near Ahmadinejad’s podium.
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 151

A satellite picture taken by Geo Eye during the rally showed exactly
what had happened.45 Azadi Square had been kept mainly empty. In the
satellite image, one could make out a large number of buses that had car-
ried government supporters to the main street leading to Azadi Square.
The Trojan horse strategy had obviously failed. The Iranian government
knew the intentions of the Green Movement supporters well in advance
and prepared for them. In hindsight, many people realized the protest
plan had been impractical and weak on crucial logistical details such
as means for countering blocked roads and the government maneuvers.
This failed demonstration was the Green Movement’s last attempt (so
far) at mounting a major street protest.
Clearly, new social media such as mobile phones, Balatarin, and sat-
ellite TV acted as “liberation technology” during and after the disputed
2009 presidential election in Iran. New media lowered the cost of po-
litical participation and protest, and proved crucial as the only channels
through which large-scale demonstrations could be effectively coordi-
nated down to specifics of date, time, and place. The risks of belonging
to Balatarin, or a Facebook page connected with the Green Movement,
or a mailing list of those receiving Jaras updates were acceptable to
many who were seeking change. These loose, online affiliations have
lowered the costs of mobilization and membership for progressive so-
cial movements. Though social media can widen the grassroots base
of social movements, such media (with their open, horizontal nature)
can also breed confusion when there is a need to deal with complex is-
sues and tactics that require discipline, strategy, and a degree of central
leadership. While social media worked effectively to mobilize protest-
ers in a grassroots nonviolent social movement, better organization and
planning will be needed if the Green Movement is to become victorious.

NOTES
1. Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy 21 (July 2010): 82.

2. Malcolm Gladwell, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be

Tweeted,” New Yorker, 4 October 2010, available at www.newyorker.com/
reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell.

3. Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New
York: PublicAffairs, 2011).

4. Ronald Deibert et al., Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian
Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012).

5. Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, “Beyond Denial: Introducing Next-Genera-

tion Information Access Controls,” in Deibert et al., eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping
of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), 6.

6. Nasrin Alavi, We Are Iran (London: Portobello, 2006); Guobin Yang, The Power
of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press,
152 Social Media, Dissent, and Iran’s Green Movement

2009); John Kelly and Bruce Etling, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture
in the Persian Blogosphere,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Univer-
sity, 5 April 2008.

7. Omid Habibinia, “Who Is Afraid of Facebook?” 3 September 2009, available at

http://riseoftheiranianpeople.com/2009/09/03/who-is-afraid-of-facebook.

8. Zicong Zhou et al., “Information Resonance on Twitter: Watching Iran,” First

Workshop on Social Media Analytics (SOMA ‘10), Washington, D.C., 25 July 2010. See
http://snap.stanford.edu/soma2010/papers/soma2010_17.pdf.

9. Philip N. Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Informa-

tion, Technology, and Political Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 201.

10. Howard, Digital Origins, 183.

11. “Technocrati: Persian Among the Top Ten Languages in Blogsphere,” 9 November
2006, available at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/persian/2006/11/post_132.html.

12. Babak Rahimi, “Cyberdissent: The Internet in Revolutionary Iran,” Middle East
Review of International Affairs 7 (September 2003), available at http://meria.idc.ac.il/
JOURNAL/2003/issue3/rahimi.pdf.

13. Aiden Duffy and Philip N. Howard, “Iran’s Political Parties Link to Persian Blogo-
sphere More than News Sources,” Project on Information Technology and Political Islam,
University of Washington–Seattle, 2010.

14. Elham Gheytanchi and Babak Rahimi, “Iran’s Reformists and Activists: Internet
Exploiters,” Middle East Policy Journal 15 (Spring 2008): 45–59.

15. For a Persian-language discussion of Facebook’s popularity in Iran, see http://

mhmazidi2.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/fa-to-15.

16. The list of those who signed the petition urging Khatami to run is available at www.
mowj.ir/PatitionList.php.

17. “Khatami talking to Mowj reporter,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiTq5Tjng8Y.

18. See www.kaleme.com/1388/11/13/klm-10327.

19. Phone interview with authors, May 2009.

20. Exclusive phone interview with VahidOnline (unpublished), January 2010.

21. See http://qik.com/vahidonline.

22. See www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8806231161.

23. “The Crime of Being Online,” http://vahid-online.net/1388/05/20/be-online.

24. See http://balatarin.com/permlink/2009/6/12/1617273.

25. Metter Mortensen, “When Citizen Photojournalism Sets the News Agenda: Neda
Agha Soltan as a Web 2.0 Icon of Post-Election Unrest in Iran,” Global Media and Com-
munication Journal 7 (April 2011): 14–16.

26. “A Protester Is Run Over by an Armored Truck,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2d

3M203aAg&feature=related.
Mehdi Yahyanejad and Elham Gheytanchi 153

27. “Tehran Police Chief Doesn’t Admit That the Truck Belonged to Security Forces,”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZbDU8KBE98&feature=related.

28. “Iran Ambassador Suggests CIA Could Have Killed Neda Agha-Soltan,” http://
latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/06/neda-cia-cnn-killing.html; “Zarghami
Claims That Neda’s Death Is Fake,” http://khabaronline.ir/news-11915.aspx; Press TV
documentary of Neda’s death, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shp7HE2YA_c&skipcontri
nter=1.

29. See www.kaleme.com/1389/06/11/klm-30708.

30. “Karoubi: You Will See the Power of People on the Quds Day,” www.radiofar-
da.com/content/f3_karoubi_protest_Iran_Quds_rally_green_movement_postelection/
1810580.html.

31. This was deleted from the website and replaced with the content in endnote 34
without acknowledging the correction.

32. Robert F. Worth, “Despite Warning, Thousands Rally in Iran,” New York Times,
18 September 2009.

33. “Clashes Erupt at Iran Mass Rally,” 18 September 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/

hi/world/middle_east/8262273.stm.

34. “Iran Protests on Quds Day,” Guardian, 17 September 2009, www.guardian.co.uk/

news/blog/2009/sep/17/iran-protests-quds-day.

35. “Mousavi Calls the Quds Demonstration a Turning Point,” www.bbc.co.uk/persian/

iran/2009/09/090928_si_mousavi_Qudsday.shtml.

36. Musavi’s speech following Quds Day is available at www.parlemannews.

ir/?n=4128.

37. “Video of the Gathering After the Death of the Dissident Ayatollah Montazeri,”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLNteL_V6QY.

38. “The Call for Gathering to Commemorate the Dissident Ayatollah’s Death,” http://
balatarin.com/topic/2009/12/20/1003993.

39. “The Idea of Sending One Million Green SMS to the Program 90,” http://balatarin.
com/permlink/2009/9/21/1766073.

40. “The Result of the SMSs Sent to the Sport Program,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=
LrfigqKfuD0&feature=player_embedded.

41. Robert Tait, “Iran Regime Depicts Male Student in Chador as Shaming Tactic,”
Guardian, 11 December 2009, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/11/iran-regime-
male-student-chador.

42. “The Story of Majid Tavakoli Is the Story of Humilation of the Women in My
Country,” http://masihalinejad.com/?p=953.

43. “The Green Movement Wear Headscarf in a Symbolic Gesture,” http://balatarin.

com/permlink/2009/12/9/1867237.

44. Amy Kellogg, “Iran’s Veil Campaign,” 11 December 2009, http://liveshots.blogs.

foxnews.com/2009/12/11/veil-campaign.

45. Satellite picture of the progovernment rally, 11 February 2010, available at www.
geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/detail.aspx?iid=294&gid=20.
This page intentionally left blank
 IV

Policy Recommendations
This page intentionally left blank
 11
CHALLENGES FOR
INTERNATIONAL POLICY
Daniel Calingaert

Daniel Calingaert is vice-president for policy and external relations

at Freedom House, which receives funding from the State Depart-
ment, Google, and other sources to promote Internet freedom. He also
teaches in Georgetown University’s M.A. Program in Democracy and
Governance and at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced
International Studies.

In her groundbreaking speech on Internet freedom in January 2010,

U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton hailed the “spread of informa-
tion networks” as the “new nervous system for our planet” and high-
lighted their importance in “making governments more accountable.”
She warned, however, that they “can be harnessed for good or for ill.” In
May 2010, then–French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner echoed her
assessment of the promise of and challenges for information and com-
munications technologies. He praised the Internet as “the most fantastic
means of breaking down walls that close us off from one another” but
expressed concern about the “alarming rate” at which “the number of
countries that censor the Internet and monitor Web users is increasing.”
He, like Clinton, called for engagement in the “battle of ideas” between
“the advocates of a universal and open Internet” and “those who want
to transform the Internet into a multitude of closed-off spaces that serve
the purposes of repressive regimes.”1
U.S. and European governments are engaging in the struggle for on-
line freedom of expression. U.S. support for Internet freedom now is
clearly articulated, identified as a priority in U.S. foreign policy, and
backed by significant resources. European governments have defined
their approaches and begun to make contributions to Internet freedom.
Their methods have both strong similarities to U.S. policy and distinc-
tive elements.
Thus, this is an opportune moment to assess the direction and initial
impact of government policy on Internet freedom and to explore effec-
158 Challenges for International Policy

tive ways to move forward. This chapter begins with a summary of the
main challenges to Internet freedom globally and then examines the U.S.
government’s record to date in promoting Internet freedom, particularly
in balancing Internet freedom against competing political, security, and
economic interests. It then compares the U.S. government’s approach to
Internet freedom to that of European counterparts, and it concludes with
recommendations for improving U.S. policy.

The State of Global Internet Freedom

Internet freedom depends to a large extent on how much the United
States and other democratic countries support it.2 Information technolo-
gies and digital media, if left alone, have great potential to liberate.
They give citizens access to a wide range of information that is unavail-
able in traditional media. Web 2.0 applications allow just about anyone
with a computer, Internet connection, and fairly rudimentary skills to
become a publisher and distributor of information. News and politi-
cal commentary are no longer in the exclusive domain of large media
houses, whose editors decide what is fit to print and what is not. Such
commentary is, rather, disseminated by myriad sources, often through
individual initiative.
Moreover, Web 2.0 applications provide powerful tools to organize
citizen activism. They have been used to organize mass protests across
the Middle East and North Africa, to spread news of the protests and
the crackdowns that ensued, and to disseminate videos to document the
scale of the protests and the brutality of the crackdowns. The power of
digital media was particularly evident in Syria, which banned foreign
journalists—including regional Arab media—during the unrest and ar-
rested thousands of activists and protestors. Antiregime activists used
Twitter to alert the international media about the situation in Syria, post-
ed videos on YouTube of security forces shooting at demonstrators, and
set up Facebook groups to coordinate slogans and plans among separate
groups of activists in different cities. Web 2.0 applications therefore
may merit the moniker of “liberation technology.”
The liberating effects of information and communications technolo-
gies (ICTs) are well known to authoritarian regimes, and, for precisely
this reason, these regimes have introduced extensive controls over digital
media. The most sophisticated authoritarian regimes, such as China and
Iran, have become highly adept at controlling the Internet. They main-
tain pervasive, multilayered systems of censorship and surveillance,
which stifle independent expression and online dissent and obstruct the
ability of political opposition to organize through social media. They
manage to promote Internet access for the purposes of stimulating tech-
nological innovation and economic growth but, at the same time, they
greatly restrict the use of ICTs to challenge their hold on power.
Daniel Calingaert 159

Internet restrictions are mounting around the world. As documented

in Freedom House’s 2011 report on Freedom on the Net, threats to on-
line freedom are growing and are increasingly diverse.3 Of the fifteen
countries covered in the 2009 edition of Freedom on the Net, nine regis-
tered declines in the subsequent two years. Several countries that previ-
ously had few Internet controls, including Jordan and Venezuela, have
begun to censor political content and violate Internet-user rights. Jordan
introduced a law in August 2010 with heavy fines for posting defama-
tory comments online and harsh penalties—fines and jail sentences—for
posting previously unpublished information on Jordan’s national secu-
rity, public order, or economy. In December 2010, Venezuela enacted
laws that increased state control over telecommunications networks and
laid the foundation for requiring website managers and service provid-
ers to censor user comments. Azerbaijan’s Ministry of National Secu-
rity has proposed amendments to the criminal code to make the act of
spreading “misinformation” a “cybercrime.”4 In other countries, the
trend toward greater control has accelerated dramatically. Pakistan set
up an Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Evaluation of Websites in
mid-2010 to flag sites for blocking based on vaguely defined offenses
against the state or religion. In Thailand, court orders have blocked tens
of thousands of websites, and dozens of citizens have faced charges for
views they expressed online, particularly for views that were critical of
the monarchy.
The variety of controls exercised over the flow of online information
includes bans on social-media applications, denial of Internet access,
intermediary liability for service providers, online surveillance, and
digital attacks. These controls have intensified over the past two years.
Blocks on social-media applications have spread widely. In 12 of the 37
countries analyzed in the 2011 report of Freedom on the Net, authorities
consistently or temporarily imposed total bans on YouTube, Facebook,
Twitter, and similar applications.
Governments have also used their control of Internet infrastructure
to facilitate censorship and, at times of political unrest, to cut off access
to the Internet. Chinese authorities severed all online connections to the
Xinjiang region from July 2009 to May 2010, while security forces car-
ried out mass arrests in the wake of ethnic violence there. Egypt shut off
Internet access for the entire country for five days in late January 2011
amidst mass protests calling on then-president Hosni Mubarak to step
down. In March 2011, the regime of Muammar Qadhafi cut off virtually
all Internet access in Libya in an attempt to stem the antiregime upris-
ing. Moreover, some countries are trying to insulate their citizens from
the global Internet. Iran is taking steps toward the creation of a national
internet to disconnect Iranian users from the rest of the world.5 North
Korea and Cuba already maintain national internets and allow only a
very small segment of their population to access the Internet.
160 Challenges for International Policy

