Power and Security in the Information Age

Investigating the Role of the State in Cyberspace

Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Victor Mauer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317076957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The marriage of computers and telecommunications, the global integration of these technologies and their availability at low cost is bringing about a fundamental transformation in the way humans communicate and interact. But however much consensus there may be on the growing importance of information technology today, agreement is far more elusive when it comes to pinning down the impact of this development on security issues. Written by scholars in international relations, this volume focuses on the role of the state in defending against cyber threats and in securing the information age. The manuscript is captivating with the significance and actuality of the issues discussed and the logical, knowledgeable and engaged presentation of the issues. The essays intrigue and provoke with a number of 'fresh' hypotheses, observations and suggestions, and they contribute to mapping the diverse layers, actors, approaches and policies of the cyber security realm.

Chapter 1
Introduction: Information, Power, and Security – An Outline of Debates and Implications

Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Elgin M. Brunner

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996

John Perry Barlow’s utopian manifesto of an independent cyberspace envisages a world in which governments hold little if any power over the people, in which new information and communication technologies (ICT) allow a free market to thrive without government intervention, and where communities are bound by common beliefs and values rather than geographical location. Technology changes everything, so the credo goes. And the ‘new’ information technologies change things very rapidly and fundamentally, so that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a ‘super-industrial society’. As futurist Alvin Toffler put it, humankind has passed through the first wave of the agricultural revolution and the second wave of the industrial revolution, and is now in the midst of a third wave of turmoil, where technology drives an information society free from traditional economic, political, and cultural constraints.1 Thus, according to Toffler, ‘the political technology of the Industrial Age is no longer appropriate technology for the new civilization taking form around us. Our politics are obsolete.’2

Indeed, who has not often felt that technology is fundamentally changing our way of life? Who can escape the ‘suggestive power of virtual technologies’?3 We are reminded almost constantly that we live in the information age – we communicate through the internet, we use mobile phones, we get immediate worldwide news, we download music and movies, we buy merchandise online, and we reserve plane tickets and book hotel rooms on the web. And it is not only as individuals that we feel the impact of this development daily: Entire segments of public life, including such diverse sectors as culture, business, entertainment, and research, have been revolutionised by the new technology. The marriage of computers and telecommunications, the integration of these technologies into a multimedia system of communication that has global reach, and the fact that they are available worldwide at low cost seem to be bringing about a fundamental transformation in the way humans communicate and interact.

But however much consensus there may be on the growing importance of ICT today, agreement is far more elusive when it comes to pinning down the impact of this development on security or other issues. In this introduction, we therefore aim to broadly discuss the ‘information revolution’ in relation to security matters. In particular, we want to outline the current debates and the possible implications of current developments. This undertaking is complicated by the fact that the ‘information revolution’ is a very fuzzy concept: Many different parties currently use the term for many different facets of an elusive phenomenon, leaving the researcher with a confusing diversity of usually poorly defined concepts. A clarification of terms and concepts is thus much needed, but so is a discussion of possible consequences.

What Information Revolution?

Undoubtedly, the information revolution is closely linked to the relatively recent technological development in information processing and communication technologies and to the rapid global dispersion of these technologies – most significantly, to the ascent of ‘the internet’, a global decentralised communication network of computer networks. For many observers, it is the most popular and most amazing manifestation of ICT, and it enjoys a phenomenal growth rate. In only very few years, it has become the bloodstream of the information revolution.

The internet’s success story is truly dazzling: not only has it transformed the way business is done and how people interact, but it has also given rise to new sociocultural patterns such as hacker communities. It has given birth to new forms of art, stimulating the imagination of designers, writers, and the movie industry. Overall, the internet has come to be an essential part of many lives and a source of inspiration. It creates a new dimension, a detached place that has come to be called ‘cyberspace’, a term that stands for the fusion of all communication networks, databases, and sources of information into a huge, tangled, and diverse blanket of electronic interchange; this global fusion of networks creates a ‘network ecosystem’, a place that is not part of the normal, physical world: it is ‘virtual’, or in other words:

Cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment that is literally universal, it exists everywhere there are telephone wires, coaxial cables, fiber–optic lines or electromagnetic waves. This environment is inhabited by knowledge, existing in electronic form.4

There can be no doubt that the recent technological development has been an indispensable trigger for change. The decreasing costs and increasing performing power of computers ‘have led to the application of information technologies (IT) in virtually all corners of society’.5 In other words, with the advent of the internet, there has been a vast increase in speed, capacity, and flexibility in the collection, production, and dissemination of information. This technologically deterministic approach, which, according to the major theorist of information society, Frank Webster, is only one among five possible analytical definitions of this ‘revolution’,6 emphasises the most commonly accepted feature of this current period.

Nevertheless, neither the breakthroughs in information technologies nor their ubiquitous application can per se be considered a revolution. In fact, it is questionable whether we are experiencing any revolution at all. The term ‘revolution’ usually designates a sudden, radical, or complete change.7 Indeed, in subjective perception, the changes and developments all around us may seem rapid enough to be called sudden, radical, or fundamental. A closer look, however, reveals transformations that are less sudden, violent, and fast. From this perspective, the alleged ‘revolution’ instead resembles a gradual process with neither a clear beginning nor a foreseeable end, making the applicability of the term ‘revolution’ in the narrower sense somewhat questionable. The term ‘evolution’ would seem much more appropriate: it better describes the gradual adjustment and the non-linearity of the development. Nevertheless, in the context of scientific-technical transformation, the term ‘revolution’ has been used less strictly:8 its definitions also include concepts that can be applied to our case, for example understood as a ‘fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something: a change of theorems’, or, even more aptly, as a ‘changeover in use or preference especially in technology’.9

Be it a revolution or an evolution, in order to arrive at a meaningful analysis of the consequences, it is crucial to take into account that technology is not an abstract, exogenous variable, but is rather inherently endogenous to politics.10 Computer networks and the communications they carry are produced by people, and people live in physical space, under the rule of law. This embeddedness means that ICT and people can only be fully examined from an overarching perspective that encompasses an understanding of the social, economic, political, and technical dimensions. Or, as one author in this volume aptly puts it: ‘[T]he political implications emerge when physical objects fuse with human rules and institutions.’11 Hence, for the purposes of this volume, we define the information revolution as a phenomenon whose consequences are unfolding in a space already shaped by thousands of other influences, such as institutions, traditions, cultures, etc., even though it was initiated by the recent technological development in information technologies, leading to the application of these technologies in ‘all corners of society’.

The range of stakeholders and issues potentially affected by the information revolution is exceptionally wide, encompassing individual human beings as well as nation-states and the international system at large. The focus of this book will mainly be on the nation-state as the fundamental unit and building block of the international system, even though cyber-security is a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary public policy issue area, not to mention multi-stakeholder participation in policy initiatives.12 The reason for this is that we are primarily interested in the role of the state in securing the information age. However, we do not and cannot focus on all states; the reason being that ‘the multiple imbalances that characterise the diffusion of novel information and communication technologies […] along income, gender, age and many other socioeconomic categories’,13 commonly discussed under the heading of the ‘digital divide’, have created a world of haves and have-nots when it comes to the information revolution. In other words, there is a considerable disparity between rich societies and low-income countries in terms of access to ICT. In fact, this digital divide also has concrete implications for security matters, which we will address further below. When we develop our arguments about the potential consequences of the information revolution for security in this volume, it is important to be conscious of the fact that most of the debate only applies to high-income states. Through its selection of authors, topics, and approaches, the collection at hand perpetuates the Western views on ICT and information age security, which are in some cased not relevant to the developing countries.

What Consequences?

Having defined the phenomenon and discussed the usefulness of various definitions, we will now move on the consequences. How, then, does the information revolution relate to and affect the state and the international system more generally? Various arguments are advanced in the literature: the transnational architecture of the global information network has made territorial borders less significant; the application of information technologies to both the military and the civilian realm leads to a blurring of boundaries between the political, military, and civilian spheres; as a consequence of the empowerment of an ever growing number of actors with information, the distribution of power has become increasingly volatile and complex not only among states as parts of the international system, but also with regard to private businesses and politicians, as well as transnational and non-governmental entities.14

‘Cyber-libertarians’ like John Perry Barlow tout the information revolution as a technological leap forward that will inevitably and irrevocably transform all aspects of life.15 However, this view met with resistance almost as soon as it made its appearance. More sceptical observers point to the limited economic and social impact of information technologies and argue, as we have above, that the process of change is more evolutionary than revolutionary. They point to the superficial impact of ICT in enhancing productivity or transforming industrial economies; they also warn against adopting a technological deterministic approach to the changing nature of society and politics.16 Those who enthusiastically preach the many advantages of the ‘Information Age’ and who see a broad array of new options opening up thus find themselves opposed by others who give more emphasis to major threats and substantial dangers arising as a consequence of the application of the new ICT to the whole spectrum of society. In between these two extremes, there are others who regard the new developments both as an opportunity and as a risk.

Cyber-enthusiasts and the Positive Consequences of the Information Revolution

Cyber-enthusiasts concentrate on the growing opportunities that the worldwide application of the new information and communication technologies has opened for all societal actors – individual, economic, political, and ...