Before I take on the task of rebutting some of the arguments in Mueller’s posts–which, by the way, I agree with in large part–I should note my own biases, for the sake of discussion. First, I have been amongst the throngs shouting opposition to the surveillance-industrial-complex. I have been doing it for about three years, while all the while not taking a particularly strong position toward any of the proposed solutions. Second, I largely oppose regulation of this industry by the United States government. This is for several reasons, but in a nutshell: I don’t trust them. If you require more detail, read this piece I wrote about it. Third, I think a lot of the current discussion/advocacy about this topic is unfocused and chaotic, which is a failure on our part. Though I have–along with other folks at some of the top human and digital rights organizations–coordinated a series of calls on the matter, it is admittedly a messy and complicated subject, and we don’t all agree on the solutions, which lends chaos to an already-chaotic situation.

Now, Mueller’s posts. The first, published on December 20 and entitled “Technology as symbol: Is resistance to surveillance technology being misdirected?“, starts strong with the premise that the movement against the sale of surveillance tech to repressive regimes–which Mueller applauds for both its publicizing of the issue and its awareness-raising of similar issues in democratic countries–has oversimplified the fight against the regimes using such technology, replacing the target (authoritarian regimes) with another, easier target (makers of the aforementioned technology).

As Mueller rightly points out, “It seems obvious, but gets lost in the shuffle: the problem lies in the users and uses of the technology, not in the equipment or software itself.” He continues, remarking that “this is not, at root, a problem of governments having or not having a specific device or piece of software. It is an institutional problem – one of balancing and routinizing social processes in ways that effectively limit, regulate and distribute political power and hold those who exercise it accountable.”

There is nothing disagreeable in either point, and it can certainly be said that some of the actors advocating for regulation in this space have focused heavily on certain regimes (Syria, Egypt, Libya) whilst turning a half-blind eye to the uses of surveillance technology in the United States, the UK, and other nations with the rule of law. Nonetheless, I would argue that the organizations leading the charge on this issue have been fairly even-handed, attacking restrictions on free expression in democratic and authoritarian countries alike.

Mueller then derides the call for regulation of surveillance technology, stating: “The problem with this approach is that information technology, unlike bombs or tanks, is fundamentally multi-purpose in nature.” On this point, I once again must agree. EFF has consistently chosen not to advocate for regulation of sales (by governments) for the same reason, opting instead to push for regulation at the corporate level and issuing a set of recommendations for companies wishing to do so.

Mueller also points out, as I have before:

Thus, there is little appreciation of the extent to which export controls and other restrictions might retard the overall diffusion and development of information and communication technology, cut off access to good people and good uses as well as bad ones, or restrict our own freedom to use the technology as and how we see fit.

Since I agree with Mueller on this, it’s worthwhile to put forth some of the counter-arguments. Essentially, those who argue for regulations tend to favor a licensing-style of such, in which companies must apply for licenses before being allowed to export their wares to a foreign government (or, in some variations, a foreign government on a particular list of “Internet-restricting countries”). This echoes the current sanctions placed on Cuba, Syria, Sudan, North Korea, and Iran to various degrees. Being well-versed in the regulations on Syria, what this means is that a company–such as Google–must apply for a license before it can release a product (either for sale or for download) in the country. Companies that fail to apply for a license but still make their product available can face severe penalties; violating the Commerce Department’s export controls on Syria, for example, can result in 20 years imprisonment and/or a $1 million fine. This, of course, has a chilling effect for Syrians, as many companies with limited resources find it not worthwhile to apply for the license and restrict their products from the country. Incidentally, EFF has also called for revision of export controls.

In the latter variation, as I mentioned, regulation would be restricted to “Internet-restricting countries,” a punishment for countries that block websites from their citizens’ view. This type of regulation has been presented before, multiple times, as the Global Online Freedom Act (for a timeless criticism of an earlier version of the bill, see Rebecca MacKinnon). The problems with such an approach should be, but somehow aren’t, obvious. First, a question: who creates the list of “good” and “bad” countries? Bahrain, a close ally of the United States, pervasively censors the Internet…would it make it on the “bad” list and would sanctions be levied thus? And even if the list were fair and just, what happens when such technology gets regulated? Do citizens of the “bad” countries suffer like Syrians have for years due to labyrinthine bureaucracy and poorly-worded export regs?

The primary concern about regulations should be, however, that they will do extremely little to curb the sale of surveillance tech. What happens when Cisco refuses to sell to Iran? Huawei steps in. And don’t forget all of those companies that have surreptitiously been selling to embargoed countries all along, such as American company BlueCoat to Syria and Israeli company Allot to Iran.

This is the point at which Mueller’s first post starts to annoy me. After his righteous concerns about export regulation are expressed, he goes on to throw up a giant straw man, advising advocates to “Stop focusing narrowly on information technology, and examine the tools of repression and aggression more generically,” and raising examples such as US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Okay, so perhaps this is not exactly a straw man, but if–as Mueller seems to imply in his second post–his arguments are directed at activists and human rights organizations, rather than say, politicians and journalists, then this is simply unfair. The individual activists taking on this issue–many of whom, I’ve observed, live in the countries where such spyware is being sold–are surely not putting the technology before the arms. And as for the organizations, they’re either semi-single-issue (why would EFF talk about gun sales?) or have been holistically focused, tackling the gamut of human rights abuses, from surveillance to military repression. (I would also add here that current export restrictions on the aforementioned five countries include arms and airplane parts).

The second major argument in the first post is presented next. Mueller criticizes some of the advocacy around the sale of certain products, asking: “If you can blame a video surveillance camera for its misuse by repugnant governments, and argue for blocking the movement of those goods, what about integrated circuits, copper wires and lenses that go into them? What about the plastic housings? What about the shipping services that transported the material there?”

Now, if Mueller’s target here is those calling for regulation, I’m with him all the way. But if we’re talking about targeting companies, if we’re working on naming-and-shaming, then I do believe in a strategy of going after companies for their sale of complete products to governments, when the company has credible concern that the product will be used to commit human rights abuses. The vast majority of highly-publicized cases this year have involved the sale of complete systems to decidedly human-rights-abusing regimes like Libya, China, and Syria. I do see a moral obligation in calling out Cisco for its complicity in the Communist Party’s harassment of bloggers. I do see a moral obligation in calling out BlueCoat for its “oh noes, the embargoes!” response to the news that its products were sold to the Syrian regime (in the end, it turned out that BlueCoat was tracking the devices and was aware of their location, even if the sale was not intentional).

But alas, Mueller was talking about the would-be regulators, and therefore I agree:

If you really want to punish, isolate and sanitize your relationship to a repressive government, you cannot limit the sanctions to specific forms of ICT. There must be a comprehensive system of sanctions that prevents anyone in that country from doing any kind of business with the country involved. Even then, the regime may not change; think of North Korea. Even then, there will be leaks or route-arounds.

But then he concludes:

But activists concerned with real social change must think through this problem more deeply, and come up with strategies that strike more directly at the pillars of authoritarianism, censorship and arbitrary power, rather than lashing out at easy domestic targets.

This is why I accused him (a point he’ll refute in post 2) of taking cheap shots at activists. The assumption here is that those involved aren’t thinking about this problem more deeply, aren’t fighting these regimes from multiple angles. And as I wrote in my accusation, if Mueller’s target here is the journalists and the politicians whose shallow thinking culminates in the conclusion that Cisco is the the real enemy, then I digress. But if it’s the activists (again, many of whom are Egyptian, and Syrian, and Chinese), then I say “meh.”

Since Mueller’s second post starts with a refutation of something I said, I feel obliged to point something out. When Evgeny Morozov’s excellent Net Delusion was released this year, it was dismissed by some who felt that the use of the term “delusion” didn’t apply: after all, hadn’t Egyptians just toppled a dictator with the help of social media? I loved Morozov’s book, and so a point that irritated me throughout readings of both critiques of the book and reads through the man’s own columns was the idea that the main target of his arguments against “cyberutopians” were a very narrow subset of the population: namely, those working in the State Department, or even more specifically, Jared Cohen sycophants.

Mueller’s posts thus strike me the same way: Just as he claims his first post “hit a nerve” with advocates (presumably meaning me, since my comment is in the next line), he then goes on once again to target not the advocates but the journalists. And that’s the thing: Mueller’s arguments are largely ones that I agree with (read: no nerves were hit), but the presumed target is off: his real beef seems to be with the journalists who have kept this story going all year. And in a sense, I get it: after all, we digital rights advocates feed off the news reports, and no doubt we wouldn’t have been so loud on the topic were it not for their reporting. If anything, that’s a call for a more tempered approach (which is part of, I assume, Mueller’s point).

In any case, I have no real problems with the second post. Like Mueller, EFF recognized that the reporting on Israeli company Allot’s sale of their NetEnforcer product to an Iranian ISP was a bit overblown. In fact, the story should have served an even better lesson: Sanctions don’t work. But alas, it did not, for most.

Ultimately, as Mueller reiterates near the end of post #2, the problem with the movement (again, lead in large part by journalists, not advocates), is the transfer of target from regime to corporation:

Western corporations and their shareholders do have a moral obligation to refrain from actively pursuing business opportunities with dictatorships when those opportunities involve supplying products and services specifically designed to aid their crimes and repression. But very few technologies are constructed so as to be only usable for crime and repression.

Post-Script: I wrote this a bit stream-of-consciousness, so if in any way I appear to contradict myself, feel free to point out in the comments. Second, I would note that while I see very different targets in journalists vs. advocates, Mueller does not appear to at numerous points, including journalists in “the movement.” In a sense (as I hinted at above), this is fair, for journalists inform advocates on these topics. In another sense, it feels odd to include the supposedly neutral (though I obviously don’t believe that rubbish) journalist in the makeup of a movement such as this one. But again, therein lies the problem, Mueller might posit: the journalists are establishing a certain policy narrative.

I welcome your comments, discussion, debate, etc, below. Just don’t be an asshole and subtweet me. You know who you are.

I'm Thomas Friedman and I think...hard.

As my colleague and current couchmate Trevor Timm pointed out, it is ironic that today of all days I have chosen to compile the definitive collection of hilarious Thomas Friedman takedowns. Why today, you ask? Because today Thomas Friedman actually made sense. Mull that one over for a moment. It’s okay, take your time.

As anyone who has seen me speak publicly knows, I delight in nothing more than a good jab at ol’ Friedman. And just because he’s written one intelligent piece doesn’t mean I’m going to stop…so, in traditional JCY style, I have compiled The Definitive Collection of Thomas Friedman Takedowns, an immaculate collection of parodies, jabs, and totally straightfaced teardowns of the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

As I’m sure more fantastic gems will eventually come our way, I will later issue a boxed set, then perhaps a B-side. But for now, here goes:

1. Matt Taibbi’s seminal takedown, “Flathead”. It has style, it has pizzazz, it has the sentence “On an ideological level, Friedman’s new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit.”  It is a classic work of art, and Taibbi’s writing, the anti-Friedman.  You’re welcome.
2. Sarah Carr’s “This is just the start and it never fucking ends.” Perhaps you didn’t expect an Egyptian blogger to come in second place.  But lo!  Who better to tear apart Friedman’s Egypt inanities than the blogger who writes Inanities, an Egyptian who actually protested in Tahrir Square?  Key line: “You might ask why, since I am in Egypt, I don’t ask an Egyptian – possibly two Egyptians – about what inspired them to completely ignore my theories on the Arab peoples and take to the streets. The answer is this: I am Thomas Friedman and I write a column in the New York Times.”
3. “Thomas Freetrademan”‘s “The Datsun and the Shoe Tree.” Some people name-drop, Friedman place-drops.  This parody captures his essence–”What’s my point? I don’t actually have one–but opening my columns with strings of clichéd cultural juxtapositions really cuts down my workload”–perfectly.
4. Andrew Ferguson’s book review of “That Used to be Us.” Opening of second paragraph: “As a writer, Mr. Friedman is best known for his galloping assaults on Strunk and White’s Rule No. 9: “Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner.”  ‘Nuff said.
5. Daniel Drezner’s “Suffering from Friedman’s Disease in Beijing.” If Foreign Policy were Weekend Update.  A classic parody.
6. The New York Observer’s “Write your own Thomas Friedman column.” A paint-by-numbers to writing Friedman-style.  Includes gems such as “Thomas Friedman is the Carrie Bradshaw of current events. Think Sex and the City , write ‘Sects and Tikriti.’”
7. Matt Taibbi’s “Flat N All That.” What could be better than a Taibbi takedown?  Two Taibbi takedowns!  “I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now,” admits Taibbi.  “Good!” reply us.
8. Joshua Foust’s “The Toms Talk ISAF Raids” and “The Only Way to Discuss This“ (tie).  There’s only one thing better than a Tom Friedman monologue, and that’s a Tom Friedman/Tom Ricks dialogue.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Foust was probably high while writing these, but consider that a good thing.  Complete with sleep-mask-wearing-Andrew-Sullivan intervention.
9. Justin E.H. Smith’s “Thomas Friedman Clogged My Toilet.” A subtle, creeping parody full of toilet humor and complete with an appearance by a long-dead Mike Royko.
10. Michael Sweeney’s “Create Your Own Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Column.” Not only is it delightfully condescending (a Friedman must!) but includes the choose-your-own-adventure style multiple choice technique that Friedman’s columns sometimes seemingly employ.

Serious Critiques:

Not exactly B-sides, the following is a list of the more serious critiques of Friedman. Equally enjoyable to the true connoisseur, but less punchy and certainly not Thomas Friedman takedown party reading material.  Wait, you don’t have Thomas Friedman takedown parties?  Ah, nevermind.

1. Belén Fernández’s “Thomas Friedman’s Confusions.” Frankly, Fernández deserves more than an honorable mention, given that she actually wrote the book on Friedman, but since I haven’t read it yet (c’mon, Nook store!), I’ll just say of her aforementioned piece: Brilliant. (Update! Excerpt of book now available!)
2. Greg Marx’s “Tom Friedman’s ‘Radical’ Wrongness.” The inclusion of Marx’s piece is almost meta, as he compiled within this post the first collection of Friedman takedowns.  And oh, it’s so sweet.
   
3. Matt Welch’s “The Simpletons.” Scathing, accurate, and references Taibbi. See also: “Capturing Tom Friedman.”
4. Steve Benen’s “Has Thomas Friedman met Barack Obama?“ Pointing out Friedman’s lack of originality and occasional outright disingenuousness.

Honorable Mentions:

1. Daniel Drezner’s “If world politics pundits covered the Women’s World Cup.” The whole thing is a delightful read, but as only one graf is dedicated to Friedmanism, an honorable mention it gets.  Bonus points for the loving yet punchy parody of Glenn Greenwald.
2. Dan Murphy‘s fact-check of Friedman’s January 2012 Cairo speech. Though Murphy tweeted that the piece was “de-snarked” (presumably by editors), it still makes its point.
3. Jennifer Rubin’s “Thomas Friedman, hitting rock bottom.” The best part of Rubin’s recent critique of Friedman in which she implies that Friedman sits upon an anti-Israel perch?  She’s totally fucking serious.

Bonus Points:

• Matt Welch, Friedman bête noire extraordinaire, offers up an artistic reenactment of a Friedman column, complete with robots.
  

What’s so key about Rebecca’s talk (and perspective) is her emphasis on building “consent of the networked” (also the title of her forthcoming book), and urging citizen awareness of the issues. Watch.

In the past year since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought Internet freedom to pertinence in her much-lauded speech at the Newseum, the rhetoric surrounding net freedom has continued to focus mainly on Iran and China.

Though Tunisia has always been part of the rhetoric–Clinton mentioned it twice, in reference both to increased filtering and to the effects of censorship on business–it has never been at the forefront of the net freedom discussion, despite evidence that its censors are among the most sophisticated and the most pervasive in the world.  Despite being under the guise of democracy (not unlike Iran) and secularism (not unlike Syria), Tunisia censors media and Internet at the surface level, and also regularly imprisons those who speak out or protest against the regime, including bloggers (in 2009, Tunisia was ranked by CPJ as one of the ten worst places to be a blogger).

The State Department’s Internet freedom policy, to many, appears generally to reflect broader U.S. policy.  We want to overturn Iran’s regime, so we make special requests to Twitter to ensure it’s not shut down during crucial periods, but we ignore the interrogation and arrests of bloggers in our ally, Egypt.  We want to save the Iranians, so we loosen up export controls to allow junk products like Haystack to reach them, while doing nothing about the similar restrictions placed upon Syrians.  When we look to China, we see business opportunities, and so we focus on strengthening those through freeing up the Internet, while secular allies like Tunisia–which do a great job of faking progress to the world–go largely ignored.

And it’s not as if we can pretend we had no idea: In a recently-released WikiLeaks cable, our own diplomats can be seen referring to Tunisia as a “police state,” with “little freedom of expression.”  We’ve known that, and we’ve said nothing.

The State Department is not the media, but when Hillary Clinton calls out a country (as she has done with both China and Iran), the media listens.  And as of yet, the media has barely touched on either the protests or the pervasive censorship happening in Tunisia.  The Guardian‘s Brian Whitaker (who, to his credit, recognizes what a big deal this is) asks whether media coverage really matters (after all, the media coverage given to Iran did nothing to overturn the regime).  Though I think Whitaker certainly has a point, I think what matters more is the awareness that such media coverage creates.  Two years ago, most Americans knew little about Iran: now they know that a large swath of the populace is fighting against their regime.  Most Americans know very little about Tunisia, but the awareness that media coverage would create would teach them.  And perhaps that awareness would then push people to fight harder for an egalitarian Internet freedom initiative from their own government.

And this is why I don’t believe in the Net Freedom agenda anymore.  If we as a nation truly believed in Internet freedom, then we would focus not only on those countries that might benefit us (a free Iran, a capitalist China) but on all of those nations where citizens are restricted from speaking out.  We would loosen the export controls on Syria–not just Iran–to allow Syrian citizens access to communications and circumvention tools, and we would give our ally Tunisia–secular, egalitarian Tunisia–incentive to stop oppressing its citizens.  If the United States of America were still truly about freedom, we would do these things, because an ally that oppresses its citizens is no ally at all.

Blocking Facebook would put Saudi Arabia in a class with Syria, Iran, and China.  Unblocking it puts it on par with Pakistan and Bangladesh, two countries which have pulled the same shenanigans.

It’s not surprising that Saudi would block Facebook; the country’s filtering is already pervasive.  It’s somewhat more interesting that the ban didn’t last–what incentive do authorities possibly have to keep the site online?  One guess is that keeping Facebook online better allows the state to monitor its citizens.

In any case, blocking Facebook would likely have few implications in Saudi, where VPNs seem to reign supreme, whereas keeping it available might just pacify young citizens enough to keep them quiet.

Rarely do I cross-post from elsewhere onto my own blog, however, this warrants widespread discussion.  From the

Whilst attending the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the OpenNet Initiative (along with partners of ONI Asia) gathered to present their upcoming book, Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace. A poster advertising the book was hung for the reception; UN security officials requested removal of the poster, which contained mention of China’s “Great Firewall.” When ONI officials refused to remove the poster, UN security bundled up the poster and took it away.

The sentence in question? “The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China’s famous ‘Great Firewall of China’ is one of the first national Internet filtering systems.”

OpenNet Initiative officials were told that the banner had to be removed because of its reference to China, a request repeated on several occasions, and in front of a number of witnesses, including the UN Special Rapporteur For Human Rights. Earlier, those same officials had asked ONI to stop circulating an invite to the event because it contained a mention of Tibet.

ONI officials requested to see governing rules pertaining to the act, however, UN security refused to provide them, with mention given to “objections of a member state.”

The incident has been covered in the major news media, most notably by the BBC, which quoted ONI Principal Investigator Ron Deibert as saying “If we are not allowed to discuss topics such as internet censorship, surveillance and privacy at a forum on internet governance, then what is the point of the IGF?” Deibert’s web site contains further information and will be updated to reflect new developments.

Access Controlled is slated for release in early 2010. Our previous volume, Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering is available on Amazon.com and other booksellers; each chapter is also available individually online.

Observers of China’s Internet filtering practices have long been anticipating how China would fulfill those promises to the IOC. The options were few and clear:

1. China would open the Internet during the Olympic period
2. An open enclave for foreign journalists would be created
3. China would break its promise

Unsurprisingly, China has so far not honored its promises. Not only do the government’s monitors continue to filter hundreds of sites; the press center for foreign journalists offers the same filtered version of the Internet.

With opening day of the Games only a week away and more web sites become accessible,OpenNet will continue to monitor China’s filtering practices. In particular, we will monitor Olympic coverage to examine how coverage within China differs from that accessible from outside the country.

For up-to-date coverage of China’s filtering practices, during the Olympics and beyond, check OpenNet’s China page frequently.

Originally posted on OpenNet.net