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Turnkey Tyranny? Struggles for a New Digital Order

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Part of the book series: Global Issues ((GLOISS))

Abstract

Networking and digital communication pervade every area of life. As a consequence, norm formation on the Net has become a hotly disputed process. The chapter tracks the evolution of order in Internet politics and correlates this with the emergence of dissidence and its various manifestations. It is argued that dissidence has found a particularly conducive setting for its operations and that, thanks to the open starting position and an astute use of the expanding protest repertoire, it has managed to generate considerable public interest and high legitimacy. To what extent politicisation and dissident practice will succeed, nevertheless, remains to be seen since public approval in the field of Internet politics does not translate easily into effective changes.

‘Bingo’, Jolu said. ‘I’m not saying it wasn’t terrible in the Great Depression or whatever. But we’ve got the power to organize like we’ve never had before. And the creeps and the spooks have the power to spy on us more than ever before, to control us and censor us and find us and snatch us.’

‘Who’s going to win?’ I said. ‘I mean, I used to think that we’d win, because we understand computers and they don’t.’

‘Oh, they understand computers. And they’re doing everything they can to invent new ways to mess you up with them. But if we leave the field, it’ll just be them. People who want everything, want to be in charge of everyone.’

(Cory Doctorow, Homeland)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are at least two other, equally key, notions of the Internet: as a space for communication (an idea I look at in greater detail later on) and as a physical structure. (An overview of the different concepts and their implications is given in Crawford 2007.) Although the second view is playing an increasingly important role in the control of the Internet (DeNardis 2012; Musiani et al. 2016), it is only dealt with indirectly here.

  2. 2.

    There is currently much discussion as to how far we are experiencing the return of closed spaces in this regard. What has triggered this debate is the appearance of ever more ‘closed gardens’, particularly in relation to the mobile Internet and its ‘restricted app’ logic and to access in developing countries, as exemplified in Facebook’s ‘internet.org’ initiative, which allows no-cost access to Internet services but only to specific ones. These changes to the Internet, and the various rationales underlying them, are discussed in, for example, Weinberger (2015); Wu (2010); Zittrain (2009); Clark (2016) and Timberg (2015).

  3. 3.

    On closer analysis, two (complementary) processes are observable that represent a departure from the original multi-stakeholder model: transposition to multilateral institutions (internationalisation) and sharper definition of networks within the ‘network of networks’—the ‘fragmentation thesis’ (Drake et al. 2016).

  4. 4.

    Civil-society actors too have stinging criticisms to make of the present set-up and its institutional predecessors. The conclusions they draw, however, differ from the arguments advanced by the state and the corporate sector. Whereas to begin with a minimally regulated Internet was seen as a better guarantor of freedom on the Net, the defects in the security architecture (Zittrain 2010) and the possibility of utilising open protocols for commercial purposes have undermined this belief (Tufekci 2016). Hence, the idea of an increase in regulation is no longer rejected on principle and instead ways are sought of creating an institutional landscape that is more committed to freedom and more open to democratic influence.

  5. 5.

    This position is known by the name of ‘Internet exceptionalism’ (Johnson and Post 1996) and received what was perhaps its most famous exposition in John Perry Barlow’s ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ (Barlow 1996). Music and software piracy were early cautionary developments that seemed to demonstrate the inability of political sanctions or commercial clout to prevent the upheavals caused by the shift from analogue to digital formats and networks.

  6. 6.

    Those that derive particular benefit from digital juridification and order formation often include—speaking in particular of the state—executive bodies such as secret services. Ironically, these bodies themselves are subjected to very little legal regulation. On the contrary, they operate in a broad, loosely defined legal framework that both permits and ensures their expansion. Illustrations of this include the framing of objectives in very general terms, for example, ‘countering terrorism’, and the definition of a task in terms that are too vague or too narrow—as when the analysis of communications content is regulated but analysis of meta-data has no limit imposed on it. As far as private actors are concerned, a renewed increase in sensitivity to issues of data collection and analysis is observable over the last decade, particularly in Europe. The paralysis that had resulted from the assumption that actors operating at global level could not be regulated is beginning to wear off. Parliaments and courts of law in particular have set new trends here, identifying and enforcing regulations that curtail particularly far-reaching practices and in some cases have led to enhanced consumer awareness.

  7. 7.

    It is also clear that, overall, cyber dissidence is located almost exclusively at the left/progressive end of the political spectrum (Wolfson 2014). Naturally, there are also a good many right-wing and nationalist movements that actively exploit Internet networking or use it as a way of doing politics. However, this ‘right-wing’ activity does not relate to issues of norm development or regulation on the Net; it merely uses the Net as a means of tackling non-digital concerns.

  8. 8.

    Only in a very few cases are the demands so radical that they fall outside the bounds of the fundamental consensus that obtains in Western states. In this regard, Julian Assange, for example, is something of a chameleon: There are certainly writings by him that break radically with the notion of statehood and the possibility of representative democracy—see Assange (2006), and, for more general anarchistic observations, Shantz and Tomblin (2014). Having said that, we should bear in mind that Assange’s position, and the WikiLeaks notion of democracy, is ambiguous in places and has undergone several mutations (on this, see Assange 2010; Hofmann 2011; O’Hagan 2014; Sagar 2011). In essence, Assange assumes that, overall, technological developments provide better, that is, more direct, opportunities for influencing and participating in politics but that the basis for this is the essential openness of all decision-making bodies. The broader Internet discourse also includes libertarian voices, which seek to extend the principles of free expression and absolute transparency not only to public institutions but also to private activities.Within the public discourse, numerous voices have been raised against this ideal of radical transparency, often taking the form of literary/fictional treatments of the theme. Jonathan Franzen’s Purity, for example, or Dave Eggers’s The Circle predict totalitarian consequences for society as a whole.

