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| (Radio Netherlands Worlwide) |
Western
governments are investing millions to keep human rights activists online in
countries like Syria, Iran and China. They're giving citizen journalists the
technology to skirt the surveillance and disruption of data traffic by
repressive regimes. But despite this aid, Europe and the US are accused of
hypocrisy on internet freedom.
The latest
moves by Iran illustrate why bloggers there need Western help. The government
has ordered cybercafes to log exhaustive details on the identity and internet
use of all customers. According to reformist newspaper Roozegar, Tehran may
soon introduce its own, national version of the internet and permanently block
Iranians' access to the global web. Ahead of parliamentary elections in March,
the government wants to ensure Iran won't see the next Facebook revolution.
Shadow
Internet
To make
sure pro-democracy bloggers there can keep informing each other and the outside
world, the West has been sending aid. Not in the shape of money, but
technology: tailor-made equipment and software that ensure internet access and
protection from spyware. It goes by names like 'The Shadow Internet' and
'Internet in a Suitcase.'
Impressed
by social media's role in the Arab Spring, both the US and Europe are smuggling
this technology across hostile borders and into the hands of pro-democracy
activists. "Our goal is to expand the space for free speech and to
strengthen democratic society," says Monique Doppert of HIVOS, a Dutch
development aid group.
Last year
HIVOS distributed 5,000 copies of Security-in-a-Box, a software package that
helps people hide their communication activity from the authorities. It
contains tips on issues like safe encryption of data and creating strong
passwords. "You can even fit the software on a USB stick. That's all you
need."
Cyber
security
Copies have
also been distributed in Syria. "We don't know how many are in circulation
there. They can also download the software from the internet and we have no way
of tracing who's using it," says Doppert. And there lies a problem. It can
fall into the wrong hands.
The
sophistication of aid technology for bloggers is being matched step-for-step by
increasingly cyberwise state security apparatuses, Doppert acknowledges.
"The regimes are learning from the technology we send. And from each
other." She believes Iran might even be helping Syria ramp up its cyber
security.
Tracking
and tracing
"It's
a kind of cat and mouse game," says European Parliament member Marietje
Schaake, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, is Europe’s most wired
politician. "We have to keep updating the technology used by human rights
defenders so they can avoid tracking and tracing surveillance. "
She says
dictatorships have shown a chilling ability to catch on to the latest advances.
"I talked to someone who was imprisoned in Iran, who said half of those in
prison with him were confronted with transcripts of their text messages, phone
calls and emails. Skype was long thought 100% secure until Egyptian activists
found transcripts of their own Skype conversations when they raided a police
office in Cairo."
Corporate
complicity
This is
hardly surprising. Repressive regimes have been buying surveillance technology
from the West with great enthusiasm in recent years. Nokia Siemens Networks
sold a mobile network to Iran prior to the 2009 crackdown, Schaake points out.
Schaake
also mentions the Italian company Area Spa, which was building a monitoring
centre to centralise all internet and mobile traffic in Syria and actually had
Italian technicians on the ground. "It's not even a matter of naming one
or two companies, this is quite a common practice." Western sales of surveillance systems to countries like Syria dwarf the amount of aid given to
pro-democracy supporters.
"Hypocrisy"
The spyware
industry originally supplied only Western governments and companies but now
enjoys €4 billion in sales worldwide. Only recently have Western politicians
started calling for the trade in surveillance software to be regulated, because
dictators are buying the technology too.
A
hypocritical stance, says Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch hacker who in 2010 became the
subject of US government scrutiny for helping Wikileaks release classified
video footage of a Baghdad airstrike.
"Western
governments that paid for the development of repressive technology are now
complaining that dictators are using it. Western countries love it when
censorship is subverted in states run by adversaries, but they're far less
concerned with freedom of expression in their own societies."
Forked
tongue
“Look at
SOPA, the anti-piracy legislation being considered in the US Congress. It's
censorship. Western governments would do more for internet freedom if they
didn't speak with a forked tongue. A clear message is better than security in a
box. If you want to be a beacon of freedom, put your money where your mouth
is."
Last
December, the EU freed up €125 million to support internet freedom in countries
like China, Myanmar, Syria and Iran – the focus was largely on helping
repressed bloggers.
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