mercoledì 8 febbraio 2017
lunedì 6 febbraio 2017
The role of the new media and communications technologies in international relations – some notes
‘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 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, are 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 of
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. 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
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. 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."
Since the start of this century there have been 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 have claimed that the current set-up is more likely to prevent or minimize censorship, surveillance and interference with internet freedom by governments. In October 2013, Fadi Chehadé, current 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 say that would give governments decision-making too much 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 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.
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."
Since the start of this century there have been 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 have claimed that the current set-up is more likely to prevent or minimize censorship, surveillance and interference with internet freedom by governments. In October 2013, Fadi Chehadé, current 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 say that would give governments decision-making too much 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 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."
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann-internet-us-governmenthttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/22/fight-control-internet-become-critical
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/03/us-rejects-un-internet-controlhttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/who-controls-the-world-wide-web/article3459842.ece?css=print
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/03/us-rejects-un-internet-controlhttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/who-controls-the-world-wide-web/article3459842.ece?css=print
Could
the US itself have used its control of the Internet as a weapon
against another state? For example, by canceling its 2-letter country
code suffix (.it)? Gates thinks the US no longer had sufficient
control over the Internet to be able to implement effectively such a
strategy. In an inter-connected commercial world it was also unclear
what the negative effects of such a strategy would be for the US
(e.g. for American companies operating abroad with the same country
recognition code). Gates argues that the Internet has become, or is
rapidly becoming autonomous.
What
about targeted cyber-attacks by states, individuals or groups on an
individual state or particular institutions? This 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.
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. Amid 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
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_78170.htm
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 domestic public opinion (disinformation, a criticism often made of China, Russia and Iran). 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
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. Amid 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
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_78170.htm
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 domestic public opinion (disinformation, a criticism often made of China, Russia and Iran). 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
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? Whistle-blowers 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.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
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:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#Fourth_Amendment
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
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? Whistle-blowers 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.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
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:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#Fourth_Amendment
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
Conclusion
– The new media have significantly changed the space in which
political discussion and action take place. This affects directly
security, privacy 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 Backgroundhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
http://insct.syr.edu/about/news/william-c-banks-on-wikileaks/
http://www.wiu.edu/cbt/eds/TheDigitalDisruption.pdf
General Backgroundhttp://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.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/
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130103_internet_governance_outlook_2013/
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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.
UN Council for Human Rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council
So if you are interested in human rights you should perhaps see what the NGOs tell you about different countries. For example:
venerdì 27 gennaio 2017
What are the main characteristics, benefits and drawbacks of globalization?
Globalization
(or globalisation)
refers to the increasingly global interconnectedness of cultures,
people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics:
the increasingly global distribution of the production of goods and
services, through reduction in barriers to international
trade
such as tariffs,
export fees, and import
quotas
(as well as invisible barriers such as complex and slow bureaucracy)
and the transfer of such goods and services to consumers. It also
involves the freer movement and circulation of workers around the
world, delocalization (relocation of factory and service providers
from one country to another) and glocalization of products and
services. Globalization contributes to economic growth in developed
and developing countries through increased specialization and the
principle of comparative
advantage.
All this helps
to lower the price of goods and thus benefits the consumer and raises
the standard of living. Globalization of financial markets makes
money available at low interest rates for investment.
The
rapid increase in the process of globalization has been the result of
a number of factors: the end of the Cold War and the end of the
relative isolation of countries like Russia, the old Warsaw Pact
states and China, and their integration into the global trading
system; the work of the World Trade Organization to eliminate or
reduce trade barriers; the work of the World Bank, which is a lending
institution whose aim is to help integrate countries into the wider
world economy and promote long-term economic development; the work of
the International Monetary Fund which aims at promoting global
monetary cooperation and financial stability and thus supporting
trade; developments in transport technologies, infrastrucure and
procedures and thus reductions in transport costs, e.g. container
ships and ports, low-cost airlines; developments in Information and
Communications Technologies (ICTs) that facilitate trade, e.g. the
internet, cell phones and satellite technologies.
Supporters
of globalization also argue that it promotes peace. In the 1960s
and’70s there was very little trade between the West and the
Communist bloc. Today the level of trade between, for example, the US
and China or the EU and the Russian Federation is very high, and it
is difficult to imagine how such trading partners could become
involved in a conflict without seriously damaging their own economies
(even in a situation like that in Ukraine where tensions are high).
The
countries that gain least from globalization will be those least
integrated within the global trading system, either by choice (by
political decision and the maintenance of strong trade barriers) or
through a lack of the necessary infrastructure (e.g. ports, airports
and roads), or know-how and expertise, or technology, or an adequate
industrial base or a secure business environment (e.g. failed or
partially failed states or states with high levels of corruption,
bureaucracy, red-tape and insecurity of ownership).
The
term globalization can also refer to the transnational circulation of
ideas, languages, and popular
culture,
particularly via the internet and social media or on satellite TV
across political borders. Many Western political commentators
identify its most positive effects in the spread of democratic and
human rights values at a grass roots level, a phenomenon which
authoritarian regimes may find difficult to control. Paradoxically,
cultural globalization in this sense may actually lead to tension and
political instability, at least in the short term, as the rapid
changes taking place in the Arab world demonstrate. On the other
hand, globalization may lead to a mixing of cultures and an enriched,
more vibrant multicultural society. This is an important argument
both for the EU and for a city like New York.
Globalization
also means the growing role of international organizations, both
global and regional, like the UN, the WTO, the IMF or the EU and AU,
and the diminishing ability of nation states to confront their
problems alone – problems which are now often global challenges
requiring international cooperation at an ever increasing level.
Critics
of globalization make a series of points:
Globalization
encourages competition to lower prices. This may damage developed
economies with strong social welfare systems which find themselves in
competition with countries like China where social welfare costs for
companies are small or non-existent, and overheads may also be
relatively low. Many Europeans commentators would argue that this
aspect of globalization outweighs the benefits to Western consumers
of low-cost goods because European companies will be unable to
compete and either close, move their factories and other production
facilities abroad where costs are lower, or outsource part, or all,
of the production process to other companies located in low-cost
areas. This will lead to more unemployment in the developed
economies. They call for trade limits on countries like China until
those countries provide their own workers with adequate health care,
education and pensions. The freer movement and circulation of workers
around the world has also been criticized as leading to a decline in
salaries as workers from the host state compete with migrants (often
willing, or forced, to work at lower pay rates and usually less
organized in terms of unions), and a rise in social tensions between
these two groups. There may also be rising friction due to cultural
and linguistic differences.Further criticisms in this field concern
the risk of increased threats to security, terrorism and pandemics.
The greater volume of trade makes it difficult for the customs
authorities to effectively check the goods being transported and this
has, it is argued, made illegal trafficking in drugs, arms, organs
and human beings easier. The same argument is made for the increased
number of people moving across borders.
Globalization
is criticized as producing a tendency towards a global monoculture
(and the destruction of local cultures) and towards a monoculture of
crops, which reduces agricultural biodiversity and could put the
world at risk of sudden reductions in food production due to crop
diseases.
