Ronald J. Deibert - Reset

The Massey Lectures are co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press, and Massey College in the University of Toronto. The series was created in honour of the Right Honourable Vincent Massey, former Governor General of Canada, and was inaugurated in 1961 to provide a forum on radio where major contemporary thinkers could address important issues of our time.

This book comprises the 2020 Massey Lectures, Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, broadcast in November 2020 as part of CBC Radios Ideas series. The producer of the series was Philip Coulter; the executive producer was Greg Kelly.

Ronald J. Deibert is professor of Political Science and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab undertakes interdisciplinary research at the intersection of global security, information and communications technologies, and human rights. The research outputs of the Citizen Lab are routinely covered in global media, including more than two dozen reports that received exclusive front-page coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other global media over the past decade. Deibert is the author of Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet, as well as numerous books, chapters, articles, and reports on internet censorship, surveillance, and cybersecurity. In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, for being among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness, and security worldwide.

Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and
the Dark Side of the Internet

Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia:
Communications in World Order Transformation

Reclaiming the Internet
for Civil Society

Ronald J. Deibert

Copyright 2020 Ronald J. Deibert
and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Published in Canada in 2020 and the USA in 2020
by House of Anansi Press Inc.

www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Reset : reclaiming the internet for civil society / Ronald J. Deibert.

Names: Deibert, Ronald, author.

Series: CBC Massey lectures.

Description: Series statement: CBC Massey lectures

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200203983 |
Canadiana (ebook) 20200204025 | ISBN 9781487008055 (softcover) |
ISBN 9781487008086 | ISBN 9781487008062 (EPUB) |
ISBN 9781487008079 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Social mediaSocial aspects. |
LCSH: Social mediaPolitical aspects.

Classification: LCC HM742 .D45 2020 | DDC 302.23/1dc23

Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk

Text design: Ingrid Paulson

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

For Jane:
my love, my lifeline,
my morning coffee confidante

Chapter Three: A Great Leap Forward
for the Abuse of Power

Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws

Look at that device in your hand.

No, really, take a good, long look at it.

You carry it around with you wherever you go. You sleep with it, work with it, run with it, you play games on it. You depend on it, and panic when you cant find it. It links you to your relatives and kids. You take photos and videos with it, and share them with friends and family. It alerts you to public emergencies and reminds you of hair appointments.

Traffic is light. If you leave now you will be on time.

You depend on it for directions, weather forecasts, and the news. You talk to it, and it talks back. You monitor the appliances that in turn monitor your house (and you) with it. You book your flights on it and purchase your movie tickets through it. You order groceries and takeout and check recipes on it. It counts your steps and monitors your heartbeat. It reminds you to be mindful. You use it for yoga and meditation.

But if youre like most everyone I know, you also probably feel a bit anxious about it. You realize it (and what it connects you to) is doing things to your lifestyle that youd probably be better off without. Its encouraging bad habits. Your kids and even some of your friends barely talk to you in person any longer. Sometimes it feels like they dont even look you in the face, their eyeballs glued to it, their thumbs tapping away constantly. Your teen freaks out when their device rings. You mean I have to actually speak to someone? How could something so social be also so curiously anti-social at the same time?

You check your social media account, and it feels like a toxic mess, but you cant help but swipe for more. Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of people actually believe the earth is flat because they watched videos extolling conspiracies about it on YouTube. Right-wing, neo-fascist populism flourishes online and off, igniting hatred, murder, and even genocide. A daily assault on the free press rains down unfiltered from the Twitter account of the president of the United States, whose brazen lies since taking office number in the tens of thousands. His tweets are symptomatic of the general malaise: like a car accident, they are grotesque, but somehow you are drawn in and cant look away.

No doubt you have also noticed that social media have taken a drubbing in recent years. The gee whiz factor has given way to a kind of dreadful ennui. Your daily news feeds fill with stories about data breaches, privacy infringements, disinformation, spying, and manipulation of political events. Social media executives have been dragged before congressional and parliamentary hearings to face the glare of the cameras and the scrutiny of lawmakers.

The 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. election of president Donald Trump were both major precipitating factors behind the re-examination of social medias impact on society and politics. In both cases, malicious actors, domestic and foreign, used social media to spread malfeasance and ignite real-life protests with the intent to foster chaos and further strain already acute social divisions. Thanks to investigations undertaken in their aftermath, shady data analytics companies like Cambridge Analytica have been flushed out from the shadows to show a glimpse of social medias seamy underworld.

Then theres the real dark side to it all. Youve read about high-tech mercenary companies selling powerful cyberwarfare services to dictators who use them to hack into their adversaries devices and social networks, often with lethal consequences. First it was Jamal Khashoggis inner circle, then (allegedly) Jeff Bezoss device.