You will need to supplement and update the notes that follow.
1) China's digital
challenge to the US, the EU and NATO as regards the next generation of ITCs. https://timruhlig.eu/ctf/assets/x93kiko5rt7l/4uiZoNQtRkni5KfuNDrBbx/fd52e3320cfe21e6b304ad31d81279d8/DPC-full_report-FINAL.pdf
https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/nato-and-cyberspace-challenge-20383
https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2022/03/Horizon_Scanning_vol2_15032022.pdf
https://www.ncafp.org/2016/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/US_China-Tech.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNYH94orAwc https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2019/01/china-digital-silk-road https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/04/03/468136/limit-leverage-compete-new-strategy-china/
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-us-condemnation-china-state-sponsored-cyberattacks/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_China
2) Current and
potential ITC threats and attacks from China and Russia on sensitive Western
targets. e.g. security, government administration
and business.
https://ecfr.eu/article/why-europes-energy-industry-is-vulnerable-to-cyber-attacks/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/30/russia-cyber-attacks-us-ukraine-biden/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/us-charges-russian-hackers-cyber-attacks
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/21/biden-russia-exploring-cyberattacks-companies-must-be-ready.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60841924
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-sanctions-russian-chinese-hackers-over-alleged-cyberattacks/a-54386841
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/23/experts-china-low-level-cyber-war-severe-threat
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/18/orion-hack-solarwinds-explainer-us-government
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/19/chinese-hackers-eu-communications-network-1040166
https://www.cfr.org/blog/new-cyber-brief-new-old-threat-chinese-industrial-cyber-espionage
3) Fake news
and attempts by dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to interfere in Western
politics and influence public opinion and at the same time to disseminate propaganda
and improve their country's image.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum
https://www.dw.com/en/russian-disinformation-mainly-targets-germany-eu-report/a-56812164
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/russias-disinformation-campaign-against-us
https://formiche.net/2020/05/infodemic-unveiled-russia-china-geopolitical-bet-italy/
https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/european-elections-russia-and-fake-news-under-commission-s-scrutiny http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2018/620230/EPRS_ATA(2018)620230_EN.pdf
This may be linked to China's
ongoing expansion into ownership of foreign newspapers and 'sponsoring' foreign
journalists
https://time.com/5557951/china-interference-global-media/
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/business/dealbook/alibaba-scmp-south-china-morning-post.html
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-buying-positive-news-coverage-11272018114512.html
4) The idea
that today most of the public gets its news from internet and/or very biased
traditional media (a private TV channel) and that the public is politically less
informed and more easily manipulated than in the past. Is this true?
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/it/node/10168
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/21/media-journalism-future-527294
5) The use of
the internet for recruitment and indoctrination not only by Islamist terrorists
but now also by white supremacists intending to carry out terrorist attacks.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-psychologie-sociale-2010-1-page-25.htm
https://www.osce.org/secretariat/107810
6) The question of who should control the contents of
websites, blogs and chats in democratic countries (what kind of liability there
should be and under what legal authority and how this would work in practice
with regard to Google, Facebook, Twitter etc...).
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/25/european-union-big-tech-googld-facebook-meta
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/09/eu-plan-facebook-google-online-copyright-law
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/open-internet
The question
of who ‘govern’ or run the internet and censor it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_governance#History
https://www.internetgovernance.org/2022/03/08/the-narrative-have-we-reached-splinternet-yet/
Countries
like China no longer allow Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc. to operate. Others limit
access.
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/internet-censorship-map/ excellent
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/01/china-great-firewall-generation-405385
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2019/jan/11/the-internet-but-not-as-we-know-it-life-online-in-china-russia-cuba-and-india https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33084425/The%20Shifting%20Landscape%20of%20Global%20Internet%20Censorship-%20Internet%20Monitor%202017.pdf Could such censorship expand through apparently neutral international bodies? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37527719
Why doesn’t Europe have its own search engines and social media like the US, China and Russia rather than only trying to have more control over Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter etc.?
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/could-there-be-european-google.html https://www.qwant.com/
7) The way the
Italian Foreign Ministry and EU use the Internet and social media to inform the
public and promote their values.
https://www.esteri.it/it/ministero/contatti/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/it/sheet/144/politica-di-comunicazione
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/contact/index_it.htm
https://www.politicheeuropee.gov.it/it/
https://www.esteri.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Documento-conclusivo-CdR-2021-2.pdf
Background
‘Information and communications technologies’(ITCs) are broad terms which
refer to a wide range of things and
ideas – ICT infrastructure, such as Internet /what is found on it, search
engines like Google, the World Wide Web (an information
space) and websites of all kinds, the social media, such as Facebook, YouTube,
Twitter, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, the kind of interactive web-sites that use these
technologies to generate and pass on information and comment on a massive scale
/ cell phones, PCs and tablets and other devices for connecting to Internet and
operating on it / even satellite TV and traditional media like the press as
they go online and become more interactive (#). The digital media, in turn,
make possible the creation of open web communities within a country and across
borders. Many experts argue that this has led, and will continue to lead, to a
greater democratization of politics, i.e. the general IT computer-literate public will
be able to share and receive information, discuss and debate issues, exchange
and evolve opinions, and plan and coordinate political action via the Web
independently of governments. Thus, political dissidents, for example, may be
able to communicate with each other and with the outside world. In such a
scenario politics and our knowledge of world events will no longer be
exclusively in the hands of a political élite (democratically elected or not)
and a media élite (democratically controlled or not). Cell phones, for instance, usually
make it possible to provide some visual and text material relating to real time
events even when an authoritarian regime attempts to block the information
flows on Internet. This was demonstrated during the anti-government
demonstrations in Iran and Myanmar in 2009.
Only time will tell whether this
vision of the potentially changed nature of politics is real, or potentially
real, or simply wildly over-optimistic wishful-thinking. After all, neither the
government in Iran nor that in Myanmar actually fell at that time, and blocking
Internet or a clamp-down on Internet freedom has not proved impossible, as the
situation in China and Russia has demonstrated. However, a real shift in power away
from the central government may eventually take place, given the role of the social
media in the Arab Spring (not just Internet and social media alone but also in
combination with satellite TV, like Al Jazeera
in Arabic #), starting in Tunisia in December 2010 and spreading across
the Arab world in 2011-13, and helping to bring down the regimes in Tunisia,
Egypt (at least temporarily), and Libya and threatening those in Bahrain and
Yemen and sparking the Syrian civil war. It seems clear that social media can
be used very successfully by broad-based movements calling for political
change. One should bear in mind, however, that without widespread discontent
and active physical commitment to opposition to a regime (a willingness by
people to protest on the streets), it seems unlikely that these technologies in
themselves will lead to real democratic change where an authoritarian regime
holds power, except perhaps in the very long term (as they gradually alter the
political environment and expectations regarded as normal by a particular
generation).
There is, of course, a more pessimistic
scenario, one in which a Big Brother-style regime uses these technologies to
monitor, entrap dissidents and suppress organized opposition, and where
necessary the security forces to break up and repress protest. This seems to already
be happening in China on a truly terrifying scale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/business/chinas-russia-information.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/29/china-new-hong-kong-law-roadmap-repression
https://jewishcurrents.org/russias-anti-war-protesters-are-facing-unprecedented-repression
https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/russias-quest-digital-sovereignty
https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-ukraine-war-russian-public-opinion/31734536.html
In an old interview Bill Gates once
pointed out that we are still in the early stages of the information
revolution, so the future is difficult to predict (the equivalent of being
present at the industrial revolution in 1800 and trying to predict its future
course). What is already clear, however, is that governments, democratic and
non-democratic, are being forced to respond to the challenge of the new media,
whether they see it as a positive factor or a threat to their authority and
independence. Governments, political parties, government offices and public agencies
at all levels, lobby groups, NGOs and individual politicians (as well as
companies and the private sector) have all gone online in order to respond and
interact with ordinary citizens and customers. Meanwhile social-networking
sites provide space for discussion of and response to all the information
provided by these and other sources such as the traditional media (newspapers,
radio stations, TV channels and their related web sites) and blogs.
For diplomats the new media offer
rapid access to events as they unfold and sometimes more accurate and detailed
information about those events than that immediately available from traditional
channels and sources, as well as easy communications within the diplomatic
corps and the diplomatic community. They also offer a platform from which to
explain the country’s foreign policy and a forum in which diplomats can monitor
public reaction to policies proposed or implemented, dialogue with citizens and
groups and respond to criticism or misunderstandings. At the same time the growth
of ICTs and social media often means growing pressure on diplomats to respond
in real time to events as they occur, and diminishing space for secret or quiet
diplomacy (e.g. the release by Al Jazeera
of the Palestine Papers in 2011). It may also mean less secure channels of communication
if whistle-blowers, for whatever reasons, decide to reveal internal
communications. This was always a danger in traditional diplomacy. Compared
with whistle-blowers in the past, the difference today in the Manning and Snowden
cases is the amount and sensitivity of the information that they had access
to, and the ease with which this information can be disclosed and disseminated.
