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Interesting article on legislating the internet......<br>
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Best<br>
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Alice<br>
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<h1>Taming and Reining in Cyberspace</h1>
<h2>Now 20 years old, the Web is losing its Wild West freedom.
Government power in cyberspace is big and growing. </h2>
<p class="byline">by <a onclick='var
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href="http://nationaljournal.com/reporters/bio/110">Josh Smith</a></p>
<h5 class="timestamp"> Updated: September 23, 2011 | 10:58 a.m. <br>
September 15, 2011 | 5:00 p.m. </h5>
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<p>On Aug. 6, 1991, the World Wide Web went global. British
physicist Tim Berners-Lee posted the first hyperlink to an
online discussion group and began the Internet’s transformation
from an elite tool to a public platform. Since then, the Web has
spawned dreams of a cyber-realm where government censors are
powerless, people are free, and national boundaries are
meaningless.</p>
<p>“Governments of the Industrial World,” wrote Grateful Dead
lyricist John Perry Barlow in 1996, “you weary giants of flesh
and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On
behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.
You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we
gather.”</p>
<p>Twenty years after the Web’s debut, governments around the
world are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. The
Internet has indeed revolutionized politics and government, but
it has hardly transcended laws and regulations. From blocking
online poker to tracking the cyberfootprints of suspected
terrorists, governments are exer-cising more power over—and
through—the Internet than ever before.</p>
<p>“In the early days of the Web, a decade or so ago, it was taken
for granted that freedom of expression online would inexorably
evolve and progress,” noted a recent report from the OpenNet
Initiative, a coalition promoting Internet freedom. “It was
assumed that governments that did not uphold the fundamental
human right to speak and write freely would be powerless…. By
now, though, those dreams have been dashed.”</p>
<p>China’s government demonstrated years ago that it could
restrict access to the Web and stifle online political
criticism. But Western governments are becoming more intrusive
too, often motivated by popular goals: fighting child
pornography; tracking criminals and terrorists; preventing
cyberattacks and fighting cyberwars; and helping political
opposition groups in countries such as Libya and Iran evade
government repression.</p>
<p>“Now that the Internet is an integral part of most people’s
lives, it would be contradictory to exclude governments,”
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told a global conference of
technology leaders this spring. “Nobody should forget that these
governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will
of the people in our democracies. To forget this is to risk
democratic chaos and hence anarchy.”</p>
<blockquote class="right">“Governments are the only legitimate
representatives of the people.… To forget this is to risk
democratic chaos.” —President Nicolas Sarkozy of France</blockquote>
<p>Earlier this year, France gave police the authority to shut
down suspected child-pornography websites without a warrant, a
move that civil libertarians fear could legitimize
more-expansive censorship. But France is hardly alone. The
governments of Tunisia and Turkey, among others, have proposed
Internet filters to block pornography that could also end up
restricting access to legitimate websites. The leaders of Iran,
already one of the world’s harshest online censors, are
transitioning to a state-controlled “national Internet” that
allows no access to the World Wide Web.</p>
<p>Washington has been ramping up its policing as well. The
proposed Protect IP Act moving through Congress would give
law-enforcement agencies more tools to go after pirated content
online. Critics say that the bill could limit free speech by
allowing officials to block websites without giving their owners
a chance to defend themselves against charges of illegal
activity. Another bill would require Internet service providers
to keep their customers’ browsing histories for a full year. It
aims at helping police track down child pornographers, but
opponents say that the government could mine the information for
almost any purpose.</p>
<p>The dilemmas came home to America in a big way in August when
San Francisco transit officials shutdown cell-phone service in
some subway stations to head off planned protests in their train
stations. The move drew rebukes from civil libertarians and
