

The World Cracks Down on the Internet - iKenshu
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/world-cracks-internet

======
idiotclock
A friend and I were discussing the Brave New World and 1984 once. We took it
for granted that our world resembles one of these dystopias, if not both. She
summarized there difference in terms of access: Orwell's universe depended on
a restriction of information to keep its citizens ignorant of the very concept
of justice; Huxley's world was flooded with information (but only just enough)
and so people couldn't sort the important from the pleasurable.

It seemed like our world was looking more like Huxley's. There is so much crap
in cyberspace that justice is hidden from view (but its out there...).

But the what-seems-like-de-facto centralization of mainstream internet makes
Orwell's fantasy seem all too real. That China uses "strategic, timely"
censorship is only one side of the coin. Surveillance too, whether from
browser cookies or 'telescreens,' is driving us towards an even deeper
conflation of these two nightmares.

~~~
HarrietJones
You may like this letter Huxley wrote to Orwell:

[http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-
world....](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html)

"Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on
indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will
find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust
for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New
World."

------
xnull2guest
This article misses that the United States and allies _do_ use the internet to
spread Western culture and ideas, start revolutions, and kindle insurrection.
It is not just some excuse.

The United States CIA attempted (and nearly succeeded) in inciting a
revolution against Castro by pretending to be a series of grassroots movements
on Twitter and inciting anti-administration feelings within the Cuban
population. That was earlier this year.

"USAID effort to undermine Cuban government with fake ‘Twitter’ another anti-
Castro failure" [1]

The United States has an ongoing effort to use Internet media to
'deradicalize' the next generation of Middle Easterners and actively
manipulates public opinions in Jordan, Cairo, Syria and other Middle Eastern
states. Here are some quotes from one DoD MINERVA paper:

"...it is imperative that we develop empirically-based procedures for
countering messages that promote violent extremism and anti-Western
beliefs..."

"...Neural predictors of Twitter impact in Cairo (UCLA & Egypt). Our prior
work (Falk et al., 2012), indicates that neural responses of a small group can
predict which persuasive messages will be more successful in mass media
campaigns..."

"... Defense Group Inc. already tracks Twitter trends specific to Egypt and
will identify which of the selected Twitter topics went on to be highly
influential over the next month and which did not..." \- Matthew Lieberman,
UCLA, September 30, 2012, Department of Defense MINERVA Initiative [2]

Here's one US company that does it. MARAYA MEDIA - "Driving Intelligent
Dialog". [3]

The United States engages in targeted mass media and social manipulation to
stir dissent in target nations, and to quell dissent where destabilization
would hurt policy objectives.

The DoD's MINERVA project specifically looks to understand the cultural
components of stability of various countries and mechanisms to encourage or
disrupt that stability. Among a great number of social studies you will find
DoD research on how to seed information inside of specific Asian countries,
including China, for the targeted introduction of instability. I will leave
speculations of possible connections to the Hong Kong protests to the reader.
[4]

This should not come as a surprise given the history of the US: The United
States and allies are known to target media in other countries to stir
dissent. Radio Free Europe, "Voice of Iraq" (cough American), the Lincoln
Group infiltrations and partnerships, etc.

But now with global interconnectedness it is easy to set up 'foreign media',
blogs and other politicizing content to influence other nations' populations.

In the past decade it has become a global issue.

This year Egypt sentenced Al Jazeera journalists that they believed were
partnered with geopolitical interests of other states. Putin's administration
is now requiring bloggers to register if they have a certain number of
readers, so that his administration can curtail international influence. China
blocks many American services including Facebook and Google. The usual story
in America is that they are censoring free speech. The truth is that they do
not want foreign influence to destabilize their population and that they do
not want their citizen's data in America's PRISM program (there's a reason
it's called the FISA "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" court).

The Snowden revelations showed us how intelligence agencies are involved in
PsyOps - the term for 'psychological operations' used by the CIA and others.

The GCHQ's BIRDSONG/BADGER/GATEWAY/SLIPSTREAM/ETC and partnership with the NSA
are used to influence online polls, discussion forums and to vote up and down
content that aligns with policy goals. [5][6][7] The giant meta-data graph
created by the NSA is also particularly valuable for 'influencer' and 'social
contagion' analysis (leaks showed they do use it to understand internal chain-
of-command and organization structure for target selection). It's why metadata
matters. A nice illustration of this is the article "Finding Paul Revere."

And so we have issues here with the use of targeted social influence in
America as well. First there are instances where other countries are trying to
incite disruption in the US - the US wants to study and curtail it. [8]

A number of journalists have called out that the state has been extremely
aggressive to dissenting opinions, even to go so far as labeling current
policy on the issue "War on Journalism". American officials have exported a
number of journalists with Middle Eastern descent and journalists like Ayman
Mohyeldin have been pulled from Gaza and other conflicts when reporting has
erred on the side of other state interests. The crackdown on journalism is
worth another post I don't have time to write.

Just look at how central a role controlling internet dialog is for running a
modern US presidency. A Google search for "Obama internet campaign" [9]
results in headlines "How Obama's Internet Campaign Changed Politics", "How
Obama won the internet", "Barack Obama and the Facebook Election", "Propelled
by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency" \- this isn't because of grassroots
discussion but because both Obama and McCain (and Romney before him) had cyber
centers in control of internet PR engaging tens of millions of dollars in
Twitter messages, etc.

You can nudge public opinion by bombarding them with an influx of the same
message, slightly disguised in one way and then another. The MINERVA program
has plenty of good reading with regard to this. Anyway, the USG does this
overseas. It is not merely an excuse these other countries have 'to be evil.'
How Jingoistic.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-
effort-t...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-to-
undermine-cuban-government-with-fake-twitter-another-anti-castro-
failure/2014/04/03/c0142cc0-bb75-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html)

[2] [http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-
Lieberman.pdf](http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf)

[3]
[http://www.marayamedia.com/company.php](http://www.marayamedia.com/company.php)

[4] [http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html](http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html)

[5] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipula...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipulation/)

[6]
[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/22/hacking-
anonymous)

[7] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-
The...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-
Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All)

[8] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/truthy-project-is-
unw...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/truthy-project-is-unworthy-of-
tax-dollars/2014/10/17/a3274faa-531b-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html)

[9]
[https://www.google.com/?q=obama+internet+campaign](https://www.google.com/?q=obama+internet+campaign)

