Transcript

Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Censorship and Control

Ryan Gallagher

Investigative Reporter & Editor, The Intercept

James Griffiths

Author, The of

Chair: Joyce Hakmeh

Cyber Research Fellow, International Security Department, Co-Editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy, Chatham House

14 March 2019

The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2019.

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2 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of and Control

Joyce Hakmeh

Good morning and welcome to Chatham House and to this session on Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control. My name is Joyce Hakmeh. I’m Research Fellow here at Chatham House, and I’m also the Co-Editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy. We’ve got a few copies over there for you, so feel free to grab one at the end of the session.

Three days ago, the world celebrated the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web. A lot has happened in 30 years. The way our economies function, but the way also, we lead our lives, have been massively altered and changed because of the internet. Importantly, the internet has also allowed citizens to mobilise in both authoritarian and democratic states. By collapsing physical space, people have been able to share their experiences, to voice their opinions and to explore their identities and mobilise positive political action.

A lot has been accomplished in just 30 years, but today we are facing three challenges. Half the world cannot go online, the other half face threats to their privacy, security and fundamental rights. The creators of the World Wide Web sought for the internet to be free, open and safe, an internet that benefits everyone, a force for democracy and freedom. Today, this is not the vision that everyone shares and agrees with. Today, we find ourselves facing a tale of two , one that is based on the principles of freedom, openness, security and resilience, and another one that maintains sovereign state control at its heart. In that latter version, the internet has evolved into a sophisticated tool for online censorship and control, where free speech is tightly regulated, dissent is oppressed, and human rights, more generally, are oppressed.

Our panellists will help us unpack all of this. We will talk about the current methods of internet censorship and control, the reasons, the challenges, and we’ve tried to project into the future and discuss expectations, as well as opportunities. We have, today, two brilliant panellists, who have been doing a lot of work on this. When we think of internet censorship, most of us immediately think of the Great Firewall of China. James Griffiths here has written a book recently on the Great Fire of China, how to build and control an alternative version of the internet. Are these copies of the book? Copies of the book are over there. James is currently a Senior Producer at CNN International. Before that, he was an Editor at the South China Morning Post and a China-based contributor to the Atlantic, GlobalPost and others. He’s reported from Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, South Korea and Australia. Our second panellist, Ryan Gallagher, is a UK-based Investigative Journalist, whose work at the Intercept is focused on national security and civil liberties.

Before I give the floor to our panellists, just a couple of housekeeping points. This event is held on the record, so if you want to tweet, please use hashtag #CHEvents. The other thing is, I ask you to please put your phones on silent, and lastly, please prepare your questions for the panellists, there will be room, before we conclude for your questions and for their answers. So, starting with you, James, you argue in your book that the primary objective of the Great Firewall of China is to censor calls to collective action and solidarity, rather than specific pieces of content, and that this has been the main reason for the success of that model, despite all this criticism over the year. Can you tell us more about this?

James Griffiths

Yes. So, since the internet came to China in the – well, it came in the late 80s, but it didn’t become popular and available until the mid-90s to late-90s, there was a sense that this was a kind of incredibly dangerous technology to the Chinese Government and to the Communist Party. A Journal – a very 3 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

prominent Journalist, for the New York Times who I won’t name, said that the Chinese Government was making a huge mistake by – it was spelling its own downfall by giving the Chinese people broadband, and, you know, this was based on this idea that you could never build a 100% effective form of internet censorship.

That’s true. The Great Firewall is the most effective apparatus for censoring the internet in the world. It is is not 100% effective, but what I argue in my book is that it doesn’t need to be, because while you can’t block 100% of content, you can’t prevent everyone from learning something you don’t want them to learn. The important thing that the Great Firewall does is, it blocks people from organising or taking collective action, based on that knowledge. So, if you learn something about – whether it be Tiananmen or an ideology that is anti-communist or a religious thinking that the government doesn’t like, it doesn’t matter that you want to try and do something about it, because when you do, the censorship kicks in.

Multiple studies have shown that whenever collective action is being discussed online, that’s what gets censored the most, and so to give an example, environmental issues are a hugely important issue in China, as I’m sure people can imagine, and are fairly widely discussed online as a topic. You know, people can talk about air pollution and they can talk about concerns about water. But if you try and take it to the next step and try and organise a protest or organise some kind of lobbying of the government or lobbying of industry, that’s when the censorship kicks in. And on topics that are much more sensitive from the get- go that obviously kicks in a lot earlier, and this has proven again and again and again, to be hugely effective. And so, kind of, one of the main messages that I think people should take away from the book is that when they see, kind of, optimistic and, you know, optimistic is perhaps the wrong word, when they see overly optimistic writing about any given piece of technology, whether it be, you know, VPNs or the blockchain is the current new, kind of, thing that’s going to defeat censorship, they need to think about how does that solve the problem of enabling people to organise and to spread solidarity with other groups, moreso than it just enables X piece of information to be shared online once or twice?

Joyce Hakmeh

And how much the, kind of, the extent of which, like, the censorship was built in, in the internet more than in China, has helped them, kind of, have, like, this site of spread, even though they cannot filter all content?

James Griffiths

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. The Chinese leadership probably realised, earlier than a lot of other countries, certainly earlier than a lot of other authoritarian regimes, potential dangers of the internet, you know, as a, kind of, engine of collective action and what risks that could pose to them. And, you know, China has – a lot of other countries are following China’s model, but China has a distinct advantage that it did this from the beginning. You know, when the internet came to China there was very early – from very early on there were blacklists, there were laws passed in order to bring this in, and so, that is now we’re looking at 30 years of development of this technology. They have – the censorship apparatus has developed alongside it, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so effective.

