US and the Net in these Orwellian times

Just when you thought the United States might finally be mending its foreign policy and taking the road to peace, the Barack Obama administration releases a report signaling a newfound seriousness about Internet security, a "hack and bomb" policy of such consequence as to consider military action in response to Internet attacks.

The "US International Strategy for Cyberspace" is a shot across the bow for companies and countries who may harbor doubts about US government willingness to meddle and intervene in the Internet. While couched in security terms, the strategy reeks of Internet evangelism of the sort that stipulates foreigners must keep their cyber gates open to hear the good word, even as the US begins to close the gates at home for the almighty purposes of national security.

Coming from the White House that has been in favor of an Internet kill switch, ruthless prosecution of WikiLeaks and active DNS blocking - all the while expanding its unprecedented and unparalleled power to spy upon others while enforcing a near impenetrable cloak of secrecy for itself - US President Barack Obama is left standing without much moral high ground to preach from.

To listen to key players in the Obama administration announce the new "freedom" policy was to submit oneself to 43 nail-biting minutes of soporific blather not unlike the sophomoric banter of high-school students debating "the importance of American freedom," or the portion of the Miss America contest in which the high-heeled contestants are asked how they would like to achieve world peace.

Superficially, the unveiling of the "historic strategy" was upbeat, polite, eager and idealistic, yet the speakers often sounded Orwellian, contradicting themselves with doublespeak when not saying outright the opposite of what they apparently meant.

The star of the show was a cheerful, ebullient and composed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who spoke of a "diplomatic imperative" for the US to lead a jaded world into accepting US norms as universal norms. Elegantly dressed in red shoes, a red necklace and sporting elegantly coifed blonde hair, her inspiring oratory made me want to believe what I knew not to be true. Her main point seemed to be that increasing US government capacity for surveillance and control of the Internet would somehow "secure fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly and association online, as off-line", as if by magic wand.

But more government control does not equal freedom and more surveillance does not equal privacy. Nor is security necessarily enhanced by espousing double standards that favor the US.

Attorney General Eric Holder spoke next about the need to crack down on crime. "Thefts of information that would have been impossible in an ink-and-paper world can now be carried out nearly undetected, from almost anywhere." He spoke as one so spooked by WikiLeaks that he tiptoed around the topic without once mentioning it by name.

Gary Locke was included in the line-up, wearing two hats, one as outgoing commerce secretary and the other as gung-ho nominee ambassador to China. His stated eagerness to confront Beijing on these issues might be political posturing to win Senate approval, but it also bears a whiff of a political loyalty dance.

It was all about WikiLeaks, though the administration's attack was couched in passive aggressive avoidance of the real topic at hand.

What came across loud and clear was that in this day and age America's commitment to "freedom" does not apply to ordinary folk, let alone whistle-blowers and foreigners.

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has been treated like an enemy of state, while suspected "leaker" Bradley Manning has been languishing in a US military brig, tossed into a memory hole, reduced to an "unperson". Even The New York Times washed its hands of the freelancer Assange after getting what it wanted from him and sharing its findings with the government.

If there is a pearl of wisdom in the report it is this: releasing information that the US government does not want released is very, very bad, whereas enabling the global spread of information that serves US government interests is very, very good.

The first type of information must be ruthlessly nipped in the bud, whereas the second type must be foisted full-throttle upon unwilling partners abroad. Expect more color revolutions and "spontaneous" unrest directed by cyber-agitators funded in Washington and cheered on by The New York Times.

Even more troubling is the call to arms, the not-at-all subtle threat that military force is always on the table, unhappily a tradition as American as apple pie. But is perpetual war really in the interest of the American proles? And just how does one punish cyber violators? With extraordinary rendition? Torture? Capture and kill missions? Drone attacks?

Must tired old Uncle Sam, rifle in one hand, begging bowl in the other, threadbare and weary from playing world cop from the Arctic to Antarctica take on a new beat in cyberspace as well?

George Orwell, who has written with wit and insight about the all too common tendency for the powerful to get carried away with their power and slide toward totalitarianism, set his classic work 1984 in a country resembling Britain in political union with the US. He did this, he explained, to emphasize that "the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere".

The author is a visiting fellow in the East Asia Program, Cornell University, New York.

(China Daily 05/24/2011 page9)