~~~
tokenadult
Most of what you actually quote, rather than what you add as commentary
yourself, says that most of the United States efforts are designed to use
persuasion counter radical movements that would sweep away freedom and
democracy where those movements are active. That's a good thing, in my
opinion. It would have been very good for the world, for example, if something
like that were happening in German in the 1920s. That would have spared the
world a lot of trouble.

~~~
xnull2guest
If you look around the links (especially the MINERVA funded material),
although also Cuba is a great example, there is plenty there in direct
disruption, rather than "counter-radical" (which would mean what, exactly,
when radical means democratic grass-roots self-determined ideas from a people
- NOT from a regime?).

There was a radical shift in American dialog around the turn of the 20th
century (the first revolution of Cuba and the Spanish War) when America's
principles of self-determination and representation were directly challenged
and contradicted by its interests in expanding and obtaining control over
certain areas of the world (Cuba, Philippines).

The language of inalienable rights and of governments of people, by people for
people - of rights to govern coming from the people who are governed - were
morphed into republican imperalist language 'we are bringing those who do not
have democracy/technology/western life what they need, even if it doesn't come
with self determination.' (Neither the people of the Philippines nor Cuba
wanted American rule).

It was ruled by American courts that America could control these regions but
did not need to give the people governed there the full porfolio of rights
garunteed by the Constitution, nor the right to vote.

You see this play out today where the US government will side with
authoritarian regimes _against democratic uprisings of their people_ when the
regimes in question align with Western strategic and diplomatic goals and the
democratic uprisings do not.

It's really hard to actually point and say "yes, this is a place where America
is liberating people and allowing democracy to shine." America is a soft-power
imperalist and has been for around 100 years. This is justified by the
narrative you mention - that America brings with it democracy, etc - but in
the details America pursues its interests first and its ideals later.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's how things have always worked. As far as the US goes, look at the
relationship it had with the Shah of Iran prior to the Iranian theocratic
revolution of 1979; reinstalling the Shah in 1953 (under Eisenhower, though
the plans were presumably laid under Truman) was an overthrow of a
Democratically elected government to suit US and UK oil producers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)

But this isn't IMHO unique to the Anglo-American countries; nations have been
doing this sort of thing for centuries going back to ancient times.

~~~
FeeTinesAMady
Why are you pointing that out? Do you think that because governments have
always been so self-serving and manipulative, that it's okay? If not, then do
you think that that has some relevance to the current discussion? We're
talking about what Western governments are doing today, and what you're doing
- saying that it's not news, and it's always been going on - is a common
technique that they use for shutting down open discussion of these topics.

~~~
tokenadult
_We 're talking about what Western governments are doing today_

What do you mean, "We"? The submitted article purported to be about a
worldwide phenomenon, and on a worldwide basis, what the Western countries and
their democratically elected governments are doing for Internet freedom looks
quite good. On a worldwide basis, regarding Internet freedom, the performance
of China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and a lot of other
countries and their governments is much worse than that of the Western
countries, and yet some participants here who enjoy Western freedom are trying
to shut down the broader discussion here by pointing only to the wrongs of
Western governments. We know a lot more about what the Western governments are
doing than we do about what the other governments are doing precisely because
we live in an environment of much more free press in the West than elsewhere.
This bias in availability of information shouldn't bias all of our discussions
of worldwide issues on Hacker News. (Disclosure: I speak and read languages
other than English and have lived in a non-Western, non-English-speaking
country before, so I don't have a narrow national perspective on this issue,
but rather attempt to have a worldwide perspective on it.)

~~~
FeeTinesAMady
Most of us live in Western nations. And Western nations, unlike the ones you
mentioned, have a veneer of pretending to be free places, but are actually as
oppressive and ruthless as the others to anyone who becomes a real threat. The
right to free speech is rendered impotent in the face of their ability to
infiltrate peaceful protests and sway public opinion.

And you are using some of the very same techniques that they do when you try
to downplay the importance of it.

------
csandreasen
I thought this was interesting perspective from the linked report:

 _The U.S. Constitution includes strong protections for free speech and
freedom of the press. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court held that internet
speech was entitled to the highest form of protection under the constitution,
and lower courts have consistently struck down attempts to regulate online
content. Two federal laws also provide significant protections for online
speech: Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the
Telecommunications Act of 1996) provides immunity for ISPs and online
platforms such as YouTube and Facebook that carry content created by third
parties. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 provides a safe
harbor to intermediaries that take down allegedly infringing material after
notice from the copyright owner. These statutes enable companies to develop
internet applications and websites without fear that they will be held liable
for content posted by users._

Source: [https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2014/united-
stat...](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2014/united-states)

------
HarrietJones
The world is cracking down on the Internet, and each country is bringing its
own tool set to achieving that end.

That Russia, Thailand, China, The Middle East, etc use the rule of law isn't
suprising. It's how these countries work. They have strong leaderships, and
those leaderships do the enforcing.

Western "liberal" nations are ruled via the invisible hand of capitalism, and
that censorship is coming accidentally from these organisations. A popular
website switches off comments. Social Media Companies pull users away from
distributed systems like email and IRC to heavily managed systems like Twitter
and Facebook. Seemingly unrelated light-touch legislation (e.g. copyright) is
used by individuals and corporates to ensure transgressive individuals are
denied a voice and are threatened with job losses and other punishments.

"The world cracks down on the Internet". I'd be a fool to assume that this is
happening everywhere else but where I am.

~~~
rtpg
I'm sorry but nothing is stopping you from throwing down $10 a month on a VPN
and spinning up an IRC server in the US or in most of Europe and complain
about the government or corruption of officials.

~~~
HarrietJones
You're right. As a wealthy person with technical knowledge, nothing is
stopping me from doing this.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is.

------
Shivetya
Its good that governments fear their people. The issue at hand is far too many
in Western nations fail to see the threat to their intellectual freedom, if
not personal freedom.

~~~
Umn55
The enlightenment was wrong about the mind:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ)