Joyce Hakmeh

You talk also in your book about this new breed of censor, the Great Cannon, which is determined to go after the enemies, wherever they might be. How prevalent is this, and what should we, kind of, what should we be expecting? 4 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

James Griffiths

So, I open the book with discussion of the Great Cannon, and this is a tool that’s only ever been used once, and it was used against GitHub, which is a site, which hosts code and is used to host a lot of, kind of, apps and various things like this, and it was being used to host an anti-censorship tool. And the Great Cannon was used to launch a huge distributed denial of service attack against GitHub, which knocked it offline.

Joyce Hakmeh

GitHub is in the States, so it’s based – yeah, yeah.

James Griffiths

GitHub is in the States, yeah, and it was traced to the architecture of the Great Firewall and it was very, kind of, strongly linked to the Firewall. And while that’s only been used once, the reason I highlight it in the book is that, for me, I see this as a pivotal moment when the censors stopped only looking or primarily looking at the situation within China and started to pay more attention to the situation overseas. Tolerance for overseas dissidents and overseas activism against the Firewall has dropped dramatically. Only in the last couple of months there has been a huge purge of Chinese users, that then, people have had, kind of, knocks on the door from the Police and been told to delete their accounts, and it’s, you know, the, kind of, space for activism and the space for dissidents is shrinking, and that’s not only affecting, kind of, Chinese experts or Chinese, you know, exiles, but also, international companies. So, people may have seen the news stories last year, the Chinese Government was putting a huge amount of pressure on international airlines and hotel chains to – and how they described Taiwan and Tibet and to, kind of, follow the Chinese form of political correctness. You know, this, to me, is all, kind of, connected, but this is a sign that the, you know, the system that once existed within China is now being spread elsewhere, and the, kind of, remit of the censors is spreading beyond the Great Firewall.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. Ryan, we often hear the expression that the Great Firewall of China was originally built with American bricks. So, what role do you think our western corporations are still playing in enabling internet censorship in authoritarian states, and what are the practical ramifications for people who live in countries like China and , where internet control and censorship is strengthened?

Ryan Gallagher

Hmmm hmm. Well, yeah, like you said, the American companies were heavily involved in the establishment, or helping China to obtain the equipment that it ended up using for the Firewall. Cisco, for example, and Blue Coat Systems is another company that was involved in that. These companies provided filtering equipment, routers, the really essential components of any, kind of, nationwide internet system, and they were, you know, crucial into helping the Chinese state to build that.

Today, you know, what’s happening is that some of the largest American and European companies, who themselves grew out of the – this, sort of, boom of the internet, and what you would call the open and the free internet that is, kind of, born out of North American-European democracies, those companies are now trying to get into China because, you know, the Chinese internet now, there’s something like, I think it’s 800 billion – sorry, 800 million internet users, which is obviously a massive market for any company, and they’re looking at that and they want a piece of that, really. 5 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

The trouble is that, of course, to get in there and to gain access to the Chinese market, it’s not just a case of you just – you go in and you set up an office, there are concessions that you have to make as a company that the Chinese state expects you to make, and those include some of the things that James was describing, in regards to the censorship.

For example, Apple is in China at the moment, and it made a whole number of concessions. It’s App Store that it’s operating in China, is a different version to the one that you or I would access, if we were in this country, and they’ve took off their – the VPNs that people use to protect their privacy. A whole range of news apps, like the New York Times app, for example, you couldn’t download if you were in mainland China through an Apple device. Also, a range of other apps that provide information about Tibetan issues, other – just general human rights issues, religious matters, about religious suppression in China, apps that provide that kind of information are all completely blocked off the Apple App Store in China.

Other examples are the companies that are in there are and Yahoo. Their services that they provide in China are also heavily censored. They’re complicit in that, they’re compliant with it. It’s not like something that’s done externally by the Chinese state, it’s like the management of these companies in the United States have made a decision that they will collaborate and that they will, you know, implement the blacklist. And also, it’s not – a really interesting dimension to the censorship in China is that it’s not a – it’s not like some little man comes to the door with a – in a brown envelope with this list of, like, terms that you can’t, you know, that you’ve got to black out, from your search engine or whatever it may be. It’s a, kind of, self-censorship style system, where there’s just an expectation, and it’s, kind of, a really secretive topic in China, even inside the government, and it’s considered a, kind of, embarrassing topic also. They don’t really want to discuss it openly.

So, what you find is that the American companies that have been going into China, they look at what the Chinese counterparts, what they’re doing, and they will try to just mimic that. They’ll build their own. I mean, some of these blacklists, they’ve actually been leaked over the years, and so there’s publicly available broad range – all the terms that have been – you’re not allowed to search for, like some of the, you know, the well-known, like, the Tiananmen Square or whatever it may be, and so, they then implement that.