Hosting companies and service providers are increasingly held liable

for the online activities of their users. In Thailand, the host of an on-
line platform is facing criminal charges over reader comments that were
critical of the monarchy. In Vietnam and Venezuela, some webmasters
and bloggers have disabled the comment feature on their sites to avoid
potential liability. In Belarus, a government decree went into effect in
mid-2010 requiring Internet service providers to register with the Minis-
try of Communications, provide technical details about online resources
and systems, and identify all devices that are being used to connect to
the Internet. These provisions are designed to give the Belarusian gov-
ernment greater capacity to monitor online activities. Belarus also intro-
duced requirements for Internet cafés to check the identity of users and
keep a record of their web searches.
Online surveillance appears to have grown more extensive over the
past two years. The Iranian government used intercepted online com-
munications, including activities on Facebook and the Persian-language
social-media site Balatarin, to prosecute activists involved in protests
against the fraudulent 2009 presidential election. Many arrested activ-
ists reported that interrogators confronted them with copies of their e-
mails, demanded the passwords to their Facebook accounts, and ques-
tioned them about individuals on their friends list.6
Western companies have come under pressure to facilitate govern-
ment interception of digital communications. The governments of Sau-
di Arabia and India pressured BlackBerry maker Research In Motion
(RIM) to grant them access to data of BlackBerry users, and the United
Arab Emirates made similar demands on RIM.7
Digital attacks against human-rights and democracy activists have
become widespread. They have crippled independent or opposition web-
sites and disrupted communication and collaboration among activists.
Sophisticated and extensive cyberattacks have originated from China.
These included denial-of-service attacks on domestic and overseas hu-
man-rights groups, e-mail messages to foreign journalists containing
malicious software capable of monitoring the recipient’s computer, and
a cyberespionage network that extended to 103 countries to spy on the
Tibetan government-in-exile. In Iran, during the mass demonstrations
that followed the June 2009 presidential election, denial-of-service at-
tacks disabled many opposition news sites, and the Iranian Cyber Army,
which operates under the command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps, hacked several other prominent websites. In Belarus, to stifle pro-
tests against the fraudulent December 2010 elections, denial-of-service
attacks slowed down connections to opposition websites or rendered
them inaccessible. Moreover, the country’s largest Internet service pro-
vider, the state-owned Belpak, redirected users from independent media
sites to nearly identical clones that provided misleading information,
such as the incorrect location of a planned opposition rally. Digital at-
Daniel Calingaert 161

tacks on websites or blogs that are critical of the government have also
taken place in several countries rated Partly Free on Internet freedom by
Freedom House, including Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Russia.
The trend toward growing restrictions on the Internet looks likely to
continue. China has outlined plans to intensify its Internet restrictions,
even though they already are among the most extensive in the world.
These plans were laid out in the April 2010 report on the development of
China’s Internet by Wang Chen, director of the Communist Party’s Ex-
ternal Propaganda Department and director of the Information Office of
China’s State Council. He lamented “the difficulty in the supervision of
information content security” with the proliferation of audio, video, and
other multimedia content and the expansion of mobile Internet services.
He proposed to respond by intensifying “efforts to guide public opin-
ion online” and strengthening “efforts to manage domain names, IP ad-
dresses, registration and record-filing, and connection services.” Chen
mentioned plans to introduce administrative procedures “for managing
mobile media and implementing real name registration of cell phones.”
Additional measures will be taken to “make the Internet real name sys-
tem a reality as soon as possible” and to “gradually apply the real name
registration system to online interactive processes.” These plans aim, as
Chen explained, to “perfect our system to monitor harmful information
on the Internet, and strengthen the blocking of harmful information from
outside China.”8

U.S. Policy
In response to the growing threats to Internet freedom around the
world, the U.S. government has presented a clear set of policy goals for
promoting freedom of expression online, undertaken diplomatic efforts
to promote these goals, and allocated substantial resources to counteract
restrictions on the Internet. The goals are defined in broad terms. In her
January 2010 speech, Secretary Clinton called for the United States “to
help ensure the free exchange of ideas” online and promised to com-
mit “the diplomatic, economic, and technological resources necessary
to advance these freedoms.” President Barack Obama, in his address
to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2010, declared
that the United States must “leverage new technologies so that we can
strengthen the foundation of freedom.” The U.S. government, as Clin-
ton explained in February 2011, promotes “an Internet where people’s
rights are protected” and that is “interoperable all over the world” and
“secure enough to hold people’s trust.”9
The Obama administration has elevated Internet freedom to a priority
in U.S. foreign policy and a key component of its human-rights agenda.
It has articulated clear and forceful policy positions on Internet freedom
and pushed vigorously at the UN and elsewhere for online freedom of
162 Challenges for International Policy