The same was true for the Palestine Papers case.
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward
Manning) was a United States Army soldier who was
convicted in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after releasing to
WikiLeaks the largest quantity of classified
documents ever leaked to the public. Much of the material
was published by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November
2010. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike,
and the 2009 Granai airstrike
in Afghanistan, 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables
and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. The case of the
Palestine Papers and Al Jazeera, is emblematic of the new difficulties that diplomats
face in this new environment. A Palestinian diplomatic team, in good faith, had
exploratory talks with the Israelis, discussing hypothetically which of their
goals they would be prepared to give up or compromise on in order to obtain a
comprehensive treaty with Israel. Documents relating to these meetings were
leaked from the office of the main PLO negotiator, Sa’eb Ereka, to Al Jazeera
which posted and broadcast them in January 2011, causing enormous embarrassment
to those involved and leading to resignations. Edward Snowden, a former
contractor for the CIA, left the US in May 2013 after leaking to the media
details of extensive Internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence.
The NSA had been secretly collecting US telephone records. Mr Snowden was
granted temporary asylum in Russia but faces espionage charges in the US
concerning his actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Papers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
Another concern is the overall
security of this interconnected system of communications. For example, could
Internet be taken over or down by a massive cyber-attack or a physical assault
of some kind? This seems unlikely as the web is run by 1086 ‘root name servers’
(July 2020) around the world. One of them in California runs 80 million company
addresses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/who-owns-the-internet-and-who-should-control-it
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/faqs-2014-01-23-it
They are usually housed in a secure location with
various back-up power systems. Should any of these root servers fail or be taken
down there is a back-up network where systems management information is copied,
which would thus be able to take over in the event of an attack and keep the
system going. So, according to Bill Gates, it is difficult to see how a
cyber-attack or even a physical attack by a terrorist group on the site of a
root server could really endanger the system. Again, however, he stresses that
we are in the early days of computer technology and all predictions are doubtful.
Another worrying factor is the disruption
to electronic systems that could be caused by some kind of atmospheric
disaster, natural or man-made, which disables the global satellite system that
relays much of our communications. Are we becoming too dependent on a fragile
system? For example, rather alarmingly, some experts argue that the system as a
whole may be at risk from extreme solar storms which pose a threat to all forms
of high-technology. They begin with an explosion, a solar flare in the magnetic
canopy of a sunspot. X-rays and extreme UV radiation reach Earth at light
speed, ionizing the upper layers of our atmosphere The side-effects include radio
blackouts and GPS navigation errors. Minutes to hours later, the energy
particles arrive. Moving only slightly slower than light itself,
electrons and protons accelerated by the blast can electrify satellites and
damage their electronics. Then comes the coronal mass ejection, a CME,
billion-ton clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to cross the
Sun-Earth divide. Analysts believe that a direct hit by an extreme CME
such as the one that missed Earth in July 2012 could cause widespread and long-term
power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Electronic
communications systems would be hit, and perhaps nuclear facilities too.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/
Growing concern about privacy issues, disinformation and false news
campaigns for the purposes of political manipulation have raised huge and
complex questions about the governance of the Internet and social media.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2017
In the context of the terrorist attacks
in Europe in recent years in 2016 the Eu moved to counter the spread of
extremism online:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52016DC0379
and in 2017 began to move on fake
news:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-4481_en.htm
As regards
cyber-attacks by states, individuals or groups on an individual state or particular
institutions, one of the earliest examples occurred in Estonia in 2007 when
coordinated cyber-attacks on web sites belonging to the government, banks and
telecommunications companies were launched, apparently, from within Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051802122.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare
Such an attack can be highly effective and temporarily completely disrupt a
society. It might be an end in itself, or the first step towards a military
attack. Similarly effective are attacks designed to hack into supposedly secure
systems for espionage purposes. In response to claims that there have been
cyber-attacks from China on the US, the US and its NATO allies have become
increasingly aware of the dangers and say they are working to improve defense
systems against such attacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_in_China
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_78170.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_Russia
Governments
can also use the web, and not merely to provide citizens with information, but
also for propaganda purposes in order to control and manipulate public opinion
(domestic disinformation, a criticism often made of China, Russia and Iran).
