Given the exciting reports leaking out of Iran, it’s easy to marvel at how a handful of determined people and a little bit of innovative technology can help sow the seeds for democracy right under the nose of a tyrannical dictatorship – even if it’s not exactly what’s actually going on. I, too, am not immune to the hopeful signs coming out of one of the oldest and most socially complex nations on the planet. Sadly, my enthusiasm is tempered by a little historical perspective that indicates we’re witnessing not so much a revolution as an arms race between the forces of freedom and oppression that’s playing itself out in many nations: including our own.
An insightful blog
post from my friend Loring Wirbel pointed out how the media is abuzz with glowing reports of how Twitter, podcasts, and other Internet-based communications have unleashed an unstoppable tsunami of democracy within Iran while they fail to report on many of the other important social and political forces at work in the country. Besides reminding us that the struggle is actually being pitched between two quasi-authoritarian
leaders, Mr. Wirbel also provides evidence that both sides of the conflict are making extensive use of the Internet and other electronic communication tools to further their respective causes.
The democratizing influence of technology is not a new phenomenon, dating back at least to Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, a development which made Bibles - and, eventually, the whole of human knowledge - accessible to the masses. More recently, the demonstrations that were the hallmark of China’s spectacular 1989 democratic
uprising were, in large part, coordinated by passing notes on the newfangled fax machines that had just come into common use by many businesses and offices. Since then,
personal video cameras and now cell phone cameras have helped expose the brutality and corruption of various governments to the light of public scrutiny on countless occasions.
Despite these hopeful developments, technology remains a double-edged sword which can be used equally well as a tool for unleashing democracy or for tightening a dictatorship’s grip on its population. One only need look at how the Soviet Union’s KGB used wholesale electronic eavesdropping to maintain tight control of its citizens to see how technology can be a brutally effective means of extending the reach of a corrupt regime. Likewise, China’s extensive electronic
surveillance efforts, Internet firewalling, and attempts at requiring
blocking software in every PC are indicators of a country that lives in distrust of its citizens.
Of course the United States is far from innocent in this respect. The recent congressional hearings about our national Security Agency’s over-zealous
domestic surveillance efforts uncovered a long-term secret program that routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. This program, which is large and sophisticated enough to make any Soviet-era
apparatchik jealous, has functioned for many years without any legal or legislative constraints and apparently continues to operate to this day. While intended to ferret out terrorists and other security threats, it is probably also responsible for helping add many innocent individuals to the nation’s ever-growing terrorist
watch list. More importantly, tools like this and the DCS series of
communication intercept systems could easily be turned against citizens engaged in lawful political activities, that happened to not be to the liking of a political faction, unless there is sufficient transparency and oversight. Recent revelations about
abuse of these capabilities during the Bush administration indicate we may have come chillingly close to such a scenario.
While many pundits are heralding the Internet and other communications technologies as heralds for a new wave of global democracy, I tend to see them as new tools in an old arms race between the forces of freedom and oppression. My hope lies not in the technology itself, but in the desire for self-determination that seems to burn in the souls of most of our fellow humans. Hopefully, this spirit will eventually prevail in Iran, Sudan, Burma, and other troubled countries across the globe.
Likewise, let’s hope that we continue to use the powerful electronic tools we have at our disposal to help keep darkness from quietly descending on the US and other normally-democratic nations.
Comments? Questions? Thoughts on how to balance security and democracy? Write me at
lhg at en-genius dot net or post your comments on our blog.