expression. Rather than develop new international human-rights instru-

ments for the Internet, the Obama administration has used existing inter-
nationally recognized human-rights principles, such as Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to promote Internet freedom.
Article 19 upholds the “right to freedom of opinion and expression,” in-
cluding the freedom “to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Diplomatic efforts at multiple levels seek to promote online freedom
of expression. The U.S. government has resisted attempts to place In-
ternet governance under the UN, specifically the International Telecom-
munication Union, where authoritarian regimes may have greater abil-
ity to introduce new controls.10 The United States instead supports the
multistakeholder bodies that currently govern the Internet, such as the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The
State Department addresses Internet-freedom issues in its engagement
with foreign governments, for instance in its human-rights dialogues
with China. According to Secretary Clinton, these issues have become
“part of the daily work” of diplomats around the world, who are charged
with “monitoring and responding to threats to Internet freedom.”11
The commitment of resources to promote Internet freedom is sub-
stantial. The State Department has spent US$50 million since 2008 on
a range of Internet-freedom programs, and Congress allocated another
$20 million to the department for 2012. These programs have supported
technologies to circumvent online censorship, secure tools for mobile
phones, efforts to reintroduce blocked content to users behind a firewall,
and digital security training for activists.12 In addition, the Broadcast-
ing Board of Governors has made significant investments in censorship
circumvention,13 and the U.S. Agency for International Development
has provided substantial support for digital media in repressive environ-
ments and for efforts by civil society to enhance the use of information
and communications technologies for civic activism.14
Secretary Clinton explains that the State Department programs take
a “venture capital-style approach.” They seek to spur technological in-
novation. They support a portfolio of technologies, tools, and training
that aims to respond to needs identified by digital activists in repressive
environments, including the growing needs for mobile-phone technolo-
gies and digital security. Moreover, these programs support multiple
tools, so that “if repressive governments figure out how to target one,
others are available.”15
U.S. government funding for Internet-freedom programs is needed
and justified. It addresses challenges and opportunities that businesses
and private donors cannot adequately meet on their own. It builds on
decades of U.S. government experience in supporting programs that
promote human rights and democracy around the world.
The State Department has taken a sophisticated approach to support-
Daniel Calingaert 163

ing Internet-freedom programs. It focuses on programs that are unlikely

to attract private donations, such as technologies for users in repres-
sive environments who rely on web applications that are free of charge.
These programs address a range of priorities identified by digital ac-
tivists in repressive environments. They aim to stimulate innovation in
censorship-circumvention and privacy-protection tools, to expand ac-
cess to these tools in Internet-restrictive environments, to assist human-
rights defenders and civic activists in applying new technology to their
work, and to support the activists’ efforts in challenging the limits to
online freedom of expression imposed by repressive governments. The
State Department has come under criticism, however, for taking more
than a year to spend $30 million in 2010 funds appropriated for Internet-
freedom programs,16 and for supporting Haystack, a tool that purported
to give Internet users in Iran the ability to bypass firewalls and commu-
nicate securely but that in fact had serious security flaws.17 The experi-
ence with Haystack underscores the risks associated with State Depart-
ment support for technological innovation.

Competing U.S. Interests

Current U.S. policy is inadequate to stem—let alone reverse—the
trend of declining Internet freedom. Growing restrictions by repressive
regimes are outpacing U.S. efforts to enable information and commu-
nications technologies to expand the space for free expression. Despite
U.S. diplomatic initiatives, responses to violations of Internet users’
rights, and Internet-freedom programs, authoritarian regimes are still in-
creasing their controls over the Internet. Moreover, when Internet free-
dom competes with other U.S. political, security, or economic interests,
the other interests tend to take precedence over Internet freedom.
In pushing back against Internet-related repression, the U.S. govern-
ment’s record is quite strong overall, but weak in certain respects. The
State Department is increasingly standing up for bloggers and cyberdis-
sidents who come under pressure from repressive regimes. It invited
several leading bloggers to attend Secretary Clinton’s Internet freedom
speech in January 2010, including Bassem Samir, who was a thorn in
the side of the Mubarak regime in Egypt. The U.S. government has crit-
icized the arrests of prominent bloggers and cyberdissidents, such as
Bahraini blogger Mahmood al-Yousif. It is, however, less vocal in its
criticism of Internet-freedom violations committed by certain foreign
governments, such as Pakistan and Thailand.
U.S. support for cyberactivists has encountered skepticism in some
quarters, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, because it
coincided with U.S. collaboration on counterterrorism and other issues
with authoritarian regimes. It put the United States in the awkward posi-
tion of supporting both authoritarian regimes and the citizens they op-
164 Challenges for International Policy

press or, in the words of journalist Rami Khouri, of “feeding both the
jailer and the prisoner.” Khouri derided the U.S. government for sup-
porting “political activism by young Arabs while it simultaneously pro-
vides funds and guns that help cement the power of the very same Arab
governments the young social and political activists target for change.”18
In the face of restrictive Internet laws and policies of authoritarian
governments, the U.S. response has been mixed. U.S. officials have
condemned such policies at times, for instance when Secretary Clinton
mentioned China’s Internet censorship in her February 2011 speech. At
other times, officials were largely silent when new Internet restrictions
were introduced, for instance when Saudi Arabia introduced a require-
ment in early 2011 for online media sites (including blogs) to obtain a
license to operate.
Moreover, to counteract Internet censorship, the Obama administra-
tion has offered incentives for repressive regimes to allow greater free-
dom online but has not spelled out any consequences if these regimes
maintain their censorship. When State Department officials led a del-
egation of representatives from U.S. technology companies to Syria in
June 2010, the U.S. officials suggested to Syrian president Bashar al-
Assad that if he stopped blocking social-media sites such as Facebook
and YouTube, U.S. investment was likely to follow. They neglected,
however, to publicly criticize Syria’s Internet censorship or to meet with
independent bloggers or cyberdissidents.
In addition to political interests, security concerns compete with the
U.S. interest in Internet freedom. The open nature of the Internet creates
vulnerabilities for U.S. military assets and critical infrastructure. National
security officials seek to reduce these vulnerabilities and, in the process,
have proposed policies that may put the open nature of the Internet at risk.
The commander of U.S. Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander, has
called for the creation of a separate secure computer network for govern-
ment agencies and critical industries to insulate them from digital attacks.
While such a network would enhance the security of government
and industry computer networks, it might also accelerate a move to-
ward greater fracturing of the Internet, whereby more countries seek to
wall off parts of their Internet. General Alexander has also requested
authority to carry out offensive operations on the Internet, including
preemptive cyberattacks on foreign targets that threaten key U.S. assets
such as power grids.19 Authority for the U.S. military to launch cyberat-
tacks outside of war zones would run counter to U.S. efforts to persuade
foreign governments to curb digital attacks that emanate from their soil,
including digital attacks on dissidents.
Moreover, U.S. government monitoring of digital communications,
while necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and to investigate criminal
activity, is sometimes at odds with the protection of online privacy,
which is integral to the freedoms of expression and association. This
Daniel Calingaert 165

very same monitoring, which is subject to due process and thus is con-
sistent with privacy protections in the United States and other demo-
cratic countries, leads to abuse in repressive regimes, where due process
is absent. Technology for online surveillance, such as spyware, is used
by authoritarian governments to harass and prosecute dissidents.
The Obama administration reportedly plans to seek legislation to re-
quire all communications service providers to become technically ca-
pable of complying with a court order to wiretap communications. This
requirement would create “backdoors” to intercept encrypted messages
on BlackBerry, social-networking sites such as Facebook, and peer-
to-peer services such as Skype.20 National-security officials argue that
these backdoors are essential for implementing existing wiretap laws
and averting terrorist attacks, but the backdoors would then be open for
abuse by repressive regimes, which monitor the communications of dis-
sidents without the kind of independent judicial oversight available in
the United States. The creation of backdoors for wiretapping will greatly
increase the difficulty for communications-service providers to resist
pressure from authoritarian governments to intercept private communi-
cations and, as the experience of BlackBerry maker RIM shows, such
pressure is likely to grow.

