Network sovereignty

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In internet governance, network sovereignty, also called digital sovereignty or cyber sovereignty, is the effort of a governing entity, such as a state, to create boundaries on a network and then exert a form of control, often in the form of law enforcement over such boundaries. [1]

Contents

Much like states invoke sole power over their physical territorial boundaries, state sovereignty, such governing bodies also invoke sole power within the network boundaries they set and claim network sovereignty. In the context of the Internet, the intention is to govern the web and control it within the borders of the state. Often, that is witnessed as states seeking to control all information flowing into and within their borders.

The concept stems from questions of how states can maintain law over an entity such like the Internet, whose infrastructure exists in real space, but its entity itself exists in the intangible cyberspace. According to Joel Reidenberg, "Networks have key attributes of sovereignty: participant/citizens via service provider membership agreements, 'constitutional' rights through contractual terms of service, and police powers through taxation (fees) and system operator sanctions." [2] Indeed, many countries have pushed to ensure the protection of their citizens' privacy and of internal business longevity by data protection and information privacy legislation (see the EU's Data Protection Directive, the UK's Data Protection Act 1998).

Network sovereignty has implications for state security, Internet governance, and the users of the Internet's national and international networks.

Implications for state security

Networks are challenging places for states to extend their sovereign control. In her book Sociology in the Age of the Internet, communications professor Allison Cavanagh argues that state sovereignty has been drastically decreased by networks. [3]

Other scholars such as Saskia Sassen and Joel R. Reidenberg agree. Sassen argues that the state's power is limited in cyberspace and that networks, particularly the numerous private tunnels for institutions such as banks. [4] Sassen further postulates that these private tunnels create tensions within the state because the state itself is not one voice. [5] Reidenberg refers to what he terms "Permeable National Borders," effectively echoing Sassen's arguments about the private tunnels, which pass through numerous networks. [6] Reidenberg goes on to state that intellectual property can easily pass through such networks, which incentivizes businesses and content providers to encrypt their products. [7] The various interests in a network are echoed within the state, by lobby groups.

Internet governance

Many governments are trying to exert some forms of control over the Internet. Some examples include the SOPA-PIPA debates in the United States, the Golden Shield Project in China, and new laws that grant greater power to the Roskomnadzor in Russia.

SOPA-PIPA

With the failed Stop Online Piracy Act, the United States would have allowed law enforcement agencies to prevent online piracy by blocking access to websites. The response from bipartisan lobbying groups was strong. Stanford Law Professors Mark Lemly, David Levin, and David Post published an article called "Don't Break the Internet." [8] There were several protests against SOPA and PIPA, including a Wikipedia blackout in response to statements by Senator Patrick Leahy, who was responsible for introducing the PROTECT IP Act. Both acts viewed as good for mass media because they limited access to certain websites. The acts were viewed as an attack on net neutrality and so were seen as potential damaging to the networked public sphere. [9]

Golden Shield Project

The Golden Shield Project, sometimes known as Great Firewall of China, prevents those with a Chinese IP address from accessing certain banned websites inside the country. People are prevented from accessing sites that the government deems problematic. That creates tension between the netizen community and the government, according to scholar Min Jiang. [10]

Roskomnadzor

Russia's Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) was created in December 2008 in accordance with President's Decree No. 1715. The agency was created to protect personal data owners' rights. According to the Russian government, the agency has three primary objectives:

On 1 September 2015, a new data localization law provided Roskomnadzor with greater oversight. The law itself stipulates that any personal data collected from Russian citizens online must be stored in server databases that are physically located in Russia. It "creates a new procedure restricting access to websites violating Russian laws on personal data." [12] Even with staunch pressure from those who promote "free flow of information," President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin remain stolid in assertions of network sovereignty to protect Russian citizens. [13]

Other examples

China's approach could also be repeated in many other countries around the world. [14] [15] One example was the Internet censorship in the Arab Spring, when the Egyptian government in particular tried to block access to Facebook and Twitter. Also, during the 2011 England riots, the British government tried to block Blackberry Messenger.

Response to Internet governance

Many believe that the government has no right to be on the Internet. As Law Professor David Post at the University of Georgetown argued, "'[States] are mapping statehood onto a domain that doesn't recognize physical boundaries,'" at least in the context on the internet. He went on to say, "'When 150 jurisdictions apply their law, it's a conflict-of-law nightmare.'" [16] Some proponents of the internet, such as John Perry Barlow, argued that the current form of the Internet is ungovernable and should remain as open as possible. Barlow's essay was written about the 1990s Internet, and while it has changed very much since then, the ideas in his work are still salient in the ongoing debates surrounding the future of the Internet. In his essay A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, he advocated that governments should stay out of the internet. [17]

Network Sovereignty can affect state security, law enforcement on the internet, and the ways that private citizens use the internet, as many people attempt to circumvent the protections and legal devices, placed by many governments on the Internet, by using tools such as VPNs.

