The role of Technology in Resistance
Christopher Kullenberg September 30th, 2007
Burma. In some cases of resistance, if not in all, the flow of information and disinformation is imperative. This friday many Swedes wore red shirts displaying political support for the pro-democracy protests in Burma, and in order to understand this spatiality of resistance in relation to world opinions, we need to understand the important role of technology.
Reporters Without Borders tell the story of the Internet being disconnected in Burma, along with newspapers and TV-stations being shut down. The official story is one of a technological failure in an underwater cable, however, hardly anyone buys such a coincidence. What is at stake is how to control a multiplicity of recording and transmitting devices. Anyone who owns a mobile phone with video recording capabilities is able to broadcast live actions, and the only way of controlling the flow of small video clips is to cut the cables leaving the country. Similarly, with video sharing sites such as Youtube (clip 1, 2, 3), the Internet must be blocked on a national top level in order to keep the lid tightly screwed. However, in the case of Burma, and other similar ones, the task is not resolved only by controlling what pieces of information that leave the country, but also what enters it. Thus satellite dishes are prohibited, not so much to stop ‘foreign’ propaganda, but to prevent people to see what happens inside their own country.
How can heterogenous technological systems be controlled then? I may be argued that there are no worries in this struggle. Soon everyone will have a mobile phone and a Youtube account, and wherever there is oppression we will know about it. In a very technical sense this naive story is quite right. The rise of Internet technologies have paved a way for de-centralized systems which are quite hard to control compared to the old paradigmatic technologies of Television-Radio-Newspapers. Instead information flows horizontally, instantly and without central and critical points. However, this is only true in theory and not in practice. In the case of Burma, the Internet could be switched off directly, just like any other medium such as television, snail-mail or radio-antennas.
We may argue then, in defense of Western liberal democracies, that this kind of control only exists in authoritarian states, such as Burma, China, Iran… However, this is only true when it comes to the figurative shape of control, and not control as such. If authoritarian states use an old model where the State controls the flow of information the hard way, that is, by physically being able to switch things on and off, ‘Western’ societies use what Gilles Deleuze in his famous essay Post-script on the Societies of Control thinks as a second order of control. “[W]hat counts is not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person’s position – licit or illicit – and effects a universal modulation”. In the case of Burma we have the physical barrier being put to work, but in the post 9/11-order there are no barriers in the west, but rather there are tracking devices; Facebook, Gmail and Google all store data which map our spatial movements (through IP-numbers), and scan through whatever we read or write when using those services, through data-mining. There is nothing ‘wrong’ about it, since we have accepted an end-of-user licence agreement. Moreover, intelligence agencies are fighting the ‘war on terrorism’, and are soon to legitimately monitor all Internet-traffic. Instead of shutting down the barrier, all barriers are torn down. The Internet appears to be a smooth space, however, just like a ship at sea, our GPS coordinates are stored, analyzed and may potentially be used against us.
Read more (en): Sunday Times, BBC
- Anonymity , China , Protest , Resistance , Technology , philosophy
- Comments(2)
So, basically, the ICT is really good news for the people of Burma, China, Iran etc, since dictatorship central command of information is going to fade away (sooner or later), BUT ICT is bad news for the people of about half of the world who live in liberal democracies and THINK we are living in a “free society”, right? But, if that is so, what could anyone who is not a skilled computer hacker do in order to (at least partly) resist the total awareness control of the state/security organisations of the “free world”?? I mean, using encryption, covering IP-numbers, etc are pretty advanced moves…(All this builds on the assumption that I don’t have to unplugg my connection to the Cyperspace, which is a thought I can’t stand…). Would the use of free ware or open source make it more difficult for the society of control?
Well, I think ICTs are good in authoritarian states since they are more difficult to repress. However, in many countries they are made quite useless because of Internet censorship. In liberal democracies… I wouldn´t say that they are bad, but rather, they are problematic. As you point out, Internet technologies can be used in many different ways, and what is at stake is knowledge and access. Hackers have the skills and knowledge, but regimes and government often have access to large scale technological systems, such as Försvarets Radioanstalt or CIA…
Organized criminals often avoid all kind of ICTs… such as e-mail or mobile phones due to the risk of surveillance. This might be a strategy for some resistance movements… if someone has an empirical example – tell me!
Open source has a potential democraticizing effect. If citizens are able to fully see how technologies function, they might become empowered by the use of open source.