{"id":1538,"date":"2011-02-26T04:38:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T08:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2011-05-24T14:40:47","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T18:40:47","slug":"hillary-clinton-and-internet-freedom-civilized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2011\/02\/26\/hillary-clinton-and-internet-freedom-civilized\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom (Civilized)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared on one of our favorite blogs, OWNI, 18 February, 2011.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cInternet Freedom? There\u2019s no app for that!\u201d<\/em> Secretary of State<\/a> Hillary Clinton\u2019s speech on Tuesday concerning Internet freedom resembled an online activism campaign from Steve Jobs. A year after\u00a0laying the foundation<\/a> for the \u201c21st Century Statecraft\u201d (the\u00a0catch phrase<\/a> invented by\u00a0spin doctors<\/a> to define diplomacy connections), Clinton was once again promoting Internet freedom, though this time she chose her words more carefully.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of 2010, her speech coincided with the incident between Google and China. This time, Clinton waited patiently for positive results from the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions before launching into her diatribe. With a storytelling air, she started her speech by referring to the temporary Internet black-out initiated by Moubarak:<\/p>\n

A few minutes after midnight on January 28, the Internet went dark across Egypt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

She did not waste much time before mentioning Neda<\/a>, the young Iranian women who was murdered during the demonstrations against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2019s re-election. Her acts of martyrdom fueled the \u201cgreen revolution\u201d along with protesters against Ahmadinejad\u2019s regime. After Clinton praised the liberating nature of the Internet in the recent uprisings, the face of U.S. diplomacy insisted on putting the events in context of the Arab world:<\/p>\n

What happened in Egypt and Iran \u2013 where this week again violence was used against protesters \u2013 was about a great deal more than the Internet. In each case, people protested because of a deep frustration with the political and economic conditions of their lives. They stood and marched and chanted, and the authorities tracked and blocked and detained them. The Internet did not do any of those things. People did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Without questioning Facebook\u2019s role in the riots inspired by Sidi Bouzid or the importance of a \u201cdowngraded channel<\/a>\u201d in an isolated Egypt, Clinton\u2019s statement seems obvious \u2013 but it is not trivial. Moments after Moubarak\u2019s resignation, Google and Facebook adopted similar policies, taking care not to over-emphasize their role<\/a> in these historic movements. Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s company used very precaution language<\/a> in an attempt to spare Facebook\u2019s business model in neighboring countries. Formerly promoting the \u201csoft power\u201d of the Internet, Clinton changed gears to focus on \u201cthe people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hillary Clinton’s discourse in 2010…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>… and in 2011<\/p>\n

The 3 axes\u2026and WikiLeaks<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a seemingly two-faced manner (The freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace<\/em>), Hillary Clinton raised three challenges facing the U.S. administration, the \u201cground-rules to protect against wrong-doing and harm<\/em>.\u201d In attempting to show balance on every point, she lists three the major lines of reasoning, although the first two interpretations are relatively disturbing:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Liberty and security<\/strong>. \u201cWithout security, liberty is fragile. Without liberty, security is oppressive,\u201d she nobly declared. She then immediately acknowledged the \u201cthreats\u201d of the above mentioned: pornography, human trafficking, terrorism, and cybercrime, which she insinuated was lumped in with hacking (\u201cGovernments use the Internet to steal intellectual property and sabotage critical infrastructure\u201d\u2026 and so does WikiLeaks).<\/p>\n

\u2022 Transparency and confidentiality<\/strong>. From the outset, Clinton denounced WikiLeaks and the \u201cfalse\u201d debate surrounding the scandal.\u201dFundamentally, the Wikileaks incident began with an act of theft. Government documents were stolen, just the same as if they had been smuggled out in a brief case.\u201d In using the same political discourse that marked the post 9\/11 era, the Secretary of State indirectly dismissed Julian Assange\u2019s work (and the underlying ideals) as a threat to national security.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Freedom of speech and fostering tolerance and civility<\/strong>. Recalling the American Muslim leaders\u2019 recent visit to Auschwitz and Dachau<\/a>, she heavily insisted on the necessity to have multiple means for expression. She used the occasion to reveal that $25 million dollars in additional funding will be allotted in fighting for Internet freedom in authoritarian regimes. Yet it appears that these project have their limitations, as shown from the previous Haystack<\/a> [FR] catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo what I say, not what I do\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than ever, the vague policies resulting from these challenges show the extent of the American government\u2019s schizophrenic character, whose message on digital technology is increasingly following a \u201cdo what I say, not what I do\u201d attitude. Clinton reminded her audience that the US States Department has not strongly criticized WikiLeaks because \u201cit is part of the Internet.\u201d She spoke diplomatically when she alluded to a truth that is often ignored: if WikiLeaks had decided to leak the secrets of dictators, the State Department would have embraced such actions<\/em>. The organization may have even tasted the millions of dollars that the US is pouring into Internet freedom projects. For proof, just listen to Clinton singing the praises of a \u201cVietnamese lawyer who denounced corruption\u201d along with others advocates.<\/p>\n

But there is more to this story. While the Secretary of State was delivering her speech, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) convened to discuss the \u201cnew digital age<\/a>.\u201d Known as an \u201cindependent\u201d agency, it is responsible for coordinating public services from Washington to the international scale. Similar to Radio Free Europe<\/a> and Voice of America<\/a>, the BBG is an establishment which promoted democracy in the Soviet bloc during the cold war.<\/p>\n

The final report of the BBG made its findings very clear: the events that shook the Arab world \u201cdemonstrates the power of social media.\u201d Another host on the Farsi version of Radio Free Europe took the argument further:<\/p>\n

Without Facebook, nothing is possible these days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Under direct orders from the State Department, are these diplomatic tools trying to be autonomous and disconnected from official discourse? While Obama\u2019s technical advisers are tripping over trying to find a consensus, Hillary is proposing an equilibrium between the carrot and stick approach. Yet the digital consciousness in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, and Bahrain could soon change parameters of the situation.<\/p>\n

Surveillance in the name of realpolitik<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the State Department deems Internet openness as the Holy Grail of a new network civilization, 100% of American businesses profit from a new market that results from transparency. To avoid losing ground to foreign competition, both large and small corporations comply with local standards to preserve domestic stability. Narus, a small business in California, sold \u201creal-time traffic intelligence equipment<\/a>\u201d to Egyptian authorities. The computer enterprise Cisco, worth $7.7 billion in sales, was implicated (through a leaked PowerPoint presentation<\/a>) in assisting Chinese officials\u2019 objectives in censorship. Even Google is still filtering their content across Beijing\u2019s Great Firewall in the name of realpolitik.<\/p>\n

Entangled in its own contradictions, the criticisms of the Marshall cyber-plan<\/strong> by certain activist may be short lived. A few months ago, a Tunisian blogger called Sami Ben Gharbia lashed out as the State Department\u2019s policy, highlighting the inconsistencies in the administration:<\/p>\n

If the U.S. and other Western governments want to support Internet Freedom they should start by prohibiting the export of censor wares and other filtering software to our countries. After all, most of the tools used to muzzle our online free expression and monitor our activities on the Internet are being engineered and sold by American and Western corporations. The other problem is that the U.S. and other Western governments are not challenged from the inside about their policy. Our U.S. free speech advocates and dear friends should put more pressure on their own government to halt the export of this kind of tools to our regimes instead of lobbying for more money to help build yet another hyped circumvention tool or support dissidents topple their regime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared on one of our favorite blogs, OWNI, 18 February, 2011. \u201cInternet Freedom? There\u2019s no app for that!\u201d Secretary of State Hillary Clinton\u2019s speech on Tuesday concerning Internet freedom resembled an online activism campaign from Steve Jobs. A year after\u00a0laying the foundation for the \u201c21st Century Statecraft\u201d (the\u00a0catch phrase invented by\u00a0spin doctors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10290],"tags":[10458,10459,10460,10461,4617,91,8511],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-repost","tag-diplomacy","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-internet-freedom","tag-realpolitik","tag-state-department","tag-united-states","tag-wikileaks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2995,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/2995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}