Economic Interests
Economic interests pull the U.S. government in different directions
on Internet-freedom issues. Some companies build their business by ex-
panding access to information or providing digital-communications ser-
vices that are reliable and secure. They have a strong interest in avoiding
censorship and protecting the privacy of their users, although they usu-
ally give in to pressure from repressive governments to censor content
or grant access to private data so that they can maintain their share of
foreign markets. Google’s decision in January 2010 to stop censoring
web searches in China was among the very few exceptions to the com-
mon practice of U.S. companies giving in to such pressure.21
Other U.S. technology companies sell security software and services
and seek to expand their overseas sales, even at the risk of seeing their
products used to filter or monitor political content. Internet service pro-
viders in the Middle East and North Africa, for example, rely on com-
mercial software from Websense and Secure Computing (which is now
part of McAfee) to filter political content.22 Boeing subsidiary Narus
sold technology to the state-run company Telecom Egypt to intercept
and inspect Internet and mobile-phone communications.23
The Obama administration has generally been passive in responding
to pressure from repressive regimes on U.S. companies to assist with
Internet censorship or surveillance. It has considered this pressure as a
problem for U.S. companies to solve alone. In her January 2010 speech
166 Challenges for International Policy

on Internet freedom, Secretary Clinton urged “U.S. media companies

to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands
for censorship and surveillance,” but she offered no assistance from the
U.S. government, beyond a meeting with the undersecretaries of state
for economic affairs and for democracy and global affairs, who lead the
State Department’s Global Internet Freedom Task Force.24 U.S. com-
panies cannot be expected to stand up to pressure from foreign govern-
ments on their own.
The U.S. Trade Representative has, with rare exceptions, failed to
challenge Internet censorship on trade grounds. While U.S. trade agree-
ments have begun to make reference to Internet freedom—so that they
may serve as incentives for other governments to respect online freedom
of expression—the U.S. government only once has seriously challenged
Internet censorship as a restriction on trade. This was the challenge to
the Green Dam content-control software, which the Chinese government
had planned to mandate for preinstallation on all computers in 2009
until a domestic and international uproar caused the plan to be scrapped.
The Obama administration as a whole is reticent about pressuring
U.S. companies to avoid cooperation with repressive regimes in Internet
censorship and infringements on the rights of Internet users. It has en-
couraged participation in the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a volun-
tary code of conduct with self-enforcement mechanisms for technology
companies, but steered clear of any legal mandates on U.S. companies.
It has neither supported the Global Online Freedom Act25—the only bill
before Congress that would require U.S. technology companies to dis-
close their censorship activities and protect the private data of foreign
users—nor proposed an alternative.
Reliance on the GNI to ensure corporate good behavior is likely to
have a limited effect. Three years after its launch in 2008, GNI still had
only three technology companies among its members—Google, Micro-
soft, and Yahoo. GNI has yet to bring in corporate members based out-
side the United States, newer companies focused on Web 2.0 services
(such as Facebook and Twitter), or companies that provide content fil-
ters or spyware, which are likely to contribute to violations of Internet
freedom when in the hands of authoritarian governments. Furthermore,
a voluntary code of conduct and self-enforcement mechanisms cannot
protect companies, even large multinationals, from pressure by authori-
tarian regimes to filter content or to facilitate surveillance of Internet
users. For example, under its deal with Chinese search engine Baidu,
Microsoft is expected to censor search results in China.26

European Policy
European government policy on Internet freedom was initially ar-
ticulated in mid-2010 by then–French foreign minister Bernard Kouch-
Daniel Calingaert 167

ner and then–Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen. They began

to convene multistakeholder meetings with allied governments, tech-
nology companies, and human-rights groups to build consensus around
initiatives to:

• Establish an international mechanism to monitor the commitments

that countries have made regarding online freedom of expression;
• Draft a corporate code of conduct to prevent Internet filters from
ending up in the hands of repressive regimes or, alternatively, per-
suade European companies to join the Global Network Initiative;
• Defend the rights of bloggers and cyberdissidents who face censor-
ship, persecution, or imprisonment; and
• Codify the universal character of the Internet into law.27

Through the multistakeholder meetings and changes in European

leadership on Internet-freedom issues (primarily the resignation of Ber-
nard Kouchner and the engagement of Swedish foreign minister Carl
Bildt), European policy was refined, and significant initiatives were
launched. The Netherlands and Sweden have begun to fund programs
to support bloggers and cyberdissidents who come under threat. They
have also pushed for greater European Union funding for Internet-free-
dom programs. The European Commission’s EuropeAid, in its 2011–13
strategy for democracy and human-rights programs, has included sup-
port for greater access to the Internet and freedom of expression online.
To encourage technology companies to respect human rights, Euro-
pean policy makers increasingly seek to build on existing mechanisms,
particularly on the GNI, rather than develop a new corporate code of
conduct. Dutch foreign minister Uri Rosenthal has gone further and sug-
gested legislation along the lines of the Global Online Freedom Act pro-
posed in the U.S. Congress.
To strengthen international respect for free expression on the Inter-
net, European policy makers now stress existing human-rights princi-
ples rather than propose new international laws. Rosenthal pointed out
that Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies
to the Internet, while Bildt stressed, “The same rights that people have
offline—freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek informa-
tion, freedom of assembly and association, amongst others—must also
be protected online.”28
The Swedish government supported the work of UN Special Rappor-
teur for Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue, who presented his report
on Internet freedom to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. The
report called attention to key challenges for Internet freedom, such as
digital attacks on human-rights organizations, intermediary liability for
online content, criminal penalties for legitimate online expression, and
168 Challenges for International Policy

