ICT for oppresion?

In my last blog yesterday I already mentioned the powers that certain regimes use in order to get their message across (or equaly disturbing, making sure an opponent is not getting a message across)

ICT can be used for many causes, good or bad, and what is good or bad ofcourse depends (at least partially) on what side of the spectrum you are on. However, there are times that almost all will conclude that certain regimes grossly misuse their powers in order to stay in power, after all that is most of the times their goal. My eye fell on an, over a year old, post by Marietje Schaake which found its source in the by then already a year old "Internet freedom Strategy"by the US Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton.
During this presentation on January 21st Clinton said: "We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it." It was no more than a week or so later, when the famous Wikileaks site was launched, that the US government took decisive action and closed the wikileaks domain and ordered all financial institutions to ensure no funding to wikileaks would be given.


It was not long before two legislative proposals saw the light, SOPA and PIPA.
Global movements like Bits of Freedom stood up and defended the open internet and mulled the fact that US legislative orders would have judicial rights in Europe or elsewhere.

The pivotal question that emerges is how to deal with the trade of ICT infrastructure and knowledge to governments that continue to massacre their people and have an obvious disregard to democracy. In an ideal world corporations who provide these technologies and services would not want to make deals with an administration like Assads. But as we all know, reality hits us hard in the face. Those deals happen below the radar, and are carried out involving a string of middlemen. And then of course there are companies that do not have a lot of scrupules when it comes to trading knowledge or technology: as long as the offer is attractive enough, everything is available.


So there is only one feasible solution: a political standpoint, a moratorium on the trade, sale or delivery of any knowledge or technology to repressive regimes, that allows them to actively track down their civilians.


The likelihood of such legislation seeing the light and actively being upheld has recently gotten a blow with all fingers pointing to the Israël and the USA for themselves using simmilar guerilla techniques in the distribution of the Stuxnet / Flame virus.
My prediction? Nothing will change, since nobody is really commited. The losers are the innocent children of Syria.