Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age

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J U N E 2 0 1 1Internet FreedomA Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age26 |basic technical training teaches users how toidentify and verify certificate authorities andSecure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates – the popupboxes that verify the authenticity and securityof a website – to help minimize the number ofstate surveillance intrusions that users inadvertentlyauthorize. Still other programs teach basic“cyber hygiene” practices to activists who maynot be technologically proficient, which includeconstructing strong passwords, avoiding keystrokelogging in Internet cafes, preventing theinadvertent download of malicious code and usingHypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS),which encrypts online sessions.The State Department has spent approximately 20million dollars since 2008 on programs to developcircumvention technologies and promote digitalactivism, and planned to award more than 25 milliondollars in additional funding in 2011. 98 TheState Department has been criticized for delays indisbursing funding for Internet-freedom relatedtechnologies. According to a congressional report,the State Department received 50 million dollars inappropriations for Internet freedom programmingsince Fiscal Year 2008, but had disbursed less thanhalf by February 2011. 99 Partly as a result, in April2011 Congress reallocated 10 million dollars fromthe State Department to the Broadcasting Board ofGovernors (BBG) – which reduced State’s Internetfreedom budget by a third and more than quintupledthe BBG’s budget in this area. Separately,the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA), which is part of the Department ofDefense, funds the development of circumventiontechnologies that would allow the U.S. military toaccess the Internet safely and anonymously. 100There are good reasons for the BBG to take thelead on providing most circumvention and anonymitytechnologies. It is an operational entitythat currently provides an array of circumventiontechnologies, and develops some of themin-house. Should State and the BBG both fundcircumvention technologies, they will likely endup funding the same outside groups. State will,however, need to continue supporting circumventiontechnologies whose use falls outside the BBG’smission of promoting U.S. government-sponsoredinternational broadcasting. State has proposedfunding projects such as mobile security applicationsand ad-hoc mesh networking (decentralizednetworks that rely on individual nodes to transmitdata) for use when the Internet is shut down, whichinclude both circumvention and anonymizingcomponents. State should also retain the lead onsupporting other technologies that fall outside theBBG’s mission and current technical competence,including tools to establish secure human rightsdatabases, online hubs for censored comment, andso on. 101Shaping International NormsThe Bush and Obama administrations have bothsought to promote Internet freedom by shapinginternational norms. Developing internationalnorms is a long-term, global objective. Somecountries that currently repress that Internetaccess – like China, Iran and Burma – areunlikely to be moved by normative trends in thenear term; statements at the United Nations andpolicy declarations supporting Internet freedomare highly unlikely to change their current policies.But promoting Internet freedom is not onlya near-term effort, and current efforts may pay offin the long run. Many countries have not yet fullydeveloped their own Internet policies or thoughtthrough all of the implications of Internetfreedom and repression even in the short run –including states in Central Asia, the Middle Eastand Africa. Shaping the behavior of those statesshould be an important goal of the United Statesand likeminded partners.Rather than advocating a new international treatyor new regimes, the U.S. government has arguedthat the principles of Internet freedom already existin the UDHR and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights. Article 19 of the UDHRstates that the right to free expression exists in anymedium and on any frontier, and Article 20 protectsthe right of everyone to peacefully assembleand associate, a right that Clinton has argued isguaranteed in cyberspace as well. 102At the same time, the U.S. government has triedto codify norms that would reinforce free expressionand block efforts to restrict it. The 2005 WorldSummit on the Information Society (WSIS), aU.N.-sponsored gathering of 174 countries, produceda consensus statement recognizing that“freedom of expression and the free flow of information,ideas and knowledge, are essential forthe Information Society and beneficial to development.”103 In 2008, the member states of theInternational Telecommunication Union (ITU)adopted a resolution pledging to “refrain from takingany unilateral and/or discriminatory actionsthat could impede another Member State to accesspublic Internet sites.” According to AmbassadorDavid Gross, then the top State Department officialmanaging communications and informationpolicy, the deliberations made clear that “memberstates” meant not only governments, but also thecivilians of those countries. 104Continued U.S. leadership is critical to fill whatremains a normative vacuum. Part of the difficulty,however, lies not only with authoritarianregimes, but also with some of America’s closestdemocratic partners. While the U.S. governmentrecognizes some limits on free expression – childpornography, slander, perjury, “fighting words”and certain other forms of expression are illegal,online or off – its commitment to free speech isnevertheless the strongest of any major country.Germany, for instance, prohibits Holocaustdenial online; France does not allow the sale ofNazi paraphernalia over the Internet; and Turkeybanned YouTube for two years because it refusedto remove videos the courts deemed insulting toMustafa Kemal Ataturk. Governments in Britain,Italy and Germany have also established lists ofblocked websites – particularly those containingchild pornography, online gambling or hate speech– but these lists are often neither transparent noraccountable to the public. 105Authoritarian countries inevitably attempt toshield themselves from criticism and pressure bypointing to democracies that ban online speech.Denying them the opportunity to do so successfullyrequires the United States and others toarticulate, publicly and consistently, the distinctionbetween restrictions on free speech put intoplace by democratic political systems through dueprocess and those enacted by dictatorships. WhileAmericans may disagree with the limits on onlineexpression enforced by democratic partners, thesedecisions are nevertheless made through participatorypolitical systems while restrictions imposed byautocratic regimes are not.Defining “cyber security,” and determining thelegitimate steps a government may take to ensureit, also poses a significant challenge to America’sInternet freedom efforts. 106 Most democratic governmentsuse the term to mean protecting againstassaults on and intrusion of cyber systems andcritical infrastructure, such as electric utilities,government servers, financial systems and telecommunicationsnetworks. In contrast, some othergovernments argue that the term should includethe notion of “information security” – regulatingcontent. Russian officials, for example, haveemphasized that information security requiresbalancing individual, social and state interests. 107Such notions have real world consequences:Russia’s federal security service recently proposedbanning Skype, Gmail and other platforms becausethey are “uncontrolled” platforms that use encryptiontechnology for secure communication. 108 TheUnited Arab Emirates made similar claims in 2010when it banned the use of BlackBerry services,complaining that it could not access encryptedcommunications. 109| 27
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