Chapter 6 Research Lecture Series: Digital Repression

6.1 Technologies of Repression

In this lecture we will revisit some of the themes found earlier in the course, but we will primarily be examining the concept of repression through the lens of technology. Ho and why does technology matter in the use of repression, or the avoidance of repression? In particular we will be looking at the role that information processing plays in political repression, as well as the definitions of surveillance technologies. In particular, we will look at technologies of identification, and the development of biometric identity and identification systems.

This lecture will also introduce the concept of digital repression, and run through some of the history of battles over freedom and privacy on the internet. We’ll also be looking at the (connected) history of technology and surveillance, and some of the key technical/policy issues associated with the regulation of surveillance in an era where almost all communication relies upon, or is co-located with, digital devices. Lastly, we will be looking at these issues in the context of China, and introducing the case study of Xinjiang.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Why is Xinjiang almost non-existent in the academic literature on surveillance studies?
  • What types of surveillance do you think constitute repression?
• Readings:
  • Breckenridge, Keith. Biometric State. Cambridge University Press, (2014). Chapter 1
  • Goede, Marieke de, and Gavin Sullivan. “The Politics of Security Lists.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34, no. 1 (2016): 67–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775815599309.
  • Agar, Jon. The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer. MIT Press, (2003). Chapter 4
  • Pfaff, Steven. “The Limits of Coercive Surveillance.” Punishment & Society 3, no. 3 (2001): 381–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474501003003003.

6.2 The State/Platform/Copyright Nexus of Repression

This lecture looks at a core value that is usually threatened by political repression, freedom of speech, and the role of censorship in political repression. We’ll use censorship, in broad terms, as a way of thinking about the interactions between states and corporations in the digital age. We will look at the span of ideals and policy options associated with the regulation of published works and speech, and how the underlying technological base of the internet and digital platforms messes with this.2121 For example, do you “speak” through ICQ or other platforms like Facebook Messenger, or are you endlessly publishing?

The interesting feature of digital censorship is the degree to which it can be repurposed. In short, the technical and social systems that suppress child pornography on the internet can also be used to keep mention of the 1989 Beijing massacre from the internet in a given country. The lecture then look at key motivators for regulation and control built into digital platforms like YouTube created by law and policy. Here we will focus on copyright and content moderation as a key issue. We can, say, contrast the development of country-wide internet filters (they exist in the UK as well as China) with the development of private regimes of content moderation in response to pre-existing law.

• Discussion Questions:
  • 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?
• Readings:
  • Edwards, Lilian. “Pornography, Censorship and the Internet.” In Law and the Internet, edited by Lilian Edwards and Charlotte Waelde, Third Ed. Hart Publishing, (2010).
  • Maréchal, Nathalie. “Networked Authoritarianism and the Geopolitics of Information: Understanding Russian Internet Policy.” Media and Communication 5, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v5i1.808.

6.3 Technology Will Save Us… Right?

This lecture covers responses to repression using digital technologies, and the idea of liberation technologies. We will be covering a range of ideas clustered around the notion that some technologies inherently preserve, or increase, political freedom, and criticisms of these ideas. In particular, we will be looking at political disputes about cryptography and the preservation of privacy. Going back to last week’s lecture, we’ll be looking at how libertarian ideas about cryptography clashed with state aims in the 1990s over the Clipper Chip and cryptography exports, and then looking to contemporary debates about the right of access by states and law enforcement agencies to information held on personal devices or company servers.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Why does the notion of “liberation technology” persist?
  • Should computer code be considered speech?
• Readings:
  • Glancy, Dorothy J. “The Invention of the Right to Privacy.” Arizona Law Review 21 (1979).
  • Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, (1998). Chapter 3
  • Schulze, Matthias. “Clipper Meets Apple Vs. FBI—a Comparison of the Cryptography Discourses from 1993 and 2016.” Media and Communication 5, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v5i1.805.

6.4 Exporting Repression

This lecture will cover the international trade in digital surveillance technology, particularly the kind of stuff that can track (now somewhat ubiquitous) mobile phones, or access communications between activists. In particular, we’ll be looking at how and why states help other states out with surveillance technology. There are a couple of narratives at work. One is that China wants to make the world “safe for authoritarianism” and the other is that digital surveillance technology appears to be a growth export market for companies based in liberal democracies. One of the key fears is that authoritarian states armed with this kind of surveillance technology might ultimately check the social movements that challenge them. We will be looking at recent controversies in this area, and fundamentally asking how and why liberal democracies can justify the export of technologies to authoritarian and non-democratic regimes. We will be looking at export controls on arms and other kinds of restricted technologies involved in political repression to ask how and why digital surveillance technologies might fit.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Why do liberal democracies permit the export of surveillance technologies to authoritarian states?
  • Can you reconcile your opinion about the regulation of surveillance technology with your answer to last week’s second discussion question?
• Readings:
  • Bohnenberger, Fabian. “The Proliferation of Cyber-Surveillance Technologies: Challenges and Prospects for Strengthened Export Controls.” Strategic Trade Review 4 (2017): 81–102.
  • Parsons, Christopher, Adam Molnar, Jakub Dalek, Jeffrey Knockel, Miles Kenyon, Bennett Haselton, Cynthia Khoo, and Ronald Deibert. “The Predator in Your Pocket: A Multidisciplinary Assessment of the Stalkerware Application Industry,” Citizenlab, (2019). Read chapters 1, 2 & 6

6.5 Digital Repression: What Is To Be Done?

If you make it this far in the year, you will probably have guessed that I am something of a pessimist, or at least that I’m suspicious of utopian narratives. But that is not the same as stating that nothing will change, or can change. In this lecture we will be discussing practical and theoretical approaches to digital repression as a policy problem.2222 It’s still a policy problem if you’re the person on the sharp end of the policy. We will be revisiting the discussions over this series to debate the importance of the digital in “digital repression” and the best theoretical framing of some of the problems that we have encountered so far.

This lecture is going to put the original issue, internment camps in Xinjiang, back on centre stage. We’ll be looking at it as a problem from a variety of different angles, and in the context of China’s competition with the United States. You’ll be asked to bring to the lecture the insights you’ve gained from your studies so far this year, and we’ll be discussing what are the most important theories that explain the existence of the camps, and how/why China might cease its repression in Xinjiang.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Does any entity but the Communist Party of China have the power to shut down the internment camps in Xinjiang?
  • Is “technology ethics” a way of avoiding the politics of technology?
• Readings:
  • Tufekci, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale University Press, (2017). Chapter 9
  • Farrell, Henry, and Abraham L. Newman. “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion.” International Security 44, no. 1 (2019): 42–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00351 .