Journalists who write about the internet should use Google more
Jackson Diehl at the Washington Post seems convinced that a new technology can take down the Iranian regime. He knows this because the the makers of the new technology have told him so in what I think is very humble language:
The companies’ volunteer founders and operators say that if they could get $30 million in funding they could ramp up their server networks to accommodate millions more users — and effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.
Got it? Give us 30 million and we will end monitoring of the internet over the world! The technology in question is UltraReach, a type of circumvention software that allows users to evade internet firewalls. The software works well enough, but the company’s servers keep crashing when too many people use it. This causes them to limit the amount of people who can use it, and limit the amount of sites users can visit through it. Diehl seems to agree with the makers of the software that they need more money, and he takes the State Department to task for not spending the money quicker to beef up the servers.
Now I’m not one of the internet skeptics who claim that technology has no effect on the relationship between the state and its people, but Diehl is acting pretty sloppy here. If he wants to jump into the whole internet freedom debate, he should at least do a little homework. If he did, he would know that not to long ago the State Department was embarrassed by pushing a technology into the field to fast. That technology, Haystack, was designed to help dissidents circumvent their government’s censorship. Unfortunately, the rush to get it out meant it was not subjected to the third-party testing that should have been done. It was revealed in September that the program left a “trail of clues” that would allow a government to track whoever is using it. Diehl should know this, it was reported in his own paper. And while I don’t blame him for not wanting to read the Washington Post, I feel he has more of an obligation than the rest of us to.
Now of course, UltraReach is not Haystack, but it is still insufficient for doing what Diehl claims it can do. The reason that Haystack was met with such hype, was that it could do things no other program could. That is, it could hide a user’s identity, and hide the fact that the user was running the software. UltraReach, in comparison, can hide a user’s identity from the government, but the government is able to detect that the program is being used. It isn’t hard to figure out why this leaves some big security holes. This shouldn’t suggest that UltraReach is worthless; it would still make life more difficult for government censors. Still, it’s hard to see how it would “destroy the internet controls” of dictatorships.
Of course there is even another factor that makes Diehl’s push for UltraReach misguided. Circumvention software works best when it is under the radar. A program that becomes famous is going to attract a lot of attention, not just from dissidents, but from governments as well. (Yes censors can use Google too!) If one piece of software becomes too famous, it will be a lot easier for government programmers to find ways around it. The optimal scenario would be a large number of low-profile programs proliferating in the target country. By writing about UltraReach in a well read publication like the Washington Post, Diehl is actually exposing its users to more danger. By arguing that more money should be spent funding this one company, Diehl is advocating a flawed strategy. Of course the UltraReach folks might not see it that way, but why would they? They are programmers, not social scientists, and shouldn’t be considered the authoritative source on how this technology should best be used.
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There is another irony here. One is how State and DoD are working at cross-purposes on internet freedom. While State (supposedly) supports it, DoD is worried about cyber attacks and so wants more effective firewalls and greater capacity to track internet users.
Barak brings up a key aspect of this issue–the disconnect between State and DoD policymaking is really frustrating…and perhaps why a unified national security budget should be considered a legitimate option for coordinating policy instead of ending up with the contradictory mess we have now.
…just like it’d be a good idea to have a unified aid budget. Just one problem – it’s not going to happen. Congressional committees and executive branch agencies have a preference for fragmentation. Only the President and leaders in Congress can change this and I suspect its likely to remain a low priority.
Great post David. I especially like this note: “A program that becomes famous is going to attract a lot of attention, not just from dissidents, but from governments as well. (Yes censors can use Google too!)”
Barak, in some ways I agree with you about having a unified aid budget; however, even if it was a remote possibility, I am concerned that this is the same argument used by those who want to fold DRL back into State. While it might appear that unifying State and DRL could streamline the foreign policy making process, and avoid a “cross-purposes” issue, DRL has a separate but crucial role in promoting democracy and human rights, even if those are not priorities in the overall foreign policy objectives of the US as advanced by State toward a particular country.
The reason agencies like DoD and DoS have disconnected policymaking (which is not completely accurate, they simply have disconnected preferences and policy priorities) is because they have disconnected purposes. The purpose of DoD is defense of our own country; the purpose of DoS is foreign relations. Sometimes the tactics we use in pursuit of democracy through DoS are at cross-purposes with the tactics needed to defend the homeland (through DoD). And really, it’s not DoD – the intelligence/national security agencies in all of the branches (FBI in DOJ, CIA in… well, its own branch, all of the military intelligence units in DOD, the agencies in DHS like CBP and ICE… the list goes on) have this same goal.
There are good and bad sides to everything. The good uses of a technology also can, in some ways, be the bad uses from a different perspective. Just as other governments would want to know how their own people are using the technologies mentioned here, our own government would like to know. We may not think that the reasons proffered by other governments are democratic or “good,” but they are really the same reasons our own government has – we just justify ours with “defense” or “security” tacked on. (And really, countries like Iran that would use this technology to track its users and then imprison them are doing so in the name of “security,” we just don’t like their methods or justifications.)