BY the end of 2019, half of the world’s population shall be connected to the Internet. This according to a report of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development.
And yet, humanity shall be entering the new year full of anxieties. The world is greatly divided, with some countries even violently divided. One explanation for the divisions is the widespread abuse and misuse of the Internet.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web (W3 or www), had this to say:
“In recent years, we’ve seen governments engage in state-sponsored trolling to quash dissent and attack opposition. We’ve seen hacking and foreign interference distort politics and undermine elections. And we’ve seen how the spread of fake news on social media can trigger chaos, confusion and lethal violence.”
The immensely popular Facebook is seen as one of the leading purveyors of fake news and stories that promote social and economic divisions. To counter these criticisms, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, issued in early 2017 a manifesto, a personal one, blaming the sociopolitical upheavals taking place in many parts of the world to the disintegration of human communities, brought about partly by the widespread drug problem, the rise of totalitarian killer regimes and the failure of globalization. In response to the global crisis, he declared that the role of Facebook is to counter social divisions by helping develop a global community, helping people “find a source of purpose” through connected communities and, yes, helping reboot globalization.
And yet, soon after the Zuckerberg manifesto, the world learned that Cambridge Analytica used the personal information of around 87 million American Facebook users to influence the results of the 2016 American presidential elections. This is separate from the ongoing American investigations on how Vladimir Putin’s hackers and trollers allegedly undermined public support to Hilary Clinton in order to elect a twitter-crazy Donald J. Trump.
The problem for Facebook is that it is primarily in the business of making money out of people’s connectivity. It gets people’s interest in its net in order to sell this to advertisers? This business model is at the roots of the rising complaints on how Facebook is undermining the social fabrics and cultures in different countries. Facebook is simply not in the charity business.
In this regard, the mission of Tim Berners-Lee and his WorldWide Web Foundation to bring back their original vision for the Internet—to connect people and to keep the web open and free in order to benefit everyone—is an awesome task. But it is a necessary one. As Berners-Lee puts it: “The Web saves lives and creates livelihoods. It puts the world’s information at our fingertips and connects us with friends and family across the globe. It powers social movements and has created countless new industries, fueling widespread innovation.”
But how does one promote a free and open Web that benefits everyone? Will corporations such as Facebook do it? No way.
Obviously, the answer can only come from governments and how they shall be able to craft policies and regulations supportive of a free and open Internet system. The problem, however, is that most governments are jealous about their respective “state secrets” (political plans, business projects, infra contracts, etc.) in order to maintain power and control over society. A free and open system can bring down governments. This is why governments have been building firewalls—to filter Internet contents, weed out bad news, shape opinions favorable to them and so on.
The biggest and most sophisticated Internet firewalls were reported to have been built by China. Hackers inside and outside China are unable to crack the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield. China also employs a large cyber army, estimated by some experts to be populated by as many as 2 million. They monitor Internet postings that would harm Chinese interests, censor unwanted or unpleasant news and implement the strict cyber guidelines approved by the Communist Party of China. Beijing also has laws criminalizing online postings that it believes were designed to hurt national security or the interests of the state. Xi Jinping himself does not hide the State’s program to keep a tight hold on the Web. During the World Internet Conference in 2015, he declared that China would not brook any criticism on its independent program of “cyber development.”
However, China is also accused of “cyber warfare”, meaning it maintains an army of hackers who conduct cyber espionage, steal corporate data and state secrets of other countries. The United States is the most vocal on its criticisms of China’s poaching of technology designs and programs through cyber and other means. This is one of the underlying causes of the US-China trade war.
Now, what is the situation in the Philippines? The Philippines apparently has an open system dubbed by some legal observers as “net neutrality,” meaning Internet access is relatively open, with only some restriction on access to pornographic sites. There are, however, citizens’ complaints on the failure of various government agencies to share vital information on the status of various programs and projects of the government such as the state of Philippine indebtedness under the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program. There is no censorship per se, only a policy of opaqueness or non-sharing to the public of needed information in a timely and transparent manner, for example, web sites containing the supposed government documents cannot be opened.
As it is, most of the policy debates on the Philippine Internet regime have been focused on the slow Internet speed due to the underdeveloped Internet infrastructures and the limited investments poured by the telecom duopoly composed of Globe and Smart. This year, the debates have acquired new dimensions, with the entry of a third telco. This telco happened to be a joint venture involving the state-owned China Telecom. The telco promises to make Internet connection in the country “faster and cheaper.”
The complaint is that with the entry of China Telecom, there is no need for China to do any espionage. It will have the personal data of 110 million citizens in its cyber data bank.
Will the three telcos collaborate in strengthening the connectivity for the 110 million citizens? Or will they compete with one another in exacerbating conflicts in a divided and unequal society?