One of the – I was looking – some of the stories that I’ve been working on recently were to do with , and Google has also been trying to get back into China. It was in China until 2009, but then pulled out because it said it couldn’t stomach the censorship anymore. But then the new leadership of Google has been trying to get back in, and I had some whistleblowers from inside Google that came to me, and they provided some extraordinary information about the extent, the, sort of, measures that Google was taking to try to basically curry favour with the Chinese Communist Party regime to get approval to go back in. And they built this prototype censors – Google, censored version of Google for China, and some of the terms that they had put on their blacklist, there was, for example, ‘Nobel Prize,’ and ‘human rights,’ the phrase in Mandarin, ‘student protest.’ These were some of the phrases that if a person in China was going to search that version of Google, it would just be like a blank page, when they searched it, and to just – maybe a small example of the extent of the secrecy around these issues, not just – I mean, inside Google it was kept a secret and then leaked out, but between – the negotiation between the Chinese Government and Google, very interesting.

Like, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, he was trying to get a meeting with someone high up in the Communist Party, and he ended up – they agreed this – that one of the President’s, Xi Jinping’s top Advisors, a man named Wang Huning, he agreed that they – he would meet them, but the condition was that – and Sundar, Google’s CEO, as you can imagine, one of the top business figures in the world, leads 6 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

one of the most powerful companies in the world, he usually travels with, like, an entourage. He has Lawyers and Advisors and stuff, who follow him around and help him and stuff, but he was told that if you wanted this meeting with Wang Huning, who – he’s kind of like Xi Jinping’s Advisor on technology issues and internet, and he said that, “We’ll have the meeting, but you have to come alone,” and he had to go into this meeting in China alone with Wang Huning to discuss Google’s future in China. He wasn’t – Sundar wasn’t allowed to take any Advisors in, ‘cause he didn’t want any, sort of, a record or any information about the whole – the censorship issues discussed. It was kept very small, and so this was – it was quite a fascinating dimension to it, but yeah, and so Google has been trying to get back in and do it. When we did these stories, it caused a big outcry in the United States, and Sundar ended up being called into Congress and asked questions about it, heavily criticised. Vice President Mike Pence also criticising Google for it, saying they should cancel it because, of course, it feeds into the ongoing, sort of, trade war that’s going on and very big tensions between the US and China, and this became a dynamic in that. But certainly, just to get back to your original question was, yeah, US companies, they really want to get into China, and this is an example of how it’s continuing, because they’re – they want a piece of the market there that’s just huge.

Joyce Hakmeh

Hmmm hmm. Having just – having looked at different countries, not just China, if we want to compare, for example, the approach of Russia in internet censorship and control versus China, what sort of similarities do you think there are, and what are the differences? Do they do it for the same reason? Is the motivation the same, or is it different?

Ryan Gallagher

Well, I mean, I think – I was thinking about this before the event, and I think there’s, you know, there’s a, kind of, universal statement you could make about how all governments view the internet, which is that it’s a threat and an opportunity. They view it as a threat in a way because of the potential for destabilisation, the potential for, you know – and when I say government, I’m referring to, also, like, law enforcement, intelligence agencies and how they would perceive the internet. I think, you know, the potential for protests, which we’ve seen all over the world, and not just – you – I think you mentioned the Arab Spring in your introduction, or you, sort of, alluded to it, the Occupy Wall Street, there was a 15-M movement in Spain at one time. You know, all over the world there have been these uprisings that have been aided by or, sort of, fermented by the internet, and governments are aware of that, and I think they’re scared of it in a certain way.

They view it as an opportunity because it allows them to, in some cases, spread their own information, propaganda, disinformation. We’ve seen with the US election what Russia’s been doing there, and also in Europe, but – and also, the way that it has enabled extraordinary surveillance of populations, I mean, really, entire populations. This is a new thing in human history, we’ve never – governments have never had that ability before. So, they – I mean, I think they also view it as an opportunity, but it’s how they respond to that that’s very different.

I mean, obviously the regulation that we see in western democracies is very subtle, in comparison to what is in China, you know, how China responds to those problems that it sees in the internet. There’s a, sort of, almost a, kind of, a softer form of the regulation, and maybe a stealthier form of it as well, because a lot of the things that our – how our governments respond is not – is always kept quite secret as well. But at least the – you know, when you look at what’s happening in China and in Russia and in some of the count – the other countries where China’s now exporting its policies and exporting its technologies, like, whether it’s Vietnam or Venezuela and Zimbabwe, for example, they’re now adopting this, sort of, similar 7 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

approach to China. That is, like, a really, kind of, brutal, almost like a crass version of regulation. It’s really – it’s quite, you know – the extent of the censorship, the extent of the surveillance, there’s not really a system of a rule of law in China. You know, it’s rule of the Communist Party regime and that’s how it functions. It’s quite arbitrary, in a way.

And so, yeah, and that’s spreading, but what’s also – I mean, Russia has a really interesting issue at the minute. What’s – very big changes there happening quite quickly, and they’re, I think, trying to catch up with what China has built, trying to – I mean, you’ve seen them start to censor, for example, Navalny’s investigations, where he’s publishing information exposing the corruption of the – Putin’s cronies and the oligarchs, and the internet regulator in Russia is trying to censor that information to stop the citizens from accessing it. I think they’re currently trying to push through a new law, which the opponents of it have dubbed it Putin-net, where they’re trying to basically shut off – like China, they’re trying to create almost a, sort of, their own walled-off version of the internet. So, this is a thing that is, you know, it’s – we’re not going to see the end of it any time soon. It’s these – these are advancements that are happening, and sadly, I think the Chinese model is being viewed by other authoritarian states as a success through their, you know, the way they would perceive it, you know, because they are successfully shutting down huge categories of information, and through doing that maintaining with an iron fist, a kind of control over the population, which is the ultimate goal of any dictatorship, and they want to control the population.

