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2/C PMS (BLACK + 809) SOFT-TOUCH MATTE LAMINATION + SPOT GLOSS THE NET DELUSION EVGENY MOROZOV POLITICS/TECHNOLOGY $27.95/$35.50 CAN “ Evgeny Morozov is wonderfully knowledgeable about the Internet—he seems “THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TWITTERED!” to have studied every use of it, or every political use, in every country in the declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after world (and to have read all the posts). And he is wonderfully sophisticated and protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for tough-minded about politics. This is a rare combination, and it makes for a all the talk about the democratizing power powerful argument against the latest versions of technological romanticism. of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China His book should be required reading for every political activist who hopes to are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, ALEXANDER KRSTEVSKI ALEXANDER change the world on the Internet.” —MICHAEL WALZER, Institute for authoritarian governments are effectively Advanced Study, Princeton using the Internet to suppress free speech, EVGENY MOROZOV hone their surveillance techniques, dissem- is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy “ Evgeny Morozov has produced a rich survey of recent history that reminds us inate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify and Boston Review and a Schwartz Fellow that everybody wants connectivity but also varying degrees of control over their populations with digital entertain- at the New American Foundation. Morozov content, and that connectivity on its own is a very poor predictor of political ment. Could the recent Western obsession is currently also a visiting scholar at Stan- pluralism.... By doing so, he’s gored any number of sacred cows, but he’s likewise with promoting democracy by digital ford University. He was previously a Yahoo! given us a far more realistic sense of what’s possible in cyberspace—both good means backfire? Fellow at the Institute for the Study of and bad—in the years ahead. Morozov excels at this sort of counter-intuitive Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a analysis, and he instantly recasts a number of foreign policy debates with this In this spirited book, journalist and social fellow at the Open Society Institute in New timely book.” —THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, author, The Pentagon’s New Map, commentator Evgeny Morozov shows that York, where he remains on the board of and senior managing director, Enterra Solutions LLC by falling for the supposedly democratizing the Information Program. Morozov’s writings nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders have appeared in the Economist, Newsweek, “Net Delusion is a brilliant book and a great read. Politicians and pundits have may have missed how it also entrenches the Wall Street Journal, the International hailed the Internet as a revolutionary force that will empower the masses and dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, Slate, consign authoritarian governments to the ash-heap of history, but Morozov harder—not easier—to promote democracy. Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, explains why such naïve hopes are sadly misplaced. With a keen eye for detail Buzzwords like “twenty-first-century state- the San Francisco Chronicle, Prospect, Dis- and a probing, skeptical intelligence, he shows that the Web is as likely to distract craft” sound good in PowerPoint presentations, sent, and many other publications. He has as to empower, and that both dictators and dissidents can exploit its novel but the reality is that “digital diplomacy” appeared on CNN, CBS, SkyNews, CBC, Al requires just as much oversight and consid- features. If you thought that Facebook, Twitter, and the World Wide Web “ Evgeny Morozov offers a rare note of wisdom Jazeera International, France 24, Reuters TV, would trigger a new wave of democratic transformations, read this book and eration as any other kind of diplomacy. and common sense, on an issue overwhelmed NPR, BBC Radio 4, and BBC World Service. think again.” —STEPHEN M. WALT, Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Marshaling compelling evidence, Morozov by digital utopians.” —MALCOLM GLADWELL Harvard University shows why we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently lib- JACKET DESIGN BY PETE GARCEAU erating and why ambitious and seemingly $27.95/$35.50 CAN noble initiatives like the promotion of AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK “Internet freedom” might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole. VISIT WWW.PUBLICAFFAIRSBOOKS.COM SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER WWW.PUBLICAFFAIRSBOOKS.COM SPOT GLOSS AREAS INDICATED ON PAGE 2 1586488741-Morozov_Layout 1 10/19/10 10:27 AM Page iii The NET DELUSION The Dark Side of Internet Freedom EVGENY MOROZOV New York 1586488741-Morozov_Layout 1 10/19/10 10:27 AM Page iv Copyright © 2011 by Evgeny Morozov Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107. PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Timm Bryson Text set in 11.75 point Arno Pro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morozov, Evgeny. The net delusion : the dark side of internet freedom / Evgeny Morozov. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58648-874-1 (alk. paper) 1. Internet—Political aspects. 2. Internet—Censorship. 3. Computers—Access control. 4. Freedom of information. I. Title. HM851.M665 2011 303.48'33—dc22 2010039066 First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1586488741-Morozov_Layout 1 10/19/10 10:27 AM Page 143 chapter six Why the KGB Wants You to Join Facebook magine that you are a target of some deeply mysterious spying oper- ation. While you happily poke your online friends, tweet your break- Ifast plans, and shop for Christmas presents, all your online activity is being secretly reported to an unknown party. Imagine that someone has also broken into your computer and is using it to launch DDoS attacks. They could be targeting Saudi websites about philosophy or dissident Georgian bloggers. You have no idea that your computer is part of this mysterious cyber-army, let alone who is being attacked or why. It’s as if a stranger has been secretly reading your diary and also using it to clobber a passerby. This is precisely what happened to a number of brave activists from Vietnam who in 2009 were protesting the building of a new bauxite mine in their country. (The project is a joint venture between Chalco, a subsidiary of China’s state-run aluminum company Chinalco, and the Vietnamese government.) Their computers were compromised, allow- ing an unknown third party not only to monitor their online activity but also to attack other online targets in Vietnam and elsewhere. But 143 1586488741-Morozov_Layout 1 10/19/10 10:27 AM Page 144 144 The Net Delusion theirs was not a case of basic computer illiteracy, where pressing the wrong button or visiting a weird porn site could surrender months of hard work to a nasty virus. It’s quite likely that the Vietnamese dissi- dents did no such thing, avoiding any suspicious-looking sites and at- tachments. What could have gone wrong? Vietnam, nominally still ruled by a Communist Party, boasts a bur- geoning Internet culture, with antigovernment bloggers mounting fre- quent campaigns about social issues, especially the poorly regulated sprawling urban development. The government, concerned that its tight hold on public life is beginning to loosen, has been trying to re- assert control, preferably without drawing much ire from Vietnam’s trading partners in the West. The authorities, all too keen on harvesting the information benefits of globalization, do not shy away from com- puters or the Internet outright. In April 2010 they embarked on an am- bitious crusade to supply farmers in more than one thousand communes with free computers, so that they could, as one ofcial put it, “contact and consult with . scientists . [about] the current epi- demics on their breeds and seeds.” The government was even kind enough to organize computer training courses for the farmers. Those opposing the government’s paradigm of “modernization at all costs” are unlikely to be invited to attend such courses. In 2009 two of the most vocal blogs that challenged the government, Bauxite Vietnam and Blogosin, became targets of powerful DDoS attacks similar to those launched against Tomaar and Cyxymu. Soon, Bauxite Vietnam was forced down the “digital refugee” route, eventually emerging on a Google-owned blogging service, while the blogger behind Blogosin told his readers that he was quitting blogging altogether to “focus on personal matters.” Those attacks made it quite clear that the Vietnamese government was up-to- date on the rapidly evolving nature of Internet control and wouldn’t stop at just blocking access to particular websites. Most likely, the antimine activists, careful as they were, inadvertently hit a government trap that allowed the secret police to establish remote control over their computers. And what a trap it was: Someone broke into the server that hosted the website of the Vietnamese Professionals Society (VPS), a trusted diaspora organization, and replaced one of the 1586488741-Morozov_Layout 1 10/19/10 10:27 AM Page 145 Why the KGB Wants You to Join Facebook 145 most popular downloads, a simple computer program that facilitated typing in the Vietnamese language, to an almost identical file—“almost” because it also contained a virus.