Conclusion: Next-Generation Controls Beyond the CIS?
There are several obvious and not so obvious reasons to believe that second- and thirdgeneration controls will become more common outside of the CIS and in fact may
presage the future of cyberspace controls as a whole. First, the experience from other
regions suggests that first-generation filtering is easy to circumvent. The ‘‘Great Firewall of China’’ is easily breached, as evidenced by the growing number of circumvention technology solutions, from Tor to Psiphon and others. As such techniques become
more common, enabled and supported by large-scale and distributed efforts in the
United States and Europe, the incentives to rely on less technologically static and temporally fixed methods characteristic of next-generation controls will likely grow.
It is also questionable whether first-generation controls in countries like Burma,
North Korea, and China are really sustainable in the long run. In China’s case, the
floodgates may open sooner rather than later as the Chinese Internet itself becomes
much more central to popular culture. First-generation filtering practices can produce
economic and other social costs through collateral filtering and disincentives for foreign direct investment and tourism. As countries become more dependent on cyberspace for research, business, and other international communications, the friction
introduced by filtering becomes increasingly unpopular, costly, and impractical.
More important than these factors, however, is the growing legitimization and frequent practice of policing the Internet through indirect and distributed means, and in
particular through third parties, including the entities that actually support the cyberspace infrastructure, from connectivity to hosting to social networking platforms. Since
much of cyberspace is operated by the private sector, there are practical and legal limits
to the direct reach of government controls. Controls have thus evolved downward
and in a distributed fashion, in a significant privatization of authority, in conformity
with second- and third-generation controls outlined previously. Naturally, the scope
for second- and third-generation controls differs among authoritarian and democratic
countries, but examples of each can be found in both contexts.
In China, for example, while much of the attention focuses on the technologies of
the Great Firewall of China filtering access to the Internet, at least as much, if not
more, of the information controls exercised in that country happen in a more distributed fashion and by private actors. Web hosting and social networking services are
now routinely obliged to sign self-discipline pacts and follow rigid hosting protocols
that limit what can be communicated online; search engines—including those owned
by American companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!—routinely filter their
search results, often more aggressively than the government does itself; and in the
most extreme example, volunteer citizen groups—sometimes known in China as
50 cent brigades for the amount they are purportedly paid for each post—swarm the
Internet’s chat rooms, blogs, and other public forums making statements favorable to
the government. 32 The latter was dramatically demonstrated, in a clear example of
30
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski
There are several obvious and not so obvious reasons to believe that second- and thirdgeneration controls will become more common outside of the CIS and in fact may
presage the future of cyberspace controls as a whole. First, the experience from other
regions suggests that first-generation filtering is easy to circumvent. The ‘‘Great Firewall of China’’ is easily breached, as evidenced by the growing number of circumvention technology solutions, from Tor to Psiphon and others. As such techniques become
more common, enabled and supported by large-scale and distributed efforts in the
United States and Europe, the incentives to rely on less technologically static and temporally fixed methods characteristic of next-generation controls will likely grow.
It is also questionable whether first-generation controls in countries like Burma,
North Korea, and China are really sustainable in the long run. In China’s case, the
floodgates may open sooner rather than later as the Chinese Internet itself becomes
much more central to popular culture. First-generation filtering practices can produce
economic and other social costs through collateral filtering and disincentives for foreign direct investment and tourism. As countries become more dependent on cyberspace for research, business, and other international communications, the friction
introduced by filtering becomes increasingly unpopular, costly, and impractical.
More important than these factors, however, is the growing legitimization and frequent practice of policing the Internet through indirect and distributed means, and in
particular through third parties, including the entities that actually support the cyberspace infrastructure, from connectivity to hosting to social networking platforms. Since
much of cyberspace is operated by the private sector, there are practical and legal limits
to the direct reach of government controls. Controls have thus evolved downward
and in a distributed fashion, in a significant privatization of authority, in conformity
with second- and third-generation controls outlined previously. Naturally, the scope
for second- and third-generation controls differs among authoritarian and democratic
countries, but examples of each can be found in both contexts.
In China, for example, while much of the attention focuses on the technologies of
the Great Firewall of China filtering access to the Internet, at least as much, if not
more, of the information controls exercised in that country happen in a more distributed fashion and by private actors. Web hosting and social networking services are
now routinely obliged to sign self-discipline pacts and follow rigid hosting protocols
that limit what can be communicated online; search engines—including those owned
by American companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!—routinely filter their
search results, often more aggressively than the government does itself; and in the
most extreme example, volunteer citizen groups—sometimes known in China as
50 cent brigades for the amount they are purportedly paid for each post—swarm the
Internet’s chat rooms, blogs, and other public forums making statements favorable to
the government. 32 The latter was dramatically demonstrated, in a clear example of
30
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski