NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Google and the Battle for the Soul of the Internet
Google and the Battle for the Soul of the Internet
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000673.html
"This will destroy That. The Book will destroy the Edifice."
-- The Archdeacon - "Notre Dame de Paris" - Victor Hugo (1831)
( http://bit.ly/8iyivf )
"Google's mission: to organize the world's information and make it
universally accessible and useful."
-- Google Company Overview (2010)
( http://www.google.com/corporate )
Greetings. Around seven years ago, in an article for "Wired News"
( http://bit.ly/5U8yhX ), I invoked Victor Hugo's words that encapsulated
a common view of the power elite when faced with the reality of a
rapidly spreading printing press technology. The concept of
information -- a commodity more valuable than any gem in the scheme of
human affairs -- being openly available to the "unwashed masses"
seemed terrifying.
Now fast-forward and it's easy to see why the words of Google's
mission statement appear to be triggering similar fears, and backlash,
among some governments around the world. Organized, universally
accessible information is anathema to those who rule through carefully
skewed information regimentation.
Of course, such fears regarding the Internet and its ability to
encourage the free flow of information have been brewing for years,
basically since the Internet's nose first began poking out from under
the tents of DoD labs and the ivory halls of academia.
But Google's ongoing very visible dispute with China has brought these
issues back front and center into the spotlight, and a number of
rather idealistic notions often expressed by some in the Internet
"intelligentsia" appear somewhat ragged under this new illumination.
It has been popular, for example, for some in the Internet community,
including various of my contemporaries, to suggest that the Internet
would trigger the blossoming of an international "Digital Democracy"
that would sweep past domestic borders and somehow encompass most of
mankind in a grand new age where old concepts of national identity and
conflict would be swept aside.
Being something of a student of history, I was never able to
enthusiastically buy-in to this particular optimistic vision. While
I've long argued that attempts to censor or filter Internet
information will virtually always fail in the long run, in the shorter
run authoritarian information regimes can make ordinary citizens'
lives extremely uncomfortable -- or even very short.
Yes, you can use a VPN or proxies to get around most Internet
restrictions, but if the penalty for getting caught doing so is 20
years at hard labor, and the finest Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
hardware that money can buy is put to the task of pinpointing such
violators -- well, it would be understandable if most persons decided
not to take the risks in the first place.
Make no mistake about it, information is the part and parcel of
authoritarian regimes' most expansive plans and also their greatest
fears.
The control of information available to a population is foundational
to most dictatorships, whether this means confiscating radios, banning
newspapers, or limiting Internet access. Information -- that is, the
information deemed suitable for distribution by the powers-that-be, is
a powerful tool for furthering their desired goals.
But "unapproved" information carries the opposite status -- it's often
viewed as dangerous and subversive, something to be tightly throttled
and ideally stamped out completely.
It becomes clear why Google is so often in the cross-hairs these days.
The Internet is so vast that without the kind of organized search
access that Google provides, much of the Internet's data effectively
might not exist at all, since the average user would have a difficult
time finding it, assuming its existence was even known in the first
place -- similar to (but much worse than) badly misfiled books in a
very large library.
In a related vein, Google's YouTube provides the most egalitarian
mechanism yet devised for ordinary people to share the most potent of
video presentations, exposing to the entire world that which some
governments would much prefer remain unspoken and unseen.
But disturbingly, the calls for Internet restrictions of many sorts,
often including various demands being made of Google, aren't just
coming from the usual authoritarian "suspects" -- but also from
countries like Australia, Italy and more.
Even here in the U.S., one of the most common Internet-related
questions that I receive is also one of the most deeply disturbing:
Why can't the U.S. require an Internet "driver's license" so that
there would be no way (ostensibly) to do anything anonymously on the
Net?
After I patiently explain why that would be a horrendous idea, based
on basic principles of free speech as applied to the reality of the
Internet -- most people who approached me with the "driver's license"
concept seem satisfied with my take on the topic, but the fact that
the question keeps coming up so frequently shows the depth of
misplaced fears driven, ironically, by disinformation and the lack of
accurate information.
We've seen much the same happen with the politicalization of Internet
Net Neutrality debates, with some mostly right-wing commentators
aligned with anti-neutrality forces spreading the Orwellian "big lie"
inanity that Net Neutrality is akin to a massive government takeover
of the Internet, and applying classic "divide and conquer" techniques
in an attempt to coopt natural allies of Net Neutrality over to the
side of the equation dominated by the very large ISPs.
At the nexus of so many of these controversies stands Google. It
would be difficult to argue that this doesn't seem like a highly
unusual position -- a position of enormous responsibility and
gravitas -- for a single commercial firm to occupy.
And yet, it seems likely that in the current environment perhaps only
an international organization of Google's size, scope, and singularly
atypical corporate culture has a realistic chance of systematically
nudging events globally in a positive direction toward increased
Internet freedoms.
As the China events show, this is a matter of continuing calibration
and adjustment, and there are no guarantees regarding happy endings.
Human history suggests that it would be foolhardy to assume that even
the noblest of motives will always win out over domestically or
internationally perpetuated fears and associated propaganda.
But in any battle over ideas, history also teaches that widespread
access to information -- in "Google-Speak" that goal of "universal
accessibility and usefulness" -- is always better for society in the
long run than restrictive information and censorship policies aimed at
"short leash" control of populations.
In the scheme of events, the Information Wars have really only just
begun. The outcomes of these battles won't only determine the fate of
the world population's access to information, but in many respects
their ability to exercise a wide variety of other very basic human
rights as well.
For all of these issues are linked in highly complex ways, and that's
not just via Web sites, but throughout the very core of the human
psyche.
Perhaps the historical path from Victor Hugo to Google isn't really
all that surprising after all.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein