The Politics of Cyberconflict

The Politics of Cyberconflict

Athina Karatzogianni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781134154241
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Politics of Cyberconflict focuses on the implications that the phenomenon of cyberconflict (conflict in computer mediated enivironments and the internet) has on politics, society and culture.

Athina Karatzogianni proposes a new framework for analyzing this new phenomenon, which distinguishes between two types of cyberconflict, ethnoreligious and sociopolitical, and uses theories of conflict, social movement and the media.

A comprehensive survey of content, opinion and theory in several connected fields, relating not only to information warfare and cyberconflict, but also social movements and ethnoreligious movements is included. Hacking between ethnoreligious groups, and the use of the internet in events in China, the Israel-Palestine conflict, India-Pakistan conflict, as well as the antiglobalization and antiwar movements and the 2003 Iraq War are covered in detail.

This is essential reading for all students of new technology, politics, sociology and conflict studies.

1 How traditional concepts and
issues fit into a global postmodern
medium

Faces of Israelis and Saudis and Iraqis, detailed charts of military hardware, reports from over decorated generals, from people with strange accents and from points all over the world, a barrage of images and information, packaged in easy-to take portions, punctuated by commercial breaks where powerful fantasies flow by too quickly – the world has truly been faxed, cabled, express delivered.

(Poster 1995: 159)

The field of research undertaken is politics on the internet and, more precisely, how political conflict manifests itself on the internet. In the face of different approaches to internet politics, my aim is to analyse these approaches, indicate what the problems are and outline how my work fits into this background. This chapter addresses the political problem of how new social movements use a postmodern medium like the internet to achieve traditional political goals, such as democracy, power and participation in an era of globalization.

In political terms, the internet is viewed as a vehicle for educating individuals, stimulating citizen participation, measuring public opinion, easing citizen access to government officials, offering a public forum, simplifying voter registration and even facilitating actual voting. It has been termed a powerful technology for grass-roots democracy and one that, by facilitating discussion and collective action by citizens, strengthens democracy. It also has been called potentially the most powerful tool for political organizing in the past 50 years. The underlying purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that, while the demands of the groups using the internet remain traditional and modern in their characteristics, the medium itself is postmodern, serving modernist ends.

It is important to understand what the central political aims of groups using communication technologies are, why and how they use them and to what effect. With this in mind, this chapter navigates through the literature, building a platform from which to embark on a study of cyberconflict and its meaning for new communication politics.

Political movements and their use of the internet

Social movement theory is particularly relevant to this research, because many of the groups using the internet have social movement characteristics – for example, the Zapatista movement in Mexico. The internet is much cheaper than other broadcasting media, is not sufficiently censored yet to impede its use by diverse groups and has a potential worldwide audience, facilitating a successful new way for social movements to carry their message to a much greater audience. However, the issue is that what these groups struggle for, in the final analysis, are traditional modernist concepts like democracy, participation and, above all, power. These concepts will be examined in that order in the next sections, in order to determine if they remain traditional, when they are linked to a postmodern medium, such as the internet. Characteristically, Daniel Nugent asks of the Zapatista movement: ‘How can the EZLN move beyond the politics of modernity when their vocabulary is so patently modernist and their practical organization so emphatically premodern?’ (Nugent 1995 quoted in Ronfeldt et al. 1998: 113). Taylor and Jordan in their work Hacktivism distinguish between two kinds of rights sought after by the Zapatistas:

The primary demands of the Zapatistas are for health, welfare and citizenship rights . . . In this struggle, the Internet functions as a medium through which the demands for these rights and the struggles around these rights can be communicated. Information rights appear here as almost a second political order, serving the ‘first order’ rights to health, welfare and full citizenship.

(2004: 97)

When basic interaction and networking are primarily conducted via the net, time and space no longer restrain individual engagement. In this respect, the density of a movement’s targeted social group, which has been portrayed as the major element in fabricating organized action, has to be redefined. Politics outside governmental boundaries in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or, more broadly, in social movements will also be restructured by shifts in information commodification. Most commonly discussed in this context is the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, where what initially looked like a guerrilla war quickly became a media war. On the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by Mexico, Canada and the USA came into effect as a free-trade zone, the Zapatistas occupied an area of the Chiapas region in Mexico. When the national army arrived, they withdrew to the rainforests. They successfully created such a media event that they were able to force the Mexican government into negotiation and avoid a full-scale war. They did this by full use of the new possibilities for information flow, including the internet (Jordan 1999: 166). An exciting quote is the following:

Meanwhile, the EZLN called on Mexican civil socieity – not other armed guerillas, but peaceful activists – to join with it in a nationwide struggle for social, economic, and political change, without necessarily taking up arms. The EZLN also called on international organizations (notably, the Red Cross) and civil actors (notably, human rights groups) to come to Chiapas to monitor the conflict. This was not at all a conventional way to mount the insurrection.

