US internet policy hypocrisy

16 August 2011

Filed under: censorship hacking political news

US internet policy hypocrisy

In a landmark speech that defined Internet freedom as a key tenet of U.S. foreign policy, [US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton] repeatedly named countries, including China, which had thwarted progress. ''Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government and our civil society," Clinton said. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation.'' She warned "countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century."

Washington Post, 20 January 2011

That sounds great. But let's examine it for a moment:

"Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation.''

Is Clinton condemning the US? Cyberwarfare is a reality and the US is, as in every other military technology, at the forefront of it. In 2008 Congress ordered DARPA to spend $30 billion or so on cyberwarfare technology. The US has been conducting cyber attacks for years, for instance this one in 2008 on a webforum in Saudi Arabia (which inadvertently disrupted more than 300 other servers in Saudi Arabia, Germany and Texas). The Department of Defense knows the danger the internet poses to their military power. An American think-tank influential on the Bush Administration wrote:

Control of space and cyberspace. Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new "international commons" be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the "infosphere" will find it difficult to exert global political leadership.

Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 51

Or this from a document commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003:

DoD's "Defense in Depth" strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will "fight the net" as it would a weapons system.

Information Operation Roadmap, p. 13

Still, it's understandable that Clinton would say something like that - even US head of cybersecurity Howard Schmidt said in March 2010:

There is no cyberwar... I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept. There are no winners in that environment.

"White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’", Wired magazine

So the White House is saying one thing, while the DoD continues their massive effort to conduct covert cyber-attacks and improve their attack capabilities. The same is true of internet censorship:

"Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government and our civil society."

"Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century."

Indeed, the US is spending $19m to help people circumvent government internet filtering. But it hardly compares to the $30b the DoD is spending to do the exact opposite - developing tools to take control of the internet and block unwanted traffic.

It also doesn't compare to the censorship and surveillance tools sold by US companies (Cisco, Oracle, Motorola and others) to repressive states like China and Iran. A leaked internal Cisco presentation from 2002 talks about how its products can be used to address China's goals of "maintaining stability" and "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles". The US is making no effort to prevent the sale of surveillance and filtering tools to authoritarian regimes.

At the same time, commercial interests have successfully convinced the US to filter the internet against file-sharing and video websites, despite this being in violation of the US constitution. Due to pressure from "American companies" - namely, the entertainment oligopoly - it is using free trade agreements to successfully pressure governments worldwide (eg. UK, NZ, France, South Korea) to push through copyright laws in violation of their own constitutions (as well as the US constitution). These laws are having a chilling effect on free speech through subversion of copyright law.

Other quotes from Clinton in the same Washington Post article:

"Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere... American companies need to take a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand."

"We must be wary of the steel vise in which many governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit"

It's a good call. But it's doublethink.

Not only is the US leading the way in developing tools to disrupt the internet, shutting down international websites, censoring peer-to-peer communication technologies to appease select industries, and pushing undemocratic laws onto other counties.

Along with other western governments they are increasingly shutting down cellphone and internet communication in an effort to prevent protests.

In future posts I'll write more about censorship and how the US government is being tempted to go too far, with no real benefit to national security or public order.

Whether government duplicity on cyberwarfare and censorship is strategic and intentional, or a result of confusion and division (probably both): if the land of the free wants to stay that way, the brave need to step up and ensure it.

Other sources

"Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet", Infowars.net

6 months ago mindy responded:

I'm not convinced - your article is high on moral rhetoric and pretty light on evidence.

You say stuff like: "the US [is] leading the way in shutting down websites without legal trials". This is a HUGE claim, and yet you only supply one sketchy example of this happening. I say sketchy, because the Saudi case involved a website that the CIA had itself setup. Shutting down your own website doesn't quite seem as bad as hacking Gmail and the UN.

The lack of any mention of China and Russia also weaks your article. Perhaps a discussion of what China has been doing might have put the US activity into context. You do link to an article on Western governments cracking down on cellphone use, but you don't explore it at all. The US is a pretty easy target in most areas of foreign policy - it would have enriched your discussion if you put it into a wider context.

You also say: "These laws are having a chilling effect on free speech through subversion of copyright law". A pretty big claim, which you don't attempt to justify. Linking to the "chilling effects" website without an in-article explanation is pretty lazy, don't you think? And you make no attempt to explain why trying to stop piracy affects free speech. The link between the two is far from obvious.

Your article is heavily one-sided. It's okay to take a side, but your argument is stronger if you can at least acknowledge alternative arguments and take a more nuanced position.

I would've liked to have seen a bit of explanation around why you think free speech should always come ahead of national security etc. This is a highly contested position in itself. I imagine also that it could be argued that the Consitutional right to free speech is tempered by matters of public order or national security.

It's not that I don't agree that the US is, at least in theory, hypocritical. Most people are at least vaguely aware that this sort of thing is going on anyway - but your article in itself doesn't provide an adequate basis for this conclusion.

Com'on Chris, aren't you writing for an intelligent, inquisitive audience, rather than preaching to the converted?

6 months ago Christopher Wood responded:

Fair criticism. The article is messy as it talks about censorship in passing, without really explaining the issue. Some of the problem is I'm writing a bunch of posts at once, I've mostly finished some other posts about privacy and censorship which deal somewhat with what you've brought up (I'll post links in the comments here when I publish them). I'd also like to write a post about reasons why internet censorship of child porn is harmful overall (I thought it was good until I read more about it) - for example some child abuse support groups oppose censorship because it hides the crime instead of catching the criminals.

I've improved the section at the end thanks to your criticism :)

Re shutting down websites, I wasn't thinking of the Saudi hacking, I was thinking of this: https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-starts-new-round-of-pirate-domain-sei... - I forgot to add the link, now I have, thanks.

Sure I could talk about various oppressive regimes like China, Russia, Iran, Egypt... but this article is about the US. I'm not comparing them to anyone else, I'm judging their own actions against their own words. Sure they're not as repressive as China. The one comparison I do make is to say they're leading the way in terms of cyberwarfare technology, shutting down international websites, censorship of peer-to-peer, and pushing undemocratic laws onto other countries.

I agree, a mere link to the Chilling Effects website is lazy - but reading a few paragraphs on the homepage explains what I mean, while the website itself is a huge trove of examples. It's a different way of doing articles - newspaper articles don't use links at all, while bloggers like myself prefer to use them as part of our argument. So it's lazy. But I could say the same about not following the link.

As for free speech vs national security: again, I'm judging them on the basis of their own words. I'm not necessarily saying that cyberwarfare is wrong; but I am associating it with censorship, since it can be used for that, and I am saying the US is hypocritical to condemn it. As for censorship: no-one says censorship of file-sharing is about national security - it's about commerce. Likewise shutting down communications to prevent peaceful protests is not enhancing national security.

No, I don't think free speech should always come before national security - far from it. Keeping secrets is an essential part of military operations, and yes at some point shutting down communications is justified for either national security or public order. In fact I'm not sure that free speech should ever come before a genuinely effective method for enhancing national security - my argument is usually that shutting down free speech in the various has a negative impact on national security, not a positive one. I'd argue for instance that the great firewall of China has weakened their country, as well as their security. But I'm not making that argument in this post, I'm just responding to your question here.

So I'm thankful to get comments from my intelligent, inquisitive audience, as well as encouragement from the converted ^_^

gracefool

US internet policy hypocrisy