‘
New
media and communications technologies’ are broad terms which refer
to a wide range of things and ideas – new communications
technology 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 and
Twitter, the kind of interactive web-sites that use new 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 new 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 changed nature of
politics is real or simply idealistic wishful-thinking. After all,
neither the government in Iran nor that in Myanmar actually fell at
that time, and temporarily blocking the internet or a clamp-down on
internet freedom has not always proved impossible, as the situation
in China has demonstrated. However, a real shift in power away from
central governments may be taking place, given the role of the new
media in the Arab Spring (not only 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, Yemen and sparking the Syrian civil war. It seems
clear that the new 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 new
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).
In an
old interview Bill Gates 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 1790 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. 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,
radios, 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 the new 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 thr 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 is true for the Palestine Papers case.
Chelsea
Elizabeth Manning
(born Bradley
Edward Manning)
is 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 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.
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 down
by a massive cyber-attack or a physical assault of some kind? The web
is run by over 504 ‘root name servers’ (Jan 2016) in over 76
countries. 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
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/
As
regards who controls Internet, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN)
is a nonprofit
private organization headquartered in Los
Angeles, California,
that was created in September 1998 to oversee a number of
Internet-related
tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the US
government
by other organizations, notably the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA), which ICANN now operates. ICANN is responsible for the
coordination of the global Internet's systems. ICANN was given a
mandate by the US government requiring that it operate "in a
bottom up, consensus driven, democratic manner."
From the
start of this century there were various proposals to transfer
authority to a UN body and ‘give the global South greater control
over how the Internet is run’. However, liberal opponents claimed
that the existing set-up was more likely to prevent or minimize
censorship, surveillance and interference with internet freedom by
governments. In October 2013, Fadi Chehadé, then President and CEO
of ICANN, met with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia.
The two announced that Brazil would host an international summit on
Internet governance in April 2014. The announcement came after the
2013
disclosures of mass surveillance
by the U.S. government, and President Rousseff's speech at the
opening session of the 2013 United Nations
General Assembly, where she strongly criticized the American
surveillance program as a "breach of international law".
The "Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet
Governance (NET mundial)” included representatives of government,
industry, civil society, and academia. The meeting produced a
non-binding statement in favor of consensus-based decision-making. It
reflected a compromise and did not harshly condemn mass surveillance
but the final resolution said ICANN
should be under international control by September 2015. A minority
of governments, including Russia, China, Iran and India, were unhappy
with the final
resolution and wanted multi-lateral
management (mainly by governments) for the Internet, rather than
broader multi-stakeholder management. Critics said that would give
governments too much decision-making power, for example via the
United
Nations,
and be more
likely to encourage individual nations to control their national
fire-walled domains which could be more easily monitored and
filtered, as with telephone systems influenced by the International
Telecommunication Union.
The 2015
date passed and the US government extended the target date for
another year. In October 2016 the U.S. government’s Commerce
Department gave control of Internet (via IANA)
to ICANN in order to respond to criticisms of US interference and
ensure broader multi-stakeholder management by
technical experts, as well as representatives of governments and
businesses.
The
Internet
Governance Coalition,
a group of companies that includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft and
Verizon, also expressed approval of the move but offered a measured
assessment.
"A plan has
been implemented that includes strong accountability measures and
upholds the bottom-up approach that embodies the very nature of the
open internet we experience today," the group said in a
statement prepared Friday. "Although this
is an important step in the transition process,
there is still much work that needs to be done to ensure the
accountability and transparency of ICANN. We look forward to working
with the multistakeholder community on these ongoing efforts."
However,
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.
In
the context of the terrorist attacks in Europe in recent years in
2016 the Eu moved to counter the spread of extremism online:
and
in 2017 began to move on fake news:
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.
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. It involves
constant vigil and control, and is at best 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 putting pressure on foreign servers operating in English
and Chinese in China to block certain key-word searches and access to
some 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 not
clear how much security and anonymity on-line critics of the Chinese
government within China really have.
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.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/us/politics/nsa-phone-records.html
While
the Web provides a democratic space for communications between
dissidents struggling for greater freedom in 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.
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 Mr
Julian Assange when he claims that WikiLeaks would never post
information that might endanger somebody’s life (a soldier’s
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 do these damage 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 Mr
Assange was to protest by blocking access to certain banks and credit
institutions by bombarding their web sites with requests for access
is also significant. Assange was granted political asylum by Ecuador
and currently resides at the Ecuadorian embassy in
London. He was granted
Ecuadorian citizenship in January 2018.
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
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/11681502/Why-is-Julian-Assange-still-inside-the-embassy-of-Ecuador.html
Finally,
the ongoing investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the
US presidential election of 2016, its apparently unsupervised use of
Facebook and Twitter accounts to lauch fake news and conduct a
campaign of disinformation and the Trump campaign's alleged collusion
with it, have 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 citzens'
privacy, limit their freedom of speech and manipulate public opinion.
Moreover, for the Western state itself, 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 technichcally.
Conclusion
– The new 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.
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#
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, 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.