(Ronfeldt et al. 1998: 2–3)

Cyberspace offers a medium in which people can interact and coordinate their actions without relying on a face-to-face contact (Tsagarousianou et al. 1998: 8). A thriving example of this is the anti-globalization movement whose participants organize heavily through the net. Dissident political groups can now have a voice that is very difficult for governments to silence. These groups have been able to mobilize support, in order to facilitate dialogue between such groups and their governments, such as happened between the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Peruvian government (Everard 2000: 158). Everard mentions that the build-up to recent Indonesian elections and the subsequent overthrow of the Suharto regime saw the internet become an active player as Indonesians sought alternative sources of information, while the authorities tightened media controls. The left-wing People’s Democratic Party went underground after they were blamed by Indonesian authorities for a riot in Jakarta in July 1996. They continued to respond to accusations on internet discussion lists. Activist groups are increasingly turning to the internet and other electronic media to provide information about their activities and about the activities of their opposition. A similar thing happened in 1997 in Sri Lanka, when the government launched a national website to counter the Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting a long civil war to establish a homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers had set up their own website giving their side of the dispute. Sri Lanka officials said their website will ‘help in countering anti-Sri Lanka propaganda by enabling Internet surfers worldwide to have access through a single window to authentic news and information on Sri Lanka’ (Margolis and Resnick 2000: 20). In the Philippines in the late 1990s, media and political history was made by using SMS (Short Messaging Service) technology or texting in helping bring down former president Estrada.

Nevertheless, such political implications of the internet were not immediately picked up by researchers. Early internet literature focused on issues of hacking, encryption and the use of the internet by extremist groups. It is nonetheless important to mention some of the main concerns expressed, if we are to understand the issues arising from the application of the internet in our everyday lives.

Denning and Baugh commented on the international issue of encryption:

Law enforcement agencies have encountered encrypted email and files in investigations of pedophiles and child pornography, including the FBI’s Innocent Images national child pornography investigation. In many cases the subjects were using Pretty Good Privacy to encrypt files and email . . . We were told of another case in which a terrorist group that was attacking business and state officials used encryption to conceal their messages.

(2000: 108)

In this context, Barrett makes an important point when he asserts that the internet can support global chains of pyramid letters, anonymous hate mail, offensive graffiti and a range of other ‘anti-social’ activities:

Just as fraudulent traders are provided with the potential to operate from ‘data havens’, so too are political agitators and even terrorists afforded havens from which to criticize government policies – either our own or our allies’ – from within the shelter of the UK, protected by anonymous ftp servers, by complicated cross-posting articles, or by the use of dial in access to some other country’s machines. In early 1996 for example, plans of the British Army’s establishment in Northern Ireland were published on the Internet.

(Barrett 1996: 203)

On the extremists’ use of the internet, Rathmell argues that the most remarked upon users of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been right wing militias in the USA, Islamist opposition movements originating in the Middle East and single-issue pressure groups such as environmental activists or human rights campaigners (Rathmell 2000: 230). However they may differ in aims, membership or ideology, all of these groups have been quick to exploit ICTs for propaganda and psychological operations. Many insurgents, from the provisional IRA through Mexico’s Zapatistas to Lebanon’s Hizbollah, have incorporated ICTs into their more traditional propaganda and fund-raising activities. They have websites as well as newspapers. Whine writes as follows: ‘The German authorities express increasing concern about the Internet. They have noted the growth of far right home pages, from 30 in 1996 to 90 in 1997 and the manner in which football hooligans were mobilized during the 1998 football World Cup series by German Nazis via their websites’ (2000: 237).

Also in July 2002 right-wing extremists looking for converts appeared to be trying to subvert the anti-globalization movement, using at least one intentionally confusing website and even showing up at major protests to recruit activists directly. In response to this move the Anti-Defamation League went on the offensive against a site of the ‘Anti-Globalism Action Network’ (www.g8activist.com), which could easily be accessed by mistake by those intending to visit the G8 Activist Network (Kettman 13 July 2002). In December of the same year, the North Rhine-Westphalia state in Germany required internet providers to block two US-based neo-Nazi websites after a court ruled the measure did not violate the provider’s rights. The providers were to appeal to a higher state court and threatened to leave the state for other German states that do not have limiting regulations (Associated Press 20 December 2002). A tough approach on net hate speech has also been taken by the Council of Europe, which has passed a provision which updates the European Convention on Cybercrime, criminalizing internet hate speech, including hyperlinks to pages that contain offensive content. In contrast with the Americans – the council cited a report finding that 2,500 out of 4,000 racist sites were created in the US – many European countries have existing laws outlawing internet racism (Scheeres 9 November 2002). European states have also set up the European Network and Information Security Agency which was set to begin in January 2004 and last until December 2008, with a budget of $28.7 million. The agency would work on problems such as preventing network failures, computer crashes, viruses and unauthorized interception on communications, advising the EU institutions on information security matters (Pruitt 9 October 2003).

