Technologies and freedom   03 March 2011

Photo: Unknown

It was in 2009, not long ago, that this historic city, Tehran, was a battleground between the government’s Basij militia and protesters very much like those washing over me on multiple channels.

 

Internet is available, at this regional meeting on telecommunication that I am speaking at; but I find that certain blogs I read regularly are blocked. My own can be read because it does not sit on a service such as Blogger. Facebook is blocked as well. How come the raw rebellion against authority catalysed by these very technologies dominates all channels permitted by Ahmadinejad? Is it because it is possible to insert the pictures of Obama with Mubarak and Persian-language spin in the torrent of videos streaming violence on TV but not on new media?  

 

One can watch BBC TV but not visit its website in Tehran.  

 

Press TV, an Iranian government-sponsored English news channel, runs SMS messages on a ticker on its broadcasts and invites viewers to contribute photos and videos. Are Iranian citizens sanctioned these actions at all times?

 

Iranian channels are reporting positively about the UN Security Council accusing Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi of violating human rights, as though such violations did not occur here in the aftermath of the last election. Sri Lankans denounce the attacks on civilians by Qaddafi’s forces, but block out the unresolved questions of how gently their own Army treated civilians in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu. Could the ubiquity of cameras be the differentiating factor? Cameras are everywhere in Tripoli and Manama; images keep coming out, despite confiscations of cameras, SIMs, and whatever picture-snapping gadgets there are. Prabhakaran’s captives had no cameras.  

 

The United States has been the leading proponent of transparency. Its constitutional structure of checks and balances is built on the availability of information on governments’ actions. A US Supreme Court Justice once said that when it came to government procedures, ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ And yet, it is the United States government which has been the most embarrassed by WikiLeaks and the most belligerent in its responses to the leaks.

 

It seems that hard choices are being faced by all. The rules are changing, but no one quite knows what they are.  

 

Critical mass

It was in 1983 that Ithiel de Sola Pool wrote Technologies of freedom. In his book, Pool predicted and analyzed the challenge posed by new technologies to the monopoly of the nation state on what its citizens could see and hear. He could not have dreamt that it would be Qatar-based Al Jazeera and not nice white BBC or VoA that would break this monopoly. And he would not have been surprised to know that Qaddafi’s men would be doing the jamming. Despite the phenomenon of the fundamental weakening of the nation state by boundary-jumping information and communication technologies such as direct-broadcast satellites having been analyzed by Pool more than 25 years ago, the tipping point has only been reached now.  

 

So it seems that the key is not technologies per se, but how much they have diffused; whether they have reached critical mass. Video cameras have been around for years, but they reached a high enough degree of ubiquity by 1991 to capture the images of the Los Angeles Police beating up yet another big black man. Rodney King thus entered history. There weren’t enough video cameras in the regions impoverished by the LTTE in Sri Lanka to make a difference. But in prosperous Bahrain, they tied the hands of the Emir.

 

In 1981, General Jaruzelski shut down the national telecommunication system in Poland: old-style fixed phones only. No mobiles, no Internet back then. Then-king Gyanendra of Nepal shut down all telecom networks in his domain in 2005, mobile networks and all. They both lost power in the end, but bought some time.

 

Hosni Mubarak shut down the Internet and mobile networks. Or tried. He could not shut them down completely. In the process, he seriously damaged the nascent business process outsourcing (BPO) industry of Egypt, and may have put a crimp in the growth of BPO in the entire developing world. He was not able to buy more than a few days. His rule is now limited, at most, to a rather large residence in Sharm-el-Shiekh.

 

To his credit, he made no moves on the concentration of undersea cables connecting Asia and Europe that transit Egypt through the Suez Canal. If he had, that would have been the equivalent of Saddam setting fire to Kuwait’s oil wells. Thankfully, the Egyptian Army put a brake on the cornered tyrant. What of countries where such constraints do not exist? If Qaddafi was sitting on most of the fiber cables connecting Asia and Europe, would he not be tempted to take an axe on them?

 

Qaddafi is shutting down everything: Internet, Al Jazeera, and is even making attempts on the UAE-based satellite phone service, Thuraya.  How much time will he buy? Will the price paid be more in innocents’ blood than in opportunity costs of communication foregone?

 

Gyanendra’s Law 

I propose a new law, named after the former King of Nepal: Gyanendra’s Law. This law states that a regime that shuts down communication systems will not last.

 

However, like most ‘social’ laws, Gyanendra’s Law has exceptions. Shutting down parts of networks does not count. The Rajapaksa government of Sri Lanka shut down networks in conflict areas and lives to tell the tale. Then again, there weren’t that many telephones or internet connections in those parts to begin with, thanks to Prabhakaran. When a country has almost no landline and internet connections, the government can get away with shut-downs. This is the Than Shwe Exception, named after the leader of the country with the second lowest number of mobiles after North Korea. 

 

Countries with least mobiles/100 people, 2009
	Mobile subscriptions per 100	CAGR, 2004-09 (%)	Mobile telephone sub-basket as a % of GNI per capita
D.P.R. Korea	0.29	-
Myanmar	1	40.3	69.61
Kiribati	1.02	10.2
Eritrea	2.78	47.8
Marshall Islands	4.84	36
Ethiopia	4.89	91.9	10.19
Cuba	5.54	52.3
Solomon Islands	5.73	58.5
Somalia	7.02	5.1
Burundi	10.1	52.8
Source: ITU/ICT Indicators Database, 2009.

Notes: CAGR is compound annual growth rate. Among the group, Ethiopia is growing the fastest and Somalia the slowest. Egypt-based Orascom started operations in N Korea only in 2009 and there is thus no growth rate to report. The third column indicates how expensive mobile service is, in relation to average income, where data are available. Myanmar is horrendously expensive. 

 

Let us be clear. Governments are not toppled by technology. Democracy is not delivered over the Internet. People make these changes.  Food prices, demographic structure, perception of corruption and marginalization constitute the necessary conditions. Incidents of torture, unjust imprisonment and self-immolation serve as triggers. What information and communication technologies do is catalyse, support, and reinforce the courageous actions of citizens who decide they have had enough. The effects of the communication technologies are powerful and difficult to counter once the technologies have reached critical mass. 

 

Where exactly is the tipping point? That is what we are trying to figure out from the ongoing natural experiments. Is Gyanendra’s Law real? What are the conditions for the Than Shwe Exception? What are the boundaries of transparency? When does spin cease to be effective?  When does Facebook trump television?