A response by democracies could be to have a "freedom computing" initiative that ensures that freedom-enhancing technologies (anonymity and secure communications) are supported out-of-the-box in the protocols the internet runs, internet-based services and computing hardware. (I've written about this here: http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/using-computers-to... )
Then, authoritarian regimes would either have to accept that the internet allows freedom, or would have to build their own software and hardware that works the way they want (and would have compatibility problems with the democratic internet). China would have the resources to do this, but many smaller autocracies might not. And would smaller autocracies want to be beholden to China?
Even if the autocracies banded together, if all the democracies got behind freedom computing, then as democracies have a larger share of world GDP than autocracies[1], the free internet would have larger network effects accruing to it than the unfree internet, ensuring that democracies outgrow autrocracies and eventually win[2].
1: true if you count the USA and EU as democracies, which sadly is not a given since (i) the USA is mostly ruled by corporations not people, and (ii) while EU member staes are mostly democratic, the EU central bureaucracy has a democratic deficit with the elected European Parliament being a weak institution without much power.
2: also, countries are more likely to transition from autocracy to democracy than the other way round, which also helps democracy win.
Hmmm, I'm not sure that creating new technology on top of what we currently have will make any difference. Currently, TCP/IP is a very simple end-to-end mechanism, which is why it's so easy to work with it. If you enforce encryption, you're violating that principle and causing a lot of headaches. It's much more a matter of legislation and infrastructure, I think, than of technology itself. Refusing to sell surveillance equipment to these authoritarian states would already be a good first step.
> Currently, TCP/IP is a very simple end-to-end mechanism, which is why it's so easy to work with it.
I agree, and it makes a lot of sense to have a "world of ends" (http://www.worldofends.com/) where all the intelligence is at the ends of the network rather than in the network infrastructure.
> If you enforce encryption, you're violating that principle and causing a lot of headaches.
I'm not tlaking about having a law that enforces encryption. Instead I think services should be created that make it dead easy to use encryption, and computers/tablets/mobile phones should come with these facilities out of the box.
> It's much more a matter of legislation and infrastructure, I think, than of technology itself.
Infrastructure is technology, so I'm not sure what point you're making. Imagine if every laptop sold in the west came as standard with hardware and software that enabled ad hoc mesh networking, switched on by default. (This would enable a city-wide ad hoc anonymous network). Then imagine that lots of services in the west were bult around this technology, and that you have whole ecosystems of protocols which relied on it. Then autocracies would have to forgo all these services and ecosystems, or build their own alternatives.
sorry, my "infrastructure" was vague. I meant ISPs, traffic hubs, physical cables, etc. The stuff that gets tampered with before it actually hits your PC.
A problem with this approach is that freedom-enhancing technologies are both more expensive and less monetizable. For example, P2P was almost completely replaced with client-server Web 2.0. In the near future I expect we'll discover that the FreedomBox is more expensive than the personal cloud.
If they are more expensive, that's not IMO a serious problem, as long as the more expensive one is perceived as better. E.g. the iPhone is expensive, but sells well because it is perceived as better.
If they are less monetizable, then yes that is a potentially serious issue, because it means companies may build cloud srvices instead of freedom-enhancing ones.
Then, authoritarian regimes would either have to accept that the internet allows freedom, or would have to build their own software and hardware that works the way they want (and would have compatibility problems with the democratic internet). China would have the resources to do this, but many smaller autocracies might not. And would smaller autocracies want to be beholden to China?
Even if the autocracies banded together, if all the democracies got behind freedom computing, then as democracies have a larger share of world GDP than autocracies[1], the free internet would have larger network effects accruing to it than the unfree internet, ensuring that democracies outgrow autrocracies and eventually win[2].
1: true if you count the USA and EU as democracies, which sadly is not a given since (i) the USA is mostly ruled by corporations not people, and (ii) while EU member staes are mostly democratic, the EU central bureaucracy has a democratic deficit with the elected European Parliament being a weak institution without much power.
2: also, countries are more likely to transition from autocracy to democracy than the other way round, which also helps democracy win.