Ronald J. Deibert

International Plug 'n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet, and Global Public Policy

One of the most dramatic changes in world politics has been the rise to prominence of citizen networks. Among the many factors responsible for their emergence are new communication technologies, and in particular the World-Wide Web. Opinions on the nature and significance of these citizen networks, however, are mixed. Some applaud citizen networks as potential counter-hegemonic forces and expressions of democratic participation. Others see them, on the contrary, as undemocratic and largely destructive. Straddling both of these views is a third argument that suggests “real” communities cannot be sustained on the Internet, hence calling into question the long-term viability of citizen networks as actors on the world political stage. To help push these debates further, this article examines the case of the citizen networks that emerged to lobby against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, focusing in particular on how the Internet played a part in the opposition movement. The case suggests that, contrary to those who see new media as an obstacle to global citizen etworks, the Internet and World-Wide Web greatly facilitated their activities. As a consequence, citizen networks will likely continue to grow and expand, intruding into international policymaking processes. The article concludes by examining several global public policy issues that are raised by this shift in the landscape of world politics that will have to be addressed by practitioners of international relations in years to come.

Dark Guests and Great Firewalls: The Internet and Chinese Security Policy

Some believe that the Internet is immune to regulation and is contributing to the demise of the state. Others see the same technology as facilitating surveillance on behalf of states and corporations. To help explore this debate further, this article examines the case of the Internet in China. China—a nondemocratic, authoritarian state—is a “hard case” for those who argue that the Internet cannot be controlled. Even while pushing for the expansion of new information technologies, mostly for economic reasons, China has attempted to maintain strict controls over the Internet. After summarizing the debate outlined above, a review of Chinas Internet security policies is conducted, and the ways in which prodemocracy activists have attempted to circumvent these policies is examined.

`Exorcismus Theoriae': Pragmatism, Metaphors and the Return of the Medieval in IR Theory

Recently, concerns have been raised among a growing and diverse group of IR theorists that the basic concepts and categories we employ to describe, interpret and explain the world around us are no longer useful or illuminating. There is a sense, in other words, that the disciplines predominant way-of-seeing the world — what some have called a state-centric/billiard-ball bias — has become a kind of ontological blinder. This article addresses the question of how we go about shedding this blinder. The main argument is that the prevailing epistemology that underpins mainstream theorizing in the field (referred to in the article as the spectator theory of knowledge) works against such a liberation. The article puts forward an alternative epistemology, called philosophical holism, and distinguishes its main strands. It then describes a method (called therapeutic redescription) that is derived from the American pragmatic strand of this epistemology, and in particular from the work of the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. The article argues that this method can help theorists break free from the conceptual blinders that hold them captive. The final section of the article illustrates how this method could be used in conjunction with recent allusions in the field to neo-medievalism or a new medievalism.

Cyclones in cyberspace: Information shaping and denial in the 2008 Russia–Georgia war

While the rhetoric of cyber war is often exaggerated, there have been recent cases of international conflict in which cyberspace has played a prominent role. In this article, we analyze the impact of cyberspace in the conflict between Russia and Georgia over the disputed territory of South Ossetia in August 2008. We examine the role of strategic communications, information operations, operations in and through cyberspace, and conventional combat to account for the political and military outcomes of the conflict. The August 2008 conflict reveals some emergent issues in cyber warfare that can be generalized for further comparative research: the importance of control over the physical infrastructure of cyberspace, the strategic and tactical importance of information denial, the emergence of cyber-privateering, the unavoidable internationalization of cyber conflicts, and the tendency towards magnifying unanticipated outcomes in cyber conflicts – a phenomenon we call ‘cyclones in cyberspace’.

