WASHINGTON – The U.S. should ensure that Internet freedom is a basic right in countries with restrictive governments by reviewing American sanctions policy because open access to technology helps spread democracy, which is in America’s best interest, according to some top Internet experts.
“Access to technology is good for the social fabric of the state and therefore the national security of the U.S.,” said independent Internet researcher Collin Anderson Thursday during a panel discussion hosted by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.
“The reality is in most of these states, control of information is fundamental to political repression,” Anderson said.
The institute’s paper on how to ensure the free flow of information globally, released Wednesday, also argues that limited or outdated U.S. sanctions policy actually can unintentionally aid restrictive governments.
Personal communications technology, including hardware such a cell phones and software such as anti-virus protection he said, should be treated as protected exports.
Open access to technology allows for the exchange of ideas and facilitates social and political organization, agreed Danielle Kehl, policy program associate at the Open Technology Institute, a think tank dedicated to the open access to technology.
“Often when people start to talk, they want change,” Kehl said in an interview. When citizens organize, they are better able to put pressure on restrictive regimes to implement change.
The institute research showed that some U.S. policies get in the way of the U.S. open-technology message. For example, popular web services and educational tools such as Khan Academy block users originating from sanctioned countries, said Kehl, a co-author of the paper.
Blocked access to American products can send a negative message to citizens and stir up anti-U.S. sentiment, Kehl said. Governments of those countries subject to U.S. sanctions – Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, and North Korea – use that to their advantage.
“Inadvertently blocking access to those tools works against us,” Kehl said.
The U.S. implemented a trade embargo on goods, technology and services with Sudan in 1997, a move that has had hurt the U.S. image in that country. “The message they get is that U.S. government does not like them,” Kehl said.
“Sanctions policy always needs to be looked at and reformed. We support access to information in sanctioned countries as a principle, but the barrier tends to be that sanctions are so complicated,” said Ian Schuler, panelist and founder of the New Rights Group.
Furthermore, when tools such as American-made antivirus software are blocked, citizen technology is vulnerable to the viruses repressive governments use to limit access to information and violate citizen cyber security, Anderson said.
Groups such as the Syrian Electronic Army, Iranian Cyber Army and cyber jihadists in Sudan are “state-sponsored actors that are using the disconnect between technological security and the user as a way to round up political dissonance,” he said.
In Western countries, laws such as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act and the Wiretap Act allow for use of surveillance technology, but as regulated by civil rights and stringent legal compliance, said Michael Gershberg, of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP and an author of a chapter on surveillance technology in the book “National Security Law in the News.”
Western information technologies are not subject to the same regulation abroad, Gershberg noted, and can fall into the hands of authoritarian leaders – risking, for example, human rights abuses that are difficult to prosecute.
Besides its benefit to citizens of those repressed countries, access to technology also opens the way for U.S. companies to do business in countries with restrictive governments, panelists said.
Dealing with sanctioned countries, however, “requires substantial expense for companies in terms of compliance programs,” according to Brad Brooks-Rubin, an attorney who specializes in trade sanctions and exports controls.
