The Neolithic Revolution was
symbolized by the invention of wheel. The Industrial Revolution is marked by
the coming of steam engine. And the face of the Information Revolution is the
Internet. What is common amongst these three revolutions spanned across tens of
thousands of years in mankind’s history is perhaps that each one of them
changed the way man lived forever. And this they achieved by increasing the
span of the possibilities of human interactions and by increasing human
productivity.
The wheel increased human reach and
made it possible for them to travel faster and farther – seeing and learning
from each other. Human knowledge quickly spread and ‘accidents’ such as
agriculture were adopted widely and perfected upon. The steam increased human
productivity and made specialization of labor possible on a scale witnessed
never before. Knowledge was specialized upon and production increased further.
Internet dismantled the barriers to communication and brought people closer
together than ever before.
A new Age was thus ushered in. Expressing
oneself to others became cheaper and freer compared to the traditional media
forms. Sharing and accessing information was now at the stroke of keys (later
‘touches’). And all this could be done in the comfort of great anonymity which
a heavily crowded place offers. Technologies evolved and privacy of
communications was ensured to a great degree too. It seemed that free speech,
privacy and transparency would be the cornerstones of this new internet based
Age.
With the above advantages, the use
and importance of internet grew exponentially. And once it became too big to
ignore, the usual counter forces of free speech, privacy and transparency
arrived. The traditional conflict groups emerged and began to carry on their
activities on internet as well.
These traditional conflicts can be divided
broadly into three categories –
(i) governments vs governments (G2G);
(ii)
governments vs people (G2P); and
(iii) people vs people (P2P).
It seems that the internet has
became the new battleground of these traditional conflict forms. In the
following, we will examine each type of these struggles. We will then examine
if it is possible to reduce, if not eliminate altogether, such conflicts and
how alternatively internet can be used in a constructive way to promote well
being for all.
I. Governments vs Governments (G2G)
Conflicts
The G2G conflicts have emerged
mainly as a result of the extension of the traditional interstate rivalry to
this medium in the form of cyber wars. It reminds us of the nuclear race age
and the space race age. The advantage offered by internet has made most
governments rely on it even for their most critical security systems. In many
countries, entire government communications, traffic, fire, electricity
systems, strategic commands, nuclear stations all rely on internet for their
functioning. And this dependence is used by the other states to spy, steal and
sabotage such systems. The host government then creates its own defensive and
offensive cyber security architecture and a war ensues in the cyber space. This
form of warfare is called cyber warfare and in future it will become the most
important mode of warfare.
The recent US-China spat accusing
and warning each other over such activities is a worrying example. The use of
sophisticated Stuxnet virus which paralyzed hundreds of Iranian centrifuges and
the Flame virus which transmitted volumes of key Iranian security data to its
foes is another example of the damage it can do. Even India is not immune from
cyber warfare attacks and there are reports of our critical cyber assets
getting hit time and again. To counter such attacks, we have created a cyber
security architecture involving agencies such as CERT-In and NTRO.
However, the incidence,
sophistication and damage caused by cyber attacks is only increasing. Thus,
before it leads to irretrievable deterioration of international relations as
the nuclear race and the space race before it threatened to do, it is essential
that the major powers of the world today sit down and devise international standards,
MoUs and threat mitigating mechanisms guiding the use of cyberspace in warfare.
A related issue here is the control
over the critical internet architecture including the DNS. Currently most of it
is located in / controlled by US based entities. The naming allocation system
i.e. the DNS is controlled by ICANN, major payment gateways are controlled by
US companies, most of the major social media websites and search engines are US
based. This gives that country immense advantage over the others in the cyber
space. The US has resisted the calls to give away this control to international
organizations citing the threat to free speech, privacy and transparency of
ordinary people from the authoritarian regimes in many other countries.
However, as the recent PRISM revelations have shown, it itself doesn’t shy away
from violating these principles for its own benefit. The real reason, then
perhaps is that it doesn’t want to share the control of internet and the power
it gives with others.
However, such an exclusive control
is not only detrimental to peaceful international relations, but is also a
threat to the principles of free speech, privacy and transparency. Here again
we need an international treaty (like the one on outer space where all parties
accepted it as a common resource and agreed to its peaceful use) putting the
critical internet architecture under UN control and explicitly seeking to
preserve the above principles.
Also, it would be unfair to say that
internet exists only as a battleground in the international sphere. Let us not
forget the role it plays in increasing coordination among various state
parties. Things such as sharing of tax information and information on money
laundering among various states would have been very time consuming without internet.
The work of many UN based agencies, many international government sponsored
research projects, have received a tremendous boost from the internet. Thus
what we need is only to evolve international standards and principles guiding
the use of internet like we did earlier for nuclear weapons and outer space.
