Part of the civic strategy must also include a serious engagement with law enforcement – another traditional anathema for civil society. Law enforcement agencies are often stigmatised as the Orwellian bogeymen of internet freedom (and in places like Belarus, Uzbekistan and Burma, they are), but the reality in the liberal democratic world is more complex. Many law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed with cyber crime, are understaffed, lack proper equipment and training, and have no incentives or structures to cooperate across borders. Instead of dealing with these shortcomings head on, politicians are opting for new “Patriot Act” powers that dilute civil liberties, place burdens on the private sector, and conjure up fears of a surveillance society. What law enforcement needs is not new powers, it needs new resources, capabilities, proper training and equipment. But alongside those new resources should be the highest standards of judicial oversight and public accountability. Civic networks can articulate the differences between powers and resources, and highlight the importance of public accountability to liberal democracy as an example to the rest of the world without alienating what could be an important natural ally.
The same basic premise of oversight and accountability must extend to the private sector as well. Civic networks are inherently transnational and are because of this best equipped to monitor globe.spanning corporations who own and operate cyberspace. Persistent public pressure, backed up by credible evidence.based research and campaigns – like the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) privacy scorecard75 – are the best means to ensure the private sector complies with human rights standards worldwide. Going further, however, civic networks should make the case that government pressures to police the internet impose costly burdens on businesses that should be conceded only with the greatest reservations and proper oversight. Such self-interest-based arguments will have much greater traction with the private sector than either pleas for magnanimity or pressures of naming and shaming ever will.
Lastly, civic networks need to be players in the rule.making forums where cyberspace rules of the road are implemented. This is not an easy task. There is no one single forum of cyberspace governance; instead, governance is diffuse and distributed across multiple forums, meetings and standard-setting bodies at local, national, regional and global levels. The idea of civil society participation in these centres of cyberspace governance varies widely, and is alien to some. Civic networks will need to monitor all of these centres of governance, open the doors to participation in those venues that are now closed shops, and make sure that “multi-stakeholder participation” is not just something paid lip service to by politicians, but something meaningfully exercised by networks of citizens. The civil society rejection of the OECD final communiqué is a model in this regard.
The idea of security is most closely associated with the tradition of realpolitik, and the denizens of the national security apparatus. Global civil society, on the other hand, is most often associated with respect for rights, democracy, diversity and openness. As the securitisation of cyberspace builds momentum, it may be tempting for civic networks to either concede the terms of the security debate to the national security community, or resist it altogether. That would be a mistake. There is a long-standing and very powerful tradition of liberal security, associated with distributed checks and balances, respect for individual rights, and decentralisation. What is urgently required now is the translation of that tradition to the domain of cyberspace, and the practical application of its principles by citizens worldwide. Otherwise, the great gains in networking that have produced an explosion in global civil society over the last decades could gradually evaporate.
Internet intermediaries: The new cyber police?