A friend in Tomsk

Events yesterday, with the news that Russian may have been behind the leaked climate-change emails from the UEA, seem to support the interesting argument by Evgeny Morozov I discussed in my last post.
(photo of Tomline from Mail on Sunday).

Morozov suggests that  the commonly held belief that the internet has put power into the hands of  activists and democracy supporters, so they can therefore make their voices heard and influence events, is an illusion..

As he points out, protests are very easy to organise and launch from the Internet, but because it's done so openly on sites like Twitter,  it's also much easier to monitor - and control.   Morozov illustrates this with the recent Iranian protests.  Activists used Twitter to get a lot of young people out on the streets -  but the authorities now know who those people are.

And in any case, with the increasing availability and use of data mining, can any activist be sure the authorities are not reading their emails or decrypting their internet traffic, how ever well they try to hide their tracks?

It doesn't require much sophistication to obtain a password of one Facebook user,  and from that link on to his other social internet connections. The Iranian authorities were well aware that Twitter and Facebook members were behind the 'green revolution' in which thousands of American Twitterers coloured their profile pictures green in sympathy with the democracy lovers out on the streets.

But  the fact that the Iranian authorities now have proof that foreigners are interfering in their country's affairs, isn't going to help the home grown young activists much, is it?

The Daily Mail yesterday suggested that the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were released to the world via a tiny internet server in Tomsk.

The server, Tomcity, and its parent company Tomline, offer an internet security business to prevent hacking and bugs.  Other division of the firm are involved in laying the cable which provides high-speed internet access to companies in the Siberian city.  The server is believed to be used mainly by Tomsk State University, one of the leading academic institutions in Russia, and other scientific institutes.

.In 2002 Tomsk students reportedly launched a 'denial of service' attack on a portal whose site material reporting on Chechnya angered the Russian authorities. It was said that they had been used by the Russian secret service, FSB, to shut down the website - an accusation which can be plausibly denied by the government, of course.

Whatever?  As far as I'm concerned, in this instance I'm all in favour of the hackers.   The climate change issue is a bandwagon, and we're all entitled to know both sides of the argument.  So anyone who enables us to get more information about something which will inevitably involve all of us paying even more taxes, is to be congratulated.

So Professor Ross McKitrick doesn't agree with Professor Jones - so what?  It's a free country, McKitrick is entitled to disagree and have his views considered - not dismissed out of hand as 'garbage by Jones, who tried to stop his work being published.

Of course, there's more to this story, but it's early hours Monday now, so more on this later.Except to quote from Tom Lehrer, a very funny and clever academic American satirist and singer, who once had a famous number involving Tomsk which begins:

I have a friend in Minsk,
Who has a friend in Pinsk,
Whose friend in Omsk,
Has friend in Tomsk   . . .. .

and ends:
To Tomsk, to Omsk,
To Pinsk, to Minsk,
To me the news will run . .. .

So more news on this will run on this site later - and meanwhile you can pick up Lehrer on You Tube, singing about his friend in Tomsk called Lobachevsky.

(And look out for Evgeny Morozov's book on the internet and democracy, due out in 2010 - he's a very interesting writer).

Power and the Internet

In a week in which Murdoch took on Google and  Mandelson took on Murdoch,  I thought I'd have a look at one of the key sources of power in the world,  the Internet, with its ability to give everyone a public voice.  At first glance it looks as though the individual, however lowly, can now join up with similarly minded others and really begin to change the world.

But is that, in fact, just a comforting illusion to allow people to believe they are  gaining control?

The conventional view is that in this new world of the world wide web governments are bound to lose control, being eventually forced to cede it  to angry, freedom loving,  energetic young netizens, spreading their own agendas on their blogs and social networks. 

Big names go along with that view. Nicholas Negroponte, author of the seminal text, Being Digital,  sees modern technology leading to the the future decline of the nation state.  Many agree with him, believing that by using the power of the Internet, networks of activists can gradually take over and do for the power of the establishment.

But some  people see it differently. Evgeny Morozov, Fellow of Georgetown University, for instance, writing for Forbes, takes a more wary view point - and makes a very sound case for it.

It's true that on the surface, it looks as though we are at the beginning of people power.  In the recent past, we've seen,  for instance,  how a network of social netizens can whip up a storm against a journalist writing about the death of a boy band singer ie: Jan Moir and Stephen Gateley - or get together a concerted attack by the many on the one solitary voice who accused an actor of being boring on Twitter ie. Stephen Fry. In both case, the mob was whipped up very efficiently.  

But this has nothing to do with real power, it's an emotional storm in a very small teacup.

As Morozov points out, because a group can be  pulled together very quickly on line, to express virtuous outrage about pop stars and actors, climate change, poverty, the war in Irqa etc. so can more heavyweight groups be pulled together. ie: networks of religious fanatics: ultra nationalists: and internet adept groups from Latin America.  He points out how warring Mexican gangs are big on You Tube,  touting their latest guns and upload graphic videos of the beheading  of their enemies. The internet is not just in the hands of harmless well meaning do-gooders.   The net is there for saints and sinners alike.

