[liberationtech] WSJ Op-Ed: No Quick Fixes for Internet Freedom

Fri Nov 19 07:57:46 PST 2010

I'd like to chime in here and defend Rebecca's conclusions, which are very
similar to my own. My impression is that none of this money is meant
specifically for either a) circumvention or b) Iran. As such, I don't see
how the facts that Mehdi cites - i.e. that GIFC tools are actively used in
Iran or that other projects got more money - is relevant for our discussion
here. That the US government may have overspent on other tools is no good
reason to continue doing so in the future, even if the portfolio is
diversified with GIFC.

The government may not have a real strategy on how to address some of the
other challenges/threats to "Internet freedom" highlighted in Rebecca's
piece (and for the record, I don't think that "Internet freedom" is a useful
way to describe the problems facing them), but this is certainly NOT a good
excuse to continue funding projects without drawing up a list of both
regional and topical priorities first. As I once already said on this list,
while I appreciate Mehdi's concern about the accessibility of his web-site
to users in Iran, this surely can't be the guiding principle of US foreign
policy on "Internet freedom".

Evgeny

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Mehdi Yahyanejad <yahyanejad at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Since 2007, Congress has inserted a total of $50 million of earmarks into
> the State Department's budget to fund organizations dedicated to fighting
> Internet censorship. One group that has been lobbying hard for the money is
> the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, run mainly by practitioners of the
> Falun Gong, a religious sect banned in China. The GIFC has produced a suite
> of circumvention tools that work well, as long as the user doesn't mind that
> GIFC engineers can see their unencrypted communications, or that the
> security of the tool has not been vetted by independent experts.
>
>
> The GIFC has found powerful allies in Mark Palmer, who was U.S. ambassador
> to Hungary when the Iron Curtain fell, and Michael Horowitz, a former Reagan
> administration official and longtime advocate for human rights and religious
> freedom. They argue that if the GIFC can get sufficient funding to scale up
> their tools, authoritarian regimes will be brought to their knees.
>
> The State Department has come under fire in the Journal, the Washington
> Post and the New York Times for failing to support GIFC. And it's true that
> of the $20 million already allocated, most went to other groups that are
> less radioactive as far as U.S.-China relations are concerned. Some of these
> groups work to help activists with training and security against
> surveillance, cyber-attacks and other threats, in addition to circumventing
> censorship.
>
> In August, $1.5 million out of $5 million available for 2009 was finally
> awarded by the State Department to the GIFC via the Broadcasting Board of
> Governors. The bidding process for a remaining $30 million is expected to
> start soon. With the mid-term elections now finished, we can look forward to
> a new surge in the war over who gets to be hero of the fairy tale "Toppling
> the Iron Curtain 2.0"
>
>
>
> The GIFC tools are the most adopted circumvention tools among the users in
> Iran. I am stating this fact based on what I see in the log files of
> Balatarin and what I was told by other people who run major Iranian
> websites. Also, I know that other circumvention tool projects have received
> much more funding than the $1.5 million which GIFC is going to get. For that
> matter, it completely makes sense for the GIFC to ask for political support
> in the congress to pressure the State Department in spending the money on
> the project which has been delivering the numbers.
>
> -mehdi
>
>
> On Nov 18, 2010, at 8:14 PM, Rebecca MacKinnon wrote:
>
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704104104575622080860055498.html
>
> NOVEMBER 18, 2010, 10:21 A.M. ET
>
> No Quick Fixes for Internet Freedom
> The hard work to promote free speech online has barely begun.
>
> By REBECCA MACKINNON
>
> Just before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Hanoi late
> last month, Vietnamese authorities redoubled their assault on Internet
> dissent. Two more bloggers were arrested and another due to be released had
> his sentence extended. Dissident websites came under cyber attack, taking
> them offline at a time when they most needed to be visible.
>
> Meanwhile in Washington, a battle is raging over funding for organizations
> and projects supporting "Internet freedom." Like many Washington fights,
> this one makes it harder for the U.S. government to help real people with
> real problems.
>
> I study how governments seek to stifle and control online dissent.
> Activists from the Middle East to Asia to the former Soviet states have all
> been telling me that they suffer from increasingly sophisticated
> cyber-attacks. Such attacks disable activists' websites at politically
> crucial times. Email accounts are hacked and computer systems are breached,
> enabling intruders to install spyware and monitor every electronic move.
> They are desperate for training and technical help to fight increasingly
> sophisticated, well-funded adversaries.
>
> The cyber-attacks are one of several new and intractable problems faced by
> online activists, alongside the older and more clear-cut problem of Internet
> censorship. A number of repressive governments, including Vietnam, Iran and