Since
the start of the current economic recession in 2008 many experts have
argued that globalization makes the spread of a financial or economic
crisis more likely because of the interconnectedness of the world
economy, and thus renders the global trading system less stable,
rather than more stable as supporters claim. However, other
economists point out that this interconnectedness is not a new
phenomenon as the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Depression of the
1930s demonstrates. In fact, they argue that today’s global
institutions and our awareness of global economic realities have made
it possible for countries to react more effectively this time by
adopting common policies rather than pursuing protectionist policies
as happened in the 1930s. However, the globalization of financial
markets and the removal of or reduction in the rules controlling
financial and banking transactions, together with the availability of
credit on easy terms to those who were not really credit-worthy led,
in the opinion of many critics, to a financial culture of
irresponsibility based on short term gains from the stock market and
property markets, and lending to high-risk borrowers rather than
sound, long term investment of this money in industrial and
technological projects and research. This, they say, led directly to
the financial bubble and crisis in the US real estate market, in
particular the sub-prime mortgage market (but also in the Spanish and
Irish real estate markets). It also allowed too much lending to some
states and now too much speculation against these states and their
currencies (e.g. Greece, Greek Treasury bonds and the Euro) on
financial markets. Critics argue that a distinction should be made
between the real economy (the production of goods and services) where
the bankruptcy of even the biggest company will not create an
economic crisis for a government, and the financial sector where
financial institutions may lend on such an enormous scale that should
they face bankruptcy they put the country’s entire economic system
at risk. This argument leads to the conclusion that financial
institutions require much stricter regulation and oversight than
other types of companies.
Critics
argue that poor countries, particularly small poor countries with
little or no industrial base, and thus dependent on the export of
agricultural produce or raw materials are under pressure from
developed economies and emerging economies to open up their economies
to foreign companies. They may thus be exploited or face very great
fluctuations in the global price of the commodities that they export.
See the current situation:
This
may prevent them from accumulating enough capital to develop and grow
their economies. It is argued that they may need to protect strategic
industries, with trade barriers and national institutions and
management, in the early stages of the development of these
industries, as most developed countries themselves (e.g. Italy and
Japan) did and China still does.
Globalization
has also been criticized for prioritizing global economic growth (in
which it has been very successful) over global issues such as
sustainable development, climate change, deforestation, the reduction
in biodiversity and global warming. A series of conferences (the most
recent, the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris November 2015, in
Lima in December 2014, and at UN HQ in New York in September 2014) )
have attempted to address these issues, but there is great
disagreement among commentators as to the effectiveness of these
conferences and the extent of the progress made. Some praise
conferences as a ‘breakthrough’ (the UN) in terms of commitment,
while others see them as too little, too late (many NGOs).
Cultural
globalization has also been criticized as leading to a dehumanized
monoculture based on materialist and essentially Western values. In
this context we should note the rising criticism, in the more
traditional fringes of some cultures, of international institutions
like the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF and even the UN itself as
Western (i.e. ‘foreign’) and imperialist.
Finally,
globalization has also given international criminal and terrorist
organizations more space to operate and these threats to security
will require an ongoing, collective response.
Conclusion
– a sudden reversal of the trend to economic globalization would,
in the opinion of most economists be disastrous, but the
reintroduction of effective rules to govern international finance is
an aim shared by the EU and the Obama administration (Donald Trump?).
A re-examination of the terms of trade between developed, emerging,
and developing countries is also clearly necessary and the goal of
ongoing global negotiations. Moreover, as many of the problems of the
21st
century are now on a global scale only shared global strategies and
cooperation will succeed in dealing with them (e.g. climate change
and the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015). As Sustainable
Development Goal 17 makes clear, in order to deal with the problems
caused or made worse by population trends a global partnership will
be necessary.
However, critics argue that
so far negotiations on global challenges have produced only modest
consensus and even less in terms of practical results.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/25/dead-end-globalisation-youth-rage
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/sep/28/peak-globalisation-have-we-reached-it-uk
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-connections/2016/aug/15/trade-global-economy-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership
martedì 24 gennaio 2017
Preselection test practice
Texts for rapid reading comprehension
plus
anything else you find by doing a search on google for:
'C1
texts for multiple choice reading comprehension' or something
similar
and
chose this:
International Current Affairs quizzes
plus
anything else you find by doing a search on google for:
'international relations quiz'
or
try adding a topic or institution. For example:
'international
relations middle east quiz' gave
me:
or
geography? 'European geography quiz' gave me:
or
history? 'Modern
European history' quiz
gave me this:
which
gave these:
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