II Governments vs People (G2P)
Conflicts
Internet has demolished
communication barriers and thus has facilitated people to people communication
greatly. This has made it a very useful tool to mobilize people bypassing the
traditional media. Thus regimes after regimes in the Middle East blew apart in
the winds of the Arab Spring and the ordinary people there were organized
against the government not by the traditional media but by the social media services
like twitter.
And who can forget the photograph of
the Egyptian woman in the blue bra being lifted and manhandled by the police?
Or that of a lone man being stripped and beaten mercilessly by the state
police? The standing man of Turkey has become the face of the ‘new’ passive
resistance movement there. Nearby in Bangladesh, it were the bloggers and not
the media houses or political parties who created a nation wide movement
opposing the religious fundamentalist forces there accused of committing unspeakable
war crimes. Perhaps if Tianammen Square had happened today, its outcome would
have been completely different and the ‘tank man’ would have been the biggest
hero of our times?
What internet has done is to turn
ordinary people like you and me into journalists and given us a potentially
viral audience. These photographs and videos were captured live by ordinary
people, uploaded on youtube or social media and within minutes went viral
getting millions of hits. And telling the tale of oppression in its rawest
form, they quickly build more public opinion and thousands more pour in next
day to join the protests. Even in otherwise ‘peaceful’ times, various popular
social media pages and handles constantly build a public opinion against the
unpopular acts of the government, be it corruption, inflation, casteism or
communalism / pseudo secularism. The traditional media is today, unfortunately,
involved in dubious connections with business houses and political parties
(even the recent TRAI report says over 80% of the news channels in India
including some of the biggest ones are loss making and receive questionable
private funding from time to time) and the Chinese wall between the editorial
management and owners no longer exists. People’s trust in it is going down and
internet has emerged as the medium where speech has never been freer, more
private and transparency never higher than ever before.
But clearly with the internet
becoming so influential and a potential ‘threat’ the governments of the day
could no longer afford to sit back. Internet had to be monitored and public
opinion sensed and movements quelled before they could be born. Almost sounding
like a plot of some sci-fi movie are the revelations made by Edward Snowden
about the PRISM program. Shocking… what we thought was private was being
snooped upon by the government. It is an open secret how the authoritarian
Middle East regimes forced the ISPs to provide information about the twitter
handles of the protestors and how arrests were made overnight. Even in our own
country, a day after the PRISM revelations, the government disclosed that it is
planning to constitute the Coordination Committee on Cyber Space (CCCS) to
better carry out snooping activities on internet communications. Blocking of
social media pages and twitter handles by executive action is not unusual in
our country as we have seen lately in the wake of disturbances following the
Rohingya muslim violence in Myanmar when the handles / blogs of various right
wing and anti-corruption activists were blocked by executive action without
giving any explanations. The arrests of the ‘facebook girls’ of Thane and the
Jadhavpur University professor for ‘irking’ the state chief minister are other
glaring examples of arbitrary executive action against free speech and privacy
on internet.
What is common in the above cases is
that everywhere the governments claim to be doing such actions to protect
people’s lives by projecting such actions as important tools in fighting
terrorism or maintaining public order. Such a claim cannot be dismissed off
hand. Terrorists and social miscreants have grown sophisticated today and use
the privacy and freedom of speech offered by internet to further their own
causes. How easy it has now become for some intelligence agency of some country
to mobilize people in the Arab countries sitting thousands of miles away or for
the terrorist organizations and intelligence agency in our neighborhood country
to fuel communal violence in our country. Such activities need to be spied upon
and curbed before lives are lost.
But in doing so we must respect one
principle almost universally accepted in all national / international laws.
Action taken should be proportionate to the threat perceived. For otherwise, a
brute force action can result in culling even the genuine birds and not just
the sick ones. There are many reasons for that. First, almost everywhere such
executive actions do not have any legal backing. Even if legal backing is
there, the proceedings are shrouded in so much secrecy that it becomes very
difficult to establish if the principle was followed. Second, power corrupts.
Giving so much power in executive hands will make it prone to use such power
not only in public interest but also to defend its own interests. So while
targeting the terrorists, it may begin to target the political opponents, civil
society, important citizens who speak differently from what it wants. There are
allegations time and again against the misuse of IB for political reasons. What
can assure us that the fate of internet snooping authority would be any
different?
Perhaps what we need is a clear
cyber snooping law laying down transparent mechanisms and effective oversight
mechanisms to ensure that while citizen lives are protected against terrorism
and other miscreants, genuine dissent is not curbed. The law must protect the
public, not the public office holders.
