[governance] Review of book on 'Political economy of Internet freedom'

[parminder]

http://boundary2.org/2015/04/29/dissecting-the-internet-freedom-agenda/

*A**review by Richard Hill of*
****

/*The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom*/*
 **by ***Shawn M. Powers and Michael Jablonski**

**  **
 

Both radical civil society organizations
<http://www.justnetcoalition.org/> and mainstream
<http://www.internetsociety.org/> defenders of the status quo agree that
the free and open Internet is threatened: see for example the Delhi
Declaration <http://www.justnetcoalition.org/delhi-declaration>, Bob
Hinden’s 2014 Year End Thoughts
<http://www.internetsociety.org/blog/institutional/2014/12/year-end-thoughts>,
and Kathy Brown’s March 2015 statement
<http://www.internetsociety.org/blog/public-policy/2015/03/connecting-dots-options-future-action>
at a UNESCO conference. The threats include government censorship and
mass surveillance, but also the failure of governments to control
rampant industry concentration and commercial exploitation of personal
data, which increasingly takes the form of providing “free” services in
exchange for personal information that is resold at a profit, or used to
provide targeted advertising, also at a profit.

In /Digital Disconnect
<http://boundary2.org/2015/04/08/the-internet-vs-democracy/>/, Robert
McChesney has explained how the Internet, which was supposed to be a
force for the improvement of human rights and living conditions, has
been used to erode privacy and to increase the concentration of economic
power, to the point where it is becoming a threat to democracy
<http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/03/11/no-democracy-is-not-excess-baggage/>. In
/Digital Depression
<http://boundary2.org/2014/12/03/internet-freedom-digital-empire/>/, Dan
Schiller has documented how US policies regarding the Internet have
favored its geo-economic and geo-political goals, in particular the
interests of its large private companies that dominate the information
and communications technology (ICT) sector worldwide.

Shawn M. Powers <http://gsu.academia.edu/smp> and Michael Jablonski
<http://gsu.academia.edu/MichaelJablonski>’s seminal new book /The Real
Cyber War/
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/025208070X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=025208070X&linkCode=as2&tag=uncomputing-20&linkId=NZ23PH2SQQTRGQAY>
takes us further down the road of understanding what went wrong, and
what might be done to correct the situation. Powers, an assistant
professor at Georgia State University, specializes in international
political communication, with particular attention to the geopolitics of
information and information technologies. Jablonski is an attorney and
presidential fellow, also at Georgia State.

There is a vast literature on internet governance (see for example the
bibliography in Radu, Chenou, and Weber, eds., /The Evolution of Global
Internet Governance
<https://www.schulthess.com/buchshop/detail/ISBN-9783725569083/Radu-Roxana-Editeur-Chenou-Jean-Marie-Editeur-Weber-Rolf-H.-Editeur/The-Evolution-of-Global-Internet-Governance>/),
but much of it is ideological and normative: the author espouses a
certain point of view, explains why that point of view is good, and
proposes actions that would lead to the author’s desired outcome (a good
example is Milton Mueller’s well researched but utopian /Networks and
States
<http://www.amazon.com/Networks-States-Governance-Information-Revolution/dp/0262518570>/).
There is nothing wrong with that approach: on the contrary, such
advocacy is necessary and welcome.

But a more detached analytical approach is also needed, and Powers and
Jablonski provide exactly that. Their objective is to help us understand
(citing from p. 19 of the paperback edition) “why states pursue the
policies they do”. The book “focuses centrally on understanding the
numerous ways in which power and control are exerted in cyberspace” (p. 19).

Starting from the rather obvious premise that states compete to shape
international policies that favor their interests, and using the
framework of political economy, the authors outline the geopolitical
stakes and show how questions of power
<http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/03_tni_state-of-power-2015_the_true_stakes_of_internet_governance-1.pdf>,
and not human rights
<http://www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/2014/287-288/cover07.htm>, are the
real drivers of much of the debate about Internet governance. They show
how the United States has deliberately used a human rights discourse to
promote policies that further its geo-economic and geo-political
interests. And how it has used subsidies and government contracts to
help its private companies to acquire or maintain dominant positions in
much of the ICT sector.

Jacob Silverman has decried
<http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/crowdsourcing-scam> the “the misguided
belief that once power is arrogated away from doddering governmental
institutions, it will somehow find itself in the hands of ordinary
people”. Powers and Jablonski dissect the mechanisms by which vibrant
government institutions deliberately transferred power to US
corporations in order to further US geo-economical and geo-political goals.

In particular, they show how a “freedom to connect” narrative is used by
the USA to attempt to transform information and personal data into
commercial commodities that should be subject to free trade. Yet all
states (including the US) regulate, at least to some extent, the flow of
information within and across their borders. If information is the “new
oil” of our times, then it is not surprising that states wish to shape
the production and flow of information in ways that favor their
interests. Thus it is not surprising that states such as China, India,
and Russia have started to assert sovereign rights to control some
aspect of the production and flow of information within their borders,
and that European Union courts have made decisions on the basis of
European law that affect global information flows and access.

