66
Heike Jensen, Jac sm Kee, Gayathry Venkiteswaran, and Sonia Randhawa
of gender and sexuality within the framework of the nation-state is essential for
understanding the morality debates that have increasingly come to dominate discussions about Internet governance and digital censorship and surveillance. Such a focus
is essential because different kinds of political and economic tensions within a nationstate can be mediated by contesting morality issues and related gender and sexual
issues in the digital realm.
Employing a gender lens fundamentally shifts the very defi nitions of censorship
and surveillance to include a basic lack of freedom of expression and privacy. It shows
how most women and many disenfranchised men have been kept from contributing
to the public sphere by social and economic structures and agents other than state
censors, and how many women have been placed under surveillance by their social
peers rather than state agents. In drawing attention to these circumstances, a gender
lens generates a more comprehensive understanding of the agents of censorship and
surveillance, showing that the state is only one among several entities and institutions
that systematically hinder specifi c groups of people from expressing themselves freely
or from enjoying a self-determined degree of privacy.
Such an augmented understanding of censorship, surveillance, and its agents is
crucial for understanding the precise stakes and scope of state-initiated censorship and
surveillance systems. It additionally creates a useful familiarity with agents beyond
the state precisely at a time when there is growing evidence that nonstate actors have
become increasingly recruited by certain states to carry out undercover censorship and
surveillance missions. This practice was identifi ed by Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski as “ next-generation information controls. ”
4
Similarly, as it is becoming increasingly obvious that the absence of state-imposed
digital censorship and surveillance in a nation does not mean that all its citizens enjoy
freedom of expression and privacy, research needs to dig deeper into the multilayered
mechanisms that regulate speech and privacy. Such conditions can be illustrated quite
well by our case study of Malaysia. While we could not detect any state-level Internet
fi ltering in Malaysia when we conducted the testing for the OpenNet Initiative (ONI)
in 2008 and 2009,
5 and previous ONI testing had similarly not yielded any evidence
of Internet fi ltering,
6 censorship and surveillance have nevertheless played important
roles. Before looking through a gender lens on recent developments in this fi eld in
Malaysia and in particular focusing on the signifi cance of sexuality and morality for
its body politic, we will provide further methodological grounding to our framework
and hypotheses.
Agents of Censorship and Surveillance
Following the logic of international human rights law such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), state authorities are the agents that may
Heike Jensen, Jac sm Kee, Gayathry Venkiteswaran, and Sonia Randhawa
of gender and sexuality within the framework of the nation-state is essential for
understanding the morality debates that have increasingly come to dominate discussions about Internet governance and digital censorship and surveillance. Such a focus
is essential because different kinds of political and economic tensions within a nationstate can be mediated by contesting morality issues and related gender and sexual
issues in the digital realm.
Employing a gender lens fundamentally shifts the very defi nitions of censorship
and surveillance to include a basic lack of freedom of expression and privacy. It shows
how most women and many disenfranchised men have been kept from contributing
to the public sphere by social and economic structures and agents other than state
censors, and how many women have been placed under surveillance by their social
peers rather than state agents. In drawing attention to these circumstances, a gender
lens generates a more comprehensive understanding of the agents of censorship and
surveillance, showing that the state is only one among several entities and institutions
that systematically hinder specifi c groups of people from expressing themselves freely
or from enjoying a self-determined degree of privacy.
Such an augmented understanding of censorship, surveillance, and its agents is
crucial for understanding the precise stakes and scope of state-initiated censorship and
surveillance systems. It additionally creates a useful familiarity with agents beyond
the state precisely at a time when there is growing evidence that nonstate actors have
become increasingly recruited by certain states to carry out undercover censorship and
surveillance missions. This practice was identifi ed by Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski as “ next-generation information controls. ”
4
Similarly, as it is becoming increasingly obvious that the absence of state-imposed
digital censorship and surveillance in a nation does not mean that all its citizens enjoy
freedom of expression and privacy, research needs to dig deeper into the multilayered
mechanisms that regulate speech and privacy. Such conditions can be illustrated quite
well by our case study of Malaysia. While we could not detect any state-level Internet
fi ltering in Malaysia when we conducted the testing for the OpenNet Initiative (ONI)
in 2008 and 2009,
5 and previous ONI testing had similarly not yielded any evidence
of Internet fi ltering,
6 censorship and surveillance have nevertheless played important
roles. Before looking through a gender lens on recent developments in this fi eld in
Malaysia and in particular focusing on the signifi cance of sexuality and morality for
its body politic, we will provide further methodological grounding to our framework
and hypotheses.
Agents of Censorship and Surveillance
Following the logic of international human rights law such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), state authorities are the agents that may