in conflicts such as the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, and revelations concerning largescale cyber-espionage networks, 7 has emphasized the impact of cyberspace on the
sweat and muscle aspects of war fighting, and geopolitical competition among states
and nonstate actors. Reflecting on these recent incidents, many states’ armed forces
and policymakers have engaged in a fundamental rethinking of assumptions about
the importance of the informational domain to conflict and competition. As a consequence, states are now openly pursuing a cyber arms race with leading powers such as
the United States, Russia, and China unashamedly making their intentions clear in
doctrines for military engagement in cyberspace. The quest for information control is
now beyond denial.
The present volume aims to document, analyze, and explore these emerging nextgeneration techniques, what they mean for relationships between citizens and states,
and how they will shape cyberspace as a domain for civic interaction into the future.
The title of our volume—Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in
Cyberspace—suggests how the center of gravity of practices aimed at managing cyberspace has shifted subtly from policies and practices aimed at denying access to content
to methods that seek to normalize control and the exercise of power in cyberspace
through a variety of means.
This volume differs from its predecessors in two ways. First, our focus is primarily on
the 56 countries that make up the OSCE. This is a deliberate choice, as many of the
legal mechanisms that legitimate control over cyberspace, and its militarization, are
led by the advanced democratic countries of Europe and North America. Likewise,
many of the more innovative means by which laws and techniques used to silence
voices in cyberspace are emerging from the postcommunist countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In this respect, the industrialized North is establishing norms that are only too readily propagated and adopted by repressive and
authoritarian regimes elsewhere.
Second, Access Controlled focuses on the new generations of Internet controls that go
beyond mere denial of information. Whereas Chinese-style national filtering schemes
represent the first generation of Internet filtering, second- and third-generation techniques are more subtle, flexible, and even offensive in character. These next-generation
techniques employ the use of legal regulations to supplement or legitimize technical
filtering measures, extralegal or covert practices, including offensive methods, and the
outsourcing or privatizing of controls to ‘‘third parties,’’ to restrict what type of information can be posted, hosted, accessed, or communicated online. Examples of nextgeneration techniques include the infiltration and exploitation of computer systems
by targeted viruses and the employment of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks,
surveillance at key choke points of the Internet’s infrastructure, legal takedown
notices, stifling terms-of-usage policies, and national information-shaping strategies,
all of which are highlighted in one way or another in the chapters that follow. Al6
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski
sweat and muscle aspects of war fighting, and geopolitical competition among states
and nonstate actors. Reflecting on these recent incidents, many states’ armed forces
and policymakers have engaged in a fundamental rethinking of assumptions about
the importance of the informational domain to conflict and competition. As a consequence, states are now openly pursuing a cyber arms race with leading powers such as
the United States, Russia, and China unashamedly making their intentions clear in
doctrines for military engagement in cyberspace. The quest for information control is
now beyond denial.
The present volume aims to document, analyze, and explore these emerging nextgeneration techniques, what they mean for relationships between citizens and states,
and how they will shape cyberspace as a domain for civic interaction into the future.
The title of our volume—Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in
Cyberspace—suggests how the center of gravity of practices aimed at managing cyberspace has shifted subtly from policies and practices aimed at denying access to content
to methods that seek to normalize control and the exercise of power in cyberspace
through a variety of means.
This volume differs from its predecessors in two ways. First, our focus is primarily on
the 56 countries that make up the OSCE. This is a deliberate choice, as many of the
legal mechanisms that legitimate control over cyberspace, and its militarization, are
led by the advanced democratic countries of Europe and North America. Likewise,
many of the more innovative means by which laws and techniques used to silence
voices in cyberspace are emerging from the postcommunist countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In this respect, the industrialized North is establishing norms that are only too readily propagated and adopted by repressive and
authoritarian regimes elsewhere.
Second, Access Controlled focuses on the new generations of Internet controls that go
beyond mere denial of information. Whereas Chinese-style national filtering schemes
represent the first generation of Internet filtering, second- and third-generation techniques are more subtle, flexible, and even offensive in character. These next-generation
techniques employ the use of legal regulations to supplement or legitimize technical
filtering measures, extralegal or covert practices, including offensive methods, and the
outsourcing or privatizing of controls to ‘‘third parties,’’ to restrict what type of information can be posted, hosted, accessed, or communicated online. Examples of nextgeneration techniques include the infiltration and exploitation of computer systems
by targeted viruses and the employment of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks,
surveillance at key choke points of the Internet’s infrastructure, legal takedown
notices, stifling terms-of-usage policies, and national information-shaping strategies,
all of which are highlighted in one way or another in the chapters that follow. Al6
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski