
Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon - maxfan8
https://onezero.medium.com/authoritarian-nations-are-turning-the-internet-into-a-weapon-10119d4e9992
======
mc32
>"But the extraordinary case draws attention to how dictatorships are
increasingly using technology to crush online dissent."

Yes, authoritarian regimes control communication. That's been the case for
over a century of radio and mass circulation dailies. It's nothing new.

What is new is that even democratic countries are controlling free speech via
speech laws or often the private companies engaging in evaluating what's
permissible speech and not above and beyond what laws require. To wit what
comprises "hate speech". It's basically come to mean "point of view in
disagreement with my group's current position which may change in the future"

~~~
wwweston
"Hate speech" has specific functional meanings when it comes to legal
jurisdictions in which it applies. The idea that it's a tool for arbitrary
suppression of disagreement is approximately correct as the idea that any
other limitation on free speech (libel, slander, fire in a crowded theater,
verbal assault, time place manner, etc) can be used arbitrarily -- which is to
say, generally incorrect, although interpretation and application of the law
matters (libel or time place manner judgments have been used to mute speech).

Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse
that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free
to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.

Private companies: not that different in the fundamentals, but there are
additional issues that lean towards both the right of ownership to speak and
restrict speech that comes through them. _You_ likely wouldn't want anyone to
force you to repeat ideas you believe are incorrect, or contrary to key
personal interests even where narrowly correct, or even lead to effects you
find personally undesirable. If freedom of speech means anything, it has to
include some measure of judgment about what your personal faculties are used
to express, and to some more moderated extent what/how your property is used.
There may be balancing concerns in the latter case, but whether we're at that
point is another issue. Again, I can think of very little in the realm of
valuable discourse that's been walled off here; if there's anything at all, I
suspect the relevant mechanism is essentially social values that are held
widely enough that contrary expressions bring social consequences, and while
you can create some spaces for robust contrary discussion ("safe spaces", if
you like), you can't eliminate the kickback from broad social consequences
without treading more heavily on other liberties of equal or greater
importance to speech.

Honestly, if there's any issue at all here, it's that there has never been an
EASIER time to express ideas -- even very unpopular ones -- quite widely, and
it's the way that these ideas carry widely that's leading to a level of
tension that people are still figuring out how to manage.

And really, this is the weaponization issues: 50 years ago, authoritarian
countries didn't have the capabilities of broadcasting ideas or disinformation
into your average household, much less an individual handheld device. A world-
of-ends internet means that they do.

~~~
1000units
I too am alarmed by these spooky disinformation campaigns.

I just googled "what party was abraham lincoln in" and a big box popped up at
the top saying "National Union Party". I've never even heard of this party. I
assume its a euphemism sinister people use like "Democratic People's
Republic".

~~~
mikeyouse
Is this sarcasm? Lincoln was in the National Union Party during the civil war
since he wanted to keep the Union together. It was a temporary 'rebranding' of
the Republican party for the Presidential Election to attract members who
wouldn't take the Republican name but were sympathetic to the Union.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_\(United_States\))

~~~
ailideex
He was elected initially as a republican and was a republican for much longer
than he was in the "National Union Party" \- I think the result from google is
clearly deceptive.

~~~
mikeyouse
Are people honestly insinuating that Google's algorithm is hiding the party of
Abe Lincoln as some sort of slight against modern Republicans? What in the
world... how could anyone believe that?

Is that bizarre conspiracy theory more likely or that their search results
scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln)

Lo and behold, it reports that Strom Thurmond was a Republican
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond))
and Jeff Van Drew is too
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Van_Drew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Van_Drew)),
even though both were Democrats for substantial periods in the past.

~~~
Mirioron
Is it a persecution complex when many of these kinds of "technical errors"
seem to so often befall people from one political persuasion? Some of them
clearly weren't errors and that has happened enough that people stop believing
that it's just an error, because these companies have demonstrated in the past
that they don't mind doing moves such as that.

~~~
notahacker
Yes. The fact that the OP had never heard of the National Union Party and
jumped immediately to the conclusion that is was a 'euphemism sinister people
use' rather than spend 30 seconds confirming that this was in fact the name of
the party he represented as President at the time of his death is ample
evidence of a persecution complex. Propensity to assume one's own ignorance of
facts is evidence of malfeasance on the part of one's opponents is pretty much
the definition of persecution complex.

~~~
1000units
I was being facetious; it appears it is your theory of mind which is lacking.
Of course, this is no grave fault of yours. Noticing these subtle tricks takes
special acuity. After a few dozen more Google queries and even examination of
several different platforms entirely, the picture becomes much clearer.

------
fredley
The whole industry of advertising as we understand it today was created by
those who had done propaganda during the first and second world war, and
realised they could apply their skills in the field of business.

To learn the history of propaganda, advertising and how it is embedded deeply
in our current political machine, watch _The Century of the Self_ , a 2002
documentary:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04)

~~~
mc32
Kinda but advertising was called propaganda in some places before the term was
marred by WWII and was afterwards rebranded as advertising.

~~~
mAEStro-paNDa
It was rebranded "public relations", as noted in the referenced documentary. A
central figure in the film is Edward Bernays, who was referred to as "the
father of public relations".

~~~
stOneskull
A very interesting character he is

------
roenxi
"Authoritarian Nations are..." makes it sound like the same trends aren't
prevalent everywhere.

The cost of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the law is dropping very
rapidly. Cameras, automated monitoring systems, etc, have all blossomed since
around 2007 when phones suddenly became computers and cameras in one fell
swoop.

It is no longer a default expectation that someone can commit a crime without
being detected. Or do anything without it being recorded in triplicate on the
internet. We'd better all hope we aren't doing anything the government doesn't
like!

~~~
datashow
I'm not sure what is your point, authoritarian or democratic does not make a
difference? Both kind of nations have same kind of access to citizens' private
information? Both use the monitoring for the same purpose? US is throwing
people who offended Trump online into jail like China is doing for Xi?

I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by
making nonsensical and shameless equalization.

Plug:

China Sentences Wang Yi, Christian Pastor, to 9 Years in Prison
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-wang-
yi-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-wang-yi-christian-
sentence.html)

Kaifeng Jewish Community Suffers New Suppression
[https://bitterwinter.org/kaifeng-jewish-community-suffers-
ne...](https://bitterwinter.org/kaifeng-jewish-community-suffers-new-
suppression/)

Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of Workers
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-
xinjiang...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-xinjiang-
muslims-labor.html)

~~~
elfexec
As opposed to what we are doing to Assange? Or carrying out a coup against a
democratically elected president in Bolivia ( Yes, I know he legally ran for a
4th time, but then so did angela merkel...). Do you know the largest "worker"
population in the US is our prison population?

> I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by
> making nonsensical and shameless equalization.

Okay. How about this. A democracy is responsible for a 100 holocausts in the
US with our extermination of the native. A democracy dropped nukes on hundreds
of thousands of civilians. A democracy pioneered human experimentation. A
democracy instituted racial slavery. A democracy has killed tens of millions
of people around the world after ww2. A democracy has stolen the most land and
resources around the world.

Democracy or authoritarian, both are capable of all kinds of evil. By any
objective measure, the most evil nation to have ever exist was a democracy.

Now flip it. An authoritarian regime lifted 800 million people out of poverty.
Easily the greatest humanitarian achievement in human history. The greatest
human good in human history was achieved by those "evil" authoritarians.

If we are going to worry about the internet being weaponized, I think we
should be worried about it whether "authoritarian" or "democratic".

~~~
aglavine
Evo Morales commited fraud.

------
talkingtab
Invasive advertising is a kind of propaganda - information that is intended to
manipulate people. Bruce Schneier said that surveillance was the business
model of the internet, but perhaps more precisely, propaganda is the business
model of the internet. At least the user facing part of it.

Put simply, we have come to accept that it is okay for businesses to
manipulate people, so it should not come as much of a surprise that other
entities will use that same well-oiled machinery for their own purposes.

~~~
johnday
I think it's easier and more correct to view it the other way round:
propaganda is a form of advertising. Specifically it's political advertising
which intends to bring you round to some viewpoint.

Viewed this way it's much easier to see the evils that advertising can and
does propagate.

~~~
pelliphant
Isn't it easier to see the evil parts of advertising if one calls it a form of
propaganda than the other way around?

In my opinion: using the first sentence of the wikipedia articles for
advertising and propaganda, I would argue that advertising is a sub-set of
propaganda:

Propaganda is information that is used primarily to influence an audience and
further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts
selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded
language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the
information that is presented.

Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored,
non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea.

~~~
johnday
Why is it that advertising is (in your opinion) only openly sponsored and non-
personal? I receive plenty of targeted, personal messages which I consider
advertising, from mail to abandoned cart notifications. And there are
definitely adverts online which do not make the sponsored aspect clear.

~~~
pelliphant
Hm, I'm actually not sure where I draw the line for what is avdertising and
what is not.

The part about non-personal is copy-pasted from:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising)

And the 3rd sentence on that page is: "It differs from personal selling in
that the message is non-personal, i.e., not directed to a particular
individual."

I would probably say that it is still advertising if it is using some form of
automated targeting, such as: buying a list of people who just got kids and
sending them a letter with their name printed on it.

But If someone stopped me on the street and asked if I have heard about the
latest pyramid scheme, I would not call advertising but rather "personal
selling"

------
bayesian_horse
It seems like this is a return to the normal. Before the internet, repressive
regimes had an easier time censoring mass media, monitoring telecommunications
and stop organizing efforts.

The major problem isn't so much the surveillance technology, but the intent
and power of those governments. The solution must be political, rather than
technological, if only because politics can eventually tackle any technology.

~~~
adamsea
> if only because politics can eventually tackle any technology.

This. 100%. I think a lot of technologists struggle with this for various
(understandable) reasons.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I remember, in the mid-1980s, I was attending an event called MacHack (long
since gone the way of the dodo). There was an Australian gentleman there, who
was writing database code as a contractor for the Sultan of Oman. It was
basically a "people tracker," and he expressed misgivings about its use (not
enough to prevent him from taking the money, though).

In the US, people think that keeping guns is some sort of guarantor of
freedom.

I posit that the computer database is the single biggest threat to freedom on
Earth. It's just a bit more difficult to understand databases, so we ignore
them, and keep updating our Facebook status.

~~~
at_a_remove
_Database Nation_ (Simson Garfinkel, 2000) was a nice intro to the topic. I
agree that the abstraction into a computer jargon renders the topic more
distant, somehow, to people than the Violent Femmes bit: "I hope you know that
this will go down on your permanent record."

------
woah
> If an app — let’s say Uber — adopts our tech, you would be able to use Uber
> [without the internet],” says Jorge Ribs, CEO of Bridgefy

There have been a few of these phone mesh startups (OpenGarden, RightMesh,
Bridgefy) over the years, and they all seem to dramatically oversell the
abilities of a phone's radio.

Basic physics mean that a network made up of only phones will be extremely
slow, even if everyone has the app. Text messages delivered unreliably is
probably the best you're going to get in the foreseeable future.

I'm sure it's tempting to embellish the abilities of one's technology to
investors and press, but the quote above is obviously false.

~~~
Spooky23
Today, in consumer space you are correct.

If you look at some of the military and police radios, they can build 10Gb
mesh networks.

~~~
lalos
An example would be the mesh network in NYC
[https://www.nycmesh.net](https://www.nycmesh.net)

~~~
woah
They use dedicated radios with good lines of sight (mounted very high up), and
aimed reflectors. Not phones with tiny battery-powered radios. NYCMesh is
basically just a nonprofit ISP.

------
0xmohit
It's been 150 days that internet has been blocked in Kashmir by the Indian
government.

The Indian government routinely blocks internet in various parts of the
country. They recently even blocked it in the national capital, Delhi.

------
einpoklum
This story seems to focus on the minor offenses, ignoring the huge one - not
seeing the forest from the trees.

> Twitter employees ... spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia ... passed private
> information about more than 6,000 Twitter users

2 employees, 6,000 spied on. How about: All employees, everybody spied on?
Hundreds of millions of people?

> For most people, the news sparked concerns that companies like Twitter are
> failing to keep user information secure

For the rest of us, no concern was sparked, because we:

1\. Know that some companies were always about selling user information to
advertisers and other interested parties, and

2\. Noticed when Ed Snowden revealed that the large companies (Google,
Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, maybe others) transmit all user information
to the US government.

It seems like a lot of US media has been making an effort - one might say an
active effort - to have the knowledge of mass (US) government surveillance
fade out of our memories.

> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described cybersecurity as “an arms race,”

It's more of a quarrel among thieves. Facebook has the "loot" \- users'
information, which is not kept safe from the company itself (though in many
ways it could!) - and whoever has access to the loot can pass it on to other
seedy elements.

> As governments get better at imposing online censorship

Censorship is a crude, blunt instrument. Governments try it and mostly fail.
It's much more effective to drown stories out with noise and junk and drivel;
or to create strung prejudice which prevents people from being open to regime-
undesirable opinions and positions.

------
aey
Unpopular opinion: Its a sign of the world becoming more liberal and free.
These kinds of weapons don’t directly kill hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s propaganda wars. Let’s hope all future wars are fought only on the
internet.

