In 1906, sociologist Georg Simmel wrote that secrecy «secures, so to speak, the possibility of a second world alongside of the obvious world»[2]. In this article, I explore Simmel's second world of secrecy and its relationship to Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Technology is often thought of as «autonomous»[3], independent of human influence, and ethically neutral[4]. Through various examples, I hope to convince my readers that it is also political, and assists in not only maintaining freedom of information and expression, but secrecy as the consciously willed or intentional concealment of information[5]. What I term twilight domains of information, censorship, redaction, propaganda[6]. surveillance, and espionage/counterespionage, hover between secrecy's second world and total transparency as partial secrets that occur «somewhere between deep concealment and full disclosure»[7]. In secrecy, as well as twilight, «only a small portion of the whole truth will be known to any single person»[8]: that is, censorship seesaws with freedom of expression, redaction[9] with context, propaganda[10], historical engineering[11] and historical delay with contemporary disclosure, surveillance with privacy, espionage and counterespionage with transparency of action. None of these twilight domains are exclusive, and perhaps even extend to lies and leaks; censorship is an integral part of propaganda[12] and influences exchange of information and self-determination; surveillance accompanies espionage or spying, and potentially interferes with one's person as property and civil rights. As such, these matters are worthy of our attention as a study into information politics and power.
What is power? In this article, I define power using philosopher Michel Foucault's concept: power is neither a possession, nor a capacity, arising not from a sovereign or a state, but everywhere as in a network creating new forms of knowledge and activity. Foucault writes that
What makes power hold good is the fact it doesn't weigh on us as a force that says no but that it traverses and produces things like forms of knowledge and discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network[13].
ICT in the Obvious World
While ICT is increasingly utilized by governments, IGOs (intergovernmental organizations), transnational corporations, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), social movements, and individuals to conceal second world information, technologies are also employed by these same groups to disclose public information required by law and regulation, promote openness initiatives and a spectrum of rights. ICT is defined as:
forms of technology that are used to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information. This broad definition of ICT includes such technologies as: radio, television, video, DVD, telephone (both fixed line and mobile phones), satellite systems, computer and network hardware and software; as well as the equipment and services associated with these technologies, such as videoconferencing and electronic mail[14].
By way of ICT, governments advance public knowledge of policies, programs, legislation, and laws, including freedom of information laws[15]. ICT is used creatively by other elements of Foucault's productive network, the grassroots, the public realm. For example, the fax machine and photocopier were used by protest movements and citizens to transmit and share information in the Former Soviet Union to disseminate samizdat, or «self publishing house.» This underground distribution network of uncensored literature that reflected the «mood of political discontent,» is completely unimaginable without ICT[16]. Other forms of ICT such as video have given human rights defenders the opportunity to «open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses»[17]; community television[18], radio (participatory radio, community radio, free radio, or alternative radio)[19], phones[20], and satellite communications[21] enhance information sharing and support alternatives to the mainstream media. Databases such as PlantGeneRisk, stores information on genetically engineered plants in the European Union, which provides a public right to know of risks of another technology[22]; The Tax Justice's Network Financial Secrecy Index[23] ranks and assigns secrecy scores of global financial transactions; public interest groups exploit freedom of information laws to obtain once secret information[24]. In this way, ICT is often viewed as a capacity builder and emancipatory medium, utilized as to share «democratic information,» progressive aims[25], identify corruption and challenges to civil and human rights.
With its emphasis on immediacy of communication and social media, the network society[26] flows via mobile and wireless technologies[27]. The Internet's World Wide Web transformed culture, and with it, power and knowledge. Collaboration underlying Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Internet Archive, and the free and open source software (FOSS) movement[28] not only gave birth to new knowledge, but rescued lost histories, generated a bottom up kind of experiential journalism, redefined property rights, and energized citizen science[29]. The participatory facet of the Net, with its crowd sourcing ability to deconstruct and build knowledge, is what Howard Rheingold sees as technologies of cooperation. Rheingold's Net is decentralized, self-organizing, and innovative[30]. There is altruism to this particular vision that carries over into the desire to make things better. If Francis Bacon's axiom that knowledge (and information) is power, and hence, empowering, then it is a natural step to link ICT to human development, educational attainment, and improvement in socioeconomic conditions. Another type of idealism, hacktivism or ethics of hacking, is framed as equalizing the tech divide[31], but also protecting information rights under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[32] in response to state sponsored censorship. Hactivism as a type of street justice has been justified by groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec in exacting retribution against companies and governments, even creators of child pornography Web sites[33] and the Mexican Drug Cartel are not exempt[34].
But it is netwar, outlined by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla as a«style of conflict that depends heavily on information and communications technology, nonhierarchical organization, and tactics that are distinctly different from previous forms of civil-society conflicts»[35] that brought Twitterization to Arab Spring in documenting popular mobilizations[36] against the repressive regimes and state violence in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria. ICT became a tool of outrage in sharing brutal attacks of Egyptian women and Syrian children. Anti-Berlusconi protests in response to bank bailouts went live on Facebook and Twitter; Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampments throughout the U.S. shared communiqués and declarations via blogs, Skype, Twitter, and Facebook to document politics in progress and police violence from cell phone to Youtube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion. The London riots illustrated the influence of the Blackberry Messenger[37], where Twitter and Facebook were used for mass organizing in order to cleanup ravaged areas in the wake of turmoil[38]. Larry Diamond describes these uses of ICT as «liberation technology»[39].
Clearly ICT are established forms of sociopolitical communication, extending the narrative of transparency, civic engagement and reform. However, as Marshall McLuhan identifies, while these technologies are a means of processing experience and a means of storing and speeding information, they can «plausibly be regarded as weapons»[40].
ICT as Dual-Use
Secrecy as intentional concealment of information or power over information[41] is oft considered a necessary element in the affairs of state, and for a government to protect its security of information, borders, natural resources, technology, and citizens[42]. Historically, as political scientist Carl Friedrich points out «the manipulation of the ruled by the ruler, through secreting and through propaganda, is endemic in all political orders»[43]. But it is Friedrich's category of disfunctional secrecy that marks the difference between the functional uses of secrecy and its other: disfunctional secrecy cloaks misdeeds, questionable policies, and embarrassing actions. Tied to betrayal and corruption, but significantly, to a tampering of communications[44], disfunctional secrecy not only involves assaults on public trust and confidence in information and policies, but paves the way to conspiratorial parallel universes. These depictions illustrate that «power and knowledge directly imply one another»[45]. For example, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) «shutter control» over Ikonos satellite images raised questions as to U.S. policy in Afghanistan as well as questions regarding the ownership of information[46].
With the ability to level freedom of information with pixilated concealment, the study of ICT is also an investigation into technologies of political control. Technologies of political control involve military-intelligence-policing technologies, or those «technological aids» designed to injure, not kill, disarm, not wound, spy, gather, restrict, disguise, and store information[47]. Expanding on the previous definition of ICT in this article, aren't the database, CCTV[48], airport body scanner, GPS, the black-box voting machine, drone, and RFID also «forms of technology that are used to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information»? In fact, technologies of political control?
In this way, ICT is Janus-faced. ICT's dual-use[49] nature operating through «continuous control and instant communication» advances the capabilities of the control society[50]. Twilight domains of information, as well as Simmel's second world of secrecy, are at home in the control society, where surveillance, spying, encryption, hacking, and intelligence gathering require partitioning of information enjoined with stealth. Due to its resistance to checks and balances, secrecy is now associated with terrorism[51], for without transparency, there can be no reasoned deliberations on laws and policies[52]. Nevertheless, this complex system involves mystery, interacting to restrict ideas, modify behavior[53] and historical knowledge: people never remember, but the computer never forgets[54].
Mashup: The Productive Network
Following Foucault's idea that power is a creative force, the mashups (below) illustrate the network of relations that coexist between the second world, twilight, and freedom of expression. Although ICT encourages knowledge production and sharing from both the bureaucracy and the public, it is the countervailing other, secrecy and twilight, which establish rhizomatic «connections between semiotic chains, organization of power, and circumstances»[55]. It is interesting to note that David Lyons' research suggests that «paradoxically, surveillance expanded with democracy»[56]. We see Lyons' idea in the use of CCTV to secure social spaces and in crime prevention, but its use potentially violates privacy and autonomy. Further, databases are critical tools in scrutinizing corruption[57] and in preserving identity and memory[58], but can also be a source of Panopticism[59]. An essential means for the cyborg soldier and information warrior[60] to maintain information superiority[61], satellite technology documents forced evictions, government repression, and human rights violations in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Darfur[62].