“just-in-time” blocking of online content during elections, periods of so-

cial unrest, or other critical moments. It stressed several key principles
for an open Internet, declaring that Article 19 applies to the Internet;
that censorship should never be delegated to a private entity; and that
any limitation on freedom of expression must be defined by law, be
necessary and proportional, and be applied by an independent body with
safeguards against abuse. La Rue’s report put forward a series of rec-
ommendations, which the Swedish and other democratic governments
pledged to promote.
European policy is generally in sync with U.S. policy on Internet free-
dom. European leaders speak out in defense of bloggers and cyberdis-
sidents; fund programs to expand online freedom of expression; work to
build recognition and respect for international human-rights principles
that apply to the Internet; and support a multistakeholder and self-regulat-
ing approach to Internet governance.
European policy on Internet freedom suffers from the same limitations
as U.S. policy. European governments promote broad principles of Inter-
net freedom and support cyberdissidents but have yet to seriously chal-
lenge repressive regimes over specific restrictions on digital communica-
tions and media. They have generally neglected to support technology
companies in resisting pressure from repressive regimes to cooperate with
Internet censorship and surveillance.29 They look to European companies
to adopt a voluntary code of conduct and have yet to enact legislation to
curb the use of European technology to commit human-rights violations.
A European version of the Global Online Freedom Act was introduced in
the European Parliament in 2008 with the support of four political-party
groups, ranging from the center-right European People’s Party to the So-
cialists and the Greens, but was opposed by the EU’s Commissioner for
Telecommunications and was never passed.
In April 2011, the European Parliament voted to introduce export con-
trols on technologies for monitoring mobile-phone and Internet use, but
these export controls still require the European Council’s approval. A vol-
untary code of conduct is unlikely to avert a future case—similar to the
Nokia-Siemens sale of a monitoring center to Iran Telecom—where Euro-
pean technology is used to commit human-rights abuses.30
Nokia-Siemens came under harsh criticism in the European Parliament
for its sale to Iran Telecom, and there were calls for a ban on exports of
surveillance technology to Iran and other repressive regimes, but no ex-
port controls were introduced. A year later, several other European com-
panies were found to have sold spyware to repressive regimes. Britain’s
Gamma International provided its product FinSpy to Egypt’s security ser-
vice, which used the product to monitor online activities of dissidents.
This spyware infects the computers of dissidents and allows the security
service to capture key strokes and intercept audio streams, even when
the dissidents are using encrypted email or voice communications such
Daniel Calingaert 169

as Skype. In addition, Italian company HackingTeam has sold software

that bypasses Skype’s encryption and captures audio streams from a com-
puter’s memory to security agencies in the Middle East and North Africa.

Future International Policy

The Obama administration has developed a sophisticated, multifac-
eted policy to protect and advance Internet freedom. This policy reflects
a serious U.S. commitment to support online freedom of expression and
to push back on the restrictions imposed by authoritarian regimes. It
promotes respect for international human-rights principles of free ex-
pression, defends the open multistakeholder structure of global Inter-
net governance, supports digital activists, and makes substantial fund-
ing available to develop and apply new technologies to curb Internet
censorship and surveillance. The Dutch and Swedish governments have
launched similar policy initiatives and led the debate in the European
Union to step up efforts to promote Internet freedom.
Current international policy on Internet freedom, however, is insuf-
ficient to stem the rising tide of authoritarian censorship and control
over digital media and communications around the world. The prolifera-
tion of these controls is outpacing the efforts of citizens and democratic
governments to expand the space for free expression on the Internet.
The United States and the EU can have greater impact in their efforts to
push back against Internet-related repression by challenging restrictive
Internet laws and practices abroad, standing up for technology compa-
nies that are pressured into assisting authoritarian regimes with Internet
censorship or surveillance, and enacting legislation to curb sales of U.S.
and European technology that is used to violate human rights.31
The United States and the European Union should conduct targeted
diplomatic initiatives to challenge restrictive Internet laws and practic-
es. These initiatives should seek to avert new constraints before they
are introduced and to persuade foreign governments to reconsider exist-
ing controls. Senior U.S. and European officials should raise concerns
about such restrictions with their foreign counterparts and express them
publicly to the media. In addition, the U.S. and the EU should challenge
restrictive Internet laws and practices as barriers to trade wherever they
can make this case and, when possible, take their disputes against such
laws and practices to the World Trade Organization.
U.S. and European companies that come under pressure to facilitate
violations of human rights—for instance, to provide access to private
data or communications of their users—should have recourse to diplo-
matic support from their government. They usually are unable to with-
stand such pressure on their own. The United States and the European
Union should stand ready to intervene if asked and to push back on the
government exerting this pressure.
170 Challenges for International Policy

The Global Network Initiative or other voluntary measures are clear-

ly inadequate to curb the export of U.S. technologies that are used to
commit human-rights abuses. Some form of legislation is needed. Leg-
islation should, at a minimum, mandate transparency of actions by U.S.
companies that contribute to Internet censorship or surveillance. U.S.
companies should disclose details of the requests they receive from for-
eign governments to filter web content, to turn over personal data of
users, or to allow communications interception, and should report to
the State Department their sales of filtering or monitoring technology
to countries that restrict the Internet. Alternatively, the U.S. Congress
might consider carefully crafted export controls on specific technolo-
gies to Internet-restricting countries. These export controls would target
specific technologies, such as content filters or spyware, that serve the
primary purpose of limiting flows of online information or monitoring
private digital communications and thus are likely to be used by repres-
sive regimes to violate human rights.
The U.S. government needs to balance its promotion of Internet free-
dom with often competing political, economic, or security interests.
While these competing interests tend to take precedence, the U.S. gov-
ernment should look to tilt the balance more toward Internet freedom.
In addressing cybersecurity concerns, for example, the U.S. government
should avoid measures that weaken the open and unitary structure of the
global Internet or facilitate online surveillance by repressive regimes—for
instance by giving repressive regimes back-door access to private digital
communications. Security requirements on Internet-related services, such
as those assisting in monitoring terrorist suspects, should be narrowly de-
fined, commensurate with the security risk, applied transparently (with
strong safeguards against abuse), and subject to independent oversight.
U.S. and European support for Internet freedom will have greater
impact if it is part of a robust policy to promote human rights and de-
mocracy in general. It cannot be a substitute for democracy assistance
for local activism, government reforms, and pluralist political process-
es. It is instead a component of larger efforts to protect fundamental
rights, foster greater citizen participation, and make governments more
accountable. Internet freedom is far more likely to flourish in countries
where fundamental rights are respected and government is responsive
to citizens. U.S. and European policy should therefore seek to promote
Internet freedom as a complement to a broader agenda of supporting hu-
man rights and democracy.
Every aspect of U.S. policy on Internet freedom would be more effec-
tive if conducted in concert with democratic allies. Joint diplomatic initia-
tives would make greater progress in promoting respect for international
principles of free expression, defending bloggers and cyberactivists who
come under threat, reducing Internet censorship, and challenging restric-
tive Internet laws and practices. Coordination on funding would avoid
Daniel Calingaert 171

