The Perils of Digital Diplomacy

These days, the buzz at the State Department is all about Civil Society 2.0 -- the idea that the United States can help non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) prosper through judicious use of technology and the Internet. Civil Society 2.0 projects have names like Random Hacks of Kindness and Tech@State.

But one well-known international relations wonk believes Civil Society 2.0 will actually empower repressive regimes.

Tufts University's Daniel Drezner is a popular blogger at Foreign Policy magazine and a prominent expert on international politics. In a recent article published in The Brown Journal of World Affairs --sadly, behind a paywall-- Drezner puts forth the case that social networking actually helps repressive regimes once, say, the heady days of protests in the streets of Tehran come to an end. Nancy Schola of TechPresident.com summed up Drezner's argument:

More than having "no appreciable effect," Drezner concludes a bit later in the piece that networked technologies might actually have a deleterious impact in oppressed lands once things have moved past a sort of magic window of the first round of protests, something we saw in Iran where the regime in Tehran started using tools like Twitter and blogs to track down dissidents and start to turn the wave of public opinion back their way.

Things look a bit different in places where, like China, an regime that has restrictive tendencies also would really like to use the Internet and mobile and all the rest to boost their country's economic activity; there, there's a bit more of an opening, because it's nearly impossible for a country that wants to exploit the web to impose a perfect regime of censorship at the same time. To boil it all down, the Internet might seem like a global organism, but its meaning and potential differs tremendously depending on the real-world relationship that already exists between human creatures and the governments under which they live.

As for Civil Society 2.0, the initiative's various aspects take an admirable approach to the possibilities of social media and grassroots technology for on-the-ground statescraft. Western governments have long assisted NGOs and CSOs in their efforts to stabilize foreign countries, build up foreign economies, and spread “soft power.” Civil Society 2.0 takes this mission and augments it with a healthy dose of evangelism for Twitter and open-source software.

But the argument that Civil Society 2.0 may unintentionally booster repressive regimes has evidence to support it. Fast Company has already reported on the State Department's championing of Haystack, a software/server package that promised anonymous and untraceable web surfing to Iranian dissidents. Haystack was touted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an example of using new technology to empower Iranians. However, Haystack turned out to be so easily hackable that Iranian authorities could easily find out the identities of users.

Similarly, foreign governments at odds with NGOs and CSOs may find it quite easy to adapt the Internet to their own purposes. The Chinese government has hired data miners to help them identify internet activists. In Singapore, the internet is closely monitored by government officials for signs of dissent. Maybe that is why Google has turned loosening China's censorship laws into a business aim of their own.

Activists from China, Thailand, Iran and the Arab world have raised concerns that Civil Society 2.0 could end up backfiring and harming them as well. Says Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia: “Having the U.S and other Western governments as major actors in the Internet freedom field could present a real threat to activists who accept their support and funding. A hyper-politicization of the digital activism movement and an appropriation of its “success” to achieve geopolitical goals ... are now considered by many as the “kiss of death”.”

To the State Department's credit, Civil Society 2.0 is doing a lot of undoubtedly good work. Thanks to the efforts of current State Department officials and former electronic evangelists like Jared Cohen, smart partnerships have been enacted with Google, Microsoft, the World Bank and others to empower NGOs.

Drezner's critique, however, remains relevant. New solutions will create new problems. These problems will vary from country to country – literacy programs in Bolivia using open-source software will have far different issues to contend with than democracy activists in Syria making forays into social networking. Just like Web 2.0, Civil Society 2.0 is no one-size-fits-all solution.