Communications Technology, a Two-Edge Sword

Danny O'Brien, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, brings up very poignant questions in this San Francisco Chronicle column about the dual role played by communications technology, both as a liberating and repressing factor.

Facebook and Twitter are still playing a crucial role in the pro-democracy demonstration in Iran, allowing opposition activists the capacity to overcome huge censoring barriers imposed by the regime. Similar electronic social-networking tools were used by demonstrators during the Uighur uprising in Western China.

But O'Brien rightly points out that the very same regimes those activists were trying to defeat are using the same or very similar technologies to put down those uprisings, with the help of Western democracies.

Iranian authorities spied on protesters' cell phone calls using equipment purchased from Nokia-Siemens. The Chinese government's "Golden Shield" project monitors the unencrypted, unprotected online communications of dissidents.

There is an important lesson from the use and abuse of technology in these cases: U.S. lawmakers and regulators should learn that America's own tech regulations can have unforeseen consequences abroad.

The Nokia-Siemens equipment sold to Iran probably contained interception facilities because the United States in 1994 enacted the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, which forced the telecommunications industry to design networks and devices to make wiretapping easier. As went the United States, so went Europe, with the predictable result that companies like Nokia-Siemens built widespread spying capability into their standard tools.

When lawmakers punch a hole in a technology to spy on its users, they create a hole that repressive governments also use.

O'Brien adds the situation is not getting any better, including efforts by the Obama administration to make it easier to demand personal identity data on the Internet and harder for individuals to keep it secure.

The larger lesson is that wherever free speech tools exist online, those who most need them will come to use them - perhaps even depend on them. Our government must ensure that the tools we build in America are not deliberately weakened by our own misguided policies.

Amen.