sparked a fight with the hacker group Anonymous. Angry over the
shutdown, Anonymous hacked into a transit-authority website,
exposing the personal data of people unrelated to the agency and
even posting nude pictures of a transit official. Both sides’
actions make it hard to say who was in the right, highlighting
the tension between government protection and government
intrusion.</p>
<p>The widening governmental grasp worries civil libertarians and
longtime champions of Internet freedom. “The world’s governments
are increasing their regulatory attention to the Internet to
address a range of concerns,” said Leslie Harris, president of
the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group
working to keep an “open, innovative, and free” Internet. “In
the process, some are forgetting—or are consciously seeking to
repeal or limit—the policy choices that allowed the Internet to
develop into such a powerful platform for economic activity,
democratic participation, and human development.”</p>
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<p>The first half of 2011 saw unprecedented action from the
highest levels of government and international organizations. In
May, the White House composed its first-ever International
Strategy for Cyberspace, designed to coordinate Internet efforts
among federal agencies. Also in May, the Group of Eight leading
industrial nations convened a gathering of tech leaders in Paris
and released a communiqué calling for tighter regulation of the
Internet. On June 29, the international Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development issued a set of principles
that called, in part, for ISPs and other intermediaries to
monitor more online content. And in July, the Defense Department
released its first plan for cyberspace, declaring the Internet a
domain for war.</p>
<p>The goal of the Obama administration’s International Strategy
for Cyberspace seems benign and even bland: to keep the Internet
“open, interoperable, secure, and reliable.” The document links
policies ranging from cybersecurity to Internet freedom and
identifies “norms of responsible behavior” for governments
around the world. “The world must collectively recognize the
challenges posed by malevolent actors’ entry into cyberspace,
and update and strengthen our national and international
policies accordingly,” the strategy document concludes. “The
future of an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable
cyberspace depends on nations recognizing and safeguarding that
which should endure while confronting those who would
destabilize or undermine our increasingly networked world.”</p>
<p>Even with the best of intentions, however, the United States
and other democracies face a paradox: In their efforts to
preserve an Internet that is both open and secure, governments
often undermine access by overregulating. “States no longer fear
pariah status by openly declaring their intent to regulate and
control cyberspace,” concluded the OpenNet Initiative’s report.
“The convenient rubric of terrorism, child pornography, and
cybersecurity has contributed to a growing expectation that
states should enforce order in cyberspace.”</p>
<h2>FOREIGN POLICY BY OTHER MEANS</h2>
<p>Antigovernment protesters filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square in
mostly peaceful demonstrations for days last winter, and by Feb.
2, the area was a teeming mass of humanity. Then, on that
particular Wednesday, things changed. Thousands of supporters of
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stormed into the square,
swinging clubs and whips. The clash created a bizarre spectacle
as protesters organized through social media and cell phones
faced thugs riding on camels and horses in a street brawl
broadcast around the world on cable television and the Internet.
Pundits cast the almost medieval images from Tahrir Square as
proof of the power of social media against an authoritarian
regimes.</p>
<p>“There’s no question that the ability of young activists in
Egypt or Tunisia to organize themselves was dependent on not
sitting in a coffee shop or hotel somewhere, but using the
Internet and having access to each other online,” said Michael
Posner, assistant secretary of State for democracy, human
rights, and labor, in an interview with <em>National Journal.</em>
“So the potential is great, but precisely because it is great
and it’s so empowering, there’s also greater risk.”</p>
<p>That fact is not lost on governments. The United States is
spending millions of dollars to develop anticensorship apps,
build shadow communications systems, and train activists
overseas how to beat Big Brother.</p>
<blockquote class="right">“Some are … consciously seeking to
repeal” the freedom that allowed the Internet to develop.