> China, block local Internet users from accessing politically sensitive
> overseas websites, as well as commercial social networking services like
> Facebook and Twitter. Anybody can get around this blockage if they know how
> to use what is called "circumvention technology." Several U.S-based
> organizations have developed a range of circumvention tools.
>
> Tools for circumventing censorship are indeed important for activists. But
> they do nothing to protect against cyber-attacks, or to address a growing
> number of other ways that governments work to prevent activists from using
> the Internet to access information, get their message out, and organize.
> Still, many in Congress and the media have bought into the fantasy that all
> the U.S. needs to do is put enough money into these circumvention tools, and
> one in particular—and freedom will flood through the crumbling firewalls.
>
> Since 2007, Congress has inserted a total of $50 million of earmarks into
> the State Department's budget to fund organizations dedicated to fighting
> Internet censorship. One group that has been lobbying hard for the money is
> the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, run mainly by practitioners of the
> Falun Gong, a religious sect banned in China. The GIFC has produced a suite
> of circumvention tools that work well, as long as the user doesn't mind that
> GIFC engineers can see their unencrypted communications, or that the
> security of the tool has not been vetted by independent experts.
>
> The GIFC has found powerful allies in Mark Palmer, who was U.S. ambassador
> to Hungary when the Iron Curtain fell, and Michael Horowitz, a former Reagan
> administration official and longtime advocate for human rights and religious
> freedom. They argue that if the GIFC can get sufficient funding to scale up
> their tools, authoritarian regimes will be brought to their knees.
>
> The State Department has come under fire in the Journal, the Washington
> Post and the New York Times for failing to support GIFC. And it's true that
> of the $20 million already allocated, most went to other groups that are
> less radioactive as far as U.S.-China relations are concerned. Some of these
> groups work to help activists with training and security against
> surveillance, cyber-attacks and other threats, in addition to circumventing
> censorship.
>
> In August, $1.5 million out of $5 million available for 2009 was finally
> awarded by the State Department to the GIFC via the Broadcasting Board of
> Governors. The bidding process for a remaining $30 million is expected to
> start soon. With the mid-term elections now finished, we can look forward to
> a new surge in the war over who gets to be hero of the fairy tale "Toppling
> the Iron Curtain 2.0"
>
> Meanwhile in real life, the human rights watchdog organization Freedom
> House warns of a "global freedom recession." They point to a decrease in
> online freedom even in many countries that engage in little or no website
> blocking.
>
> Take Russia, for example. In a new book published by the Open Net
> Initiative, "Access Controlled," University of Toronto scholars Rafal
> Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert point out that while the Russian government
> doesn't block many websites, it stifles online dissent in a range of other
> ways. Government critics in Russia face cyber-attacks, surveillance, and
> good old-fashioned intimidation.
>
> In a growing number of countries including China, domestic Internet
> companies are enlisted in this effort through regulatory pressures. Laws and
> mechanisms originally meant to enforce copyright, protect children and fight
> online crime are abused to silence or intimidate political critics.
>
> In real life, conceiving and implementing an effective set of policies,
> programs, and tools for promoting a free and open global Internet requires
> hard work by both the public and private sectors. This work has barely
> begun.
>
> A range of fast-evolving technical problems requires an array of solutions.
> Activists around the world need technical assistance and training in order
> to fight cyber-attacks more effectively. We need more coordination between
> human rights activists, technology companies and policy makers just to
> understand the problems, and how they can be expected to evolve in the next
> few years.
>
> What's more, existing research indicates that many of the problems aren't
> technical, but rather political, legal, regulatory and even social. Other
> obstacles to free expression are probably best addressed by the private
> sector: Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be
> urged to adhere to business practices that maximize the safety of activists
> using their platforms.
>
> Circumvention technology is one tactic to support access to information and
> online dissent. It makes sense to keep funding these tools, so long as
> activists are given choice. On their own, however, they are not the silver
> bullet that many claim. The State Department and Congress need to approach
> freedom of speech issues strategically, based on a clear understanding of
> purpose and effect.
>
> Ms. MacKinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the New America
> Foundation.
>
> --
> Rebecca MacKinnon
> Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
> Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
> Cell: +1-617-939-3493
> E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
> Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack
>
>
>
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