Power to the People

Social networking is ubiquitous in people power movements. The ability to send information instantly to anyone levels the playing field for citizen protestors. Formerly large, unorganized, and unwieldy groups of people are now able to mobilize quickly, at precise times and locations, with focused and pre-determined goals. Most importantly, social networks allow people power movements to gain the attention of the greater world. In particular, activists in the town of Ferguson, Missouri have successfully brought attention to the murder of Mike Brown by a police officer. Activists are using applications such as Twitter to broadcast images and video of their protests and document police activity. This constant stream from the ground creates an account of events that complements, and at time contradicts, traditional news reports of the protests. As the average citizen gains wider access to information, they cultivate greater potential as agents of change and justice. But what happens when governments hold the keys to these precious channels of information? In 2011, San Francisco’s BART system shut off the wireless routers in strategic subway stations. The move was credited with halting citizens from organizing a protest regarding the police shooting of a passenger earlier that year. A government’s ability to restrict access to communication is a powerful weapon.

Corporate Allies

With this in mind, many participating in the 2014 protests in Hong Kong have preemptively turned to the mesh networking application FireChat. The application allows users to circumvent cable and wireless networks vulnerable to government control, and combine multiple phones into a network via Bluetooth. While the system is not completely secure, it does provide a working alternative if the government does decide to shut down communication lines. Perhaps then, the efforts of private for profit entities could be a strong ally for estranged political movements. A recent McKinsey study estimates that nearly 4.4 billion people worldwide are currently without Internet access. If unbridled access to information via the Internet facilitates justice, then certainly private companies are leading the charge. Both Google and Facebook are reported to be exploring creative ways to broaden access around the world, exploring weather balloons and solar powered drones as access points. The profit motive for these pet projects is clear. For every new individual connected, Internet companies gain a new potential user. But does this matter? Is it impossible for business to help advance justice while still making a buck?

Corporate Allies?

On October 7th, Twitter launched a lawsuit against the United States government. At the crux of the suit is Twitter’s claim that it should be able to inform its users about government requests for data. Google, which settled its own suit earlier this year in January, provides statistics to its users regarding the number, origin, and compliance numbers of government requests. For the United States alone, the company reports that there were a total of 12,539 requests regarding 21,576 accounts between January and June of 2014. Google complied with 84 percent of these requests. Google assures its users that data is only disclosed pursuant to legal process or in emergency situations, such as “kidnappings or bomb threats”. The number of accounts in question is small considering Google’s large user base, but it is evident that Google complies with most government requests. It could be argued that citizens have no reason to worry about their privacy being compromised if they are doing nothing wrong, but this is beside the point. As the recent uproar over Facebook’s enforcement of its real name policy on drag queens illustrates, the user experienced provided is in exchange for individualized data to be sold to the highest bidder. Even if Google and all of its corporate competitors stuck to the motto “Don’t be evil”, the fact of the matter is that the effort to monetize user experiences results in the collection of immense amounts of data.

Double Edged Sword

What is a potential dissident supposed to do? Privately owned social networking platforms have revolutionized the art of protest, but with personal data potentially at the fingertips of unscrupulous governments, the risk of exposure looms large. Furthermore, even when corporations do protect their users, there is no guarantee that data is actually secure. It did not take complicated legal process or sophisticated hacking to obtain the celebrity nudes that caused Apple so much embarrassment recently. The brute force attack simply tried random passwords until entry was granted. Mesh networking provides a possible alternative.

A Network of Our Own

Mesh networks allow users to create private networks between individual cellphones and Wi-Fi routers. Localized mesh networking may hold the key to successful civil protest in the face of government surveillance and corporate data collection. While privately developed applications like FireChat are useful, they are in the end closed source products engineered for profit. They are subject to government pressure and perhaps even worse, acquisition by a larger company. Free and open-source software can assist in circumventing some of these hurdles by enabling users to create decentralized networks on their own terms. Users determine who joins the network, shedding corporate concerns of government pressure and the need to monetize data. The United States State Department has even bankrolled one such project by Commotion, to create a free and open-source mesh-networking program that can be used by dissidents to send encrypted messages. Ironically, it is not the government that stands in the way of these developments, but the prohibitive nature of two of the world’s popular smartphone makers: Apple and Google. Both iPhone and Android operating systems make it exceedingly difficult to modify phones for mesh networking. On top of this, Google appears to be altogether moving away from open source Android operating systems. With competition for profits driving technology’s most influential corporations to withdraw deeper and deeper into secrecy, free and open-source software maintained by an army of volunteers maybe be the only alternative left for the tech savvy activist.