However, the permanent elimination of sites that a government disapproves of,
whether those of terrorists or dissidents, is much more difficult if the
individuals are prepared to accept the risk of identification. It involves
constant vigil and control, and may at best be only partially effective, since a
site which is blocked can be reactivated with a new address or hidden within a
link from another innocuous site, and firewalls and other barriers to block
access to information can often be skirted (circumvented). On the other hand,
China has had considerable success in blocking foreign servers and web sites. Many
experts argue, however, that the Chinese one-party government is less worried
about the influence of information coming into China from abroad than about dissent
and unsupervised discussion within China between Chinese citizens. A recent
report claims that the government pays around 50,000 people to write and post
pro-government articles on social network sites and to infiltrate, spy on and
denounce dissident groups and individuals. So, it is clear that the security
and anonymity of on-line critics of the Chinese government within China is very
limited.
The US has a sophisticated system (ECHELON) for monitoring a large proportion of the world's
civilian email, telephone, fax and data traffic, which it has used to
combat terrorism, to the annoyance of many civil rights groups. This works in
two ways. First, all the communications of a known suspect can be closely monitored.
This is often very effective. Second, general communications can be monitored on the basis
of the use of key words or expressions. This is obviously much less effective.
It requires significant man-power and extensive use of translation. As traffic on
the internet expands so will the costs, so that this kind of monitoring will
always involve a large amount of luck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGSYktqmlJY
http://www.globalresearch.ca/echelon-today-the-evolution-of-an-nsa-black-program
The PRISM
(electronic surveillance program) is a further development within this context.
Edward Snowden’s revelations about the alleged misuse of such systems to target
ordinary citizens, both foreigners and Americans, at the very least raise
serious concerns about government security agencies and privacy issues. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued that the phone
surveillance program violates both the US First Amendment rights of free speech
and association, and the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable
searches and seizures. It filed a
lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York (June
2013). The US government argued its use of the system is legitimate (the government
has an obligation to ensure the safety of its citizens). In June 2015, Congress
passed a law that ended collection of data in this way, instead allowing the NSA
to search the phone companies’ records only if it gets court approval first. http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-appeals-court-backs-government-in-nsa-phone-surveillance-case-1446128749
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/leslie-harris/1807government-surveillance-viewed-though-global-prism
http://www.munlaws.com/uploads/1/9/7/7/19771651/munlaws_-_hrc_sg_1.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/us/politics/nsa-phone-records.html
While the
Web may sometimes provide a democratic space for communications between
dissidents struggling for greater freedom in some authoritarian states, and a
space for like-minded people in a democratic country to exchange information,
learn and form pressure groups to increase government transparency and accountability,
‘open web communities’ – it also, unfortunately provides a
space for ‘closed web communities’ e.g. terrorists can
recruit and indoctrinate in a space that tends to cut off and isolate the
individual and can become more real than the outside world and the daily life
of the subject. This can lead to a radical psychological reprogramming of the individual.
Criminal organizations can also use the Internet to recruit, monitor and to
threaten people.
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/terrorism/news-and-events/use-of-the-internet.html
Big Brother –
those authoritarian governments which manage to gain near total control of the
digital space available to their citizens can launch long-term indoctrination programs,
of a truly Orwellian kind, aimed at ensuring social conformity and uncritical
support for the national government.
Whistle-blowers
– The Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks case, the Palestine Papers case and the
Edward Snowden case, have illustrated many of the key points relating to the
evolving uses that can made of the new media. Large quantities of confidential
information can, with the help of someone inside an organization with access to
that information, be copied and transferred out of the system and posted for
public consumption very rapidly. It is unclear how we should view such a
phenomenon. Is this a further step towards government accountability,
transparency and real democracy - something which will affect diplomacy and may
have significant consequences (some of them legal) for politicians who lie and
agencies that infringe existing privacy laws? Does this mean there is a need
for new law to cover new types of surveillance? And how should jurisdiction for
acts committed in cyberspace work? Whistleblowers themselves claim they are
driven to an act of conscience by a desire to expose wrong-doing by their own
government and seem ready to accept the risks and legal consequences. Governments
usually argue that such behavior is a danger to the real concerns of national
and international security, and one for which both the supplier and receiver of
such information should be prosecuted. Can we believe Julian Assange when he
claims that WikiLeaks would never post information that might endanger
somebody’s life (that of a soldier at the front, for example)? More important, can
we be sure that other people will act with the same level of responsibility? Is
this becoming a phenomenon that is beyond a government’s ability to control? If
not, what new levels of security and restriction on information need to be
introduced, and would these risk damaging our right to freedom of expression
and a free press (freedom of information)? If so, what are the implications for
government activity in general and diplomatic activity in particular? Will
there remain any space for secret negotiation, quiet diplomacy, where perhaps