As the authors put the matter (p. 6): “the [US] doctrine of internet
freedom … is the realization of a broader [US] strategy promoting a
particular conception of networked communication that depends on
American companies …, supports Western norms …, and promotes Western
products.” (I would personally say that it actually supports US norms
and US products and services.) As the authors point out, one can ask (p.
11): “If states have a right to control the types of people allowed into
their territory (immigration), and how its money is exchanged with
foreign banks, then why don’t they have a right to control information
flows from foreign actors?”

To be sure, any such controls would have to comply with international
human rights law. But the current US policies go much further, implying
that those human rights laws must be implemented in accordance with the
US interpretation, meaning few restrictions on freedom of speech, weak
protection
<http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Privacy/United%20States.pdf> of
privacy, and ever stricter
<http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/04/06/the-shaky-rationale-for-tpps-copyright-term/>
protection for intellectual property. As Powers and Jablonski point out
(p. 31), the US does not hesitate to promote restrictions on information
flows when that promotes its goals.

Again, the authors do not make value judgments: they explain in Chapter
1 how the US deliberately attempts to shape (to a large extent
successfully
<http://www.global.asc.upenn.edu/internet-governance-the-new-great-game/>)
international policies, so that both actions and inactions serve its
interests and those of the large corporations that increasingly
influence US policies.

The authors then explain how the US military-industrial complex has
morphed into an information-industrial complex, with deleterious
consequences for both industry and government, consequences such as
“weakened oversight, accountability, and industry vitality and
competitiveness”(p. 23) that create risks for society and democracy. As
the authors say, the shift “from adversarial to cooperative
and/laissez-faire/ rule making is a keystone moment in the rise of the
information-industrial complex” (p. 61).

As a specific example, they focus on Google, showing how it (largely
successfully) aims to control and dominate all aspects of the data
market, from production, through extraction, refinement, infrastructure
and demand. A chapter is devoted to the economics of internet
connectivity, showing how US internet policy is basically about getting
the largest number of people online, so that US companies can extract
ever greater profits from the resulting data flows. They show how the
network effects, economies of scale, and externalities that are
fundamental features of the internet favor first-movers, which are
mostly US companies.

The remedy to such situations is well known: government intervention:
widely accepted regarding air transport, road transport,
pharmaceuticals, etc., and yet unthinkable for many regarding the
internet. But why? As the authors put the matter (p. 24): “While
heavy-handed government controls over the internet should be resisted,
so should a system whereby internet connectivity requires the systematic
transfer of wealth from the developing world to the developed.” But
freedom of information is put forward to justify specific economic
practices which would not be easy to justify otherwise, for example “no
government taxes companies for data extraction or for data
imports/exports, both of which are heavily regulated aspects of markets
exchanging other valuable commodities”(p. 97).

The authors show in detail how the so-called internet multi-stakeholder
<https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/democracy-or-multi-stakeholderism-competing-models-of-governance/>
model of governance is dominated by insiders and used “under the veil of
consensus’” (p. 136) to further US policies and corporations. A chapter
is devoted to explaining how all states control, at least to some
extent, information flows within their territories, and presents
detailed studies of how four states (China, Egypt, Iran and the USA)
have addressed the challenges of maintaining political control while
respecting (or not) freedom of speech. The authors then turn to the very
current topic of mass surveillance, and its relation to anonymity,
showing how, when the US presents the internet and “freedom to connect”
as analogous to public speech and town halls, it is deliberately arguing
against anonymity and against privacy – and this of course in order to
avoid restrictions on its mass surveillance activities.

Thus the authors posit that there are tensions between the US call for
“internet freedom” and other states’ calls
<http://www.ip-watch.org/2014/11/05/what-is-happening-at-the-itu-plenipotentiary-conference/>
for “information sovereignty”, and analyze the 2012 World Conference on
International Telecommunications
<http://www.amazon.com/The-International-Telecommunication-Regulations-Internet/dp/3642454151>
from that point of view.

Not surprisingly, the authors conclude that international cooperation,
recognizing the legitimate aspirations of all the world’s peoples, is
the only proper way forward. As the authors put the matter (p. 206):
“Activists and defenders of the original vision of the Web as a ‘fair
and humane’ cyber-civilization need to avoid lofty ‘internet freedom’
declarations and instead champion specific reforms required to protect
the values and practices they hold dear.” And it is with that in mind,
as a counterweight to US and US-based corporate power, that a group of
civil society organizations have launched the Internet Social Forum
<http://internetsocialforum.net/?q=Tunis_Call_for_a_Peoples_Internet>.

Anybody who is seriously interested in the evolution of internet
governance and its impact on society and democracy will enjoy reading
this well researched book and its clear exposition of key facts. One can
only hope that the Council of Europe will heed Powers and Jablonski’s
advice and avoid adopting more resolutions such as the recent
recommendation to member states by the EU Committee of Ministers
<https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=2306649>, which merely pander to the
US discourse and US power that Powers and Jablonski describe so aptly.
And one can fondly hope that this book will help to inspire a change in
course that will restore the internet to what it might become (and what
many thought it was supposed to be): an engine for democracy and social
and economic progress, justice, and equity.
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