The end of freedom in cyberspace?

  

Foreword

This text is not a reply to the blog article of Jovan Kurbalija entitled “Durov and X-Brazil cases: The end of the illusion of cyberspace?”, published on 31 August 2024. It is, however, inspired by that thought-provoking article. Jovan’s article is an ominous statement backed by judicious arguments. As I cannot contradict it on its substance, my choice is to make its outcry worse.

“The starry heavens above me…

At its origins, internet freedom was indeed associated with the perception of non-territoriality. People have been offered images with the information packets finding freely their way to the destination. Beautiful representations, indeed! Genuine abstract artwork, where one cannot see borders, territories, servers, governments, traders, or sharks. We feel quite comfortable in the illusion of freedom in cyberspace.

This illusion was tolerated and cultivated by the United States as long as it had full control over governance leverage, attribution of domain names, and other responsibilities of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), through the Department of Commerce. 

The illusion of freedom in cyberspace was indeed scintillating, like a constellation. 

The first blow to the ideal of freedom was the commercialization of the internet. Normally, we should have realized instantly that once the profit hunters find ways to monetize the use of the internet, the freedom would be limited to purchasing.

Back to Earth

Now, with the emergence of other internet powers, countries, companies, and egocentric individuals, doubled by the clash of political and commercial interests, we have reasons to move from the utopian vision of the internet to a rather dystopian vision of the same. 

The freedom of information on the internet acquired a geopolitical dimension. The participants in the preparation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, 2003) might remember that the first embryo of the now famous BRICS alliance became manifest around the issue of internet governance and the US control of addresses, domain names and protocols.

Snowden and Assange were the collateral victims of the new phase. Now, many not so naïve people believe that Pavel Durov was arrested for no other reason than finding a way to coerce Telegram to disclose information on its users to the intelligence services of the West, turning a blind eye to some principles otherwise widely agreed.

For a while, the issue of territoriality was somehow neglected. People got blinded by the perception of communication without borders, although they knew that there were cables and routers with a very physical presence. Personally, I found out how deeply the illusion of freedom penetrated the United Nations reality when I worked for the report of the UN Joint Inspection Unit on cloud computing. People really had their heads in the clouds forgetting that the servers are robustly planted on Earth, on the inviolable territories of sovereign states that could close, occupy, bomb, cut the electricity, and take control of any server.

At the time of the WSIS, we started to see the limits of that illusion when participants concluded that laws that govern the physical space are valid for cyberspace. The ways and means to deal with that new reality were not the same, but the crimes and abuses were. Maybe worse, the criminals enjoyed more freedom in cyberspace than in physical space. The hate speech, the organized crime, pedophilia, and fake news have never been so facilitated in the history of humanity.

Also, much to its credit, the United Nations translated the abstractions of cyberspace into calls for action for the use of ICTs in service of development and a plethora of e-activities in the documents adopted by WSIS in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005). Paragraph 6 of the Geneva Plan of Action is clearly all about territoriality. 

There was an overestimation of the potential of new technologies, but at least the international community added a collective imperative to the dynamics of the IT industries, whose power and means have increased exponentially, often to the detriment of global public good. This propensity of the United Nations to inflate the expectations that digital technologies would help the various agendas for development and “bridging the digital divide” remains constant and, yet, wishful thinking, despite stubborn facts. The recent speech of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on artificial intelligence seems to be a copy-paste version of past statements on other technology hypes. 

… and the moral law within us”

As technology seems to have endless means but no conscience, the moral sense of its use remains entirely the responsibility of human beings. Yet, in practice, moral and ethical considerations do not precede or condition any of the new digital tools. They are just launched in both cyberspace and physical space and adopted by us instantly, with blind enthusiasm. We’ll see the consequences later! Seize the moment! We are not just one sorcerer’s apprentice, we are millions.

The concern for ethics and the protection of human rights has a prominent presence in the manifestos of the United Nations.

However, what do we see if we look beyond the official pronouncements? The so-called progress in the development of digital technology produces, as collateral damage, a terrible regression on basic freedoms. 

On the one hand, in the name of cybersecurity, the governments propose more limitations, restrictions, and control over private lives. The human rights fundamental concept was to protect the individual against abuses committed in the name of the raison d’État. Now, the new master in town is cybersecurity. Only this time we give up our freedom willingly.

If the privacy of correspondence was protected by law almost everywhere in democratic countries, except for in situations of war and military censorship, now our messages on the internet can be visited at any moment in times of peace by unknown visitors, private or official. In the non-digital past, we were the only ones in possession of our passports or ID cards. Now, personal information is stored by multiple vendors and public institutions. We will end up living like fish in aquariums exposed to many. The presumption of innocence does not work. We are all potential terrorists or foreign agents, so we should show our underwear to a benevolent Big Brother.

On the other hand, individuals all over the world are conceding voluntarily, in exchange for service facilitation, elements of their personal identity, privacy, freedom of movement, free reasoning, personal choices etc. We are no longer sheltered under the roof and between the walls of our houses but surrounded by tens of pins and codes. We pay a high price in terms of freedom in exchange for relative comfort. 

With the further advance of activities in cyberspace, freedom, as we know it, will be an illusion. There is no escape from cyberspace, particularly when we open the door to the intrusion of digital technologies. The whole of personal life, including professions, business, leisure, shopping, and banking, is already squeezed into a small phone, which will be literally smarter than many users. Our identity is lost in fragments spread out in the servers of all vendors worldwide, seemingly protected by passwords, not safer than metallic locks.

As one character in a play by the Spanish playwriter Antonio Buero Vallejo, predicted in 1974: we must be very intelligent to realize that we live in a prison.

Therefore, I fully agree with the message of Jovan’s article. With one caveat. I do not agree with his outcry, “There is no cyberspace!”. Cyberspace does and will exist, with cyberwars, cybercrime, cyberlife, and cyberdeath. Cyberspace will exist, like airspace or outer space. And the competition to conquer this space will not chase illusions but seek power. Power is real.

The end of illusion, yes! As far as I feel, I propose a different outcry from the one of Jovan: “The end of freedom in cyberspace?”

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