status quo and whose activities can be considered illegal in some jurisdictions, making them
the target of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Groups advocating electronic civil
disobedience, for instance, are examples of resistance networks. A third form of agency
is the least well known, and has tended to fall outside of the scope of most scholarship on
global civil society. This category, which we call dark nets, includes armed social movements, criminal networks, and the underground economy linking diaspora communities worldwide. Although it is the latter two forms of agency that are most often used as justifications
for assertions of state power in cyberspace and are the primary targets of filtering, one of
the main contentions of our chapter is that such targeting can have collateral impacts on
civic networks as well. In other words, state filtering policies and practices are altering the dynamic ICT environment not just for resistance networks and dark nets, but for civic networks
as well.
Global Civic Networks in the Internet Environment
The past several decades have witnessed a rapid expansion of global civic networks. The
source of this expansion is undoubtedly complex, and reflects a variety of independent factors
having to do with the end of the Cold War, the rise of a set of global values and political
causes, the decline of civic participation in traditional structures of political participation, the
increase of development initiatives, and no doubt other factors as well. However, there should
be no doubt that this expansion also has been the result of the enabling role played by the
new media environment, and in particular the growing use of the Internet by civic networks beginning in the 1990s.
Global civic networks were among the earliest adopters of Internet technologies for their
collective activities, and have been at the forefront of innovative uses of new media, like
SMS, VoIP, and blogs. The medium’s constitutive architecture—distributed, decentralized,
and relatively cheaply and easily employed—fits with the organizational and political logics of
global civic networks. As John Naughton observes, by facilitating access to published data,
information, and knowledge; lowering the barrier to information dissemination and overcoming
traditional gatekeepers in media; facilitating rapid communication and information sharing on
a global scale; and helping to form virtual communities of people with shared interests, the
Internet’s material properties (how they were constituted in the 1990s) fueled a remarkable
and unprecedented expansion of global civic networks.
5 In short, global civic networks both
contributed to and were empowered by the evolving environment of Internet communications.
The origins of civic networks’ use of the Internet can be traced back to the early 1980s when
social change and activist groups began to employ computer networks as a mode of information dissemination and organization.
6 These early networks were largely ‘‘basement operations’’ with individuals donating their time and computing equipment to assist in the activities
of their NGOs. By the late 1980s, more formal links had been established among some of
Global Civil Society and the Securitization of the Internet
125
the target of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Groups advocating electronic civil
disobedience, for instance, are examples of resistance networks. A third form of agency
is the least well known, and has tended to fall outside of the scope of most scholarship on
global civil society. This category, which we call dark nets, includes armed social movements, criminal networks, and the underground economy linking diaspora communities worldwide. Although it is the latter two forms of agency that are most often used as justifications
for assertions of state power in cyberspace and are the primary targets of filtering, one of
the main contentions of our chapter is that such targeting can have collateral impacts on
civic networks as well. In other words, state filtering policies and practices are altering the dynamic ICT environment not just for resistance networks and dark nets, but for civic networks
as well.
Global Civic Networks in the Internet Environment
The past several decades have witnessed a rapid expansion of global civic networks. The
source of this expansion is undoubtedly complex, and reflects a variety of independent factors
having to do with the end of the Cold War, the rise of a set of global values and political
causes, the decline of civic participation in traditional structures of political participation, the
increase of development initiatives, and no doubt other factors as well. However, there should
be no doubt that this expansion also has been the result of the enabling role played by the
new media environment, and in particular the growing use of the Internet by civic networks beginning in the 1990s.
Global civic networks were among the earliest adopters of Internet technologies for their
collective activities, and have been at the forefront of innovative uses of new media, like
SMS, VoIP, and blogs. The medium’s constitutive architecture—distributed, decentralized,
and relatively cheaply and easily employed—fits with the organizational and political logics of
global civic networks. As John Naughton observes, by facilitating access to published data,
information, and knowledge; lowering the barrier to information dissemination and overcoming
traditional gatekeepers in media; facilitating rapid communication and information sharing on
a global scale; and helping to form virtual communities of people with shared interests, the
Internet’s material properties (how they were constituted in the 1990s) fueled a remarkable
and unprecedented expansion of global civic networks.
5 In short, global civic networks both
contributed to and were empowered by the evolving environment of Internet communications.
The origins of civic networks’ use of the Internet can be traced back to the early 1980s when
social change and activist groups began to employ computer networks as a mode of information dissemination and organization.
6 These early networks were largely ‘‘basement operations’’ with individuals donating their time and computing equipment to assist in the activities
of their NGOs. By the late 1980s, more formal links had been established among some of
Global Civil Society and the Securitization of the Internet
125