  9. 9.

    One can probably also draw a distinction here between an American and a European Internet culture. The former is much more influenced by Californian ideology and the culture of Silicon Valley, with its mixture of libertarian and 1960s counter-culture stances. (The classic critique of this mix was formulated early on by Barbrook and Cameron (1996). For a general account of developments, see Turner 2006.) The European position is less tied to business and permeated to a greater degree by a culture of data protection (on the cultural differences in general, and on status within the social system, see Williams 2016).

  10. 10.

    Examples of activism that is Net-based but not Net-related include the WikiLeaks publications regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. They also include many of the ‘Anonymous’ group’s actions, in which the choice of means is Internet-related but the substance at issue is not. (The interplay between Net-related and general opposition is explored in Kahn and Keller 2005.) A case in point was Project Chanology, which sought to challenge the Church of Scientology and played a key role in politicizing the group. Here too, however, there was a crucial digital connection, namely the attempt by the Church to have a video of Tom Cruise—one of its members—removed from the Internet (excellent descriptions of the evolution and politicisation of Anonymous are given in Coleman (2014) and Olson (2012).

  11. 11.

    The digital dissidence described here is largely a phenomenon of Western liberal societies. Dissidents in authoritarian regimes do share many of the ideals in question, and in some cases use similar means; however, given the repressive context, the efforts to get the right to freedom of expression and other Internet standards accepted are more of a means to an end. Equally, under an authoritarian regime, much smaller acts are required to turn opposition into dissidence. In general, one should take care not to construe information and communications technologies one-sidedly as ‘liberation technologies’. One has to weigh up what instruments and opportunities also find their way into the hands of the state as a result of the expansion of the digital sphere (on this debate, see Morozov 2011; Deibert and Rohozinski 2010; Deibert 2013; Howard 2010).

  12. 12.

    Interestingly, in this case the name of the party itself constitutes a call to dissidence. Also, battles against copyright provisions (and thus also indirectly against the liberal system of property ownership) have had a high profile in the party’s country of origin—Sweden.

  13. 13.

    The passing of technical expertise to non-expert users in order to make these open structures accessible (CryptoParty is one such initiative) must be included in these activities. Much of what is done by classic hacker organisations—the CCC, for instance—comes under the development, deployment, and dissemination of an open infrastructure in a way that does not seek confrontation with the commercial/political shaping of the digital order (Kubitschko 2015).

  14. 14.

    As well as these forms of online protest, there are many Net-based but non-disruptive kinds (e-petitions, for example, which come in for frequent use at the oppositional end of the spectrum—see Earl 2006; Earl and Kimport 2011).

  15. 15.

    It is important to bear in mind that hacking does not necessarily have a political component and is instead pursued out of technical curiosity, say, or for fun (or indeed may actually be done exclusively or chiefly for these reasons) (Turgeman-Goldschmidt 2005). One reason why hacking has become increasingly politicised is because the ontology of digital communication has undergone a change and what was once a mode of play for experts has turned into a heavily regulated area of human action deemed to be of crucial social importance (Nissenbaum 2004).

  16. 16.

    It would be instructive at this point to look a little further afield and consider the kinds of world views that are associated with digital dissidence—views that appear to play an important part in recruiting new activists and maintaining the digital-dissidence movement in society. Popular culture’s fascination with digital dissidence is evident. It finds expression in admiring narratives about hackers—in the Mr Robot television series, for example, and in countless feature films. Iconic images of columns of green figures and successions of programme codes flashing past elevate computer expertise to the realms of wizardry. At the same time, these admiring accounts always have an undertone of considerable ambivalence, partly because they convey the feeling that anything may happen, that there is no control, and partly because the hacker is often portrayed as a loner and an unstable person.

  17. 17.

    One example of successful endeavour by civil-society actors that remains as telling as ever is the series of so-called crypto wars conducted during the 1990s. As a result of these, comprehensive and accessible systems of coding were made available to end users in the face of strong reservations on the part of political actors. This example also shows, however, that the successes achieved by the Internet movement need constant safeguarding: The Snowden leaks make clear just how keen secret services are to undermine encryption standards (Kehl and Bankston 2015; Diffie and Landau 2007). Similarly, the discussions about ‘back doors’ and ‘golden keys’ in commercial applications demonstrate that the ideal of control-averse network structures faces strong resistance from both the state and, to some extent, business, meaning that norm formation must be viewed as an incomplete and contested project.

  18. 18.

    This is clear from the case of data protection. Thus, the successful challenges mounted against the ‘Safe Harbour’ arrangement both in the courts and in parliament seem at first sight to signal victory, but the updated version of the instrument, entitled ‘Privacy Shield’, contains as many major implementation problems as ever and these are explained—at least by the actors involved in the negotiations—as being due to the impossibility of pushing through any broader-based agreements.

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Thiel, T. (2017). Turnkey Tyranny? Struggles for a New Digital Order. In: Gertheiss, S., Herr, S., Wolf, K., Wunderlich, C. (eds) Resistance and Change in World Politics . Global Issues. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50445-2_7

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