Excerpt from Ronald J. Deibert's The Geopolitics of Internet Control: Censorship, Sovereignty and Cyberspace
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The geopolitics of internet control Censorship, sovereignty, and cyberspace
Ronald J. Deibert
In early 2007, the online mapping service Google Earth provided a feature on the ongoing political crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Not long afterwards, however, an aid worker based inside Sudan reported not being able to properly load the map, receiving an error message in his browser stating “This product is not available in your country.” Upon further inspection, the source of the inaccessibility was Google itself—filtering access to its own services based on the “geolocation” of the computer’s IP address making the request. Google was not permitting IP addresses based within Sudan from connecting to its service in order to comply with U.S. export restrictions against the sale or export of informational products to the country (Geens, 2007).
w IS w IS B .r BN N ou 97 tle 97 8 dg 8- -0ep 0- 41 ol 20 5 iti 3- -42 cs 96 9 .c 14 25 om -6 41 (h (e bk bk ) )
What is the impact of the internet on state sovereignty, and in particular on states’ ability to control information flows across their borders? Whereas once the internet was presumed to be a borderless world of free-flowing information, today countries and corporations alike are carving it up in a bewildering array of filtered segments, often with major unintended consequences. The motivations for these practices range widely, from concerns over national security, cultural sensitivities, and protection of social values, to rent seeking and the protection of economic monopolies. Whereas once it was conventional wisdom to believe that the internet’s technological infrastructure was immune to control, today states and corporations are applying an ever-increasing level of skill and technological sophistication to precisely that mission. The result is that rather than being a single seamless environment, the internet a user connects to and experiences in Canada is far different than an internet a user
The geopolitics of internet control Censorship, sovereignty, and cyberspace
Ronald J. Deibert
In early 2007, the online mapping service Google Earth provided a feature on the ongoing political crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Not long afterwards, however, an aid worker based inside Sudan reported not being able to properly load the map, receiving an error message in his browser stating “This product is not available in your country.” Upon further inspection, the source of the inaccessibility was Google itself—filtering access to its own services based on the “geolocation” of the computer’s IP address making the request. Google was not permitting IP addresses based within Sudan from connecting to its service in order to comply with U.S. export restrictions against the sale or export of informational products to the country (Geens, 2007).
w IS w IS B .r BN N ou 97 tle 97 8 dg 8- -0ep 0- 41 ol 20 5 iti 3- -42 cs 96 9 .c 14 25 om -6 41 (h (e bk bk ) )
What is the impact of the internet on state sovereignty, and in particular on states’ ability to control information flows across their borders? Whereas once the internet was presumed to be a borderless world of free-flowing information, today countries and corporations alike are carving it up in a bewildering array of filtered segments, often with major unintended consequences. The motivations for these practices range widely, from concerns over national security, cultural sensitivities, and protection of social values, to rent seeking and the protection of economic monopolies. Whereas once it was conventional wisdom to believe that the internet’s technological infrastructure was immune to control, today states and corporations are applying an ever-increasing level of skill and technological sophistication to precisely that mission. The result is that rather than being a single seamless environment, the internet a user connects to and experiences in Canada is far different than an internet a user