Enemies of the Internet 2013

By March 12, 2013

For this
year’s “Enemies of the Internet” report, Reporters Without Borders
has
identified Five State Enemies of the Internet, five “spy” states
that conduct systematic online surveillance that results in serious human
rights violations. They are Syria, China, Iran, Bahrain
and Vietnam. Surveillance in these countries targets dissidents and has
grown in recent months. Cyber-attacks and intrusions, including the use of
malware against dissidents and their networks, are on the increase.

China,
whose Electronic Great Wall is probably the world’s most sophisticated
censorship system, has stepped up its war on the use of anonymization
tools and has enlisted private-sector Internet companies to help monitor
Internet users. Iran has taken online surveillance to
a new level by developing its own national Internet, or “Halal Internet.” As
regards Syria, Reporters Without Borders has obtained
an unpublished document – a 1999 invitation by the Syrian
Telecommunications Establishment to bid for a national Internet network in
Syria – which shows that its Internet was designed from the outset to include
extensive filtering and surveillance.

Without
advanced technology, authoritarian regimes would not be able to spy on their
citizens. Reporters Without Borders has for the first time compiled a list of five
“Corporate Enemies of the Internet,” five private sector companies that it
regards as “digital era mercenaries” because they sell products that are
used by authoritarian governments to commit violations of human rights and
freedom of information. They are Gamma, Trovicor,
Hacking Team, Amesys and Blue Coat.

Trovicor’s surveillance and interception
products have enabled Bahrain’s royal family to spy on news providers and
arrest them. In Syria, Deep Packet Inspection products developed by Blue Coat
made it possible for the regime to spy on dissidents and netizens
throughout the country, and to arrest and torture them. Eagle products supplied
by Amesys were discovered in the offices of Muammar
Gaddafi’s secret police. Malware designed by Hacking Team and Gamma has been
used by governments to capture the passwords of journalists and netizens.

“Online
surveillance is a growing danger for journalists, citizen-journalists, bloggers
and human rights defenders,” Reporters Without Borders
secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Regimes
seeking to control news and information increasingly prefer to act discreetly.
Rather than resort to content blocking that generates bad publicity and is
early circumvented, they prefer subtle forms of censorship and surveillance
that their targets are often unaware of.

“As
surveillance hardware and software provided by companies based in democratic
countries is being used to commit grave human rights violations, and as the
leaders of these countries say they condemn violations of online freedom of
expression, it is time they took firm measures. Above all, they should impose strict
controls on the export of digital arms to countries that flout fundamental
rights.”

Negotiations
between governments already led in July 1996 to the Wassenaar
Arrangement, which aims to promote “transparency and greater responsibility in
transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus
preventing destabilizing accumulations.” Forty countries, including France,
Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States are nowadays party to the
agreement.

By
demonstrating the importance of online information, the Arab Spring reinforced
authoritarian governments’ understanding of the advantages of monitoring and
controlling Internet data and communication. Democratic countries also seem
increasingly ready to yield to the siren song of the need for surveillance and
cyber-security at any cost. This is evident from all the potentially repressive
laws and bills such as FISAA and CISPA in the United States, the Communications
Data Bill in Britain and the Wetgeving Bestrijding Cybercrime in the Netherlands.

Reporters Without Borders has made a “digital survival kit
” available on the WeFightCensorship.org

website in order to help online news providers evade increasingly active and
intrusive surveillance.