Impact of VPNs

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are a significant tool to allow private citizens to get around network sovereignty and any restrictions their government may place on their access to the internet. VPNs allow a computer to route its Internet connection from one location to another. For example one would connect from a connection at point A to a connection at point B, and to others, it would appear that they are accessing the Internet from point B even if they are in point A. For example, in China, VPNs are used to access otherwise-blocked content. Yang gives the example of pornography stating that with VPN, "smut that's banned in the US can wind its way into American homes through electrical impulses in, say, Amsterdam." [16] In that example, by using VPNs, an Internet user in the United States could access banned material that is hosted in Amsterdam by accessing through a server, hosted in Amsterdam, to make it appear that the user is in Amsterdam, based on the IP address. Therefore, citizens have a way around network sovereignty, simply by accessing a different server through a VPN. That greatly limits how governments can enforce network sovereignty and protect their cyberspace borders. Essentially, there is no way that a government could prevent every citizen from accessing banned content by means such as VPNs.[ citation needed ]

Rationales

Protection of national traffic

One of the most significant reasons for enforcing network sovereignty is to prevent the scanning of information that travels through other countries. For example, any internet traffic that travels through the United States is subject to the Patriot Act and so may be examined by the National Security Agency, regardless of the country of origin. Jonathan Obar and Andrew Clement refer to the routing of a transmission from a point in state A to another location in state A through state B as Boomerang Routing. [18] They provide the example of traffic from Canada being routed through the United States before returning to Canada, which enables the United States to track and examine the Canadian traffic.

Governments may want to enact network sovereignty to protect copyright within their borders. The purpose of SOPA-PIPA was to prevent what was effectively deemed theft. Content providers want their content to be used as intended because of the property rights associated with that content. [19] One instance of such protection is in e-commerce.

E-commerce

Currently, private networks are suing others who interfere with their property rights. [20] For the effective implementation of e-commerce on the Internet, merchants require restrictions on access and encryption to protect not only their content but also the information of content purchasers. Currently, one of the most effective ways to regulate e-commerce is to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to regulate the market. [21] The opposing argument to regulating the internet by network sovereignty to allow e-commerce is that it would break the Internet's egalitarian and open values because it would force governments and ISPs to regulate not only the Internet's content but also how the content is consumed. [22]

Role of WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization is a United Nations body, designed to protect intellectual property across all of its member states. [19] WIPO allows content to traverse various networks through their Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The PCT allows for international patents by providing security for content providers across state borders. [23] It is up to states to enforce their own network sovereignty over these patents. Global standards for copyright and encryption are viewed as one way that governments could cooperate. [24] With global standards it is easier to enforce network sovereignty because it builds respect for intellectual property and maintains the rights of content creators and providers. [25] It is possible that governments may not be able to keep up with regulating these initiatives. For example, in the 1995 Clipper Chip system, the Clinton administration in the United States reneged on its original policy because it was deemed that it would soon be too easy to crack the chips. [19] One alternative proposed was the implementation of the digital signature, which could be used to protect network sovereignty by having content providers and governments sign off the content, like for a digital envelope. [19] This system has already been implemented in the use of Wi-Fi Protected Access Enterprise networks, some secured websites, and software distribution. It allows content to pass through borders without difficulty because it is facilitated through organizations such as WIPO. [19]

Countries

In his 2015 book Data and Goliath , American security expert Bruce Schneier says the cyber sovereignty movement, in countries such as Russia, China, France and Saudi Arabia, was given an enormous boost by the 2013 revelations of widespread international NSA surveillance, which those countries pointed to as justification for their activities and evidence of U.S. hypocrisy on Internet freedom issues. [26]

China

Cyber sovereignty, known in Mandarin as 网络主权, has been a mainstay of Chinese Internet policy in recent years, and the international promotion of cybersovereignty forms an integral part of Chinese foreign policy, although it remains ill-defined within Chinese discourse. [14] The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. [27] The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g. Google Search, [28] Facebook, [29] Twitter, [30] Wikipedia, [31] [32] and others) and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations. [33] [34]

The Chinese government and ruling Communist Party asserts cyber sovereignty, or control over all of China's digital resources, including servers, user data, technical infrastructure, and tech firms operating in China, both within the country and overseas. China's 2017 Cybersecurity Law of 2017 requires firms that offer "critical information infrastructure" in mainland China to store their data on Chinese government-run servers, allowing the state to access resources such as Apple's China-based iCloud data. The Data Security Law of 2021 also empowers the Chinese government to conduct national security audits over firms operating in China which gather user data. [35]

France

Project Andromède launched in 2009, with the aim to spend €285 million on "cloud souverain" or sovereign cloud. [36] [37] The government spent €75 million on each of its two national champions, Cloudwatt and Numergy, but these two sold only €8 million worth of services, combined. [38] On January 1, 2020, all services were terminated and clients were advised their data was deleted. [39]

Germany

openDesk is a project to create administrative workspaces to enable digital sovereignty, initiated in 2023 by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and the public IT service provider Dataport. [40] There is collaboration with a team of open-source specialists from Collabora, Nextcloud, OpenProject, OpenXchange, Univention, XWiki, and others [41]

Russia

The Sovereign Internet Law is a set of 2019 amendments to existing Russian legislation that mandate Internet surveillance and grants the Russian government powers to partition Russia from the rest of the Internet, including the creation of a national fork of the Domain Name System. [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

See also

Related Research Articles

China censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of their government, and severely restricting freedom of the press. China's censorship includes the complete blockage of various websites, apps, video games, inspiring the policy's nickname, the "Great Firewall of China", which blocks websites. Methods used to block websites and pages include DNS spoofing, blocking access to IP addresses, analyzing and filtering URLs, packet inspection, and resetting connections.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a type of data processing that inspects in detail the data being sent over a computer network, and may take actions such as alerting, blocking, re-routing, or logging it accordingly. Deep packet inspection is often used for baselining application behavior, analyzing network usage, troubleshooting network performance, ensuring that data is in the correct format, checking for malicious code, eavesdropping, and internet censorship, among other purposes. There are multiple headers for IP packets; network equipment only needs to use the first of these for normal operation, but use of the second header is normally considered to be shallow packet inspection despite this definition.

The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.

Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression. CDT seeks to promote legislation that enables individuals to use the internet for purposes of well-intent, while at the same time reducing its potential for harm. It advocates for transparency, accountability, and limiting the collection of personal information.

In the United States, internet censorship is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roskomnadzor</span> Russian government agency

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberethics</span>

Cyber ethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers, encompassing user behavior and what computers are programmed to do, and how this affects individuals and society. For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.

Information technology law concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both (digitized) information and software, information security and electronic commerce aspects and it has been described as "paper laws" for a "paperless environment". It raises specific issues of intellectual property in computing and online, contract law, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PROTECT IP Act</span> US Senate Bill

The PROTECT IP Act was a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to the sale of infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stop Online Piracy Act</span> Failed United States bill

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a proposed United States congressional bill to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Introduced on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), provisions included the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the websites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the websites. The proposed law would have expanded existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protests against SOPA and PIPA</span> Series of protests in 2012

On January 18, 2012, a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These followed smaller protests in late 2011. Protests were based on concerns that the bills, intended to provide more robust responses to copyright infringement arising outside the United States, contained measures that could possibly infringe online freedom of speech, websites, and Internet communities. Protesters also argued that there were insufficient safeguards in place to protect sites based upon user-generated content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian Internet Restriction Bill</span> Federal law of Russian Federation

Russian Internet restriction bill is a law passed by the Russian State Duma in 2012 which replaced procedure of shutting down telecom operators by prosecutors' orders with a blacklist of Internet sites containing alleged child pornography, drug-related material, extremist material, and other content illegal in Russia. This blacklist was supposed to be implemented and supervised by a self-regulating NGO of Internet users, but it was never created and this duty was assumed by government agency Roskomnadzor. The bill also introduced several other changes in the law, including liability for providers of telecom services for failing to protect children. Some critics expressed concern that the bill could be used to censor the Internet. Others noted that it would be expensive and, as written, contained many technical problems that would negatively impact legitimate Internet use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet censorship in Russia</span>

In Russia, internet censorship is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor).

Demand Progress is an internet activist-related entity encompassing a 501(c)4 arm sponsored by the Sixteen Thirty Fund and a 501(c)(3) arm sponsored by the New Venture Fund. It specializes in online-intensive and other grassroots activism to support Internet freedom, civil liberties, transparency, and human rights, and in opposition to censorship and corporate control of government. The organization was founded through a petition in opposition to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, sparking the movement that eventually defeated COICA's successor bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, two highly controversial pieces of United States legislation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VPN blocking</span>

VPN blocking is a technique used to block the encrypted protocol tunneling communications methods used by virtual private network (VPN) systems. Often used by large organizations such as national governments or corporations, it can act as a tool for computer security or Internet censorship by preventing the use of VPNs to bypass network firewall systems.

GitHub has been the target of censorship from governments using methods ranging from local Internet service provider blocks, intermediary blocking using methods such as DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks, and denial-of-service attacks on GitHub's servers from countries including China, India, Iraq, and Russia. In all of these cases, GitHub has been eventually unblocked after backlash from users and technology businesses or compliance from GitHub.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberspace Administration of China</span> Central Internet regulator in China

The Cyberspace Administration of China is the national internet regulator and censor of the People's Republic of China.

Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population. Mass surveillance in Russia includes surveillance, open-source intelligence and data mining, lawful interception as well as telecommunications data retention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China</span>

The Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China, commonly referred to as the Chinese Cybersecurity Law, was enacted by the National People’s Congress with the aim of increasing data protection, data localization, and cybersecurity ostensibly in the interest of national security. The law is part of a wider series of laws passed by the Chinese government in an effort to strengthen national security legislation. Examples of which since 2014 have included a Law on National Intelligence, the National Security of the People’s Republic of China and laws on counter-terrorism and foreign NGO management, all passed within successive short timeframes of each other.

A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geoblocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks.

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