this might be necessary or beneficial, or for diplomats to express candid
opinions to other diplomats on what they assume is a secure channel? The
response of WikiLeaks sympathizers to the initial arrest of Assange was to protest
by blocking access to certain banks and credit institutions by bombarding their
web sites with requests for access and this is also significant. Assange was
granted political asylum by Ecuador and then resided at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He later lost this protection and was arrested
and now faces the possibility of extradition to the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59608641
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/24/uk-high-court-grants-assange-right-to-appeal-extradition-ruling
Privacy is thus a growing issue of concern in many countries. Civil rights
groups claim that the largely unmonitored collection, exchange and use of data
on people (whether legally or illegally obtained) by government agencies and
private companies is a clear infringement of privacy rights, e.g. the US Bill
of Rights, Fourth Amendment, see:
https://edps.europa.eu/data-protection/data-protection/reference-library/mobile-devices_en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#Fourth_Amendment
Here is the
EU position:
The News International phone-hacking scandal in
Britain 2011 demonstrated how exposed individuals, both famous ones and
ordinary citizens, are to targeted phone-hacking by unscrupulous journalists
and newspapers. Individuals operating online are similarly exposed to increased
risks of invasions of privacy and government surveillance. The role of the Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
in the UK in 2013 received considerable media attention when the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the
agency was attempting to collect all online and telephone data in the UK via
the Tempora program. Snowden's revelations began a
spate of ongoing disclosures of global surveillance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_and_network_surveillance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters
Finally, the investigation into
Russia's alleged interference in the US presidential election of 2016, its apparently
unsupervised use of Facebook and Twitter accounts to launch fake news and
conduct a campaign of disinformation and the Trump campaign's alleged collusion
with it, raised widespread concerns about the security of Western democratic
systems in general. Any effective response will presumably require more
oversight of online activities. This may, in turn, conflict with issues regarding
both online privacy and free speech. For civil rights groups the Internet, once
seen as a way for citizens to obtain better access to information, as a space
for greater democracy and freedom of speech and a way to make the state more
accountable, now risks becoming a means to invade a citizen’s privacy, limit
their freedom of speech and manipulate public opinion. Moreover, for a
democratic state, for its political institutions and for its IT experts, at a
practical level these issues raise the question of just how the supervision
required to protect democracy and ensure security can be achieved technically.
https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/sisr.nsf/comunicazione/decennale-intelligence/gentiloni.html
http://www.dw.com/en/countering-fake-news-while-safeguarding-free-speech/a-37924278
https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/internet-speech
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170301-lies-propaganda-and-fake-news-a-grand-challenge-of-our-age
Conclusion – The digital media have significantly changed the space in which political discussion and action take place. This affects directly security, privacy, freedom of speech and the way the state (democratic or otherwise) functions. This is simply a reality and not something that can be undone. For example, diplomats will have to accept that secret diplomacy and quiet diplomacy, for better or worse, will now be much more difficult. They need to embrace the positive features the new environment offers in terms of being better able to communicate and dialogue with the public, within their own service and with the government and public in other countries. All this means that international relations will have to adapt to this new and rapidly evolving reality. At the same time, since the IT revolution is probably still in its early stages, it is difficult to predict the course it will take and the effect it will have on international affairs. It is, after all, an ongoing process.
General Background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
http://insct.syr.edu/about/news/william-c-banks-on-wikileaks/
http://www.wiu.edu/cbt/eds/TheDigitalDisruption.pdf
http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/FA_Democracy_and_Internet.pdf
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/12/145125429/who-should-control-the-internet-some-say-the-u-n
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130103_internet_governance_outlook_2013/
|
#
Despite the fact that social media played a significant role in sparking the
Arab Spring, it was satellite broadcasting that was able to provide the Arab
masses with minute-by-minute coverage of developments. This medium broadcast
to Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria and followed stories about the
leaders and other officials involved in regime changes. It was satellite
television that gave voice to the opposition. AlJazeera, AlArabiya, the BBC’s
Arabic news channel, AlHurra, and France 24 were the main news networks that
played a significant role in informing the Arab world about Arab Spring
events. The paper cited in the link below not only describes the role these
networks played in covering the Arab Spring, but also analyzes the important
role the networks played in preparing the region for the aftermath by giving
a voice to the voiceless, covering opposition groups, exposing corruption,
reporting demonstrations, and discussing issues of freedom, democracy, and
social justice in the Arab states. |
The debate
over the legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the claims made by the US and
British governments that Iraq had WMDs and the use made of the media in this
context is also very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Weapons_of_Mass_Destruction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_%28weapons_expert%29#WMD_dossier
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