Access Contested
5
Over the last eight years, through a pioneering interuniversity and public/private
collaboration, we have been witness to these transformations and the growing struggles to shape and control cyberspace. Our collaboration started out animated by a
simple and astonishingly unanswered puzzle: if someone connects to the Web in a
country like China or Saudi Arabia, will that person experience the same Internet as
a person connecting from Canada or the United States? We built a fairly elaborate
methodology designed to answer this question, even as it evolved over time. Although
we have documented with a good degree of precision the growing number of countries
that attempt to fi lter access to information and services online, we have also observed
an entirely different struggle to shape practices and norms around cyberspace. While
it is still essential to have something like what we call a “ gold standard ” for testing
Internet fi ltering on a comparative basis, the range of controls being exercised by a
growing number of actors, as well as the resistance to those controls, present challenges to our research.
As with its predecessor, Access Controlled , which focused on member states of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, we take a regional view in Access
Contested, focusing primarily on the cyberspace contests playing out in Asia. Although
cyberspace can be viewed as an undifferentiated whole, it is important not to lose
sight of important regional variations. Nowhere is the battle for the future of rights
and freedoms in cyberspace more dramatically carried out than in the Asian region.
At the epicenter of this contest is China — home to the world ’ s largest Internet population and, in our view, the world ’ s most advanced Internet censorship and surveillance
regime. China struggles to balance national/cultural security and regime stability
against the exploding aspirations of ethnic and social groups who strive for identity
and recognition, and commercial ventures seeking connectivity to worldwide markets.
The resistance to its controls ranges from grassroots human rights groups to corporate
giants like Google. Recent revelations of cyber espionage, patriotic hacking, and theft
of intellectual property have thrust China into a tense rivalry with regional and global
powers, such as India and the United States.
The drama of security, identity, and resistance evident in China is played out across
Asia, but in a form unique to each country ’ s national context. India is an emerging information and communications technology (ICT) superpower but like China struggles to
balance economic development, identity, and resistance through surveillance and censorship of its own. Burma is among the world ’ s most repressive regimes and has shown
a willingness to take drastic measures to control online dissent, including shutting
down the Internet altogether during protests in 2007 known as the Saffron Revolution.
In Thailand, street protests have spilled online, leading authorities to take unusually
harsh measures to limit access to social networking and other mobilization services.
Throughout Asia, a diverse mixture of controls and local resistances has created a
unique regional story around the contests to shape cyberspace. Most importantly, by
5
Over the last eight years, through a pioneering interuniversity and public/private
collaboration, we have been witness to these transformations and the growing struggles to shape and control cyberspace. Our collaboration started out animated by a
simple and astonishingly unanswered puzzle: if someone connects to the Web in a
country like China or Saudi Arabia, will that person experience the same Internet as
a person connecting from Canada or the United States? We built a fairly elaborate
methodology designed to answer this question, even as it evolved over time. Although
we have documented with a good degree of precision the growing number of countries
that attempt to fi lter access to information and services online, we have also observed
an entirely different struggle to shape practices and norms around cyberspace. While
it is still essential to have something like what we call a “ gold standard ” for testing
Internet fi ltering on a comparative basis, the range of controls being exercised by a
growing number of actors, as well as the resistance to those controls, present challenges to our research.
As with its predecessor, Access Controlled , which focused on member states of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, we take a regional view in Access
Contested, focusing primarily on the cyberspace contests playing out in Asia. Although
cyberspace can be viewed as an undifferentiated whole, it is important not to lose
sight of important regional variations. Nowhere is the battle for the future of rights
and freedoms in cyberspace more dramatically carried out than in the Asian region.
At the epicenter of this contest is China — home to the world ’ s largest Internet population and, in our view, the world ’ s most advanced Internet censorship and surveillance
regime. China struggles to balance national/cultural security and regime stability
against the exploding aspirations of ethnic and social groups who strive for identity
and recognition, and commercial ventures seeking connectivity to worldwide markets.
The resistance to its controls ranges from grassroots human rights groups to corporate
giants like Google. Recent revelations of cyber espionage, patriotic hacking, and theft
of intellectual property have thrust China into a tense rivalry with regional and global
powers, such as India and the United States.
The drama of security, identity, and resistance evident in China is played out across
Asia, but in a form unique to each country ’ s national context. India is an emerging information and communications technology (ICT) superpower but like China struggles to
balance economic development, identity, and resistance through surveillance and censorship of its own. Burma is among the world ’ s most repressive regimes and has shown
a willingness to take drastic measures to control online dissent, including shutting
down the Internet altogether during protests in 2007 known as the Saffron Revolution.
In Thailand, street protests have spilled online, leading authorities to take unusually
harsh measures to limit access to social networking and other mobilization services.
Throughout Asia, a diverse mixture of controls and local resistances has created a
unique regional story around the contests to shape cyberspace. Most importantly, by