Caught in the net Why dictators are going digital

The Economist this week has a review of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov. The book makes a point that I have been making for years (although probably better than I have). The information and communications technology revolution is producing a variety of very powerful technologies. While some people may appropriate the power in ICT to promote democracy, coercive governments are likely to try to do so to suppress democratic movements and strengthen coercion.

In fact, authoritarian regimes can use the internet, as well as greater access to other kinds of media, such as television, to their advantage. Allowing East Germans to watch American soap operas on West German television, for example, seems to have acted as a form of pacification that actually reduced people’s interest in politics. Surveys found that East Germans with access to Western television were less likely to express dissatisfaction with the regime. As one East German dissident lamented, “the whole people could leave the country and move to the West as a man at 8pm, via television.”

Mr Morozov catalogues many similar examples of the internet being used with similarly pacifying consequences today, as authoritarian regimes make an implicit deal with their populations: help yourselves to pirated films, silly video clips and online pornography, but stay away from politics. “The internet”, Mr Morozov argues, “has provided so many cheap and easily available entertainment fixes to those living under authoritarianism that it has become considerably harder to get people to care about politics at all.”

Social networks offer a cheaper and easier way to identify dissidents than other, more traditional forms of surveillance. Despite talk of a “dictator’s dilemma”, censorship technology is sophisticated enough to block politically sensitive material without impeding economic activity, as China’s example shows. The internet can be used to spread propaganda very effectively, which is why Hugo Chávez is on Twitter. The web can also be effective in supporting the government line, or at least casting doubt on critics’ position (China has an army of pro-government bloggers). Indeed, under regimes where nobody believes the official media, pro-government propaganda spread via the internet is actually perceived by many to be more credible by comparison.

Think about the ability of governments to tap into land lines and cell phones and to use computers to screen traffic in order to identify people with opinions that they don't like and to track networks of people sharing such opinions.

In the democratic countries CCTV networks and high powered informatics are used to prevent crime, but coercive governments may define thought that they don't like as criminal and appropriate the technology for their own purposes.