—Leslie Harris, Center for Democracy and Technology</blockquote>
<p>Not surprisingly, autocratic regimes have fought back with
their own measures. The State Department’s 2010 Human Rights
Report cited the dramatic growth of communications technology as
one of the most significant trends in human rights. But
researchers also found that “more than 40 governments are now
using a combination of regulatory restrictions, technical
controls on access to the Internet, and technologies designed to
repress speech and infringe on the personal privacy of those who
use these rapidly evolving technologies.”</p>
<p>The growing threat of Internet censorship, ranging from China’s
sophisticated firewalls to outright attacks on activists tracked
down through their online trails, is prompting calls for
more-concerted freedom initiatives. “The open Internet as it
exists today did not come about by accident,” warned the Center
for Democracy and Technology in a recent report. “Today’s
Internet is possible because of very specific choices made in
technology, policy, and law that encourage innovation and
preserve the openness of the platform.”</p>
<p>In many ways, the United States is active on both sides of the
argument. On one hand, the Defense Department and the CIA are
pouring billions of dollars into cyberwarfare and
cyberespionage; the Homeland Security Department is beefing up
cybertracking to head off potential terrorist attacks; and
members of Congress are aiming to increase regulation of online
privacy, intellectual property, and cybercrime. All of these
efforts work to expand government’s power.</p>
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<p>On the other hand, the State Department is actively helping
dissident groups in countries such as Libya to evade their
government’s Internet barriers. Those efforts have the potential
to expand democracy.</p>
<p>“This is a new foreign-policy imperative,” Christopher Painter,
who became the State Department’s first cyberpolicy coordinator,
said in an interview with <em>National Journal.</em> “The
decisions we make over the next year or two will define how the
Internet looks for years.” After years of approaching Internet
issues as a cluster of separate technical problems, Painter
said, governments and private-sector groups are recognizing that
cybersecurity, privacy, copyright protections, and free speech
are all connected. “All these topics are mutually dependent,”
Painter said. “You can’t make policy without understanding
that.”</p>
<p><img src="cid:part1.00070800.04070809@apc.org" alt=""></p>
<h2>JUST DON’T HELP TOO MUCH</h2>
<p>In December 2010, an officer with the sheriff’s regional
electronics and computer investigations in Hamilton County,
Ind., contacted 52-year-old Michael Bohannon online. Bohannon
shared 41 files of suspected child pornography with the officer,
and investigators ultimately uncovered more than 13,000 images
and 6,000 videos of child pornography on the Cincinnati man’s
home computer. Even more disturbing, police realized that
Bohannon had been convicted five years earlier of possessing
child pornography and had served 40 months in prison.</p>
<p>It’s a story repeated almost every day in crime blotters around
the world, along with reports of international child-porn rings,
and it’s why the public supports law enforcement’s authority to
track suspected predators with whatever tools are available. Who
wouldn’t want to do everything possible to stop the sexual
exploitation of children?</p>
<p>That’s exactly what Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., argued at a House hearing in July.
The pair was championing their Protecting Children from Internet
Pornographers Act, which would require ISPs to collect and
retain user data for at least a year. Opponents, including Rep.
Darrell Issa, R-Calif., warned that the bill could open a
Pandora’s box of government intrusion—from warrantless snooping
on innocent people to mining all kinds of personal information.
“This is not about child porn. It never has been and never will
be,” Issa said during committee debate. “This is a convenient
way for law enforcement to get what they couldn’t get in the
Patriot Act.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, many big corporate players on the Web are
uneasy about government intervention in cyberspace. Google’s
Chairman, Eric Schmidt, fretted at the “e-G-8” meeting in Paris
this May that governments might be getting ahead of themselves.
“Technology will move faster than governments, so don’t
legislate before you understand the consequences,” Schmidt
warned the audience of political and technology industry
leaders.</p>
<p>While few Internet users in Western countries face outright
censorship, government officials are stepping up efforts to
prevent cybercrime, protect privacy, and crack down on copyright
infringement. Germany and Canada, among others countries, have
also used hate-speech laws to go after Internet service
providers that knowingly host illegal content.</p>
<blockquote class="right">The Internet has great potential to
empower democratic movements, “but … there’s also greater risk.”
—Michael Posner</blockquote>
<p>As early as 2000, a French court ordered Yahoo to block French
users from an online auction site offering Nazi memorabilia.
This June, ISPs in Australia took matters into their own hands
and restricted access to a list of 500 websites, according to
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates Internet
freedom. “While some filtering at a private level can be a good
thing, such as keeping kids from accessing undesirable content
online, government-level filtering does more harm than good,”
said Jillian York, the foundation’s director for international
freedom of expression. “What happens when the filters go after
politically sensitive content? Will anyone object then?”</p>
<p>Over the past year, cyberspace experienced a surge in
government interference, restrictions on the flow of
information, and disputes over how Internet traffic is
exchanged, noted Larry Strickling, assistant secretary of
Commerce for communications and information, speaking at a
Georgetown University Law Center event in July. “All of these
events only strengthen my view that now is truly a time for all
to get involved who are concerned about maintaining a vibrant
and growing Internet and who want to preserve established global
Internet institutions,” he said.</p>
<p>In the United States, power struggles over the Internet are
under way on many fronts. Various proposals making their way
through Congress would enact sweeping changes to laws governing
cybersecurity, online privacy, and protection of intellectual
property. Each fight, regardless of the specifics, has the
potential to change the balance of control between the
government, the communications industry, and private
individuals. The Global Online Freedom Act, reintroduced in
April after languishing since 2006, would require technology
companies to receive permission from U.S. officials before
complying with restrictive foreign governments. Critics of the
legislation—notably, businesses that do business with such
governments—charge that it is autocratic of the United States to
try to control what other governments want them to do.</p>
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<p>Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, have
proposed a measure that would require websites and online
services to abide by strict privacy rules for children under 12.
Among other things, the bill would prohibit Web companies from
tracking a child’s online browsing. But some civil-liberties
activists say the bill would actually reduce privacy because
Internet companies would need to collect even personal
information to determine if a user is a child.</p>
<p>Government efforts to protect against hacking present some of
the greatest challenges to Internet freedom, analysts say.
Legislation proposed by the top members of the <a onclick='var
x=".tl(";s_objectID="http://topics.nationaljournal.com/Senate+Homeland+Security+Committee/_1";return
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rel="nofollow">Senate Homeland Security Committee</a> would
give the federal government the authority to enforce
cybersecurity and would push the private sector to establish
“best practices” against hackers. When civil-rights groups
complained that the measure would give the executive branch too
much power in the event of a major cyberattack, the bill’s
sponsors added language that explicitly bars the president from
using any kind of “kill switch” to shut down the Internet.</p>
<p>Some policymakers, including former Director of National
Intelligence Mike McConnell, have proposed measures to beef up
security by making it easier to track and identify people
online. But cyberlibertarians oppose any such steps. “A
‘reengineered,’ more secure Internet is likely a very different
Internet than the open and innovative network we know today,”
warned George Mason University researchers Jerry Brito and Tate
Watkins in a recent paper. “It might be an Internet on which
information flows are much more easily controlled by government
and in which anonymity is impossible, posing a threat to free
speech. A capability to track and attribute malicious activities
could just as easily be employed to track and control any other
type of activity.”</p>
<h2>BIG BUSINESS VERSUS BIG BROTHER</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most heavily lobbied open-Internet battle in the
United States centers on network-neutrality regulations designed
to reduce anticompetitive behavior over broadband networks. The
rules, which the Federal Communications Commission approved in
December, prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or
slowing access to certain websites. For supporters, usually on
the liberal side of the political fence, net-neutrality
regulations are vital to ensuring that corporations don’t
restrict Internet access. Without restrictions, they say, ISPs
could charge Yahoo for the opportunity to have its search site
load faster than Google’s, or could block start-ups from
entering the market. Conservative critics decry the rules as
tantamount to a government takeover of the Internet. Even before
the regulations took effect, they were challenged in court, and
the House voted to overturn them.</p>
<p>The brawl highlights a vexing subtext of the online-freedom
debate: Who is best suited to protect the free use of the
Internet? The Net’s traditional champions leaned libertarian,
worrying primarily about government control. But giant
corporations essentially dominate the Internet today, and many
of them have access to vast amounts of personal data. Facebook
alone boasts more than 750 million active users (if Facebook was
a country, it would be the third-most populous in the world),
and Google recently became the first website to attract 1
billion visits a month. Like Washington, the cyberindustry seems
to straddle both sides of the argument over Internet freedom.</p>
<p>“People tell me, ‘On the one hand, it’s great you played such a
big role in the Arab Spring, but it’s also kind of scary because
you enable all this sharing and collect information on people,’
” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, told the e-G-8
assembly. “It’s hard to have one without the other.… You can’t
isolate some things you like about the Internet and control
other things that you don’t.”</p>
<p>Many in the business community and in civil-society
organizations are hoping that self-regulation will stave off
government mandates. The Global Network Initiative, a coalition
of human-rights groups and industry giants such as Google,
Microsoft, and Yahoo, was established in 2008 to develop
guidelines for operating within authoritarian countries. The
idea, not always embraced during the heat of competition, is
that Western companies shouldn’t provide the tools for political
repression.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, though, the communications and tech sectors face
mounting calls in democratic countries for government
intervention to fight cyberattacks, data breaches, invasive
marketing, child pornography, and hate speech.</p>
<p>Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit advocacy group for
citizen rights in cyberspace, said that some degree of
government control is inevitable. “As long as there are people
sitting at the keyboards, governments will have a role to play,”
he said. “People still live in the real world, and in the real
world, governments are still in charge.”</p>
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<h2>IS INTERNET ACCESS A HUMAN RIGHT?</h2>
<p>Rafal Rohozinski is riding the Internet freedom wave. As a top
executive of Psiphon, a Web proxy service based in Canada that
allows people around the world to circumvent Internet firewalls
and avoid censorship, Rohozinski was among the first to receive
some of the $15 million in grants from the State Department to
support Internet freedom in 2008. Now, the company is one of
several that contract with the Broadcasting Board of Governors,
an independent government agency, to help international users
access U.S. government news content. Since then, the department
has handed out $35 million in similar grants for anticensorship
technology, software, and activist training. But that’s just the
beginning. Inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, Congress
included an extra $20 million in its most recent continuing
budget resolution for the State Department’s Internet freedom
programs, as well as $10 million for the Broadcasting Board of
Governors’ circumvention contractors.</p>
<p>The parallel growth of government control and government
spending to block censorship is no coincidence. “We are
experiencing a tectonic shift,” Rohozinski says. “As more and
more people come online, it becomes more political. It used to
be just for geeks. Now we’re moving way beyond that.” At the
heart of that change, he says, is the growing number of young
people online and the explosion of Internet use outside the
United States. “The epicenter of cyberspace is shifting,” he
said.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton highlighted the
growing stakes in a landmark speech on Internet freedom earlier
this year. “The Internet has become the public space of the 21st
century—the world’s town square, classroom, marketplace,
coffeehouse, and nightclub,” she said. “We need to have a
serious conversation about the principles that will guide us.
What rules exist and should not exist, and why? What behaviors
should be encouraged or discouraged, and how?”</p>
<p>The problem, Clinton’s senior adviser Alec Ross has said, is
that no international norms govern access to the Internet. In
June, United Nations special rapporteur Frank La Rue concluded
that access is a human right and should be protected as such.
“Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for
realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and
accelerating development and human progress,” La Rue wrote in a
report in May to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, “ensuring
universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all
states.”</p>
<p>These declarations from the United States and the United
Nations have heartened civil-rights advocates and the
information-technology industry alike, in part because they
concede that the technology itself doesn’t guarantee immunity
from repression. As Google’s Eric Schmidt remarked at a Santa
Barbara, Calif., conference in May, “If you’re willing to shoot
enough people and to kill enough people, you can beat the
Internet.” </p>
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