Tyranny in the digital age: Censor the internet

One of the targets of high value for tyrants and demagogues is the free flow of information, political criticism and inconvenient but honest speech. That needs to be shut down as much as possible to allow demagogues and dictators more freedom to create unrebuttable false realities and real divisions within societies. 

The undisputed world leader in in digital tyranny is the demagogic Chinese government dictatorship. However, the demagogic Russian tyranny has finally gotten around to starting to shut down the internet. It is surprising that it took Putin this long to get serious about clamping down on online inconvenient facts, truths, reasoning, criticism and reporting. The New York Times writes:

Russia’s boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways — with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms.

The messages, sent by Russia’s powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details — like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds — from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived.

The telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-approved technicians installed the equipment alongside their own computer systems and servers. Sometimes caged behind lock and key, the new gear linked back to a command center in Moscow, giving the authorities startling new powers to block, filter and slow down websites that they did not want the Russian public to see.

The process, underway since 2019, represents the start of perhaps the world’s most ambitious digital censorship effort outside China. Under President Vladimir V. Putin, who once called the internet a “C.I.A. project” and views the web as a threat to his power, the Russian government is attempting to bring the country’s once open and freewheeling internet to heel.

The gear has been tucked inside the equipment rooms of Russia’s largest telecom and internet service providers, including Rostelecom, MTS, MegaFon and Vympelcom, a senior Russian lawmaker revealed this year. It affects the vast majority of the country’s more than 120 million wireless and home internet users, according to researchers and activists.  

Russia’s censorship efforts have faced little resistance. In the United States and Europe, once full-throated champions of an open internet, leaders have been largely silent amid deepening distrust of Silicon Valley and attempts to regulate the worst internet abuses themselves. Russian authorities have pointed to the West’s tech industry regulation to justify their own crackdown.

New Russian technology -- slowing down inconvenient truth

from 4 seconds to 34; the next step is completely blocking it 

The image is of Russian police crushing a street protest

The NYT goes on to report that what Russia is doing can be done easily by dictators anywhere. The censorship technology operates in cyberspace between internet access companies and people browsing the web on a phone or laptop. The process is akin to intercepting mail. “Deep packet inspection” software amounts to data filters in internet networks. The software can either slow websites down or simply remove content has been programmed to be blocked.

Over time, this will eliminate most digital exchange of political information and content. The internet is the last place in Russia where foreign content, activism, and political humor and criticism is still freely available. In essence, censoring the internet is likely to push Russia to deeper isolation, akin to the situation in the Cold War era. That would be perfectly fine with Putin and his successor kleptocratic tyrant.

Putin uses censorship, other strong-arm tactics and legal intimidation to coerce Western internet companies. In September, the Russian government threatened to arrest employees of Google and Apple, forcing the companies to remove apps run by supporters of the prominent political opponent Alexei A. Navalny before Russian elections. Navalny is a jailed opposition leader. Western companies had to censor themselves or employees would face physical violence.

No wonder that so many Russians want to get out of that sad, hopeless country.

What about American authoritarians?

Meanwhile, back here in the US, the FRP (fascist Republican Party) bitterly complains on the one hand that criticisms from professional news sites are lies, slanders and motivated reasoning.[1] But on the other hand, the FRP slams private sources for censoring the propaganda and lies the FRP routinely poisons political discourse with.[2] For this issue, the FRP leadership arguably is not much different in attitude toward inconvenient facts, truths, sound reasoning and criticisms than the demagogic tyrants that run China or Russia. They want to shut it down, but cannot manage it yet. Uncensored free speech is one of the last lines of defense that democracy has against the FRP’s onslaught on democracy and civil liberties including free speech they dislike.

The big problem this raises is the difference between honest speech and dark free speech (DFS) (lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity, irrational emotional manipulation, partisan motivated reasoning, etc.). That raises the question of what, if anything, can be done without empowering demagogues and tyrants by passing laws banning or punishing DFS without seriously weakening democracy and the rule of law. 

Obviously, demagogues and tyrants want to censor honest speech and set their own DFS free to poison people’s minds. In theory, Democrats should want to censor DFS and leave honest speech free to do social good, including combatting DFS. In practice its not clear that is possible without undermining the democracy the law is intended to protect.

Questions: 

1. Given that demagogues and tyrants shut down criticisms and access to inconvenient facts and truths, is it reasonable to believe that honest free speech is mostly anti-authoritarian, but dark free speech is mostly anti-democratic? 

2. Short of passing laws to ban or punish it by, e.g., imposing taxes on provable but un-retracked lies and falsehoods, is there anything a democracy can do to defend itself against the authoritarianism inherent in DFS?

Footnotes: 

1. For example:

President Trump hates the press. He spends nearly as much time attacking CNN and the “failing” New York Times as he does attacking Democrats. He’s referred to journalists as an “enemy of the people” both on Twitter and in public appearances. In March, he asked then-FBI Director James Comey to examine options for jailing reporters who published leaked information.

A fairly large plurality of Republicans — 45 percent — support allowing media organizations to be shuttered. A scant 20 percent oppose the idea; that’s less than half the number who support it. The remaining 35 percent of Republicans have not made up their minds.

By contrast, more Democrats and independents oppose shutting down media organizations than support it (by a 21-point margin among Democrats and 2-point margin among Independents).

Let that sink in for a second: More than twice as many Republicans support giving the government power to shut down media organizations that it deems either “inaccurate” or “biased” than oppose it. Such a proposal isn’t something you see in democracies, as it would essentially end freedom of the press entirely. It’s along the lines of what you see in Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan’s Turkey.

What is surprising is how many independents are open to shutting down speech they dislike or are unsure. Also, Democrats are not all that reassuring, with 18% wanting to shut down speech sources they dislike and a whopping 43% saying they are unsure.

2. For example:

American conservatives have been having a shrieking panic attack over free speech for the last several months. When Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for trying to overthrow the government, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) wrote it was a "PURGE" and suggested "a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires have a monopoly on political speech," while Donald Trump, Jr. wrote "Free speech is dead and controlled by leftist overlords." When the estate of Dr. Seuss pulled a handful of books with racist imagery from publication, Glenn Beck yelled "This is fascism!" When Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) temporarily lost a book contract for voting to overturn the 2020 election, he said he had been victimized by the "woke mob" and that the decision was "a direct assault on the First Amendment." And for years now, every time there is a protest against some racist speaker on a college campus, conservatives throw a wobbler about supposed censorship.