These Factors Will Determine the Future of the Internet

This is the second part of a three-part piece. For part 1, click here.

We see that the Internet is a paradox information space. A space where not everybody has access. There are six axes that determine what information is accessible via the Internet, and these axes also define the relationship between the Internet and national governments. They're in a state of flux, and their outcomes will shape the future of the digital world.

1st axis: Friends and Enemies

The axis between friends and enemies (or at least: allied nations) has turned into a moving target. The lines are blurring. Do you remember the German chancellor’s first comment on the revelation that the NSA has been spying on Germany and other European countries, even on the chancellor herself and her mobile communication? Angela Merkel had her spokesperson say: “Spying amongst friends – that’s just intolerable.” I am fully aware of the fact that “friendship” is an irrelevant category in terms of intelligence agencies. They have other operational codes in place. But something has changed in practical politics and public perception.

The USA and Germany – the two have, for quite a while, been part of the same circle of friends. We all remember that this was not always easy. Donald Rumsfeld 2003 rampantly addressed Germany and France as part of the “old Europe” and didn’t mean it to be a compliment. He criticized the reluctance of some European players to join forces in the invasion of Iraq. But apart from all sporadic irritation: When George W. Bush jun. talked about the “axis of evil”, we were still on the same side: the good one.

2nd axis: The Known and Unknown

I am not sure we can still tell who is on which side. I am not even sure we can still tell whether there are sides to be on or whether it has all become a winner takes it all game. What we see rising on the horizon of the digitally networked global society are the dark clouds of a kind of information totalitarism we haven’t known up to now, if only because it was technologically impossible to set up a system of surveillance as effective and efficient like the one we have in place now. Its basic operational code is to know or not to know. It’s not about the impact of knowing, it’s not about deriving consequences from the known (as well as the unknown). It’s just the knowing itself, the collection of data, we are not even sure we can derive information from. It’s about being able to know as a state of being prepared. The equation goes: If you store all haystacks of the world, you will somehow collect the needles as well.

And, again, it was Donald Rumsfeld who coined the phrase of “the unknown unknown”. It is perfectly clear that military as well as intelligence agencies need to get hold of the known unknown. It takes the awareness of vulnerability to be prepared for the moment, when the attack might takes place. But if you start to also aim at the “unknown unknown”, you will always create a perfect information dictatorship. It’s the model George Orwell vividly described in “1984”. The “unknown unknown” is the target category for every thought police. Its political idea is one of total control over everybody, its instrument is censorship, be it the one applied from outside by restrictions and punishment, be it the - even more effective – one of self-censorship.

3rd axis: Freedom and Security

We have come a long way up to the point of today where, as Michael Ignatieff (Harvard) said in an op-ed for the Financial Times, “democracy is in danger if digital technologies give the states powers of total surveillance”. It is a change of paradigm that comes along with broad technological innovation.

“Surveil first – check later.”

That is what the global collection of haystacks demands. First the hay, then the needles will come along. By the way: this inverted approach can be found in other systems as well. Media all over Europe are struggling with the virtues of journalism that too often go down the drain in favor of quick publication. “Shoot first – check later.” What does that mean? That anybody can be a suspect or publicly blamed for something that is yet no more than a suspicion or a vague supposition. That suspicion comes first and evidence follows. That surfing the wrong websites might trigger surveillance algorithms to mathematically “assume” that there is a terrorist getting down to work.

The simplest example for “guilt through algorithmic association”, as Danah Boyd has put it, is the Google autocomplete function. If you enter the name of the former wife of the former German president in the Google search input screen, autocomplete offers “red light district” amongst other suggestions what you might want to search for. The German Federal High Court of Justice decided last summer, that Google needs to take out illegitimate autocomplete suggestions.

There is no doubt that freedom and security are related closely in a trade-off where we can’t have the one without impacting the other. It’s all about the right balance, and whether we are able to keep it, to fight for freedom and basic human rights, which will more quickly become damaged than we might have expected. If we accept what turns out to become the new paradigm of reversed evidence – guilt by assumption, not by evidence – then we can expect deep changes in our societies, in Europe and in the US.

Click here for the third part.