[Noisebridge-discuss] Egypt, China, Internet, "rights", wiki leaks

[Glen Jarvis]

This is a general discussion, and possibly a long thread. It's not necessarily a discussion about building a large robot. And, just because it's a long thread, it may not be drama. It is a discussion that I think is very core to the philosophy of Noisebridge.

Here is a podcast/article discussing the technical events that brought Egypt offline:

http://www.mmsend10.com/link.cfm?r=128133884&sid=12161167&m=1224709&u=IEEENY&s=http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/telecom/internet/egypt-goes-offline/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=020411

With recent events like WikiLeaks, China's censorship, US "kill switch" discussions, the nature of the Internet, and now Egypt, I am suddenly coming to ask myself a question "Is Internet communication with the outside world a fundamental human right?"

Media is powerful (as we see with Hollywood, television, advertisement, etc.). We could try to substantiate that point, but I believe most of us already see how this is true.

Power corrupts. Again, a whole thread of conversation could form around this point. But, most of us see clear examples of corruption of power.

It's reasonable to assert that power over a citizen's access to the Internet is possibly subjective to power corrupted influences.

When I hear the above article, I can't help but think how possible it is to provide outside Internet connectivity through different mediums. I was thinking this before I heard about people bringing out old 80's equipment to connect to the outside world in the podcast listed above.

I mostly think of a discussion I had at a Kirk McKusick's FreeBSD internals class at UC Berkeley. Western Europe didn't have Internet 'linkages' between countries. Each had their own internal network, but for various reasons the networks did not cross country borders.

A particular individual (was he Swiss or from the Netherlands -- can't remember) purchased tons of phone modems (I think from the US but could be mistaken) and brought them home. He then set up a bank of modems and brought a receiving modem to each country. He would connect via phone between his country and the others being the first real 'hub' (although incredibly slow one).

This went on for some time until it was a precedent, used by stock exchanges and a necessary part of international business in western Europe. He just 'did it.' It was unclear if this were legal or not -- it wasn't obviously illegal.

Eventually, it was challenged by a judge. When police came to shut him down, by a judge's order, he was very compliant. He only asked who the signing judge was. As he was shutting down the service, he sent an email and explained the service was being shutdown by this judge and gave the contact information. The system was down, the modems were confiscated, and a particular judge's phone was ringing off the hook by international people of authority explaining how this service was necessary. Needless to say, the service was back very quickly. The man who's nationality that I can't rememver also received a large sum of money (I  don't remember why). And this was the birth of western europe's Internet backbone.

When I hear a story like Egypt bringing it's Internet connection offline, and I think of the dangers of large powerful entities censoring communication, I feel compelled to give of myself -- help form an organization -- to try to prevent this.

However, with any situation there are moral issues. If I really could "somehow" help people in all countries have a basic Internet access when a country shuts down that access, should I? Could bypassing this centralized authority cause harm to individuals? (it would certainly be illegal in the country in question-but not necessarily here in the states). 

We learned early in the 70's and 80's by involving technology and individuals that span international borders, we diffuse attempts if centralization and too much political control (e.g. The distribution of the DNS root servers across countries is no accident).

If we can, if it's moral, can we and should we form a network with the goal of giving Internet access to individuals of all countries regardless of the in-flux legality of centralized power? Is it really the right thing to do? Is having communication with the outside world a fundamental human right? Could just having that communication legitimately be considered treason in the country in question? I see the good of doing this if it could be done. I don't know the harm.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Cheers,


Glen