The original article was published by the Organization for World Peace on November 30, 2015. The original article can be found at here.
Introduction
Since the 1990s, the internet has greatly increased the velocity of information dissemination, research, and allegedly even democratization. However, hand in hand with these advances, the internet has made possible for cyber-attacks and surveillance on a scale that would have been unimaginable for most of human history. In the world of modern global terrorism, the debate surrounding internet privacy has become a priority for many policymakers and citizen groups alike as they people try to find a balance between privacy and security.
Even many liberal democracies are beginning to accept the “necessity” of surveillance and censorship. In the aftermath of almost every terrorist attack, most recently in Paris, governments have usually redoubled their efforts to push for expansions to the mandate of information collection by intelligence agencies. The directions that internet controls are evolving will shape the political future of not just western liberal democracies, but the political landscape of the world.
Internet and Decentralization
Older Western narratives often portrayed the internet as a bastion of freedom that will spread liberal democracy to the rest of the world. The narrative assumed that it is easier for internet users to circumvent censorship regimes due to the internet’s decentralized and accessible natured compared to traditional communication channels. It claimed that no government can effectively monitor the trillions of data packets sent across the global network by millions of people every minute. There is no bottleneck at which intelligence agencies can effectively screen all data entering or leaving a state’s borders.
The narrative further states that no government can afford to limit the spread of the internet in their jurisdiction because of the world wide web’s central role in economic growth. The internet allows businesses to connect with their suppliers and customers across the world and decreases transaction and search costs. Any country that wants to modernize its economy must adopt the internet to stay competitive or lag behind economically.
It was due to these beliefs that the internet became strongly associated with liberal democracy. Western scholars and pundits alike claimed that that the internet will network all of humanity and bring about a new world of liberal democratic states. The common belief was that as the internet is un-censorable, was it will become easier for activists to break authoritarian governments’ control over the flow of information and expose the shortfalls of these regimes. Once exposed to the “unfiltered information from the outside world”, the oppressed citizens of these countries will rise up and overthrow their autocratic leaders. And after toppling their authoritarian leaders, decentralized liberal democratic governments would arise to take their place.
Non-State Actors and Corporations
The Internet as a Two-Way Street
Unfortunately for the advocates of an inevitable liberal democratic future, recent events are threatening to scuttle their optimistic predictions. One unforeseen consequence is the rising prevalence of cross-border crimes enabled by the internet. Thanks to the internet, crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and international fraud, have developed new evasive capabilities that bypass traditional detection methods employed by law enforcement agencies. The same mechanisms that liberal democracy advocates believed will lead to the overthrow of autocratic governments also allow criminal groups to evade unprepared law enforcement agencies.
Worse is the co-option of the internet by extremist groups. The Western narrative claims that extremists are too “fossilized” to be able to adapt to the internet age. Unfortunately for many people, this assumption has been proven false by recent events. As the cases of many of the self-radicalized young men in Europe and North America demonstrated, radicals and extremists are successful in turning the internet into a tool for their own recruitment and propaganda. Internet exposure turned these people to non-liberal ideologies, despite these people being brought up in liberal democratic societies. Rather than spreading liberalism and the rule of law to the “backward” areas of the world, extremism and crime have taken advantage of the internet to spread in liberal democratic societies.
Corporations
Another area in which the internet has not helped in building a rational, liberal, and democratic society is the co-option of the internet by powerful business interests to further their own agendas. One way business interests use the internet that is contrary to what many liberal advocates support is by using available data to build profiles of their customers. These businesses can use the profiles to create targeted advertisements to sell products, influence customers to be more susceptible to certain marketing campaigns and even be traded by businesses like a commodity.
Examples of how corporations use the internet to manipulate their customers are many. One is using GPS to track the movement of their users to allow apps to suggest nearby attractions. Another example is shopping websites noting the shopping habits of their customers and make corresponding suggestions. Some businesses employ strategies such as “astroturfing”, which involves hiring agents to artificially promote a product, to push consumers towards certain behaviors.
As more of these techniques develop, the internet is appearing to be less an anonymous, private communication tool but instead a massive vacuum cleaner that sucks up user information. Agencies and corporate bodies can then use the information for many purposes, and not all of them benevolent.
The Backlash
It has become increasingly clear that monitoring technology is catching up to the point where effective monitoring of internet traffic is now possible. The organizations that can afford to invest in the resources and technologies to monitor and manipulate internet users are increasingly bringing the internet under their sway. As a result, the idealistic predictions that had predicted a straight path from internet adoption to functional liberal democracy are becoming more torturous by the day.
Even in Western countries, support for completely unregulated internet is waning. Ever since 9/11, Western governments have been grappling with how to balance between security and privacy. With every new terrorist incident, there have been more calls for the security apparatus of the democratic states to increase surveillance to safeguard their citizens. Similarly, it is also becoming clearer how corporations can use the internet to influence people and destroy their competition through not entirely honest means. The internet is not developing into an arena where only liberal democratic ideals can flourish. Worse, new emerging threats are appearing that, despite originating on the internet, can have devastating real-world consequences.
Cyber Warfare
The internet also created a new arena for nations and political groups to contest over. To pursue their national political and economic agendas, many state intelligence agencies and even non-state groups have developed the capability to leverage the internet to achieve such ends. The employment of digital tools for espionage and disruption is often termed “cyber warfare”. The rise of cyber-warfare has worried many commentators and strategists due to the implications of this new front in global competition.
The cost of cyber-warfare is cheap and tools are readily available. Sometimes, the tools for cyber warfare are so cheap that even private citizen groups can afford to engage in it. While incapable of directly harming anyone physically, the economic and political impact of cyber warfare can be devastating. Attacks such as the Stuxnet attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and the breaches of the Estonian and Ukrainian energy grids have caused widespread chaos and damage to existing infrastructure. Such state-backed attacks also reside on a growing pile of individual hackers out to cause mischief and to make a profit.
Looking Ahead
Like the arms race and the space race of the Cold War era, many factions are now racing to gain the upper hand in cyberspace. Whether it is the government against dissidents, state against non-state groups, or corporations against their commercial competitors. As a result, investment in cyber technologies is likely to continue. But these organizations will deploy that technology is not how the earlier liberal advocates imagined it.
Certainly gone are the optimistic days when it was expected the internet will join the people of the world in human rights and “universal values”. Instead, the internet is evolving into a space that is increasingly carved up and controlled by the powerful. Gatekeeping technologies and surveillance are becoming increasingly common everywhere. The internet has opened a new can of worms that will shape many aspects of society in the 21st century.
Works Cited:
“A Cyber-Riot.” The Economist, 10 May 2007 2007.
Harris, Shane. “U.S. Electrical Grid Vulnerable to Cyberthreats and Physical Attacks, Study Finds.” Foreign Policy, 15 July 2014 2014.
MacKinnon, Rebecca. “China’s “Networked Authoritarianism”.” [In English]. Journal of Democracy 22, no. 2 (Apr 2011 2015-11-14 2011): 32-46.
Morozov, Evgeny. “Whither Internet Control.” [In English]. Journal of Democracy 22, no. 2 (2011): 74.
“Nato Techies Test Defences with Simulated Cyber Attacks.” The Toronto Star, 20 Nov. 2015 2015.