James Griffiths

Just to jump off what Ryan was talking about about Russia, I mean, Russia is a very interesting case because Russia has dealt with these concerns for a very long time and has had a great degree of scepticism about the internet, since Putin came to power, essentially. And what’s really been interesting, in the last three or four years, but especially the last year, has been Russia has pivoted to the Chinese model. There used to be a kind of, you know, parallel systems, that Russia had its own, kind of, technologies that were used to control these things. It was developing in a similar direction to China but, you know, domestically, and in recent years, they’ve, kind of, recognised that China is leaps and bounds ahead of them in this regard and, “We should just learn from the best,” and, you know, we’ve got plenty of reporting on, and some Chinese officials have spoken publicly in Russia that are advising Russian firms, the recent laws that were pushed through the Duma or in the Duma at the moment are, you know, very clearly modelled on Chinese laws and Chinese, kind of, systems already in place, and that’s a kind of pattern that’s repeating all over the world. Ryan mentioned Vietnam. Vietnam has a new cybersecurity law that is really, really based on the Chinese one and comes after Vietnamese officials visited China for training and then came back with this law. Zimbabwe as well, and lots of African countries. This is – you know. So, China used to be a kind of inspiration, and now it’s, kind of, a Teacher and a, you know, Advisor on all of these issues.

Joyce Hakmeh

Hmmm hmm. That’s very interesting. So, just to go back on the law in Russia, and, you know, on the – like, so, as you said, like, Russia has been for a long time trying to restrict, you know, the way the internet functions and to control the narrative in some way. But according to a recent Freedom – or, like, to the Freedom House Ranking, the internet remains, despite all of these restrictions, the internet remains the most versatile and effective tool for activism in the country, whether to confront state propaganda, fight corruption or – and organise protests. So, I wonder whether, you know, a) what is the fate of this law? What do you think this law – will it be passed or not? And is it because the current model of censorship is not working? And then let’s, as you said, learn from China and have, like, a tighter grip over the narrative. 8 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

James Griffiths

I mean, we talked earlier about how China had, kind of, baked this in from the beginning of the internet. Russia hasn’t, and what we’re seeing now is the attempts to do that retroactively. You know, the new law will – I mean, I would be astonished if it didn’t pass. There was a protest this weekend, but there’s been protests from internet activists for months. There was a protest against the blocking of Telegram and Telegram was still blocked. You know, Russia – Putin’s regime doesn’t respond to protests very much, and the new law, and it’s one of several laws, there’s also a couple of ones that are designed to tackle fake news and some other issues, that these are really pushing Russia in a, kind of, certainly legislative fashion, and we should expect, kind of, technology to catch up with that afterwards, that they’re pushing them in the direction of the Chinese model, and I think it is definitely a conscious attempt to catch up with China.

Joyce Hakmeh

Hmmm hmm. Ryan.

Ryan Gallagher

Yeah, I don't know what the outcome of the law is going to be, but it’s certainly clear that there is a very big push from the Kremlin to establish the law, so that would lead you to assume that it will probably get passed in some form. I think the problem – I mean, you said, like, the protests there have been organised on the internet, and quite effectively. I think that part of the reason for that and part of the reason why it’s still effective for activists to organise is because the Russian state has actually been quite inept at its attempts to censor. When they tried to block Telegram, for example, which James mentioned, these, sort of, encrypted apps that people use in Russia and also in other parts of the world, but it’s very popular there, they – it was a terrible attempt. You know, it failed, and it was very patchy. Sometimes it – there was just, like, there were outages and people were having problems accessing, but it wasn’t total censorship, so it wasn’t effective, and I think that’s what they want to change. Part of the reason why they’ve not been effective is ‘cause they don’t have the infrastructure that China has to do effective censorship. So they don’t have – I think they call them the root DNS servers, they’re, like, a really fundamental part of internet infrastructure. In Russia, these root servers are not actually located on Russian territory, so they’re relying on and they’re just getting – their internet data is flowing in from outside, so obviously, they don’t have control of anything outside of their own territory.

Joyce Hakmeh

And that’s what they’re trying to deduce from this law?

Ryan Gallagher

Exactly, yeah, and so if they do change that they’re going to be a hell of a lot more effective at doing the censorship, and, you know, like I said, they just – up until now they haven’t been good at it. They are trying though, and they’re showing, you know, like I said with the attempts to censor also the Navalny’s investigations, that they’ve been presenting it as, “Oh, you know, this is about cyber defence and all that,” which is just utter nonsense. It’s not, and they’ve already shown this attempt to use censorship for political reasons, to get information out of the public domain that implicates, for example, Putin’s regime and corruption. So, it shows what their intent really truly is, with this attempt to replicate China’s Great Firewall. You know, this is what they want and this is what they’re dreaming about creating for those 9 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

reasons, ‘cause they want to censor anything that the regime wants out, you know, deleted from public consciousness.

Joyce Hakmeh

Hmmm hmm. We will now turn to your questions. So, I’ll give you, like, a couple of minutes to prepare those questions, and I’ll ask you, our panellists questions in the meantime. So, we’re talking about, you know, and this is the Chinese mod – is the ultimate model of censorship at – you know, as – at the moment, and how China or, like, some countries have been keen on, like, exporting or, like, importing this model to their countries as well. So, how do you – but – so, we’ve talked at the beginning, also, in my introductory remarks about the benefits of the internet and how, you know, it helped us get adjusted with our lives and all of that. But at the same time, our increase – our online presence brings with it, like, threats, and whether to us as individuals or to the economies, you know, cybercrime threats, whether that being, like, you know, the threats of, like, disinformation campaigns or, like, child online abuse or ransomware, or whatever that is. So, how do we convince the countries, or those countries that are currently preparing or developing their internet policies, not to go down the route of censorship and control, because they – you know, this could be easily argued, that if you control your internet, you secure it, right? And this is basically what they can – one of the main arguments that they use. How do you convince these countries that, actually, this is not the right model, and you have to keep the internet open and you can secure it at the same time?

James Griffiths

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really dangerous things about the – that this effort by China, this very, you know, active and, you know, well-funded effort to, you know, propagate the firewall overseas and to export this model, comes at a time when global confidence in the internet as a free and open system is perhaps lower than it’s ever been, and that the, kind of, myriad of problems with the internet, as a technology, have been growing every year.

You know, I’ve been talking a lot this week of, kind of, while I’ve been promoting the book, but a lot of people have, kind of, asked me for, you know, what can be done about this? And I don’t have a very good answer, but the only thing I can say is that, you know, I don’t think there’s any hope to improve the internet in closed societies, when we don’t have a particularly good version in supposedly open societies, and, you know, I think it’s concerning that even in places like the US and the UK, there are pushes to control the internet, not in a way that benefits users and benefits ordinary people, but that benefits governments and potentially benefits corporations. And, you know, I think there needs to be a, you know, refocusing on – of the debate on how to protect users, and, you know, there have been some, kind of, advancements in, the GDPR in the EU is, kind of, a good push, in terms of privacy and certain other issues. But, you know, we have a very broken internet in the West, and we, kind of, need to fix that if we have any hopes of, you know, fixing it or encouraging other countries to adopt our model.

Joyce Hakmeh

Hmmm hmm. Turn to you, gentleman over there. Can you please introduce yourself. Thank you.

Sam Geall

Sure. Hi, I’m Sam Geall from China Dialogue, and I’m an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. We’ve been talking about the internet in this really interesting discussion so far. Mainly, I suppose in terms of 10 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

its infrastructure as, sort of, a – in terms of speech, I suppose, as a technology for communication within countries or across borders, but that, I guess, there’s another element of the internet increasingly as, sort of, critical infrastructure for communication between devices and, you know, it’s the backbone of, kind of, industrial systems, and that’s the big debate around 5G standards and this, kind of, warring context that’s playing out between big internet companies. In that sphere, does China have a particularly different approach? Is it justifiable to see Chinese companies as, you know, embedding a particularly controlling kind of approach to these standards and to these, sort of, technological infrastructures that are the backbone of IOT technologies and so on? Or indeed, is there a particular authoritarian approach that, you know, some companies are taking or some state-backed projects are taking and others aren’t in the, sort of, export of those infrastructure? Thanks.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. Ryan, do you want to take that question?

Ryan Gallagher

Are you referring to, sort of, like, Huawei? And so yeah, I mean, I – speaking personally, I’ve not done specific work or I have no, you know, special information on that, but I personally would be quite concerned with having Chinese companies that have known state links, starting to incrementally have a greater presence in western democracies, in UK. I think that you have to always assume, and I apply this to, also, any companies with, you know, links to the British state or to American governments, because we’ve seen how they will, you know, use covert access into that infrastructure for their – to, you know, send that information to intelligence agencies. We’ve absolutely no reason to think that the Chinese state would behave any differently, and so I would be concerned with, and I think the government here is concerned with the – China’s role in 5G, for example, in this country, and I think rightfully so, it should be looked at very closely.

Joyce Hakmeh

The President of Huawei’s 5G product line said, “Technology is for the benefit of humanity, should not have any boundaries,” recently, and that the people of – it was the context of the 5G debate, “and the people of the US deserve the world’s most advanced technology.” How do you read that in contrast with, actually, the state’s practice on censorship and control and very, you know, an internet with, like, loads of boundaries?

James Griffiths

Yeah, I mean, China famously hosted – hosts the World Internet Conference every year, which is – and that has a, kind of, hosted, you know, ironically named things around the internet, which talk about connectivity and, you know, freedom and, you know, doesn’t tend to, kind of, pay much attention to how the Chinese model works in practice. You know, China doesn’t have a particularly good record of practising what it preaches overseas, but, you know, kind of, such as what Ryan said, neither do a lot of other countries as well and, you know, when it comes to things like key infrastructure and things like this, I, you know, I think we should look back at, you know, the NSA revelations in particular, to see that, you know, I think these have been somewhat forgotten now, as if this, you know – ‘cause this story stopped being frontline news. But, you know, that was a very good insight into the power of and degree of surveillance that one particular government, or, you know, also, [inaudible – 34:33] was implicated as well, that one particular government had and, you know, we should, kind of, assume that most other 11 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

governments are at least attempting to do this, or are already able to do this and, you know, I think there are legitimate concerns about this technology, regardless of who’s building it.

Joyce Hakmeh

Hmmm hmm. Okay, questions? Gentleman over there.

Peter

Peter [inaudible – 35:02] at Warwick University. Two questions, one more specifically about China and the second about the implications. One of the consequences you might imagine – one might imagine for increased censorship of citizens’ activities is that it encourages them to go offline to work elsewhere. How far does the Chinese Government actually try to provide countervailing incentives for people to go online, so that they can reward them for being good citizens? Passports and various other kinds of benefits that they might get, because that, in a sense, might help to make Chinese society actually more online than it would otherwise be, although it might be a rather different kind of society, from the one that people know about in their daily lives. And the second question is, how far does China actively try to market its experience, its skills, its techniques for controlling political activities to other countries? You’ve mentioned that other countries may be trying to imitate it, but does China actually go out there and try to sell that, as well, to others?

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. Who would like to start first?

James Griffiths

Yeah, I can go. So, you know, on your first question, what’s really interesting, in terms of, kind of, organising collective action is that one of the, kind of, most successful groups in China are doing this, despite internet controls and everything, is the Workers’ Movement, who, kind of, have a more fundamental understanding of how to do offline organising and, you know, person-to-person interaction and stuff. You know, I do think that there has been some attempt, by other movements, to move offline and, you know, to find a way around this. But, you know, as I’m sure anyone in this room can imagine, when you are so emmeshed in the internet, when this is such a feature in daily life and how we communicate, it’s so exceptionally difficult to try and not do it and not do that and to avoid it.

And so, your second question, very, very much in terms of marketing. You know, there are trainings run very regularly for foreign officials to use – in my book I write about Uganda as a model for how it’s following China’s model, and Ugandan officials, after a series of protests in the country, went to Beijing and spoke openly of going to Beijing to learn from China and, you know, were given workshops and came back, with a host of new ideas, and that became a new – a couple of new laws. So, there is a huge marketing effort, a huge, kind of, coaching of this – on these issues.

Ryan Gallagher

Yeah, and the first question, yeah, I think, like James said, people do try and organise offline, but the problem, as well, you have to remember is that the Chinese state has historically been very effective at quashing offline dissent as well, and offline activism. I mean, that’s really what they’re built upon, in a certain way. So, the internal security and the Police that work for the Communist Party are, you know, 12 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

really quite efficient at doing that. So, that’s the problem that people in China, I think, they face, that almost every aspect of their life, even their homelife in some as – in some parts of the country are surveilled and monitored, offline and online. So, it’s a very difficult environment for anyone who’s trying to oppose the state. You know, and very swiftly, they will be taken into custody, if there’s any even suspicion that they’re doing anything against the regime.

In terms of marketing, definitely, I mean, this is a big part of what we’re seeing. There’s dozens of countries now where China is exporting its telecommunications equipment. Its companies are doing big business there, so I think even just from an economic standpoint that they’re really pushing that. But also, of course, it has a, kind of, dual purpose, because like we’ve mentioned with the 5G and telecommunications infrastructure especially is usually always, you know, they would be putting some kind of so-called back door or something in there to benefit themselves from gathering intelligence in other countries, and also, just exerting influence over governments and parts of, like, in Africa and the Middle East, they’re very big there, China, in terms of having that influence.

Joyce Hakmeh

So, we’ve talked about, like, how technology is being used, right, whether infrastructure, software, whatever, to control the narrative online and to exercise this censorship. One of the other tools that states normally use in authoritarian states are laws, right? And they formulate together, like, in all these laws that use very vague terminology on the basis of, like, extremism and fighting terrorism, etc., and they try and squash, like, you know, like, very large, you know, narrative or, like, online content. How can we – like, if we want to think, like, solution oriented, so we’ve talked about the problem, addressed it, we don’t want to be extremely pessimistic. But thinking about, you know, some sort of measures that could be in place, what can we do, actually, to, kind of, you know, raise awareness on the importance of having actually laws that are acted on? What can we do to, kind of, stop this from, just, you know, like, going to other countries and having it like more and more countries as well?

James Griffiths

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is raising consciousness of, you know, the potential danger of this type of control slipping into maybe not so suspicious looking laws. So, to give an example, I recently did quite a bit of reporting on a new law in Fiji, which was designed – which was proposed as a way to protect people online, and the reason given for it in the Fijian press and in parliament was to protect people from blackmail online, so, you know, the, kind of, intimate photos being leaked. The law also happens to have a bunch of things about speech in it that aren’t very well defined, have no freedom of speech, kind of, protections in there. The opposition party raised this in Parliament and said, “Can we put some protections in?” The government overruled them, and this law has gone into action now, and it has had a chilling effect quite quickly, and, you know, so the ability to slip these controls in is quite easy because, going back to what we talked about earlier, the, kind of, scepticism and the concern about the internet, I think we all see, in this country and in many others, an attempt to fix that. And what people need to be conscious of and what people need to be wary of is an attempt to fix that and also do a power grab for the security services and for government censors and other things at the same time. And so, I think in terms of being solution oriented, that we just need to raise awareness and, you know, say it, talk about the types of, you know, protections that need to be in any law that deals with online speech or deals with online activity.

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Ryan Gallagher

I think that if we want to be serious in western democracies, in the United States, about being – supporting human rights and saying that we believe in human rights and saying that we believe in internet freedom and governments advocating that, I think that more has to be done to prevent companies that come from these countries, from going and bolstering, helping to build, being complicit in what are very, very clear human rights violations. For example, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, about freedom of expression, very clear, if you’re going in and censoring phrases like ‘human rights,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘Nobel Prize’ from the internet, or you’re otherwise complicit in helping build a system that does that, well, that shouldn't be allowed.

If you’re – you know, if you’re an American company – this is an idea that I have for one way that you could help to prevent what I would see as the normalisation of that kind of system. You should prevent these massive corporations, which have huge influence, from doing that, because otherwise, you’re greenlighting it and you’re sort of saying that it’s acceptable there, or you’re at least turning a blind eye to it, which is almost worse. So, I think that if we want to be serious about it you need to look at, maybe, just some kind of embargos on particular sales of technology, and some of those are in place. For example, you couldn’t sell particular telecommunications equipment to, like, the Assad regime or or wherever, but the – you know, these are quite limited and they don’t cover the kinds of things that we’ve been talking about tonight, especially in regards to, like, China and Russia.

James Griffiths

Just to build slightly off what Ryan was saying as well is that I think that that’s an approach that maybe needs to – that there’s a value in taking from a purely self-interest perspective for these countries, because compromises made in markets like China don’t stay in China. I mean, one of the big concerns about Dragonfly and that was raised by Ryan’s reporting was that this would quickly spread to other markets where Google operates, and, you know, maybe it wouldn't spread to the US any time soon, but the potential for it doing so would still be quite high. So, you know, this isn’t just a, kind of, principles issue, this is potentially protecting your own population issue and your own, you know, future populations.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. We want to encourage more ladies from the audience to ask questions. You have a question? You go next, yeah. Please go ahead, yeah.

Alex

Hi, I’m Alex [inaudible – 44:18], Aviva. Considering these trends don’t seem to be going anywhere, would you hazard a guess what the internet may look like, in the medium-term?

Ryan Gallagher

I don’t want to do that. No, I really don’t know. I have to be honest, I’m not very optimistic about it. You know, I think that you just have to look at the trends that we’re seeing, that you mentioned. You know, China’s is long established, but even there it’s getting worse, it’s getting much worse, actually, quite quickly, and with Russia also. It seems to be accelerating quite rapidly. So, I think in the medium-term, it really doesn’t look good, and I can’t see, like, what I mentioned about the whole – the idea of some sort of embargo situation where you would at least prevent, you know, western comp – corporations like the 14 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

Microsofts or the or the Ciscos or whoever it may be, from actually going and helping it. I don’t think that – I mean, there’s not a cat’s chance of that happening either, but, you know – so, I just think that there’s not the will, really, from – you know, there’s so much other stuff happening in the world, there’s so much chaos going on politically, it’s just, you know, I don’t think that it’s high on the agenda. So, I think that unfortunately, the spread of this kind of – the Chinese model is just going to continue, and I worry also about what’s happening in Europe and in America and here. I think that there is, sort of, a degradation of the idea of the free internet and the open internet here also. I mean, it’s slowly – also, like, you know, the concepts of net neutrality, and they’re slowly being chipped away at, you know, so, it doesn’t – the trend is a, sort of, downward one, unfortunately, I think.

Joyce Hakmeh

So, are we going towards, like, the Splinternet as they call it? Is this where we’re heading? Is that your view?

Ryan Gallagher

Well, yeah, I mean, you could call it that, yeah. I mean, it’s – it does – I think that you see, like, the move in Russia – one set – also, I mean, a couple of years ago, even with Brazil, for example, is going to try to take more control of its own infrastructure. I think, really though, the positive dimension that we have here is that there really is strong support in the public for the idea of a free and open internet, and, you know, I think that the public can exert a really quite powerful influence on governments to try to prevent some of these, you know, like I said, chipping back at the internet freedom. So, that is one optimistic dimension of it, but yeah, I do think that there is definitely a splintering for sure, and it’s going to continue.

Joyce Hakmeh

Do you think there’s an understanding, among the general public, about what is at stake?

Ryan Gallagher

James.

James Griffiths

I, you know, I don’t want to seem patronising, but probably – I mean, probably not, because I don’t think this is something that is necessarily talked about frequently at, kind of, a policy level, and it is discussion. I mean, I think I agree with Ryan that I think there is a, kind of, pressure from the public and there is support for a free and open internet, but I – one thing that concerns me is the, kind of, language that’s used around things like fake news and, you know, alleged election interference and, kind of – and also, an over – you know, an exaggeration of the, kind of, dangers and the effects of these issues, and I think – ‘cause I think that can potentially be taken advantage of by governments and security services that want to use these as wedge issues to undermine the internet. And so I – you know, it’ll be interesting to see with this week being the anniversary of the internet and Tim Berners-Lee has been, kind of, at – you know, saying, “We need to fix this,” and stuff like that. But if we will see, kind of, more debate going forward in a, kind of, talk about a positive in the internet we want to see, rather than trying to – just trying to focus on all the problems. 15 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

Joyce Hakmeh

Optimism here. Yeah, go ahead.

Member

Hi, [inaudible – 48:26], so hopefully an optimistic question, and it relates to your point that you’ve just made. Might be coincidental, of course, but China is slowing down as an economy. Obviously, compared to Europe, it’s still doing really well, and Russia arguably, also has been hit by sanctions economically, the situation is worsening. Do you think there might be a) a correlation between, you know, a country doing, sort of, worse economically and then the censorship increasing? And related to that, then, is it really sustainable? Because, of course, you can censor me searching student protest, but you can’t censor the fact that my wage has stagnated for the last five years, you know, and that is very obvious and that makes me angry. Do you think there is – you know, maybe there will be, sort of, like, a boiling point, if you will, for this, and then that might be a breakthrough of sorts?

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. Just before you answer, maybe we take one more question? Gentleman over there. Yeah, we’ll take the two questions, yes.

