Selling Democracy – ctd.

28 June 2009 Dan McGarry

Farhad Manjoo says the Revolution will not be digitised. His recent Slate column, subtitled “How the Internet helps Iran silence activists” makes the obvious point that technology makes all aspects of communications easier – even the unpleasant ones. But his lazy analysis misses the import of his own observation.

The key to all this is his failure to distinguish between the network and the protocol. Manjoo says that the Internet helps Iran’s repressive efforts. That’s not true, at least not nearly to the extent he thinks. The network – the physical infrastructure of cables, switching and routing equipment, is what’s trapping people right now. If it weren’t for the end-to-end nature of the software protocols that make up what we conveniently call the Internet, little if any news at all would have emerged from Iran.

Farhad Manjoo says the Revolution will not be digitised. His recent Slate column, subtitled “How the Internet helps Iran silence activists” makes the obvious point that technology makes all aspects of communications easier – even the unpleasant ones. But his simplistic analysis misses the import of his own observation.

The key to all this is his failure to distinguish between the network and the protocol. Manjoo says that the Internet helps Iran’s repressive efforts. That’s not true, at least not nearly to the extent he thinks. The network – the physical infrastructure of cables, switching and routing equipment, is what’s trapping people right now. If it weren’t for the end-to-end nature of the software protocols that make up what we conveniently call the Internet, little if any news at all would have emerged from Iran.

Read more “Selling Democracy – ctd.”

Selling Democracy – Part II

28 June 2009 Dan McGarry

In recent years, nearly all communications devices have been designed to adhere to a centralised network model. Wireless access points, laptops, iPhones and other ‘smart’ handheld devices could easily be configured to create or join mesh networks on the fly. The code for it exists. But they don’t.

That’s because most consumer devices are designed to integrate into the existing economic model, which attaches individual customers to central networks.

Most of the time, this presents no problem at all. Network owners take care of the headaches of building and managing the infrastructure and we blithely go about our business.

Blithely, that is, until our interests no longer coincide with the network owners’. The result can be petty nuisances like limitations in using Skype or downloading files. Or they can be life-changing, as the people of Iran have recently discovered.

In a press conference about Iran last week, a reporter asked US Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if the US couldn’t do an end run around Iranian censorship and use its satellites to ‘beam down’ broadband data connections to the Iranian people.

The question as asked comes across as remarkably naive to us geeks. We make it our business to know the difference between the logical (soft) network and the physical (hard) network.

A tension exists between the inherently democratic design of the myriad end-to-end connections that compose the Internet and the centralised conformation of the physical networks themselves. Briefly, the ‘soft’ elements of the network (the software we run on our computers and the protocols they follow) are completely agnostic about how the data they share actually get from one point to another.

On the other hand, the ‘hard’ elements (international satellite links, long-distance cables and the connection between your home and your ISP) are all about how the data moves. Controlling the data flow is their very essence.

From a ‘hard’ network point of view, this idea of ‘beaming down broadband to an entire population’ is little more than a pipe dream. The thing is, it’s pretty easy to receive a signal from a satellite. Sending an answer back is another matter entirely. That requires some pretty sophisticated equipment.

This led a number of geeks to discard the question entirely and to laugh more than a little at the naiveté of the reporter who posed it.

I’m not so sure we should cast it aside it so quickly.

Read more “Selling Democracy – Part II”

Selling Democracy by the Byte

21 June 2009 Dan McGarry

A blog post by Renesys Corporation experts, who provide network data collection and analysis services, suggests that access to all but one of Iran’s five major international data connections has been severely degraded. Some have speculated that this is because the Government of Iran, which controls most national telecommunications systems, has imposed a strict regime of Internet filtering on its population.

Notwithstanding these events, activists organised their protest efforts through online messaging sites such as Twitter, which had apparently been overlooked by censors. One message implored activists to climb to the rooftops and give voice to their protest by shouting ‘Allah’u akhbar’ (God is great). By 4:00 a.m. local time on June 13th, the noise of the rooftop protest was deafening. The outcry has only increased since then. Significantly, the same tactic was used at the outset of the 1979 revolution that ousted the US-supported Shah of Iran and ultimately led to the rise to power of the current theocratic regime.

This riveting spectacle provides us with an object lesson in the effects of communications networks on democracy and social movements.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent. Updated and edited slightly from the original print version.]

Thirty years after the Revolution, the June 12th Iranian presidential elections seem to have catalysed a transformational moment in the nation’s history. One Western commentator writes:

The widespread, sustained, peaceful and courageous demonstrations by Iranians this week has been an astonishing and inspiring sight. In a way this feels like the anti-9/11.

Analysts have suggested that the rapid rise in popularity of moderate candidate Mir-Hosain Mousavi caught the theocratic regime’s leaders flat-footed. Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute and long-time commentator on Middle-East affairs, writes:

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi’s spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi’s camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

His narrative is, he admits, largely speculative.

The result, witnessed through countless independent blog posts, photos and videos, has been massive, occasionally violent protest in the streets of the capital Tehran and, according to reports, in Tabriz, Mashad, Shiraz and Rasht as well.

Expression is Wealth

6 June 2009 Dan McGarry

The wealth of nations is often measured in monetary terms. I say it should be measured in how that wealth is used.

Investment in media and in the mechanics of free speech and open exchange of ideas creates immeasurable wealth. Such wealth will never appear in economic reports. It will, however, define our history.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

I’ve been following a few different stories these last few weeks. Thousands of miles apart and separated by decades, they might seem at first to have little in common.

The first is the story of over 500 websites in China that have decided to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre by voluntarily taking themselves offline for ‘non-technical maintenance’. The censored are boycotting the censor.

The second story is the ongoing suppression of media in Fiji. In a June 2nd statement, Fiji’s interim Permanent Secretary for Information, Lieutenant-Colonel Neumi Leweni indicated that the current state of emergency would continue into August at least. It’s not clear whether this means that state censorship of media will continue as well.

The last is a story of the Australian movie ‘Balibo’. The recently-released film recounts the story of 5 Australia-based journalists killed by Indonesia during the 1975 invasion of East Timor.

Following decades of patient, determined investigation, the facts of the Balibo case have at last come to light. In the years following the murders, nobody – not even Australia – wanted the full extent of Indonesia’s depredations in Timor to see the light of day. Through a combination of determined neglect and deliberate distortion, countries in the region and across the globe allowed Indonesia to act with impunity against the Timorese people.

All of these stories have one thing in common. Every single one of them has been shaped by our collective complacence. The passive-aggressive self-imposition of censorship by Chinese website operators is more an act of sullenness than outright protest. According to one commentator, the increase in censorship activity in the lead-up to Tiananmen’s 20th anniversary is a “minor annoyance for most, perhaps making them remember, but they don’t care that much.”

Because It's Today

4 June 2009 Dan McGarry

An entire society has adapted itself to living in an environment wherein they can go about their daily lives normally, as long as they do not make themselves or their opinions known to the authorities.

One is inclined to wonder whether Fijians will become similarly inured to the censorship regime imposed by Commodore Frank Bainimarama. Recent reports indicate that the state of emergency will be extended until August at least.

Perhaps the greatest danger of State censorship is its ability to integrate itself into daily life. Provided that its exercise doesn’t affect too many of the people too much of the time, it quickly becomes an environmental factor like mosquitoes, bad weather or the common cold. Just something to be taken in stride.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

I came across the following exchange (translated from the original Chinese language) on a technical news site today. This series of comments come from Xiaonei, a Chinese blog site, following a post about the recent global economic meltdown. (The writers’ names have been obscured for reasons that will become obvious):

AAA: Well written!! But why can’t I share it [i.e. link it to social media sites like Facebook or LiveJournal]?

BBB: Yeah, I can’t share it either. Must be because it’s today!

000[the author]: Well, I can post it, you guys should be able to share it….

CCC: [a few comments about the actual content of the article]

DDD: I guess Xiaonei is having problems recently. Anything with numbers seems to run into problems.

AAA: Anything with certain numbers runs into problems around this time of year….

EEE: I’m sure this maintenance is perfectly normal, as it is for all other Chinese websites right now. [sarcasm]

BBB: There is no spoon~~! [this in English]

FFF: Wow, nice word choice guys.

Mystified? You wouldn’t be if you had to deal with state censorship on a day to day basis. Today – the day the comments were being posted – marked the beginning of a worldwide observance of the 20th anniversary of the disruption by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army of the pro-Democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Protecting our Children

16 May 2009 Dan McGarry

Over the last two weeks or so, there’s been an animated and quite fascinating discussion on the VIGNET technical mailing list. VIGNET is a mailing list service provided by the Vanuatu IT Users Society (VITUS) in order to contribute to a public dialogue about all things to do with technology. With over 220 subscribers, it represents a significant number of people working in IT in Vanuatu.

Following the roll-out of Digicel’s GPRS mobile Internet service, concerns have been raised about children and youth in Vanuatu having access to unsuitable content, especially pornography, through their mobile phones.

With nearly 100 messages from dozens of different contributors, the discussion was illuminating, intelligent and remarkably respectful, especially given the delicacy of the topic. What follows is a small but representative sampling….

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Note: Because of public demand for a printable version of this column, here’s a PDF version of this week’s column.

This week, I’m going to give over much of my column space so that other voices can be heard.

Damage

1 May 2009 Dan McGarry

The presence recently of Sulu Censors (so called for the skirt-like traditional dress many of them wear) in all television, radio and print media outlets has largely neutered Fiji’s traditional media. But the flow of information has simply found a route around this ‘damage’. In recent weeks, Fijians at home and abroad have flocked en masse to the Internet to get their fix of national and local news, uncensored by the Bainimarama regime.

Countless blogs have sprung up like flowers across the Internet in reaction to the media crackdown. With names like Coup Four and a Half, Fiji Coup and Fiji Uncensored, they’ve made their raison d’etre clear. While a few leave no doubt that they have very particular axes to grind, the majority are replete with well-sourced, insightful news, commentary and analysis.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

This statement was first uttered in 1993 by John Gilmore, Internet pioneer and co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Since it was first quoted in Time magazine, it’s become axiomatic, an unanswerable trump card to be played whenever the issue of Internet censorship arises.

There’s a good reason for this. Numerous efforts by governments, institutions and organizations to impede the free flow of information have achieved mixed results at best and, more often than not, failed. Only in places like Tibet and Burma, where the government owns and closely controls the information networks, has any kind of comprehensive censorship been successful.

The Internet was designed as a ‘network of networks’ – that is, a communications medium that effectively had no centre of control. While it never completely achieved that aim, it’s still a vast departure from the monolithic telecoms networks that we used to have.

Internet Pioneer Mitch Kapor’s assertion that “[Internet] architecture is politics” has never been more true.

No News is Bad News

17 April 2009 Dan McGarry

With headlines like ‘Man Gets On Bus’, and ‘Breakfast As Usual’, Fiji’s beleaguered fourth estate is reporting all the news it feels is still fit – or safe – to print. Such stories are a reaction to Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s extensive power grab this week, which included the abrogation of the national Constitution, removal of judges and senior financial figures, expulsion of Australian and New Zealand-born journalists and censorship of domestic media.

In solidarity with my Fijian colleagues, I’ve decided to write about nothing as well. Happily, this is easily done. Even though Port Vila is home to the Melanesian Spearhead Group and PM Edward Nipake Natapei holds the chair this year, I am glad to say that I have nothing to report.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

With headlines like ‘Man Gets On Bus’, and ‘Breakfast As Usual’, Fiji’s beleaguered fourth estate is reporting all the news it feels is still fit – or safe – to print. Such stories are a reaction to Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s extensive power grab this week, which included the abrogation of the national Constitution, removal of judges and senior financial figures, expulsion of Australian and New Zealand-born journalists and censorship of domestic media.

One particularly riveting feature, titled ‘Paint Dry’, recounts the couch painting adventure of a man named Max. The paint, he recounts, “went on wet, but after four hours it started to dry…. That was when I realised, paint dries.”

I expect it ran with a four column headline.

Despite being uniquely positioned to provide sober diplomatic counsel to the increasingly isolated Fijian dictator, despite what our PM describes as a fraternal relationship with one of our closest neighbours, one with whom we have a unique trading relationship, whose culture closely resembles our own, we and our Melanesian brethren have decided to do exactly nothing to prevent Fiji’s descent into constitutional, social and economic crisis.

The Price of Freedom

1 November 2008 Dan McGarry

Australia’s Labour government recently announced that they would be implementing a two-tiered, national content-filtering scheme for all Internet traffic. The proposal as it stands is that people will have a choice of Internet connections: The first will block all Internet content considered unsafe for children. The second will allow adult content, but block anything deemed illegal under Australian law. People can choose one or the other, but they must choose one.

As with all public content-filtering schemes, this idea is well-intentioned, but fatally flawed.

National content filtering is an inefficient and fundamentally faulty technical approach that deputises the nation’s Internet Service Providers to the role of neighbourhood sherriff, something they’re not at all comfortable with. Second, and more importantly, it creates a dangerous legal and moral precedent that is difficult to distinguish from the infamous Great Firewall of China, which is regularly used to stifle social and political dissent.

Indeed, a spokesman for the online rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia recently said, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.”