Transcript Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship and Control Ryan Gallagher Investigative Reporter & Editor, The Intercept James Griffiths Author, The Great Firewall of China 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. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chairman: Stuart Popham QC Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Cybersecurity Series: Exploring Methods of Internet Censorship 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 internets, 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.