Li Xiao

Hi, Li Xiao. My question is about – one thing that you said that really struck me is when you said that China’s model is the best in the world and it’s exporting it, and I always think back to combining both Churchill’s quote about liberal democracy and the attempts by the West to export liberal democracies to the world and it not always working, and one of the reasons being, sort of, the cultures and the people are different. So, you’ve talked about the complicitness of big western companies and the Chinese state. How much of the censorship is actually just the self-censorship and the complicitness of the Chinese population? Because I see a lot of Chinese students coming over to various countries where the internet isn’t, sort of, censored and there not being a sudden, sort of, outpouring and yearning for this uncensored internet. And also, from a lot of my relatives and friends that I still have in China, they do self-censor themselves. A lot of them know a lot of the topics we talk about, but avoid it in much the same way I think certain topics we self-censor in the West, and me raising that topic, say, of Tiananmen is met with the discontinuation that certain people in the West will meet someone, say, raising a topic that you particularly really find a, sort of, taboo subject. So, I do wonder how much is self-censorship going on.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you.

Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker from The Times. I was just wondering if you think that there’s a double standard with the view of the internet as this, like, open and universal tool for humanity. You know, arguably, China is justified in, kind of, being a bit cautious about letting, kind of, you know, Silicon Valley into its, you know, into – across its borders, just in the same way we would worry about letting Huawei, you know, cross our borders, so… 16 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

Joyce Hakmeh

Okay, maybe start with you James, if you want to answer, yeah, just give your answers on any of the questions. We had one on correlation between economic development and censorship, one on self- censorship, does it matt – you know, even when they leave, like, they still censor themselves, and the last question on double standards.

James Griffiths

Yeah, I mean, the correlation between the economy and political action, it is perhaps the biggest challenge the government’s going to face, in the coming decade or so, that, you know, the deal post-Tiananmen was, you know, shut up and we’ll make you rich, but as that stops – as that starts to become less effective, that deal – a new deal may have to be reached. My great concern on that issue is that China would hardly be the first government in the world to be facing pressure at home and decide that nationalism and foreign action is a good way to relieve that pressure. China has a lot of potential issues in this area, Taiwan being the most obvious one, where you could direct public anger and public frustration, and so, you know, this is definitely going to be a challenge. I don’t know necessarily that it goes in a positive direction. Can we keep rolling through them?

Joyce Hakmeh

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Griffiths

Yeah? So, on self-censorship, I mean, self-censorship is absolutely a huge part of the censorship model, and, you know, part of top-down censorship is to encourage self-censorship. You know, it is naturally more effective if people do this themselves, if you don’t have to, kind of, control them every day, and, you know, this is – you know, Ryan touched on earlier about how there isn’t a, kind of, book that you get that tells you, as a company, this is how you censor, this is what to censor, this thing, and because this censorship is exported to private companies within China to do, it’s naturally done, self-cens – they self- censor those companies. And by guessing what might be sensitive, they tend to, kind of, err on the side of greater censorship, and I think ordinary people probably do that as well, especially as the situation in China gets more severe, in terms of the repercussions you might face.

And then, on the final question, the – you know, the, kind of – China does have a point, obviously, that, you know, I think we shouldn't make the mistake in this of, you know – we shouldn't make the mistake of associating the good things about the internet with the good things about in – with internet companies. You know, I think Silicon Valley has had this, you know, has been able to surf off the, you know, the good things that the internet has brought the world, as if it did – made all of them itself. You know, we don’t necessarily need the internet to be run by huge corporations. The technology itself is the positive thing, not the fact that Mark Zuckerberg became a multibillionaire, and, you know, so I think scepticism, in that regard, is to be welcomed and is valuable, and I – my only concern is that I don’t think China is particularly sceptical for the right reasons.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. Ryan. 17 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control

Ryan Gallagher

Yeah, I’ll, just, I’ll touch on the self-censorship point. I think it’s – it was a really interesting point that you raised, actually, and obviously the ordinary Chinese people, there’s a big aspect of it that is – they’re brought up in that culture, and I think a lot – I would feel it’s a bit harsh to blame the ordinary Chinese citizens though, because I think that, you know, there’s an element of conditioning to it, and even though they may not be demanding or yearning for a more open internet, it’s not them – they’re not the ones who are putting the demands on the companies to be compliant in the censorship, it’s the government. It is a top-down situation, like James said. So, yeah, I would feel it’s a bit harsh to blame the ordinary people for the situation. I don’t think, you know, they can shoulder much of that.

But on the point about the western companies in China being cautious about them, yeah, well maybe they should be, but I don’t think that there’s an equivalence between that and us being – I mean, we can be cautious about Chinese companies or any other country’s companies coming into our country, and so can they. But the difference is, we’re not demanding that when Huawei comes into this country that they censor all manner of information about human rights and democracy, from text messages coming through on people’s phones, or whatever it may be. You know, there’s – I just don’t think there’s an equivalence, and, you know, the demands that the Chinese state is putting on the western companies that it allows into its country are not just – they’re not related to national security or concerns about the NSA or whoever it is tapping into their communications, it’s much broader than that, and they’re actually trying to control information in their country, and what their ordinary citizens can access and discuss, and I think that that is far more problematic and it’s something that really should be condemned.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you very much. Actually, we’ve ran out of time. Thank you for a fascinating discussion and thank you for coming. Please join me in thanking our participants. Thank you [applause].