Extremist groups use the internet because it is cheap. For the price of a computer and a modem, an extremist can become a player in national and world events. ICTs lower the threshold for participating in illegal acts and, without state or other backing, extremists will look for cost-effective instruments. Furthermore, ICTs act as a force multiplier, enhancing power and enabling extremists to punch above their weight. They can now have a reach and influence that was previously denied to them. Tragically, Helsinki experienced a transfer of activities from the net to real life in late 2002, when a 17-year-old boy in an internet chat room dealing with explosives was held for questioning in a deadly bombing at a suburban shopping mall. The teenager had contacts with a 19-year-old, Peri Gerdt, suspected of making and planting the explosive device that killed him and six others.

To sum up, some political actors are denied access to traditional political means, and ICTs provide new opportunities. The question centres on how these new technological possibilities affect the political situation. With the emergence of this new technology, political actors have unlimited access to easier and cheaper means of political communication. Instead of using traditional means like election campaigns or public relations, the groups that use the internet are able to communicate messages to a wider audience than that reached by more traditional means of political communication. These new technological opportunities affect the political situation in various ways. Political communication becomes more mechanized, it is instant and cheaper and new groups which were previously excluded can take part in a political situation without feeling excluded through the new technology. The groups that use ICTs affect the political situation in that they put forward new rules of the game, the rules of new technology. As a result, traditional political means are less effective and need to adjust to these new technological possibilities. The use of ICTs, and the internet in particular, provide endless opportunities to groups that are otherwise excluded from traditional political communication. This does not mean, however, that new social movements, like anti-globalization, anti-capitalist or anti-war movements, when using the internet to communicate political goals, ask for anything that is not traditionally modern in character, like participation, democracy or power. The nature of the medium does not appear to affect the essentially modernist nature of the game. Lastly, what this first impression points to is that two types of actors use the internet for political purposes: sociopolitical movements and extremist or ethnoreligious groups like the ones mentioned above.

Internet politics: democracy, participation, power

Democracy in internet politics

In order to discuss the connection between democracy and the internet, it would be useful to include a conceptualization of the term ‘democracy’ before we apply a political theory of democracy to our internet research. The internet brings forth new types of participation in government, thus challenging the traditional type of democracy, where new forms of power configurations can exist between communicating individuals. Arguably, information is the lifeblood of democracy. Keeping this in mind, can we speak of a new politics on the internet or is democracy a traditional term left unaltered by the postmodern realities of the new medium?

In the contemporary world democracy can only be fully sustained by ensuring the accountability of all related and interconnected power systems, from economics to politics. These systems involve agencies and organizations, which form an element of and yet often cut across the territorial boundaries of nation-states. This is how Held views it: ‘The possibility of democracy must, accordingly, be linked to an expanding framework of democratic institutions and procedures – to what I have called the cosmopolitan model of democracy’ (1995: 267).

Held makes three important points. First, processes of economic, political, legal, military and cultural interconnectedness are changing the nature, scope and capacity of the sovereign state from above, as its regulatory ability is challenged and reduced in some spheres. Second, the way regional and global interconnectedness creates chains of interlocking political decisions and outcomes among states and their citizens, altering the nature and dynamics of national political systems themselves. Third, the way local groups, movements and nationalisms are questioning the nation-state from below as a representative and accountable power system (see also the discussion on social movement theory on pages in Chapter 2). Democracy, Held argues, has to come to terms with all three of these developments and their implications for national and international power centres.

In the same context, the hierarchical structure of the state system itself has been disrupted by the emergence of the global economy, the rapid expansion of transnational relations and communication, the economic growth of international organizations and regimes, and the development of transnational movements and actors – all of which challenge its efficacy. With the spread of the internet, there is scope for a newly international localism that is finding expression in ‘virtual’ communities, with some people going so far as to suggest that a new global cyberstate is forming (Barrett 1996). There are also signs that online communities will offer further dimensions to personal identity within an already complex world. The problem remains that it is extremely doubtful that these changes will ultimately undermine the notion of sovereignty. According to Everard, people still live within a physical location and the idea of cybersovereignty falters, as it fails to think through the place of the body in cyberspace (Everard 2000: 63). However, it can be argued that his view is rather limited, considering more recent challenges facing states’ particularly undemocratic ones, which is discussed in the sections ‘Chinese dissidents’ (pages 128–143) and ‘Internet ce...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: How Traditional Concepts and Issues Fit Into a Global Postmodern Medium
• 2: The Three Theories
• 3: The Environment of Cyberconflict
• 4: Sociopolitical Cyberconflicts
• 5: Ethnoreligious Cyberconflict
• 6: The Effects of the Internet On the 2003 Iraq War
• 7: Conclusion
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography