class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # Dirty Wars ## The State/Platform/Copyright Nexus of Repression ### Jack McDonald --- class: inverse # Lecture Outline .pull-left[ Why is censorship important in dirty wars? How have digital communications technologies altered the relationship between political control and communication? ] .pull-right[ - War and Censorship - Digital Censorship in Context - Controlling Online Publishing - How Else Have States Responded? - Conclusions & Connections ] ## Main Points - Censorship is a key tool of social control in war - Contemporary security debates about online speech cannot be understood without reference to wider censorship debates - Digital publishing and communications technologies both empower and restrict public/private censorship ??? Are hundred-million-user platforms an inherent threat to freedom of speech? Should governments and corporations err on the side of over-censoring or under-censoring when seeking to eliminate terrorist propaganda from the internet? --- class: inverse # Part 1: War and Censorship ??? --- # Weapons of the Weak .left-40[ ![Belgian? Resistance printing press](img/r7/press.jpg) ![Family sitting around the radio](img/r7/radiofamily.jpeg) ![James Foley](img/r7/foley.jpg) ] .right-40[ > In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. Marshall McLuhan ] ??? --- # Censorship in Repression and War .pull-left[ > during the era of the dictators, all of the Argentine media operated under strict government censorship. At the beginning, it was principally a self-imposed restraint, which allowed the government to deny that official media censorship existed. Later, censorship became quite overt with severe consequences for media which did not comply. R. Dwight Wilhelm, _Censorship in Argentina_ ] .pull-right[ ![Tia Vincent](img/r7/vincent.png) ] ??? Censorship to prevent spread of security probs CEnsorship to sustain government support --- # Digital Censorship in War and Dirty Wars > Mrs Thatcher's broadcasting restrictions have, it seems, become the ultimate in censorship. It has made journalists, through intimidation, boredom or indolence, the instruments of the ban when they should be its principal victims and most vigorous opponents. Ed Moloney, _Closing Down the Airwaves_ > The government notes the chief coroner’s comments regarding the evidence at the inquests, the existence of the offence for possession of a prohibited image of a child, and the perception that the lack of a comparative counter-terrorism offence may sometimes prevent counter-terrorism policing from taking disruptive action. Priti Patel ??? --- class: inverse # Reflection Question .pull-left[ ![BBC News](img/r7/bbc.png) ] .pull-right[ .large[ Should governments and corporations err on the side of over-censoring or under-censoring when seeking to eliminate terrorist propaganda from the world wide web? ] ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 2: Digital Censorship in Context ??? --- # Offensive Information .left-column[ ![Michaelangelo's David](img/r7/mike.jpg) ![Fig leaf](img/r7/fig.jpg) ![Lady Chatterly's lover](img/r7/lady.jpg) ] .right-column[ Repression often focuses censorship discussions upon political or security explanations Censorship has many different contexts/reasons, e.g. - Blasphemy - Obscenity - Social norms/pressures - How often do you ask what someone's salary is? ] ??? --- # Censorship in Theory and Practice .pull-left[ All social systems regulate speech either explicitly or implicitly It is hard to regulate beliefs, but practices (communication/speech/production) are easier to observe and regulate Social values are usually reflected in legal systems/social engagement with legal systems .medium[ - If you are going to write something mean about an oligarch, do it in America, not the UK! ] ] .pull-right[ > Working out how to defeat the assassin’s veto is one of the great challenges of our time. Among the many questions that arise is whether or not to republish images at which fanatics have chosen to take such violent offense that they murder those who made them. Timothy Garton Ash, _Defying the Assassin's Veto_ ] ??? --- # Technology and Censorship .left-33[ ![Index of banned books](img/r7/prohibido.jpg) ] .right-33[ Censorship makes no sense without reference to the means and rights of reproduction - Prior to the printing press, the primary socio-technical system of reproduction were distributed scribes - Printing presses (15th-16th century) enabled mass reproduction and distribution of ideas - Governments responded by controlling presses through licensing and copyright - Copyright expands to cover many different types of object/creation - Late 19th century: internationalisation of copyright ] ??? Pic: index of banned books --- # Censorship and Organisations .pull-left[ ![Satanic Verses](img/r7/satanicverses.png) ] .pull-right[ ![Fox news](img/r7/fox.jpg) ] ??? --- class: inverse # Reflection Question .large[ Are hundred-million-user social media platforms an inherent threat to freedom of speech? ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 3: Controlling Online Publishing ??? --- # What is the Medium? .pull-left[ ![internet pipes](img/r7/arpa1972.png) ] .pull-right[ ![internet pipes](img/r7/pipes.png) ] > We shape our architecture; and thereafter it shapes us. Andrew Keen, _The Internet is Not The Answer_ ??? --- # Internet Censorship: The Early Years > Unlike the family-oriented commercial services, which censor messages they find offensive, the Internet imposes no restrictions. Anybody can start a discussion on any topic and say anything. There have been sporadic attempts by local network managers to crack down on the raunchier discussion groups, but as Internet pioneer John Gilmore puts it, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Philip Elmer-Dewitt, _First Nation in Cyberspace_ > What will happen to the traditional notions of intellectual property and copyright in the face of a technology that can create infinite numbers of copies and spray them freely across the world in seconds? Wendy M. Grossman, _net.wars_ ??? --- # Censorship and Speech .pull-left[ Q: What does this guy have to do with internet censorship? ![Tom Cruise](img/r7/cruise.jpg) ] .pull-right[ A: > Numerous attempts had been made by the Church's lawyers to persuade Erlich to halt his unauthorized, wholesale postings of the Church's religious scriptures, which went way beyond the concept of 'fair use' and constituted violation of copyright law. Leisa Goodman (Media relations director for the Church of Scientology ] ??? --- # Walled Gardens and Internet Platforms .pull-left[ ![Lessig's Pathetic Dot](img/r7/lessig.png) ] .pull-right[ > the invisible hand of cyberspace is building an architecture that is quite the opposite of its architecture at its birth. This invisible hand, pushed by government and by commerce, is constructing an architecture that will perfect control and make highly efficient regulation possible. The struggle in that world will not be government’s. It will be to assure that essential liberties are preserved in this environment of perfect control. Lawrence Lessig, _Code is Law_ ] ??? --- # So, What's New? > Today’s “simple idea of Architecture,” as Jeremy Bentham put it, is an electronic network in which everything we do is recorded and remembered. Bentham’s eighteenth-century Panopticon has been upgraded to a twenty-first-century instrument of mass surveillance. Like Vannevar Bush’s Memex, its trails never fade; like Ted Nelson’s hypertext, there is no “concept of deletion”; like Erich Mielke’s Stasi, its appetite for our personal data is insatiable. The internet has, indeed, become a crystal republic for crystal man. > We shape our architecture; and thereafter it shapes us. Andrew Keen, _The Internet is Not The Answer_ ??? --- # Data Filtering > by 1996, we had a solution. We had the WIPO Copyright Treaty, passed by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization. This created laws that made it illegal to extract secrets from unlocking programs, and it created laws that made it illegal to extract media (such as songs and movies) from the unlocking programs while they were running. It created laws that made it illegal to tell people how to extract secrets from unlocking programs, and it created laws that made it illegal to host copyrighted works or the secrets. __It also established a handy streamlined process that let you remove stuff from the Internet without having to screw around with lawyers, and judges, and all that crap.__ Cory Doctorow, _Lockdown_ ??? --- # Sovereignty and Servers > Last week, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Tom Cotton asked for a national security probe. They said they were concerned about the video-sharing platform’s collection of user data, and whether China censors content seen by U.S. users. They also suggested TikTok could be targeted by foreign influence campaigns. Greg Roumeliotis, Yingzhi Yang, Echo Wang and Alexandra Alper, _US opens national security investigation into TikTok_ ??? --- # Platforms as Single Points of Failure .pull-left[ > If Amazon’s dream of a world without gatekeepers becomes reality, then the company itself will become a powerful gatekeeper. Evgeny Morozov, _To Save Everything, Click Here_ The "internet" consists of a small number of extremely large companies, with shareholders, amenable to government regulation ] .pull-right[ ![YouTube](img/r7/youtube.jpg) ] ??? --- class: inverse # Reflection Question .large[Do you think internet platforms have too much power to control public speech? How might they be reined in, and what actors are best placed to do this? ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 4: How Else Have States Responded? ??? - Last week: Digital ICTs and two key challenges - E2E encryption, mass communication - States always adapt, those that fail to adapt, often fail - State responses to social movements and security threats rely upon traditional state means of control - legal authority and potential for coercive force - State responses demonstrate a key vulnerability of digital comms tech - reliance upon corporate-owned infrastructure - We cannot understand the dynamics of authoritarian use of digital tech without reference to global tech economy --- # Hostile Access .pull-left[ ![APT](img/r8/nsa.jpg) ] .pull-right[ States spend money on means of hostile access, but not all states have the capability to build and maintain institutions like NSA and GCHQ "Zero day" exploits are expensive To understand digital repression, we need to look at wider context: the global market for digital surveillance products. ] ??? - Lastly, hostile access - states breaking into your stuff - Important to differentiate between custom and generic forms of hostile access - With enough time and resources, you are done (NSA illustration on the left) - But key point - states don't have to use gucci options most of the time - Next lecture section looks at the market in digital surveillance technologies --- # Connectivity as a Tool of Control .pic80[![Internet shutdowns](img/r7/shutdown.png)] > As more and more countries have seen the internet being used to organize for political change, however, internet blackouts have become increasingly common, a go-to tool for controlling unrest and stifling criticism of the government. Nor is the tactic limited to authoritarian states: the worst offender by far is India, the world's biggest democracy. James Griffiths, _Internet shutdowns used to be rare. They're increasingly becoming the norm in much of the world_ ??? Myanmar!!! - We can observe state reponses - one of them is to shut down or reduce access to internet/www - Control over media networks is a traditional element of authoritarian playbook - Difference of digital tech - sophistication of filtering technologies, ability to control gross volume of tech, or central on/off switch - My view: we will see more of this in future, obviously same issues are tightly controlled in liberal democracies - As mentioned previously - this is a continuum of responses - lib democs want to achieve some effects on this continuum within the law --- # Astroturfing .pull-left[ One response to social mobilisation using social media networks is to attack the utility of the network itself through "sock puppet" accounts - Harassment - Disinformation - Reduction of trust - Generation of false social organisations ] .pull-right[ ![APT](img/r8/astro.jpg) ] ??? - Another observable response is the use of sock puppets/Astroturfing - Old joke: on the internet no-one knows you're a dog/new joke: no-one knows you're real - This leverages traditional state strengths - money plus people - Important to note individual and systemic consequences - Be careful about "disinformation" - are you assuming that there is one truth? Who should determine what truth is, or is not? --- # Case Study: Facebook and the Rohingya > The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing... The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propaganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human migration in recent history. Paul Mozar, _A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military_ ??? --- # Re-Identification .pull-left[ ![Re-identification curve](img/r8/reid2.jpg) ] .pull-right[ > We study 3 months of credit card records for 1.1 million people and show that four spatiotemporal points are enough to uniquely reidentify 90% of individuals Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye et al., _Unique in the shopping mall_ We now live in societies where the collection of large volumes of data and metadata is a fact of life ] ??? - Some responses less identifiable, for example, re-ID - Basic tradeoff is data utility versus privacy (re-ID) - Growth of anonymising tech exists in world where re-ID becoming trivial - It is very hard for an individual to prevent re-ID, almost impossible for a social movement - Besides, can a social movement stay anonymous and achieve its political goals? --- # Dependencies .pull-left[ > When you pay cash, there is no middleman; you pay, you receive goods or services — end of story. When a middleman becomes part of the transaction, that middleman often gets to learn about the transaction — and under our weak privacy laws, has a lot of leeway to use that information as it sees fit. Jay Stanley, _Say No to the “Cashless Future”_ ] .pull-right[ .picblock[ ![Dread Pirate Roberts](img/r8/dpr.jpg) ] > The paradox of cryptocurrency is that its associated data create a forensic trail that can suddenly make your entire financial history public information. John Bohannon, _Why criminals can't hide behind Bitcoin_ ] ??? - States are able to leverage the fact that D ICTs rely upon corporately owned infrastructure - The long tail of data enables control over time - This is why some people are worried about cashless society - Anonymous markets rely upon crypto currencies that rely upon permanently stored transaction chains - Anonymous markets like Silk Road amenable to state action (RE-ID and arrest of Ross Ulbricht) --- # Preserving Rights of Access .pull-left[ ![EFF](img/r8/eff.png) ] .pull-right[ ![APT](img/r8/vpn.jpg) ] ??? - Fundamentally, traditional state tools - law and coercive power - enable them to limit the scope of anonymity - TOR and https might limit this, but states create legal requirements on storage of user data to help them track individual users in the context of criminal cases - Another key tool, VPNs, amenable to state control - states can block VPNs - This points to a future of a fractured internet, but one in which individual states can exert authority over those within their borders --- class: inverse # Reflection Question .large[ Do you think internet blackouts are a human rights violation? Even localised/limited ones? ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 5: Conclusions and Connections ??? --- # Key Issues .large[ Mass communication has never been easier, but neither has mass censorship The tools of online censorship for things almost everyone agrees should be censored (CSAM) also enable online commerce, and political control We are only beginning to see the start of state efforts to enact population control leveraging digital communications networks ] ??? --- # Key Questions .large[ Which outcome do you prefer: a global internet where governments cannot control communications, or an internet divided by the wishes of sovereign states? Are you scared of TikTok (or other non-western platforms) achieving market dominance? How can social movements survive internet blackouts? ]