duplication, allow U.S. and European governments to focus on their com-

parative advantages, and reinforce common efforts. Initiatives to curb ex-
ports of technology that is used to commit human-rights violations would
have greater impact if transparency requirements and export controls were
applied equally to companies in all democratic countries.
To advance Internet freedom in the face of growing restrictions
around the world, the United States and the European Union need to
do more. They cannot rely entirely on uncontroversial measures, such
as advocating broad principles, criticizing flagrant abuses, and funding
programs that promote Internet freedom. They need to take bolder ac-
tions, such as challenging foreign governments on their restrictive In-
ternet laws and controlling exports of U.S. and European monitoring
technology to repressive regimes. Such actions are vital to reversing the
global trend toward suppression of Internet freedom.

NOTES

The author thanks Sarah Cook, Richard Fontaine, Robert Guerra, Sanja Kelly, Caroline
Nellemann, and Christopher Walker for their comments on earlier drafts. Research was
updated for the period up to 12 July 2011.

1. Bernard Kouchner, “The Battle for the Internet,” New York Times, 13 May 2010.

2. Internet freedom is defined here as the freedoms of expression and association and
the free flow of information on the Internet and in digital communications, including
mobile telephones.

3. Freedom on the Net 2011, Freedom House, available at www.freedomhouse.org/

report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2011.

4. Shahin Abbasov, “Azerbaijan: Baku Moving to Restrict Online Free Speech?” Eur-
asiaNet.org, 25 May 2011, available at www.eurasianet.org/print/63554.

5. “Iran Vows to Unplug Internet and Create a Private Network,” Wall Street Journal
Asia, 30 May 2011.

6. Iran country report, Freedom on the Net 2011, 7, available at www.freedomhouse.

org/images/File/FotN/Iran2011.pdf.

7. RIM refused to release details of its agreement with the UAE’s Telecommunica-
tions Regulatory Authority, but the agreement was reportedly “compatible with the UAE’s
regulatory framework.” Lance Whitney, “RIM Averts BlackBerry Ban in UAE,” CNET
News, 8 October 2010, available at http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20019011-83.html.

8. Report by Wang Chen, “Concerning the Development and Administration of Our

Country’s Internet,” trans. Human Rights in China, China Rights Forum 2010, no. 2, 2010.

9. Hillary Rodham Clinton, speech, “Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices and Chal-
lenges in a Networked World,” George Washington University, 15 February 2011.

10. See comments by Michael H. Posner, assistant secretary of state for democra-
cy, human rights, and labor, in “Conversations with America: The State Department’s
Internet Freedom Strategy,” 18 February 2011, available at www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/
rm/2011/157089.htm.
172 Challenges for International Policy

11. Clinton, “Internet Rights and Wrongs.”

12. Letter from Assistant Secretary Michael Posner, 24 May 2011.

13. See Broadcasting Board of Governors, Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Request, 88–89,
available at http://media.voanews.com/documents/FY_2012_BBG_Congressioal_Budget_
Final_Web_Version2.pdf. In addition to the funds for Internet-censorship circumvention
embedded in BBG’s budget, Congress was expected to appropriate an additional $10 mil-
lion in 2011 to the BBG for anticensorship technologies.

14. Funding for Internet freedom–related work is included in several awards for media
and civil society from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

15. Clinton, “Internet Rights and Wrongs.”

16. Mary Beth Sheridan, “Congress Trims State’s Internet Freedom Funds,” Washing-
ton Post, 13 April 2011.

17. Haystack was fast-tracked for a license to export to Iran with U.S. State Depart-
ment support and was praised by Secretary Clinton. See Evgeny Morozov, “The Great
Internet Freedom Fraud,” Slate, 16 September 2010.

18. Rami G. Khouri, “When Arabs Tweet,” New York Times, 22 July 2010. A similar
argument was presented in Sami Ben Gharbia’s blog post, “The Internet Freedom Fallacy
and the Arab Digital Activism,” 17 September 2010.

19. Ellen Nakashima, “Pentagon’s Cyber Command Seeks Authority to Expand Its
Battlefield,” Washington Post, 6 November 2010.

20. Charlie Savage, “U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet,” New York
Times, 27 September 2010.

21. Domain-name registration companies GoDaddy and Network Solutions followed

Google’s lead soon after.

22. Helmi Noman, “Middle East Censors Use Western Technologies to Block Vi-
ruses and Free Speech,” OpenNet Initiative, 27 July 2009, available at http://opennet.
net/blog/2009/07/middle-east-censors-use-western-technologies-block-viruses-and-free-
speech.

23. Timothy Karr, “One U.S. Corporation’s Role in Egypt’s Brutal Crackdown,” Huff-
ington Post, 28 January 2011, available at www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/one-us-
corporations-role-_b_815281.html.

24. In her February 2011 speech, Clinton similarly offered no support for U.S. com-
panies facing pressure from authoritarian regimes to collaborate in Internet censorship
or surveillance. She merely praised the Global Network Initiative and called for “strong
corporate partners.”

25. While other bills would introduce or strengthen sanctions on specific countries, the
Global Online Freedom Act, H.R.1389, would apply to all Internet-restricting countries. It
would require U.S. companies to disclose the methods of filtering they use and the content
they block at the request of repressive regimes, to host personal data on servers outside of
Internet-restricting countries, and to refer requests for personal data from these regimes to
the U.S. Justice Department.

26. David Barboza, “Microsoft to Partner with China’s Leading Search Engine,” New
York Times, 4 July 2011.
Daniel Calingaert 173

27. “The Internet and Freedom of Expression,” communiqué issued by the Ministry
of Foreign and European Affairs, Paris, 8 July 2010, see http://ambafrance-us.org/spip.
php?article1729.

28. Carl Bildt, “Freedom of Expression on the Internet Cross-Regional Statement,”

speech to the Human Rights Council, 10 June 2011, available at www.sweden.gov.se/
sb/d/14194/a/170566.

