Sensing and Shaping Emerging Conflicts Report of a Workshop by the National Academy of Engineering and United States Institute of Peace Roundtable on Technology, Science, and Peacebuilding (2013) / Chapter Skim
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4 The Misuse of Technologies
4 The Misuse of Technologies
Pages 33-42
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From page 33... ...
EXERTING CONTROL OVER INFORMATION Ivan Sigal, executive director of Global Voices, which conveys to global audiences the voices of bloggers, writers, digital media activists, and translators who work in the developing world, began his examination of the misuses of technology by analyzing one of the two broad themes of the workshop: the means used to shape conflicts. Conflict involves contestation, and those involved -- including peacebuilders -- have both intention and agency.
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From page 34... ...
The United States and other countries "don't have a vision for what we want the Internet to be -- they do." Sigal also described efforts by governments to use economic rather than political means to block Internet use. The government of Kazakhstan, for example, has been able to essentially create a national firewall without declaring one by incentivizing the largest telecommunications company in the country to provide free access to any kind of data, whether file sharing, music, or videos, while people who go outside the network pay for the data they access.
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From page 35... ...
A set of events can occur that will not necessarily predict an outcome but make it more likely. For that reason, Global Voices analyzes, translates, and aggregates local citizen media for global audiences, focusing mostly on the developing world, and systematically tracks threats or events in fragile states.
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From page 36... ...
But the Internet is changing. The vast majority of Internet users are no longer in North America, which represents only about 13 percent of the global Internet population and is declining.
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From page 37... ...
This may not matter as much in the United States as it does in other countries, but under authoritarian regimes, governments now have a way to know a lot about any individual "by essentially having them carry a digital dog tag everywhere." Intelligent networks that enable this kind of monitoring are spreading fast outside North America. Advanced networks have greater penetration in some parts of Africa and Latin America than elsewhere, "which means those intelligent networks are being built exactly in the places where their capabilities can be turned inwards for surveillance purposes." Surveillance also has become a much greater undertaking since the days of wiretaps.
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From page 38... ...
A final approach is to use technological means to identify and target dissent and to confound readers about posted information. For example, the Iranian revolutionary guard cyber command has a Facebook-like page where it posts pictures of protesters online and asks people to crowdsource who they are, which has the additional effect of intimidating people who might be considering activism.
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From page 39... ...
Rohozinski also recommended looking at the work done by the World Health Organization on violence mapping and prevention as a public health issue. This work has combined precursor indicators of violence, drawn from such measures as demographics, economic conditions, reports of homicide, and the prevalence of a grey economy to gauge the likelihood of conflict at different levels.
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From page 40... ...
to shrink the humanitarian space and access, and target civilians and human rights activists." Sanjana Hattotuwa asked what would happen if 3D printers could be used to make exact digital duplicates of AK47 rifles? In this and other ways, technology could be used to exacerbate rather than prevent conflict.
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From page 41... ...
THE MISUSE OF TECHNOLOGIES 41 He also added that the dark side/light side division, or skeptic versus utopian, is a misleading way of framing the issues. People accused of being utopians are often the most skeptical, because they have the practical experience of trying different things and realizing what works and what does not work.
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