A Twitter Revolution without revoluationaries?
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Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:00
I'm going to ask the next question, and it's about the growth of the technology revolution. The very politics and the growth of the world, as I said earlier, the great twitter, a wonderful way for the normal people of the streets to understand the system.
00:23
So I'm going to start with a few questions. First of all, I'd like to ask you, is there a way or is there a way for you to understand the system that you're currently working on? I think that's a good 40-minute question. I'd like to start with this one.
00:42
For The Economist, the Newsweek International, the International Herald Tribune and so on, I'd like to introduce you to Evgeny Morozov, and there he is.
01:28
Unfortunately, I think I'm the one to blame for that. I was actually the one who came up with this very nice buzzword, which apparently stuck really well.
01:42
If you look at how it has been used, a lot of media actually got fascinated with this idea of young people suddenly using new media and Facebook and Twitter to basically communicate with each other.
02:02
Unfortunately, every single other riot or revolt or whatever else you want to call it got that label attached to it. In retrospect, I think it was probably a very bad decision on my part, and I'm not particularly proud of that because I think too many meanings now are attached
02:23
to this term. And if you look at the coverage of the events in Iran, for example, in the American media, you see extremely divergent media newspapers, like, for example, The Nation and The Washington Times, which have nothing in common politically, which are the opposite polar ends,
02:42
actually embracing very eagerly this label. Of course, you have the same thing in Germany. Spiegel also very eagerly embraced the label of Twitter Revolution. And while doing research for my book, I actually spent quite a lot of time compiling all sorts of silly things
03:01
which pundits mostly in America actually said about Twitter and the role that it played in Iran. And if you go through this list, which extends to many, many pages, those are just a few snippets, you'll actually be shocked at how much enthusiasm and utopianism people associate with the role
03:23
that technology can play in bringing those surprises. And those of you who follow this field probably heard about a very important speech that Hillary Clinton delivered earlier this year. She spoke about Internet freedom, and I can assure you that now, by the end of the year,
03:42
all major think tanks in Washington and New York will all start some kind of Internet freedom programs because this is the new buzzword in town. Everyone loves this concept. It raises money really easily. People are just jumping on this bandwagon. Just to give you an example, next week on April 19th,
04:01
you actually have an event in Dallas at George Bush Institute, which is this new conservative think tank which is all about cyber dissidents and Internet freedom, and it's actually opened by George Bush. And this kind of shows you, and you can see further on the schedule, it has things like e-freedom,
04:20
and it has things like freedom stories from the front lines. There is definitely a lot of excitement which I wouldn't necessarily say is a healthy thing. The last eight or ten years taught us anything. It's that if George Bush gets excited about a subject, it's probably not going to bring any good results.
04:47
So why bother? Why should we even be thinking about this matter? And why is it very important to get this relationship right, how technology influences political protest? Well, you know, I think that it's inevitable
05:02
that all of conservative and neoconservative pundits will eventually embrace Internet freedom as one of the leading causes. And I think it's very sad, but I don't think there is any way out here.
05:20
There will be money allocated to it. I think it will politicize blogging and new media up to a point where it will just be very dangerous to be a blogger in certain countries, no matter what you blog about, whether it's about cats or whether it's about music. The fact that now bloggers are being perceived as cyber dissidents
05:40
and potential threats to the state, I think makes it very hard and difficult for a lot of people who are embracing new media for completely different reasons to continue operating in their countries. The second point, I think, is that for sure, all this money flowing through Internet freedom is almost certain to be misallocated.
06:01
If you look at the kind of rhetoric, I'm based in Washington, I'm based at Georgetown University now, and I can hear a lot of this rhetoric, a lot of this revolves around circumventing Internet censorship, which is probably a very important venture, but that's not the only thing that can be done.
06:21
And in many cases, that's actually not going to help much because censorship now in Internet control takes many different forms, which you can't just solve by funding circumvention tools. And I'll try to get to this at some point. And I think, lastly, we also have to understand that digital activism may not actually require any money,
06:42
and that by funding it, we may actually spoil a lot of otherwise self-sustainable entrepreneurial initiatives, which would develop on their own. And I think this is very important to keep in mind, that money always comes with certain political strings and attachments, and sometimes it's better to underfund the project
07:02
than to have it associated with an American or European political entity. So before we jump into the actual meat of my presentation, I think there is definitely a need for us, and I'm sort of guilty of this myself, but we need to go beyond this very abstract discussion
07:23
of whether the Internet is good or bad for democracy and start actually critiquing specific policies. We have to be looking at how money should be allocated. We have to be paying critical attention to how healthy it is for governments and even Western governments to get involved in this space,
07:41
and this is something which we would never be able to answer if we just continue talking about very abstract topics and looking at very abstract effects. So just to give you a very short biographical digression here, so that you understand where I come from and so that you don't think that I'm an enemy of Internet freedom or something,
08:03
I actually come from, I would say, quite mixed and interesting background. I started in this field working for an NGO, which was doing a lot of new media work in the former Soviet bloc. I got involved very closely with the Open Society Institute, which is the philanthropic arm of George Soros,
08:23
and I'm still advising them on a lot of issues which have to do with Internet and democracy, so I'm actually at the front line of allocating some of that money. And I also do a lot of journalism, as you may know, writing a lot about Internet activism, writing a lot about technology and politics. So I have multiple perspectives here,
08:41
and it also helps that I actually originally am from Belarus, so I've seen some of these issues dealing with authoritarianism firsthand. So that's kind of what shapes my perspective. It's definitely not just coming up with theories for theories' own sake, it's trying to understand how we can actually use some of the theories to bring tangible improvement to many of those closed,
09:02
authoritarian societies. And again, I just want to make a disclaimer. A lot of people, and I think for good reasons, doubt the very premise that we should be democratizing any region with any technology or any aid, right?
09:22
And I think it's a position which is probably more popular in Europe than in the U.S., and we can probably have an entire conference on this, whether we should actually be doing anything to democratize the Middle East or Central Asia. I'll just leave it on the margins, assuming for the purposes of this talk that, for whatever reasons, this work will continue and the governments in the West will continue supporting those efforts.
09:44
So it's not anyhow a moral take on whether we should be doing it or not. So the key takeaway, I guess, from this talk, if you don't remember anything, and to answer my first question in the talk, it's we really know very little about the internet's impact on authoritarianism.
10:02
And I think we know very little, and we are still misleadingly thinking that we actually know a lot. And we have a lot of biases here, and I think a lot of those biases have to do with our wrong reading of history, the wrong reading of political science, and our somewhat shallow understanding of the dynamics of the internet.
10:22
And I'll touch on all of those later on. I think to me, for a very long time, I've been thinking about best ways to actually think about those issues. So you have new media, you have blogs, you have social networks, you have a limited amount of funding, and on the other hand, you have some objective.
10:42
You want to bring freedom, you want to bring more respect for human rights, you want to somehow democratize those societies. And for me, I think the best, and it's probably all severe and inappropriate metaphor, is an analogy. Imagine that you are stuck in a dark room, and you're forced to drink a bottle of vodka,
11:02
and you're given a gun, and you're being asked to shoot at a moving target. And your hand is obviously shaking, and the target is moving, and you're also told that there may be civilians standing in the room. And that's more or less the challenge, I think, that we are facing.
11:22
The internet is constantly changing our tools, our gun and our hand. It's always evolving. It's changing, its governance is changing, the ways in which we're aggregated is changing. But our target, I mean, authoritarianism, if you think about it, we are broadly changing as well. China today is not what China used to be in 1989,
11:44
just like Iran is not what it used to be back then. And it's very important for us to actually understand that it's a very dynamic field. We can't just be getting the old tools, which worked in 1989, and try to apply them to an environment which is completely different.
12:01
And of course, the most important thing is actually to try not to cause any damage. Because I do think that there are a lot of activists, particularly in the authoritarian states, who are not fully aware of all the risks which digital activism entails. They're not fully aware of the extent to which the secret services are watching social networks.
12:22
They're not fully aware of what making friends with their Western donors on Facebook could mean, that it could serve as evidence that they're actually supported by the West. There is this very famous example of an Iranian academic who was actually part of a mailing list about academic affairs,
12:43
and it was run by Columbia University. And during his trial in Iran, the prosecutor actually used his membership in an email group, in an email list, as a proof of his ties to the West. If you push it a little bit further and start thinking about what kind of evidence you can get from Facebook and Twitter,
13:01
it's a completely different issue. So yes, there will be casualties, and I think we have to make sure that we minimize them. But the point here is not to continue shooting in the dark room until we run out of ammunition. That would be the very wrong prescription to take. The right course of action is actually trying to search for the light switch.
13:22
And I think that's the only option that we have. It's trying to understand how exactly governments are adopting to these environments, and how exactly bloggers and media types are actually challenging the power of the governments. I think until we understand those two, we'll continue shooting in the dark,
13:43
and we will continue missing a lot of targets, and we'll continue putting many people in danger. So if we frame this question really broadly, what role does information play under authoritarianism? I think the obvious question, the obvious answer, is that sure, all dictators hate information.
14:01
They hate it, they try to suppress it, they try to censor it. Why even bother asking this question? I think it's a very simplistic view, and it's actually probably not true, for I myself can list at least three ways right now in which they benefit from information. And if you think about it, and if you look at political science and how they think about the authoritarianism,
14:26
you'll see that yes, information can be very strategically used for propaganda purposes, it can be used to neutralize dissent and somehow push people towards entertainment and away from politics. It can be used for more effective governing, and I'll talk about that in a while.
14:46
Of course it can be used for spying, surveillance, and many other things. There is nothing that tells us that information or the Internet by extension has only a positive effect on those countries. And I think that's a footnote which all of us have to keep in mind.
15:01
I think if you look at the U.S. specifically, there is this very, I think, misinformed view that the U.S. actually won the Cold War, and they won the Cold War because they were smuggling banned literature and Xerox machines and fax machines, and they were broadcasting through radio for Europe to settle this in Europe.
15:24
And I think there is some truth to that statement, but I think for those of us who come from this region, it's a very simplistic view, which completely ignores the economic reality that communism ran out of steam, there were a lot of other tensions within it, and that information may not have been what killed it.
15:45
But if you look at the kind of intellectual discourse in the U.S., particularly in the early and mid-90s, you'll see books like this one, which was written actually by a former Moscow bureau chief for one of the big American newspapers, where the physicist thought it's the information which killed the Soviet Union.
16:06
And if you look at many of the statements made by people like Francis Fukuyama in the early 90s or Sam Huntington, all of them definitely crowded the information with the fall of authoritarianism. And, you know, that's why a lot of people in Washington, you know, I can speak incredibly about Europe,
16:23
but a lot of people in Washington still knowing that assumption and knowing what happened there, they still think that that's exactly the same role that information technology will play in more than Iran or China or Russia or whatever. And I think it's just too early to tell, right? There are more and more divisionist accounts of how actually communism ended,
16:43
and I don't want to get into this historical debate, but I think it's a very naive reading of history, and I think it's a very simplistic reading, which can potentially misinform the policies we are going to devise for, you know, changing other authoritarian regimes. So, you know, there is, it's not, of course, an official name, you know, liberation by information,
17:05
but there are a few people who are studying the internet, you know, and you know, some of you may know that I've had a lot of debates and discussions with Clay Shorkey, for example. You can also get Howard Triangle here, who wrote the book Smart Mops. There is a lot of positive, and I would say, you know, optimistic expectation that somehow the internet can topple authoritarianism.
17:29
And, you know, I'll try to summarize this theory here, because I think it's very important for us to get what these people are actually saying and try to see what potentially could be wrong with that. So the basic theory goes like this.
17:40
You know, now the internet allows people to see all the facts, see what exactly is wrong with the government. The government can no longer lie to them. They also get very cheap tools through which they can organize, whether it's blocks or social networks, and they also have cheap media like cell phones, like cameras, with which they can actually document any police brutality that would, you know, result and share it with the rest of the world,
18:04
and that would somehow prevent the government from, you know, violent crackdown. Right? And there are lots of academic theories built here in the information case case that, you know, the more people do that, the more intense it becomes. And, you know, I think that's a widely popular view that that's exactly what the influence is.
18:24
You know, to critique this theory, I think we have to still ask quite a few questions, because I think there are too many assumptions built into this. And I think by, you know, accepting the theory without much critical thinking, we actually risk making the wrong policy decisions. And as you see, you know, to me it's all about, you know, what the future holds,
18:44
because we do have to base our policies on something, and, you know, in most cases we have to build them on assumptions that, you know, result from theories like this one. So in terms of actual, you know, unanswered questions, you know, is it really true that, you know, through blogs and social networks and Flickr and Twitter,
19:05
people would only get positive incentives to participate because they see that the government is falling? Would that be that, you know, they would also see that the government is reacting very violently and all of that will spread virally and they would actually lose any incentives to participate?
19:21
You know, you've all seen this famous Nada video of this young woman who was killed in Iran. And to me, it's still not clear what the overall impact of that was. You know, did it bring a few hundred other, you know, people into the streets? Or did thousands of people see that video and decide that, no, it's not very safe, I'd rather stay home, right?
19:42
And the fact that it was spread in a centralized manner, of course, also resulted in a lot of people seeing that. And I think that's something we just don't know yet. It's something that we have to study, but it will be too premature to say that this effect, this kind of encouragement of protest, works only in one direction.
20:00
The second question, which, again, I also think we need to ask, is, you know, even if that theory is true, what are the critical intervention points and where can the government intervene and disrupt the communication flows? And, of course, it's by blocking mobile networks, it's by blocking internet networks, and, you know, by cutting the cables. You know, the Chinese were fine by cutting the cables in Xinjiang
20:22
when, you know, the Uyghurs were rioting last year. They cut those networks down for six months. They had no mobile coverage. They had no internet coverage, right? In an environment like this, it's very hard to plan a protest. You know, we've seen in, for example, Cambodia in 2007, for three days before the elections, they just turned down all mobile networks, right?
20:43
When all the mobile networks are down and the government knows how to do that, it's very hard to spread those messages and plan anything, right? So, again, the key question here is, you know, does the government still have control over the intermediaries? And, again, there is very little that blogging has changed here.
21:01
We can't give a satellite phone to every single individual, right? And even if we do, I'm sure the government will find a way in which they'll jam satellite phones, you know, particularly geographic area. So, again, this is also very important to think about. The other question which I think is even more important is the value and usefulness of centralization, you know, in planning a revolution.
21:23
Again, if you look at play Shorki's book, you'll see a lot of, you know, I think correctly pointed out observations that the internet has made it very easy for people to organize, right? But, again, you know, executing a revolution is somehow different from writing code
21:41
and writing open source software or, you know, doing a Wikipedia entry because the kind of leadership you need is completely different. You need satellite leadership which has objectives, which sets, you know, goals and where people should do whatever they're told, not take initiative, right? And, again, not everyone can be the revolutionary leader, right?
22:02
You don't want people suddenly pulling a movement apart in 25 different directions. And it is incredibly easy. It was blogging and networking. You know, you look at Facebook and what happened in Iran, you have no idea whether some of the people who were really active on Facebook were actually in Iran or they were in the Iranian diaspora abroad
22:21
or those were just foreigners who were sympathizing. And it's very hard to make decisions where you don't particularly know who are the people giving commands, right? So, you know, yes, the internet has cheapened the cost of communication but one of the indirect results may be that it will actually, you know, make it harder for people to act as a coherent group.
22:41
And, again, this is something which I'm not claiming as definitive but that's just another question which we need to continue answering because I don't think it has been answered yet. So let me just give some, you know, sketch, you know, what else we have to be looking at because I think the current kind of thinking about protest,
23:03
about, you know, the Twitter revolution, it's all very much focused on the short term. It's all focused on, you know, planning a protest. But if you look at the actual role of technology under authoritarianism, it also has long-term effects, right? It has effects which will show themselves in five or ten years, whether it's by making government more effective
23:21
or whether it's by helping them to create more propaganda, you know, you name it. We can't just be assuming that, you know, the only impact it would have would be on how, you know, potential revolutionaries plan a protest. So let me just give you a few, you know, thoughts here. Again, the big question which I think we have answered too prematurely
23:43
is how exactly can authoritarian states benefit from freer floors of information, right, which may again seem more like an oxymoron. So here are some thoughts which, again, I think I hinted at already in my talk.
24:00
So, for example, the question of improving governance. Again, you have to look at all of these countries, be that Russia, be that China, be that Iran, is very complex entities where, you know, there is a central ruler, you know, and there are people, you know, who are doing things on the periphery, right? And the central ruler doesn't always know what the periphery is up to.
24:21
You know, from that perspective, you know, will greater information flows help to, you know, keep some bureaucrats in check, make sure there is little corruption? Sure, of course it will. You know, and they will design systems in which local citizens can report on local corruption on the ground, and that's what's happening, for example, in China, where they are very active in terms of a government, for example, right?
24:43
They are setting up a government websites, and they do want citizens to complain about what's happening on the ground, right? And they do execute local mayors who take bribes, right? That's just the reality of authoritarianism. So, will we have a more effective authoritarian regime? Well, probably yes. Will it be any more democratic?
25:01
You know, I'm just not so sure. Then again, there is, I think, a strong propaganda value to, you know, pretending to be listening to people. You know, you open up, people submit questions, people submit various talking points. You know, sometimes you act on them, sometimes you don't. You know, the net result that you perceive
25:21
as more open and transparent government, right? Your legitimacy goes up. Again, this is not something that we have started to understand really well, and I think it does play an important role. So, you know, again, we have to look at this question, not so much through the lens of the internet,
25:40
but through the lens of, you know, how authoritarian regimes evolve and adapt to this new environment, you know, whether it's globalization or whether it's the information society. It has very little to do with the internet per se. On this other question of sort of, you know, cyber-hiddenism, as I like to call it, again, if you look at our discussions in the West,
26:00
we do not yet have agreement whether, you know, the internet is making young people more engaged in politics or whether it's making them more disengaged in politics, right? Again, that's something that's still up for debate. Some people saying that, you know, these digital natives will be, you know, digital renegades who will all rise up and use Facebook to organize,
26:21
and some are saying that they will all be digital captives who will just be staying home playing computer games and, you know, participating in politics. Again, I don't want to weigh in on this question and give any answers, but that's something which we should also be considering in the context of authoritarian states. It's not at all certain, at least as far as I'm concerned,
26:41
that, you know, everyone living or every young person living in those societies is by default opposed to the government, right? And the more entertainment and the more opportunities for disengaging from politics you provide, the more disengaged they will become. So, again, this is something which we need to consider, and I can perfectly see, you know, an environment
27:02
where an authoritarian government would be, you know, they would be happy with piracy, as they are actually, you know. No one in, you know, China or Russia, with a few exceptions, cracks down on piracy, you know. Well, why? Because probably they don't have enough resources, but another reason that, well, you know, it keeps people busy, you know, and it doesn't, it's not exactly, you know,
27:22
videos of human rights abuses that are sharing over BitTorrent, you know, in most cases it's Hollywood films, pornography, you know, and music, you know. So, again, this is another dimension which we have to consider if we want to get an answer about the Internet's impact on authoritarianism. And a very short digression here.
27:41
You know, I also think we have to be completely, you know, clear on the fact that we cannot have a new branch of politics in those countries. You know, I don't think that, you know, you can have a meaningful virtual protest through Facebook or Twitter. You know, yes, you know, you can organize campaigns, you can highlight certain issues,
28:01
but to change the situation in any of those countries, you still have to do a lot of dirty business, and you still have to get arrested, you still have to participate in the regular elections, and you still have to do a lot of things, which, you know, result in you being beaten up by the police. You know, so what I don't want to do is for a lot of these young people who are comfortable with technology to get the wrong impression
28:23
that the way to change things is by engaging with the Internet rather than risking their lives on the street, you know, and that's very cynical, but I think that's the reality that we have to face. We can't just be pushing them away from traditional engagement because it's the traditional engagement that change will come, if it ever comes.
28:42
So, you know, that's just something that we shouldn't lose sight of. And, you know, you look at the theory of authoritarianism, right, and you look at political science and sociology, and you find a lot of interesting things. You find that, you know, many authoritarian states actually are fine with having parliaments.
29:01
They are fine with having elections. You know, they are fine with having quasi-independent media. You know, why do they allow that? Well, we don't know. There are lots of theories that they do it because, you know, it helps to distribute jobs between, you know, their elites, or they do it because it helps to learn who is the most corrupted bureaucrat and that gets rid of him.
29:21
There are all sorts of theories, but, again, we have also to be prepared to consider a scenario where, you know, an authoritarian state would say, fine, you know, it's okay, let's have the bloggers fear, let's keep them blogging, as long as they don't engage in real political stuff, you know, and I think if you look at, you know, I will probably be a contentious example, but if you look at Russia, there is very little control.
29:42
There is no censorship of the Chinese kind of style. There is very little intervention. You know, does it have a lot of impact on the country itself? You know, on social issues, yes. On political issues, I would say no. So, again, there may be a certain legitimacy value built in and allowing people to talk. And, again, that's something that we can't just disregard
30:02
focusing on protests and, you know, and what's happening to protesters. Propaganda angle is really easy. I'm not going to spend much time on it. You've all seen probably stories about, for example, 50 Cent Party in China. You know, that's a movement which is affiliated with the government
30:20
and those are people who are basically being paid a few cents per comment when they, you know, find sensitive political topics online and they then comment and try to take that discussion in that action which is favorable to the government. You know, apparently there are 280,000 people who are employed and trained regularly to do this.
30:44
Again, it may seem really crazy. You know, why would they be doing that? I think, you know, we've learned that in the West. You know, we have astroturfing. We have, you know, corporations hiring the same bloggers to, you know, go and promote their own talking points
31:00
and products and whatnot. They actually see that the Chinese propaganda officials are learning from the Labor Party in Britain. You know, they're having a lot of joint sessions and, you know, know-how exchanges. And, you know, it's a standard practice. You want to promote your talking points. You know, you hire a few people who will undercover promote your talking points. The big question is why do authoritarian states
31:21
think it's important to do that? You know, and I can build a theory here. I'll just try to be very quick. I think the reason to do it is because traditional forms of censorship are no longer very effective. And what happens is that when, you know, one Chinese blogger writes something online and then, you know, the government tries to delete it,
31:41
it just encourages 100 other bloggers to repost it on their own blogs and they end up adding credibility to the accusations in the additional blog post. So what happens is that instead of trying to remove this information from the internet altogether, they're trying to discredit it, you know. The way they discredit it, they just, you know, accuse the author of being an agent of the CIA or MI6
32:03
or, you know, being funded by the West and then it discredits the entire message that they were trying to say and it also makes other people really suspicious of lending their support to this particular blogger. You know, and we, you know, we also have that in the West and it was a stress on the fact which many of you have heard of
32:22
and, you know, you can look it up. And I think that the other big issue here is that, you know, trying to push their talking points through anonymous bloggers which may be completely unknown is probably still more credible than trying to push their talking points through already discredited government media. You know, I'm not sure how many people believe,
32:42
you know, in the Soviet Union what they write in Pravda, right? But if you read something written by an anonymous scribe and they don't know where that person comes from, he can be a dissident, he can be something else, sure, of course, you'll be more likely to read that because you know you can't trust Pravda, right? And again, that's just another factor we have to consider. You know, surveillance and data mining,
33:01
I think it's an issue you know very well in Germany, so I don't even want to spend, you know, too much time on it. Yes, obviously, you know, all the data we produce on social media sites, whether it's Facebook or whether it's Twitter, does leave a lot of traces which can then, you know, the government can use in order to identify who we are
33:21
or in order to identify, you know, who it is that we are connected to. I'll just give you two stories from Iran. So the government, after the protests quieted down, what the government did, they gathered all the photos that have been shared on Flickr, they have been uploaded to Twitter and all the videos that have been uploaded to YouTube
33:40
and they set up a government-run website where they basically posted all of those photos and they asked people to identify who are those people in the photos, you know, so they would take a photo like this one, you know, zoom it really well and they would ask the public to basically, you know, identify who are those protesters and of course then they would arrest them,
34:01
they'll expel them from universities, they do all sorts of other nasty things. You know, and that happened, you know, like there was a report on BBC, they got I think more than 40, they identified more than 40 people. Again, it just shows you some of the downsides of this increased transparency. Yes, of course, it will make police brutality more visible
34:23
to international audiences, as a lot of theorists say, but we also have to be aware that it will make, you know, the protesters also more visible, right? And then what kind of reactions it will trigger, we don't know. You know, whether the fact that the Iranian government is running such websites, how does it influence the, you know,
34:42
eagerness of other people to participate in protests? You know, if you know that your face will be shown to the entire nation, then you have a lot of enemies who threaten you. I doubt you would want to participate in protests, right? Again, those are some of the relationships which we need to continue investigating. You know, the other point is that another anecdote from Iran,
35:01
again, just to zero in on this role of social networking, you know, a lot of Iranians who live abroad have actually reported that when they go back to Iran, people at the border, you know, the customs, the, you know, passport guards, they actually ask them if they have accounts on Facebook, right? And if they say no, they actually look them up on Google
35:23
and they write down, you know, all their friends in Iran, right? Because those people automatically look suspicious. And again, you can think of what are the kind of consequences, you know, what are the kind of connections you can discover? You know, in the past, you know, it used to be really hard, you know, like the KGB and others had to torture to get that kind of data.
35:43
You know, now we self-disclose it on Facebook and you can just go and do some data mining and you'll know all of the social graphs. You know, it may seem trivial, but again, the fact, as I've mentioned before, the fact that you're even part of a mailing list already, you know, presents evidence that you're somehow connected to the West.
36:01
And this is where I think we have to be really careful when we retweet stuff, when we, you know, try to promote something we see in Iran on Facebook, because eventually, you know, that could be used as evidence. And this is something where, you know, I think we need much better ethics and, you know, much better understanding of how things, you know, are actually working.
36:22
So, you probably get the idea about social networks, so skip that. You know, that a bit on surveillance, which really bothers me now, as, you know, you may have seen this innovation from China last year, you know, the software called Green Dam, which they wanted to install in all computers sold in China. Right? And, you know, it was a very,
36:42
it wasn't such sophisticated piece of software, much of it was based on Western technology, which they could have stolen, actually, as it turned out, and it wasn't really rolled out in the more professional manner. But what really bothered me about this particular case is that, you know, it was smart. It was almost relying on artificial intelligence
37:00
to figure out what it is that you're reading and then make a decision whether it needs to be banned. You know, it was a system which was constantly learning. It was exchanging information with a central server. It was getting directions. It was getting new vocabularies on what to ban. You know, it would analyze the photo you're looking at, and it will determine whether it's pornography.
37:21
Right? It wouldn't just ban it altogether. It would actually think, you know, and process, and you can then imagine how you can link it to your other profile. You know, you can look at who your friends are and then determine what kind of information it wants to block. Right? There are all sorts of customizations you can think of, which I think look very scary, you know,
37:41
and it gets us away from this, you know, filtering of URLs and banning of URLs. All we focused on was just banning, you know, Wikipedia or banning the websites of Human Rights Watch. You know, as long as it's based on content, it can ban anything. It doesn't even have to deal with URLs. You know, whatever copy you set up, if it finds that it has some language that it doesn't like,
38:03
it will just shut down the application. You know, and those are the kind of things which I find really bothersome, you know, and I'm not sure that we have good tools. You know, I had it installed on my computer just to experiment. You know, I had it for three weeks. I couldn't get rid of it, you know, and like I'm a relatively advanced, you know, tech user and I ended up just reinstalling my system.
38:22
And I think the last point I would like to make here is that, you know, too much of our thinking about the impact of the Internet on our certain societies suffers from what I call the binary fallacy where we think that it's all just a struggle between bloggers on the one hand who are all pro-democratic and pro-Western and a certain government on the other hand.
38:42
But any situation is just much more complex. You know, you look at this and you start noticing that, you know, there are nationalists, there are extremists, there are religious extremists, there are all sorts of forces and groups and networks which are not necessarily affiliated with the state but which are also not particularly conducive to democracy, right?
39:01
And they too are being empowered by the Internet. You know, I'm not saying that they're being empowered more than, say, the democratic forces, but you have to understand that if our common understanding of this, and I'm talking now, you know, about the perception in Washington, if our common understanding of this is that the Internet transcends al-Qaeda,
39:21
right, or Muslim Brotherhood, indirectly what follows is that the U.S. will just continue propping up Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, right? So this is a very direct geopolitical implication, right? So if, you know, that's the conclusion we want to draw, we also have to be prepared to face the geopolitical consequences, right? And missing and kind of removing this geopolitical angle from our analysis
39:44
is likely to get us, you know, achieve completely wrong conclusions. So if we go back to our dark room, you know, and we try to figure out whether we should be controlling our hand which is shaking, you know, which is the Internet, or whether we should try to fix the, you know, the target,
40:03
I think the best thing we can do is probably to control our own hand, you know, because the target will keep moving, you know, and at this point I am not sure that even, you know, the Chinese leaders understand what keeps China, you know, going and ticking, right? I think at this point it's so complex, very few people understand how exactly it works and what it does,
40:22
and, you know, what are the politics of resistance in a country like China. But I think that the Internet is something that we can still control and at least ensure that, you know, it stays as it is and it doesn't become more centralized or it doesn't become, you know, more opposed to privacy on an immediate.
40:41
And I think this is where the biggest challenge actually is, at least in the U.S. You know, there is a huge tension between domestic and international Internet agendas. I'm talking about the U.S., I'm sure it's more or less the case in the U.S. as well. If you listen to people working in the intelligence community and the military,
41:01
all they talk about is how we can fight cyber war, how we can fight cyber crime, how we can remove anonymity, you know, and, you know, recently Mike McConnell, the former national, the former director of National Security Agency, said that we need to re-engineer the Internet to make it easier, you know, to attribute cyber attacks. And, you know, I think it's a terrible idea, right?
41:23
And this is where we'll start getting a lot of contradictory messages because we cannot be restricting anonymity online at the same time as we're trying to empower Chinese or Iranian cyber dissidents. Those are two completely contradictory messages and we will be accused of hypocrisy, you know.
41:42
And just to give you another example, you know, when you get American hackers who attack the websites of the Iranian government, the reaction in the U.S. is nonexistent. You know, we call it hacktivism and we just let it go. Then you get Russian hackers attacking Estonian websites. We call it cyber war and, you know, we hold Russia accountable for, you know, whatever they did.
42:03
And again, I think it just cannot continue for far too long because the U.S. and at some point the EU would also be accused of hypocrisy, right? And that's just inevitable. So I just don't know for how long we can go, you know, trumping this message of Internet freedom if all we're doing is trying to restrict it at home, right?
42:22
And that's just a very big challenge which we don't really know how to address. And, you know, the last bit here is that the kind of flight issue at the beginning of, you know, George Bush Institute holding a conference about cyber dissidents and their freedom, you know, it's a big business.
42:40
You know, there is a lot of money attached to Internet freedom. There will be even more money attached to it. And I think it's very dangerous. And we do have to think whether we want our governments to get involved in this, particularly governments and institutions with a very sporty track record. And I think we cannot just continue acting as if, you know, that's not a problem. You know, we can't continue, and I'm talking about activists here
43:03
existing in a parallel universe and saying that the Internet is good for democracy and, you know, ending the conversation. Because there will be people who use your sound bites and insert them into their own reports which will justify, you know, bombing Iran or whatever, right? And I think at this point we really have to be careful, you know, and we really have to start engaging with policy criticism
43:23
because I'm really concerned myself about the kind of decisions which are being made about this subject in Washington right now. And I just think we need to exercise more scrutiny and more criticism of them. And, you know, again, we have a very, very sporty history of, you know, government intervention,
43:43
you know, and various foreign scandals. So what would it be? You know, it could be, again, we may get another default of the Great Firewall of China, just like we had, you know, default of the Berlin Wall, or we may end up with a very botched and mangled affair, you know, like the Iran Contra scandal, right?
44:02
And I'm not sure which it would be. As I've said, you know, I myself am very concerned about the direction the things are going, and I think it's time for us to be paying more scrutiny and criticism. And I think I'll stop here, and we have about 15 minutes for questions. So thank you very much.
44:37
Well, I have one question.
44:46
Your studies is pretty much about authoritarian states. But all the problems you're talking about you also find in the West, pretty much, like supervision and control. And I ask myself why you don't compare the development in authoritarian states
45:04
not stronger with this one in the West? Oh, sure. I mean, I'm not, that was not the message I wanted to send. No, I'm actually very concerned about what's happening in the West, because I think a lot of decisions which are being taken in, you know, countries like Australia, for example,
45:20
they help to justify more international censorship in China. You know, I myself personally just happen for, you know, personal reasons, much more interested in the kind of the future of freedom in authoritarian states. That's why I'm looking into this matter. But by no means am I trying to suggest that the situation in the West is any better. I think it's actually, you know, getting worse. And I think the consequences of it getting worse will be felt everywhere.
45:44
Because, you know, if the democratic societies are moving towards more internet control, sure, everyone else gets just a free pass. So I'm with you on that question. Just something which I think, you know, you in the West are pretty well aware of,
46:02
and, you know, it's up to your civil society to start campaigning on it. But I'm extremely perturbed by contacts between, you know, Google and NSA and I think even if those contacts are not very meaningful and if they're all about technical matters, it does raise certain issues and it does, you know, raise many concerns.
46:21
And I think even many of the authoritarian governments which now want to build their own email systems because they don't trust Google, they actually do have a point. You know, I'm not sure that Americans would be very happy if, you know, the American government specifically would be very happy if all of their citizens did their email on, you know, a website run by a Chinese company
46:43
which had regular contacts with the Chinese spies. You know, so I'm always you on that. Well, I think there's very little knowledge about the control techniques
47:03
which are used by the services in the West. That's a little bit the problem. I mean, we don't know much about what NSA and so on and economic project has information from the net. Well, look, I mean, I can't study everything, right? I have to concentrate on something.
47:24
So, one issue you didn't talk too much about today but which was brought up in a recent talk with Clay Shirky published in the Frankfurt-Algemeine Zeitung in Germany
47:42
where you basically said that in the Twitter age there can't be a revolution leader in the sense of Solzhenitsyn who has really thought for a long time about an issue because it's just like only 140 characters
48:02
so basically as an honest student you are saying that well, all those Twitter users, they don't think anything through and now there can't be a real revolution leader and that's the revolution anymore or whatever.
48:23
So, what I want to ask you is what do you believe? Should today's revolution leaders not use modern communications technologies because it's just short-term as I said today?
48:41
Yes. Well, that's certainly not exactly what I said. I wouldn't dismiss people who use Twitter because I use it myself pretty actively and regularly. It's just that you have to understand that first of all many of those tools are not particularly suitable to planning a revolution and if you want to plan a revolution you don't announce it on every corner
49:03
and that's more or less what Facebook and Twitter are. They are very public by nature and I actually think one of the reasons why the Iranians did not fully block Twitter and Facebook during their protests was because they were used as very useful tools for intelligence gathering. It was useful to keep Twitter and Facebook operational
49:21
because you could actually learn quite a lot about what people were saying, what protests were emerging, things like that. I'm not a technological determinist so I by default cannot tell you that Twitter will make revolutions impossible because I don't think it's at all about Twitter. Whether it somehow pushes people who have not yet been engaged in politics
49:47
towards a very naive interpretation of how social change happens, I think yes. I think there is very little you can change with Twitter in a country like Belarus or China. There are some practices you can enhance
50:03
but primarily it's all about real world action. It's getting engaged and getting beaten up by the police. I don't think there is an easy way out. You still have to go through all of that stuff. So from that perspective, no, I don't think you're going to have that on Twitter alone. Can you have a meaningful campaign to raise awareness about a certain issue?
50:23
In democracies, sure. I think the stronger your democracy, the more useful Twitter will be in highlighting the problems you're working on. So sure you can publicize a campaign in Germany or Britain on Twitter and you can get the media and the courts to act on it. The problem is that if you look at a country with no civil society whatsoever,
50:41
like Turkmenistan, there is no one to influence with Twitter. There is no media or courts that will look at Twitter and say, hey, there is popular pressure coming on us. So I'm not subscribing to any deterministic views. It all depends on society. But we have to get a much better handle of how societies work before we can draw any conclusions about technology.
51:04
Sorry, I don't know if it answers it. Thank you. So two questions. First, I'd like to ask you one question. So Mikko can answer it here. Or I don't know. No, I don't think so.
51:21
I think we're done. I'm not sure. Any questions? Go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. Hey. So you gave us two competing views in America. The Defense Department view that we need less anonymity and more cybersecurity.
51:44
And the State Department view that we need to promote Internet freedom around the world. And those two are, as you mentioned, contradictory. But they seem to come from two different places. Defense Department, State Department. Yes. Do you see this as an attempt to lock down the American Internet and promote freedom elsewhere?
52:05
Or as just a tension between two agencies trying to figure out what the American position will be? No, I don't think that the agencies are actually aware of that tension. I'm not sure that there is such a good conceptual handle of the Internet-related issues
52:21
in those agencies that they actually understand that they're about to collide. Even if you look at Clinton's pitch, and we're sort of getting really wonkish here, but if you look at Clinton's speech from January, she herself didn't embrace a coherent position. She said, on the one hand, we need to protect the center line,
52:41
but on the other hand, anonymity fuels piracy and that hurts our companies. So I don't think there is even consistency within specific departments. But I also think that they have to have priorities. What do we want to do? Do we want to empower Iranians or do we want to defend Viacom? And then essentially, again, they'll be accused of hypocrisy sooner or later.
53:04
And that's just something that they need to be aware of.