Below is the playoff between the dual-use ICT, the second world, and twilight:
Censorship
Research indicates that countries are actively involved in Internet filtering[63] with online freedom compromised in 37 countries; «crackdowns on bloggers, increased censorship, and targeted cyberattacks often coincided with broader political turmoil, including controversial elections»[64].
Italy's «DDL intercettazioni» (Wiretapping Act) includes a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image. The law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge – the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website[65].
ICT Workarounds
- Wikipedia removed the entirety of its Italy pages in protest of "DDL intercettazioni" (Wiretapping Act)[66].
- Psiphon encrypts Internet communications to avoid blocked or filtered content[67].
- Herdict uses crowdsourcing to determine Web site accessibility[68].
- As the first decentralized, "censorship-resistant" currency, Bitcoin is distributed via peer-to-peer computer network. Anonymous Internet users can complete financial transactions stored transparently in the public record. User accounts and transactions cannot be controlled by the third party[69].
- Hackerspace Global Grid proposed the development of a grid of low-cost ground stations that can be bought or built by individuals to bypass state-controlled Internet backbones[70].
Propaganda
Prepackaged news stories are complete, audio-video presentations that may be included in video news releases, or VNRs. They are intended to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public by independent television news organizations[71].
A Chinese official urged more «"forceful" Web controls to "guide public opinion and promote positive social values"»[72].
ICT Workarounds
- Through infobombing tactics, individuals flood the Net and other public spaces with differing perspectives.
- Collaborative ICT such as alternative media Web sites, wikis, blogs, and listservs build alternative knowledge systems.
Surveillance
ECHELON[73] «is a term associated with a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses».
In 2007, Britain implemented 4.2 million CCTV cameras – one for every 14 people in the country – and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily[74]. Within 200 yards of George Orwell's flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras[75].
Drone warfare secrecy[76].
ICT Workarounds
- Individuals and organizations encrypt their communications via Rubber-hose cryptanalysis, which creates individual partitions or layers each requiring a separate password[77] and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)[78]. Human rights organizations encrypt their research using Martus[79].
- Sousveillance, or «watchful vigilance from underneath,» as proposed by Professor Steve Mann is inverse surveillance as «a counter to organizational surveillance.» Wearable computing devices generate different kinds of responses, and «new kinds of information in a social surveillance situation»[80].
- Sea Shepherd Conservation Society utilized drones to locate the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru off Australia's western coast[81].
- Occupy Wall Street New York acquired a Parrot AR drone named the «occucopter.» The four-rotor helicopter can be purchased on Amazon.com and controlled with an iPhone[82].
- The Web site cryptome.org organizes critical materials from governments related to surveillance, censorship and secrecy; one of its projects is Cryptome CN, collects documents and information banned in the People's Republic of China.
- In response to Columbine shootings and other violent incidents in U.S. schools, Tyson Lewis suggests teaching critical surveillance literacy, which «enables students to recognize the interconnections between school practices and national policies. It is also important for teachers to open up a pedagogical space were students will feel comfortable expressing their opinions concerning school militarization and hypersurveillance»[83].
- Via freedom of information (FOI) laws[84] and investigative journalism, facts behind the U.S. drone program are revealed[85].
- The courts are used as a vehicle for release of government information[86].
Espionage/Counterespionage
GhostNet infected «at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, of which close to 30% can be considered as high-value diplomatic, political, economic, and military targets»[87].
ICT Workaround
The Tor (Onion Router) software allows Internet users to transmit information and surf anonymously; WikiLeaks bootstrapped documents, supposedly stolen by Chinese hackers and/or spies using Tor to transmit the data[88].
Concluding Thoughts
Gilles Deleuze writes that it isn't a matter of whether the «old or new system is harsher or more bearable because there's a conflict in each between the ways they free us and enslave us.»[89] In this article, I offered cases regarding showing the dynamic dual-nature of ICT, one that encourages and sustains freedom of expression and free form exchange of ideas, and the other, which has an affiliation with secrecy and twilight information in the control society. In my simple read of Michel Foucault's analysis of power, ICT remains a means for secrecy and control, but also a transcendent conduit for communication across the sociopolitical spectrum. It is as philosophers Deleuze and Guattari observe: the secret must sneak, insert, or introduce itself into the arena of public forms; it must pressure them and prod known subjects into action.[90] While the future remains uncertain as to what shape action will take, ICT as a tool of power sparks the imagination and offers hope of possible, obvious worlds. It is up to us in the present to determine whether the path is dystopian, or participatory and deliberative.