At the same time, the constructive
role played by the internet in promoting government – people interaction and
the three ideals of free -speech, privacy and transparency cannot be overlooked.
It has strengthened the RTI – its procedures have become so easy now and
various departments have made their information easily accessible to the public
by putting it on their websites. It has increased citizen awareness about
government policies and laws. It has increased citizen participation in
governmental activities. Citizens can now directly send their comments to the
various committees setup to examine different issues. The finance minister
makes himself available on Google hangout to explain the budget to the general
public. The Planning Commission’s ‘Hackathon’ is an innovative way of
increasing citizen participation and awareness about the major programmes
shaping the destiny of the nation in next few years. And the ‘Open Data’
movement is such an important step where most of the data generated by the use
of public funds would be shared with the general public. This would not only
increase transparency but also lead to better analytics and ultimately better
policy formulation and implementation.
III People vs People (P2P) Conflicts
The battle over free speech, privacy
and transparency on the internet is also being fought among the people
themselves. And these manifest most openly around the issues surrounding
defamation, pornography and intellectual property protection. The Indian
Constitution subjects free speech to the restriction of defamation and morality
(among others) and internet is no exception. But what complicates the issue
here is the nature of the technology which renders the traditional methods of
media control either ineffective or too aggressive.
Recently there was the case of a
video containing explicit sexual activity involving a leading politician from
the ruling party. He rightfully obtained a court order to restrain the
circulation of the video and its removal. However, when the original video was
removed, many other copies sprang up from different locations. When they were
removed, many more would come up. This was because of the ease which internet
offers in sharing content. The traditional methods were rendered virtually
ineffective.
On the other side of the scale is
the case of defamation suits filed by Arindam Choudhary of IIPM. He uses court
orders to indiscriminately block any and every site hosting content critical of
IIPM or himself. That the truthfulness of the allegedly ‘defamatory’ content is
not verified while giving the blocking orders is justified saying they are not
final verdicts but only interim injunctions to provide immediate relief to the
complainant. This way even the UGC website carrying an official circular that
IIPM is not recognized by it was blocked! And that the bloggers and websites
hosting the content are not given a chance to defend themselves before being
blocked is justified by erroneously claiming in many cases that due to the
nature of internet it is not possible to reach out to the other party. And
while implementing the blocking orders, entire websites are found to have been
blocked instead of those specific sections only which hosted the allegedly
‘defamatory’ content. Criminal cases are filed in courts in the far flung areas
of the country and thus the blogger is effectively bulldozed into silence by
the sheer power of Mr. Choudhary’s institutions irrespective of the final
verdict of the court.
The above cases clearly highlight
that the courts, the executive, the implementing agencies need to understand
the nature of the technology better and such ways need to be evolved which
strike a fine balance between defamation and free speech. What makes this issue
more delicate than the traditional media forms is that while in the traditional
media, both sides are likely to be big with the capacity to fight it out in the
courts, on the internet, one side is an ordinary citizen unable to match the
might of the other side and thus likely to be silenced by the mere threat of
legal action.
Similar is the case of intellectual
property protection. Internet has given a great boost to piracy and has
resulted in great loss to the content generators and copyright holders.
Traditional methods have been found to be ineffective. On the other hand are
the blanket John Doe orders obtained by many filmmakers recently (for example
Singham) which led to blanket ban on file sharing websites. The SOPA/PIPA acts
were perceived as being too stringent and crude in their attempt to protect
IPRs and unsurprisingly witnessed some of the biggest online protests which
included some of the biggest internet names like Wikipedia.
Thus again a need is highlighted to
step out of the traditional thinking and draft laws and regulations which
strike a fine balance as has been done for the other form of media in the past.
At the same time the constructive impact of internet in spreading harmony among
people while at the same time promoting free speech, privacy and transparency
should also be emphasized. Various geographical / functional unit / interest
based groups have emerged which lead to greater people to people interaction
and exchange of thoughts. One can stay in touch with her loved ones in a safe
and private way (at least private from other people if not the government).
Activists dedicated to the same cause now collaborate on the internet through
multi authored blogs, social media pages and online forums, educating people
and thus promoting transparency in the system.
Conclusion
Thus in the conclusion, it must be
accepted the internet is emerging as a new battleground for various kind of
conflicts. But this is because it is a new technology and clear rules of the
games are not established. This is not a new phenomenon and has happened in the
past every time a new technology has surfaced. So we need to sit down and
devise universally acceptable standards and guidelines which strike the fine
balance of preserving free speech, privacy and transparency while at the same
time protecting people’s lives and dignity, maintaining national security and
safeguarding intellectual property. At the same time we must recognize the constructive
role played by the internet and strive to build upon it.
------source by Gaurav Agarwal
