Technology is for revolution (and repression)

By John Gapper

Published: June 19 2009 19:28 | Last updated: June 19 2009 19:28

Technology gets a bad rap in the old media. In books and films, it is often the machinery used by governments to crush individuality.

In 1984, George Orwell’s book about an imagined police state, the Ministry of Love used telescreens to monitor the inhabitants of Oceania: “The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide.”

In The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film, Gene Hackman played a surveillance expert drawn into a murder plot as he eavesdrops on a young couple. Hackman reappeared in Enemy of the State, a 1998 film about a rogue circle of government agents using satellites and phone-monitoring software to hunt down and kill people.

A funny thing happened on the way to the digital dystopia. Far from being a tool for repression, the internet has become a means by which people shake off state censorship.

The internet has pushed governments in undemocratic and semi-democratic countries on to the defensive. They used to be able to control the flow of information on televison or in newspapers with relative ease. The ability of anyone with a mobile phone or a video camera to broadcast at will has confounded them.

Twitter, the 140-character message social network, is the latest internet phenomenon to thrust power into the hands of the citizenry. In Iran, it was the tinderbox that fanned the spark of revolt among supporters of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the defeated presidential candidate, into rallies and protests against the election result.

But do not count out the repressive uses of technology. Every Twitter follower and Facebook user who signs on for updates about popular protests in Iran or China, or uploads videos to YouTube, signals his or her revolutionary sympathies. That is not only news for free-thinkers but also potential intelligence for Big Brother.

There is no question that the internet and the rise of social media services such as Twitter have altered the balance of power between governments and citizens. That is evident both in Iran and China, which struggles with its policy of allowing access to the internet while trying to filter the flow of information.

China’s latest initiative was to insist that every personal computer sold in the country should come supplied with Green Dam Youth Escort software, which blocks sites with pornographic or violent content. Since then, it has wavered on how strongly to enforce use of the software.

Traditional news outlets are easier to control than the internet, with its unlimited flow of articles, videos and blogs. Satellite and broadcast signals could be blocked, offending articles cut out of newspapers (in some cases literally) and foreign journalists confined to their hotel rooms or deported.

Such crude methods are much trickier to make stick with the internet. Clay Shirky, a writer and consultant on internet technology, argued in a talk at a conference of the Technology, Entertainment, Design group: “Our generation is living through the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”

Mr Shirky said the internet was unique in the history of media and technology innovations such as the telephone and television in allowing a combination of communication and broadcast (as, incidentally, Orwell’s telescreen did). People can switch seamlessly between conversing with one friend, or a bunch of them, to broadcasting to millions.

This magnifies exponentially the censor’s task because far more material is pouring out of the citizenry than being beamed to it from professional media outlets. In Iran, Twitter is a medium not only for expressions of outrage, links and videos but also for organising rallies.

Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, forecast in 1995 the emergence of The Daily Me, a digital newspaper tailored to the interests of each reader. That overlooks the most revolutionary aspect of the technology – that anyone can publish a Daily Me full of news about himself.

Most people’s day-to-day lives are of limited interest to others, which is why most blogs have few readers. Yet occasionally, when an earthquake strikes a province in China, or an election seems to have been rigged in Iran, citizens can turn into journalists, with powerful results.

The events in Iran tempt us to view digital technology as a purely liberating force. Rupert Murdoch upset China in 1993 when he asserted that “advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere”, but that view is now accepted wisdom.

So far, it has proven true. But technology is neutral: the power it hands to citizens who twitter about their political activities could in future be used against them by governments. As they broadcast, they identify themselves as dissidents and leave digital fingerprints on networks. This has, of course, occurred to both sides in Iran. Traps have been laid for supporters of Mr Moussavi to get them to disclose their real names and the #iranelection topic on Twitter is full of warnings not to ask Iranians for identifying information.

In future, censors will do more than that. State security services lag behind Silicon Valley in digital innovation but they are capable of it when the pressure is on. Other regimes will learn lessons from the Iran debacle and are likely to be better prepared for the next twitterised revolution.

In 1984, Winston Smith believed he had evaded telescreen surveillance but it was simply hidden behind a picture. The machinery of government will always be there.

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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009