~~~
newguy1234
Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people. Les not forget that Hitler
was able to turn his conspiracy theory ideas about what should happen to the
Jews into reality. Germany pre-hitler's rise was a vibrant democracy with many
political parties.

~~~
paganel
> Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people.

Quoting Albert Speer [1]:

> Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War
> Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical
> means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the
> radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent
> thought."

and to quote Goebbels himself [2], i.e. the Nazis' propaganda minister:

> It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the
> ways we have without the radio...It is no exaggeration to say that the
> German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible
> without the airplane and the radio…[Radio] reached the entire nation,
> regardless of class, standing, or religion. That was primarily the result of
> the tight centralization, the strong reporting, and the up-to-date nature of
> the German radio.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_the_Ministry)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany)

------
pell
Surely not a fan of China's internet censorship or India shutting down the
internet whenever people protest their insane nationalistic politics, but
let's not forget what the NSA from the land of the "free" does.

~~~
umvi
> but let's not forget what the NSA from the land of the "free" does

Collects tons of data and then does nothing with it?

~~~
chasd00
hah that reminds me of the demotivator "Government, if you hate our problems
just wait until you see our solutions".

------
netcan
Fragmentation is relative, and "weoponization" in the sense described in the
article is global.

That doesn't mean we're equally affected and government type doesn't matter.
If a scary dictatorship gets access to journalist communications, for example,
a scary dictatorship will more aggressively action that.

That said, almost any of these "weaponization" trends happen everywhere and
affect everyone. Strong democracies have certain defenses, but that doesn't
make them immune.

Spying, censorship, propoganda, media manipulation, disruption of activist or
political groups... These uses are growing. Democratic norms and institutions
are not absolute, or necessarily even even effective at preventing abuses of a
totally new communication ecosystem.

It's not as if our high courts, parliaments or whatnot have been breaking new
ground recently. The ground however, keeps moving regardless.

------
guavaNinja
And I couldn't access the link because medium is blocked here in Egypt. The
irony

------
systematical
I'm trying to think of an instance where a government (authoritarian or not)
hasn't used technology to advance its agenda, or more to the point of the
article, for espionage. I can't think of one.

~~~
newguy1234
There isn't one because all governments focus on continuance of their regime
once they've gained a foothold for power.

------
neiman
Nations are turning the internet into a weapon. It's terrible when it comes to
authoritarian nations, as it's so difficult to imagine an upheaval taking
place under internet surveillance, but it's even scarier with democracies.

The law in a democracy is not meant to describe the future. It describes what
people do in the past. But democracies rely on people occasionally breaking
the law in order to evolve and improve. If we use the internet to monitor and
surpass every possible violation, we lose what makes democracies great.

------
0x8BADF00D
This is why decentralized protocols are so important, especially if you live
where govt censorship is rampant. Internet was designed with decentralization
in mind, first and foremost.

~~~
Frost1x
We're heading in the opposite direction because decentralization typically
flies in the face of business interests. It's essentially the Apple IBM 1984
commercial, all over again.

If a business has something to sell, they want to he the central authority of
it, otherwise someone else is making money.

Decentralized technologies/IP can certainly grow inside a given business but
they still want to maintain some sort of stranglehold so as not to make that
IP public if possible or maintain some sort of legal restrictions on its
usage.

------
ljw1001
Companies that collect what could be very sensitive information about people
should be subject to criminal negligence charges if someone comes to harm
because of their carelessness. This is especially true where they promote
highly politicized speech to drive engagement.

Civil suits won't do the trick when the chiefs are super-rich. No court would
ever fine Facebook enough that Mark Zuckerberg could be inconvenienced in the
slightest.

------
lammalamma25
What's the answer? I grew up in the late 2000s and really believed the
internet would challenge existing power structures to change. I think in a lot
of ways it did. Even as a fairly technically sophisticated user I can't seem
to think what to do about the backslide though. Maybe good open source tools?
Maybe a career in cybersecurity? It seems like the bad has more resources and
incentives than the good now.

------
isacikgoz
Being authoritarian should be a property of the governments. I don’t think
nations become intentionally authoritarian.

~~~
smt88
> _I don’t think nations become intentionally authoritarian_

They absolutely do. Most democracies and republics in history have
transitioned to authoritarianism at the behest of their own citizens.
Centralized power is seen as a route to fast, urgent reform. The most famous
example, of course, is Julius Caesar's assumption of power.

This is partially why "populist" can have a negative connotation in political
or historical discussions. Putin is (supposedly) very popular, and Stalin is
still remembered fondly by a surprising number[1] of Russians. South America
has had tons of popular authoritarians, like Juan Perón[3], Alberto
Fujimori[4], and Getúlio Vargas.

1\. [https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
countries/articles/2019-05-...](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
countries/articles/2019-05-09/stalin-is-more-popular-than-ever-in-russia-
survey-shows)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Fascist_influe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Fascist_influence)

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Fascist_influe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Fascist_influence)

4\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Fujimori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Fujimori)

------
larnmar
Six top level comments, and four of them are of the form “whatabout democratic
nations doing the same thing, huh?”

~~~
supergirl
it wouldn't be news if everyone did it no?

------
m000
Oh those nasty authoritarians! IMHO, that's a pretty narrow point of view,
reminiscent of cold-war rhetoric. There's a 2016 documentary called Black Code
[1] on the weaponization of the internet. While the documentary also focuses
on "authoritarian" nations, their commentary was more insightful:

> it feels, I think to many, exotic and different and it couldn't happen here.
> And I think, in fact, what you're seeing in Syria is this is what happens
> when the risks get higher but the technology is the same.

[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5937964/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5937964/)

------
gen_greyface
Surprised to see India not mentioned in the article.

[https://internetshutdowns.in/](https://internetshutdowns.in/)

------
mrobot
The US had thousands of bots defending the Evo Morales Bolivia coup. Barely
anyone in Bolivia speaks English.

~~~
proc0
Not sure what your point is, but Evo is the authoritarian that would do what
the article is describing. He wanted to be dictator and wanted all kinds of
controls on the people there including media. Also if you ever been there you
will realize the majority of people understand English, if not actually speak
it pretty well.

------
imvetri
Innovations can't win over evil.

------
mrlanderson
The Western Firewall is forming.

------
alerighi
As Stallman said, this technology would have been Stalin's dream.

We must control the amount of data that we put in the hands of others, and we
must do that avoiding the use of services that tracks us, avoid Google,
Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and we must use only encrypted communication. Who
says that in our democratic country in a couple of years will not arrive a
dictator that will use this data that was collected to repress us? To me is
not only possible, but probable, seeing the cult of the strong man in power
that is appreciated nowadays.

------
gcmptra
Yea, must fight back!

------
Razengan
Authoritarian? As if America has NOT been turning the internet into a weapon?

~~~
joejerryronnie
C’mon man, the Internet started out as a weapon.

------
molteanu
I agree, US has always used the internet as a weapon. This being actually in
line with the article's title.

------
aabbcc1241
When talking about censorship, I want to discuss about zeronet.

It appear to be censorship free. Yes, the zite owner can apply censorship, but
anyone can clone the zite and become the new admin (similar to fork in the GUI
of github).

And there is hub mechanism so people can see aggregated content from multiple
zites.

Zeronet may be not as good as the FANG but it's already usable.

~~~
bardan
Zeronet feels too monolithic to be an effective web replacement to me, given
it's almost all delivered through that its frontend. I'm more interested in
systmes like ipfs

------
dmos62
Western business practices is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw
the title. The internet has been a weapon for a while now. The authoritarians
are late to the party and they are putting their specific spin on it, but
we've been doing it for some time now. NSA, Cambridge Analytica, mass
surveillance by big-business, general manipulation through media (e.g. news
outlets, advertisement). The authoritarian regimes function differently, so
they do it differently. I've no sympathy for them, but pointing fingers saying
"they've weaponized the internet" is severe hyperopia.

