Essay 5
Trung Doan says that he isn't as Net-savvy as he'd like to be, so he's asking others who are: how about using your talents to help defeat the Internet censors in Communist and other dictatorships? The people there really could use your help.
I was so impressed with Trung's innovative solution to the problem of Internet censorship that I asked him to be part of our essay series, and I'm grateful that he has obliged. I hope readers will spread the message to freedom-loving people, especially those with the skills needed.
Over to you, Trung: – Pip
Hackers: C'mon, hit the censors
By Trung Doan
The Internet is impossible to censor, right? Not if you are a despotic regime throwing all your resources into it. You won't stop everyone and everything, but if the aim is to prevent enough citizens from getting free speech to topple your regime, then you can succeed (unless, that is, Internet hacks and geniuses turn their talent to fighting you).
For a start, people can't access the Internet using just brainwaves. They need a computer connected to a wired or wireless phone line. Stopping someone getting access to that, and you stop their Internet.
Most countries ruled by authoritarian regimes are poor and have low telephone penetration. There are fewer than nine phone lines per thousand people in China, and three in Vietnam. It is pretty obvious that unlike people in democratic nations, few Vietnamese or Chinese can walk into their study room and log on. Some office workers might have access at work, but someone will likely walk past as they are surfing. The majority of the population must go to Internet cafés.
It was at an Internet café in Hanoi that Vietnamese Internet dissident Le Chi Quang was caught by the secret police in February 2002, after the state-owned Internet backbone company FTP spotted Quang, who had posted an article criticising Hanoi's secret donating of land near the border to appease the Chinese regime. In June that year, the regime told all Internet café owners to report on customers accessing blocked sites.
The same thing happened in the South. In Saigon in March 2003, democracy activist Dr Nguyen Dan Que, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was caught, again at an Internet café. Both Quang and Que are presently in prison.
Even if every household had a telephone and everyone had a computer, free speech could still be blocked. Because the Internet backbones in these countries are controlled by the Communist Parties, it is quite easy for them to block sites. As the Net's secret police put on more and more filters, Net-literate dissidents find more and more ways to work around them. But as all this goes on, it gets harder and harder for less Net-literate people to play the game.
The effect, then, is that only a small minority of the population can get around the authorities. And revolutions cannot be started and maintained by small minorities.
For democracy to be built up in these countries, millions of their ordinary citizens must be able to be exposed in their daily life to concepts of democracy and freedom. With their control of the Internet, the dictatorships ensure that only a small minority can do that, therefore dissidents will always find it impossible to attract wide followings in the population at large.
It is here that Internet hacks and geniuses should come in. While almost everyone hates hackers, few can argue that they are not talented and inventive.
Like the democracy dissidents, hackers are always in battle with the authorities. Unlike dissidents, hackers are more successful. First, in the catch-me-if-you-can game, it is the authorities who have to play catch-up, while dissidents have to wait for filters to appear before finding ways around them, usually with much difficulty.
Secondly, dissidents only win small battles here and there, they haven't won the war as long as the authorities can isolate them and keep them in small numbers. In contrast, so far hackers have won most battles and the war so far. Despite their apparently small numbers, they almost always win: when hackers attack, they usually cause the damage they desire before a fix is put in place.
This is what I hope to see: some hackers turn their talent to beating the big bad corrupt guys in Hanoi, Beijing and elsewhere who are robbing their peoples – the cruel bullies who kill and jail dissidents who dare to speak up against them.
And specifically what should they do? Their imagination and talent is better than mine, so I won't "teach grandma how to suck eggs", as the saying goes. But I'd love to see attacks on one of my pet hates: the servers that do the censorship, so that people can surf to democracy websites. I wouldn't mind hearing of torrents of "I love you" emails sent to politburo officials. And I would love to see a new genre of downloadable games: games that, for example, encourage young kids to know that it is wrong and unacceptable for officials to demand bribes from their parents.
In this twenty-first century, perhaps one can help change the world – using the keyboard.
