Technology is neutral

I have been writing a lot about the internet lately, primarily as a result of Secretary Clinton’s speech last week on internet freedom. It’s important to recall, however, that technology is typically neutral. Whether it is good or bad for democracy is a function of who uses it and for what purposes. Recent violence in Nigeria makes this clear:

Text messages that urged people to murder and then burn their victims’ bodies helped stoke inter-religious violence in central Nigeria that killed hundreds of people last week, police and rights activists said overnight.

Rights activists have identified at least 145 texts that circulated on mobile phones in the central city of Jos, the epicentre of four days of Muslim-Christian clashes that authorities said killed 326 people.

“The messages helped escalate the violence in Jos in that some of them instructed people on how to kill, dispose of and burn bodies,” said leading rights activist Shehu Sani.

The texts were aimed at “spreading rumours and inflaming tensions”, said Mr Sani, who heads a coalition of 32 Nigerian civil and human rights groups called the Civil Rights Congress.

One of the messages seen by AFP read: “War, war, war. Stand up … and defend yourselves. Kill before they kill you. Slaughter before they slaughter you. Dump them in a pit before they dump you.”

Moreover, this is not an isolated incident. For example, people used SMS’s for similar purposes following Kenya’s flawed election in 2007.

Operationalizing Internet Freedom

The State Department seems to be taking internet freedom quite seriously. The Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is asking for proposals for the following programs:

Mobile technology: DRL seeks proposals that support innovative technologies designed to operationally defeat or circumvent censorship and/or surveillance of all forms of content related to independent news, democracy, and human rights that is created, shared or stored on mobile devices in repressive environments…

Mobile technology/education and outreach: DRL seeks proposals that support training and networking of potential users of mobile circumvention technology that would support the promotion of democracy and human rights in repressive environments.

Protecting privacy in the documentation of human rights crises: DRL seeks proposals that support the development of technology and best practices to protect users from surveillance in documenting human rights and other abuses as they occur or in the promotion of independent news and information through the use of mobile technology or other new media tools.

Promoting organizational information security: DRL seeks proposals that promote the implementation of effective information security policies and practices amongst individual activists and civil society organizations promoting democracy and human rights.

I wonder if I could apply for funding to develop software to get around this surveillance? I am guessing the good folks at the State Department would not find this amusing. In fact, I bet if I did this, the FBI would probably want me to come on down for an informational interview. Oh well, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, isn’t it?

China tells Clinton to shut up

Seems like Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on internet freedom did not go over very well with everyone in China. According to Reuters:

A speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday showed a lack of respect for China, which cannot accept conditions on matters of “national security” or “social stability,” said Beijing Association of Online Media Chairman Min Dahong…

“How China’s Internet develops and how it is managed are Chinese people’s own affairs,” Min said in an interview with state-run Xinhuanet.com.

“On the Internet question, China doesn’t need any lessons from the United States on what to do or how,” he said…

“Hillary’s speech on January 21 insinuating that China lacks freedom of information and speech is in fact disrespectful and doesn’t stand up,” Min said.

Good for Secretary Clinton.

Solution in search of a problem

In a recent post, I wrote that I liked the policy idea in Secretary Clinton’s speech on internet freedom about using new technologies to hold governments more accountable. The more I talked about it with others, the more I felt like something was missing, not only in the idea, but in the speech more broadly. Evgeny Morzov at Foreign Policy made me realize what it was.

what’s the broader strategy here? I didn’t sense one…they are clinging to the old view “let’s make information available and see what happens,” which I think is a very passive (and often dangerous) way of going about it. I doubt they would be able to topple the Iranian regime with an iPhone app. Voice of America… already tried something similar. It seems like the State Department hopes to solve its political issues via economics: mobile phones will create universal prosperity and that will somehow guarantee democracy and human rights everywhere.  Maybe. Unless, of course, authoritarian governments develop even greater immunity to information, which will make the State Department’s job much harder.

More crudely, Clinton has a solution in search of a problem.

Internet Freedom

Secretary Clinton gave a speech today on internet freedom and announced a fascinating new policy for D&G technophiles:

…let’s say I want to create a mobile phone application that would allow people to rate government ministries on their responsiveness, efficiency, and level of corruption. The hardware required to make this idea work is already in the hands of billions of potential users. And the software involved would be relatively inexpensive to develop and deploy. If people took advantage of this tool, it would help us target foreign assistance spending, improve lives, and encourage foreign investment in countries with responsible governments – all good things. However, right now, mobile application developers have no financial incentive to pursue that project on their own and the State Department lacks a mechanism to make it happen. This initiative should help resolve that problem, and provide long-term dividends from modest investments in innovation. We’re going to work with experts to find the best structure for this venture, and we’ll need the talent and resources of technology companies and non-profit organizations in order to get the best results.

I agree, this would be very easy to design. I hope they follow through with this. Given how cheap and easy it would be to set up, even a small non-profit could afford to do it.

In the speech she also mentioned by name one of the delegates from the set of conferences we sponsored last fall in the Middle East who is visiting us this week:

…last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir – who is thankfully no longer in prison – is with us today.

Bassem and the other delegates met with Secretary Clinton for about 10 minutes yesterday. She invited Bassem on the spot. I guess you can say Clinton she is on my good side now.