29. In February 2008, the European Parliament passed a proposal to treat Internet cen-
sorship by other countries as a trade barrier (see www.webpronews.com/eu-to-consider-
Internet-censorship-a-trade-barrier-2008-02), but this proposal was never adopted by the
European Council. In early 2010, U.S. and EU officials pressed China to drop its plans to
require local certification of encryption-related products, such as firewalls, secure rout-
ers, and smart cards, for government tenders. This certification requirement would have
obliged U.S. and European companies to submit to Chinese government testing and per-
haps to pass on software source codes and other confidential information. The companies
seemed to object less to the risk that this testing would contribute to increased Chinese
surveillance of Internet activity than to the possibility of losing out on Chinese govern-
ment contracts or having their intellectual property handed over to Chinese competitors.
See Kathrin Hille, “IT Groups Warn Chinese on Regulation,” Financial Times, 21 Febru-
ary 2010.

30. A joint venture of the Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia and the German electron-
ics and electrical-engineering company Siemens in 2008 sold Iran Telecom a monitor-
ing center that allowed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to tap mobile phones and
monitor electronic data transmissions. Human-rights advocates and intelligence officials
believe that this center’s electronic surveillance system was used to target dissidents. See
Christopher Rhoads and Loretta Chao, “Iran’s Web Spying Aided by Western Technol-
ogy,” Wall Street Journal, 22 June 2009.

31. For a comprehensive and insightful analysis of U.S. policy on Internet freedom, see
Richard Fontaine and Will Rogers, “Internet Freedom: A Foreign Policy Imperative in the
Digital Age,” Center for a New American Security, June 2011.
This page intentionally left blank
 INDEX

164–166, 173n. See also CCP;

Note:
Great Firewall of China
f refers to a figure
Clinton, Hillary, xxv, 16, 44,
n refers to a citation
49, 52, 57, 78, 80, 120, 157,
t refers to a table
161–164, 166, 172n
Afghanistan, 11, 86, 98 CNNIC (China Internet Network
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 143–144, Information Center), 64, 65,
146, 148, 150 76n, 86
Algeria, 112, 114–115, 122 Cybercrime, xxvi, 21–22, 24, 41,
Al Jazeera, xxiii, 112, 115, 118, 120 43, 58, 90, 159
Alkasir, xxiii, 127–130, 129f, Cyberespionage, 14, 20, 22–23,
133–136, 137n 29, 43, 160

Bahrain, xi, xiii, xx, xxii, xxvi, 40, DDoS (distributed denial-of-service)
110, 114–120, 122, 131t, 131, attacks, xiv, xvi, 50–52, 55, 58
133, 163
Belarus, 4, 24, 27–28, 39, 160 Egypt, xx–xxii, xxvi, 11–12, 38, 42,
Ben Ali, Zine al-Abidine, xxii, 73, 95–108, 110, 113–136, 131t,
xxvi, 110, 111–113, 115, 124, 145, 159, 163, 165, 168
133
Botnets, 21–23, 28, 58 Google, xvi, xxii, 8–9, 26–29, 53–
Burma, xiii–xiv, 12, 15, 18, 21, 54, 56, 74, 84–85, 98, 113, 115,
24, 42 118, 121, 126, 143, 165–166,
172n
CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Great Firewall of China, xviii, 7, 9,
xvii–xviii, 4, 9–10, 65–68, 71– 25, 38, 50, 66, 69, 74, 78, 80,
76, 81–82, 88. See also China 82, 89
China, xi–xii, xiv–xxi, xxv–xxvi,
xxviin, 3, 4, 6–10, 13, 15, 22, ICANN (International Corporation
24–29, 36–43, 48, 50, 52–55, for Assigned Names and Num-
57, 63–92, 126, 140, 158–162, bers), xv, 37–38, 162
176 Index
IGF (Internet Governance Forum), Qadhafi, Muammar, 110, 115, 118,
xv, 37–38 120, 133, 159
India, xvii, 7, 11, 37–42, 44, 89, 98,
160 RIM (Research In Motion), 38, 40,
Indonesia, 37, 40, 122 44, 160, 165, 171n
Iran, xiii–xiv, xx, xxiv–xxv, 4, 10– Russia, xv–xvi, xix, 22, 24, 29, 37–
11, 13–15, 18, 21, 26, 29, 39, 42, 39, 41, 43, 52–53, 89–90, 97, 161
50, 52, 55, 57–58, 90, 113, 126,
139–151, 142t, 143t, 158–160, Saudi Arabia, xxiii, 11, 40, 44,
163, 168, 172n, 173n 53–54, 101, 110, 112, 114, 116,
ITU (International Telecommunica- 121–122, 124, 128, 131t, 131,
tion Union), xv, 37–38 135–136, 160, 164
Sudan, 98, 112, 115, 131t, 131, 145
Kazakhstan, 39, 50, 86, 161 Syria, xx, xxii–xiv, 12, 97, 99, 110,
Kenya, ix, xx, 11, 95, 97–98 114, 116–120, 122, 128, 131t,
Kyrgyzstan, 28, 39, 98 131, 134–136, 158, 164

Lebanon, xi, 11–12, 25, 98–99, 106, Thailand, 53, 126, 159–160, 163
112 Tibet, xiv, 8, 24, 29, 68, 160
Libya, xx, xxii, xxvi, 97, 110, 114– Tor, xvi, 15, 49–50, 104, 127
115, 117–118, 122, 131–133, Tunisia, xx–xxii, xvi, 15, 24, 42, 73,
131t, 159 96–99, 110–120, 122, 124–126,
132–133
Malaysia, xii, 5–7, 10, 161
Microsoft, 27, 41, 166 United States, x, xv–xvii, xxv, 16, 25,
Morocco, 110, 119, 122 30, 34, 36, 41, 47, 52, 89, 98, 101,
Mubarak, Hosni, xx–xxii, xxvi, 158, 161–163, 165–166, 169, 171
99–100, 103, 108, 110, 113–115, U.S. Cyber Command, 24, 41, 164
118–121, 125, 159, 163 U-Shahid, xxi, 99–108
Musavi, Mir Hosein, 13, 140, 142, Ushahidi, xii, xx, 11, 95–108, 145
144–146, 148–149 Uzbekistan, 10, 24, 39

Nigeria, xi, 7, 11 Venezuela, 10, 12, 26, 159, 160

Voice of America, xxiv, 69, 127,
ONI (Open Network Initiative), xiv, 143t, 147
33, 35–36, 42
Yemen, xx, xxiii, xxvi, 42, 97,
Pakistan, 11, 25, 39, 86, 98, 159, 99, 110, 112, 116–117, 122,
163 126–135
Liberation Technology
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