The geopolitics of internet control: censorship, sovereignty, and cyberspace

What is the impact of the internet on state sovereignty, and in particular on states’ ability to control information flows across their borders? Whereas once the internet was presumed to be a borderless world of free-flowing information, today countries and corporations alike are carving it up in a bewildering array of filtered segments, often with major unintended consequences. The motivations for these practices range widely, from concerns over national security, cultural sensitivities, and protection of social values, to rent seeking and the protection of economic monopolies. Whereas once it was conventional wisdom to believe that the internet’s technological infrastructure was immune to control, today states and corporations are applying an ever-increasing level of skill and technological sophistication to precisely that mission. The result is that rather than being a single seamless environment, the internet a user connects to and experiences in Canada is far different than an internet a user experiences in Iran, China, or Belarus. This chapter provides an overview of the geopolitics of internet control, and in particular state efforts to control information flows across borders, with comparative data from over 22 countries.

A method for identifying and confirming the use of URL filtering products for censorship

Products used for managing network traffic and restricting access to Web content represent a dual-use technology. While they were designed to improve performance and protect users from inappropriate content, these products are also used to censor the Web by authoritarian regimes around the globe. This dual use has not gone unnoticed, with Western governments placing restrictions on their export. Our contribution is to present methods for identifying installations of URL filtering products and confirming their use for censorship. We first present a methodology for identifying externally visible installations of URL filtering products in ISPs around the globe. Further, we leverage the fact that many of these products accept user-submitted sites for blocking to confirm that a specific URL filtering product is being used for censorship. Using this method, we are able to confirm the use of McAfee SmartFilter in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Netsweeper in Qatar, the UAE, and Yemen. Our results show that these products are being used to block a range of content, including oppositional political speech, religious discussion and gay and lesbian material, speech generally protected by international human rights norms.

Hacking Networks of Terror

That we in North America face a new kind of threat is beyond question. The attacks against the heartland of the United States, its corporate and military icons, and the killing of over 3,000 civilians, mark a watershed in thinking about security. It is almost two hundred years since civilians in North America have been the object of systematic attack, and even longer since the core of the hegemonic power was struck from the periphery. The important analytical and political questions are What kind of threat do we face? What is the appropriate response to that threat? In other words, what are the appropriate ways to think about dealing with a threat from a nonstate actor with no fixed location or permanently defined territorial assets?

Deep Probe: The Evolution of Network Intelligence

Over the last several decades, civil society activists and non-governmental organizations have been employing new information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, to facilitate their activities. At the same time, an increasing number of computer scientists, hackers, and engineers have become increasingly politicized, contributing their skills to security, privacy, and networking tools used by civil society organizations worldwide. The merging of these two social forces, and their sophisticated uses of technology for political action, is giving rise to a new form of distributed information and communication networking that I refer to as ‘network intelligence’.

Typographica: The medium and the medieval-to-modern transformation

There is an emerging consensus among a growing body of scholars that the present era is one in which fundamental change is occurring. Among International Relations theorists, for example, John Ruggie has argued that we are witnessing ‘a shift not in the play of power politics but of the stage on which that play is performed’. Similarly, James Rosenau contends that the present era constitutes a historical break leading to a ‘postinternational politics’, while Mark Zacher has traced the ‘decaying pillars of the Westphalian Temple’. This belief in epochal change is mirrored outside of the mainstream of International Relations theory in, for example, pronouncements of the emergence of ‘the information age’, ‘post-industrialism’, ‘post-Fordism’, or, more generally, ‘postmodernism’. While these analyses differ widely in terms of their foci and theoretical concerns, there is at least one common thread running through each of them: the recognition that current transformations are deeply intertwined with developments in communications technologies, popularly known as the ‘information revolution’.

Electronic privacy and surveillance

The confluence of big data, data analytics, and connected devices is facilitating electronic surveillance and compromising privacy in unprecedented ways. This panel brings together voices with a diverse set of experiences and interests to discuss electronic privacy and surveillance, and the contributions the human-computer interaction community can make in this arena. Topics will include the usability of privacy tools, how to design interactive technologies with privacy as a primary consideration while incorporating user-centered design practices, and how to manage the technical complexity involved in privacy tools while enabling users to make wise choices.