During one of today’s panel Q & A sessions at the Politics 2.0 conference, I suggested that coercive states were becoming increasingly savvy in their ability to monitor, control and censor information. I added that the technology for Internet filtering, to cite one example, was becoming more effective and widely used as confirmed by the Berkman Center‘s recent empirical study on internet filtering. The response from the panel: technology is not as important as the underlying motivation behind the uses of technology.
I understand the point, but am nevertheless concerned that technology is being swept under the Web 2.0 rug so easily, just like the role of the coercive state has not made a strong appearance at the conference as per my previous blog. Again, participants at this conference are necessarily a self-selected group. Few of us, however, have a background in software engineering and computer science. This may be why we all too easily dismiss the significance of technology in our presentations.
The Berkman book entitled “Access Denied” includes a chapter on “Tools and Technology of Internet Filtering” by Steven Murdoch and Ross Anderson. In this chapter, the authors identify the following techniques:
- TCP/IP Header Filtering
- TCP/IP Content Filtering
- DNS Tampering
- HTTP Proxy Filtering
- Hybrid TCP/IP and HTTP Proxy
- Denial of Service (DNS)
- Domain Deregistration
- Server Takedown
- Surveillance
This should give us pause before we minimize the impact of technology on state-society relations. What is also lacking from the panel presentations is the perspective of the private sector and the profit-motivated interests in the technologies that implement techniques listed above. Cisco and other companies are catering to increasing demand for data security. As long as there is a market, the tools will be enhanced accordingly.
Of course, there is also a market for technology and software to counter monitoring and censorship. However, this only goes to show that technology in and of itself does matter. This in no way implies technological determinism, it simply suggests that scholars of Politics 2.0 should become more familiar with existing techniques and technologies if they are going to make sweeping statements about technology.
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