History shows it is usually unwise to underestimate the power of the establishment to adapt to new challenges. Morozov points out that authoritarian states have shown a capacity to embrace new technology very efficiently. He cites the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl in Nazi Germany, or the brain washing radio broadcasts in the old Soviet Union.

And the establishment learns fast, and has access to some of the best advisers.  Clever young geeks can work for governments of many different persuasions.  Some of them hack for fun, but some talent will sell itself to the highest bidder, and that bidder may be an authoritarian government. Most powerful governments, like China,  have moved on from the crude model of controlling online discussions by censorship and filtering. The Chinese soon realised that didn't work when everyone had access to publishing on line with blogs, twitter, my Space etc.

So what did China do? They created a decentralized, 20,000-person-strong group of what is known as the 50-cent party, members of which get 50 cents for each comment they post -  they identify sensitive online discussions and try to hijack the conversation in directions supportive of the government. 

Examples like the above are what Morosov  calls the Spinternet. Every government does it differently.

The Russians outsource to new media start-ups, who then create social networks and blogs that promote a pro-Kremlin ideology.  The Russian parliament has been discussing a 'Blogger's Chamber' that would invite famous bloggers (obviously those taking the party line) to set their own standard of what can and cannot be discussed. A good example here of the apparent ceding of state power that, in reality, simply reinforces the establishment's control over the Russian internet.

The Nigerian government has been reported to be constructing an 'anti-blogging project' that would fund hundreds of pro-government voices, paying them in cybercafe vouchers,  to counter the influence of oppositional bloggers.

In Iran, the clerics have  Qom-based blogging workshops, to control much of the online discourse about religious issues.  And the Iranian authorities have already singled out Facebook and Twitter as sources of the 'color revolution' that got thousands of American twitterers coloring their profile picture green in sympathy for the freedom seeking activists in Iran.

The examples above, given by Morozov,  concern authoritarian states.  But it would be naive to assume that our democracy-loving states are not doing exactly the same thing. 

So maybe the future does not look that rosy for the little man at his laptop trying to organise a movement for some noble cause he believes in.  Perhaps Big Brother is even now peering over his shoulder and assessing whether he needs to be reined in. One can only hope that he is also peering over the shoulders of the bad boys who are planning more destructive things - and let us hope he believes with absolute surety that he can distinguish between the the good and the bad.

But hang on,  that's just what authoritarian states believe they can do, isn't it?

What a moral morass this whole field is!

 Evgeny Morozov is contributing editor to Foreign Policy, blogs, and is Yahoo Fellow at Georgetown University for the study of diplomacy.
He has a book coming out next year, published by Public Affairs, about the Internet and Democracy, and I'll certainly be at Amazon on publication day ordering a copy.

Birkenfeld billions

Je Reviens - unfortunately sometimes life and work just get in the way of blogging - so let's just blame my recent silence on 'Events, dear boy, events.'

So, back to business, to find that the wonderful UBS/Birkenfeld story has moved into even more interesting territory, as Brad the whistleblower bites back.  I've long thought there was endless money to be made out of this saga and that Bradley Birkenfeld would come out of prison, write a best selling book, then Hollywood would come along and make a great film out of the whole thing.

Who to play Birkenfeld?  That's a tricky one - depending on whether you view him as  hero, or  villain. Tom Cruise for either, perhaps?

Anyway, to update: The New York Times is reporting that Brad Birkenfeld and his lawyers are hoping to use a new federal whistleblower law to claim a multibillion-dollar reward from the American Government.

Birkenfeld, who begins his prison term in January, is being represented by the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, Stephen M. Kohn. It was Mr Kohn who sucessfully represented Linda Tripp when she helped to expose the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Clinton years.

According to the NY Times, Mr Kohn says, 'We are seeking at least several billion dollars.' (Big thinking here, does no-one think in terms of millions anymore?)
Legal experts say the odds in their favour are pretty good.

Brad Birkenfeld pleaded guilty in June 2008 to conspiring to defraud the US government, but - surprise, surprise -  in spite of that, whistleblowing experts think he has a persuasive case to make a claim.

A spokesman at Phillip & Cohen, a law firm that specializes in large whistle-blower claims,  is reported as saying 'It was very useful information from inside UBS that Mr Birkenfeld provided. The law is pretty clear on this."

Mr Kohn stands to reap a fortune if Bradley Birkenfeld wins.

I have to 'fess up here and say I have nothing but admiration for this display of chutzpah. Can't blame Birkenfeld for trying and if he and Kohn bring this off they deserve a standing ovation. But now that Birkenfeld himself has opened the gates to an absolute onslaught on tax havens, when they get their billions where will they put them?

Off shore account, anyone . . .