Fort McMoney is a recently released ‘docu-game’ that combines extensive documentary footage of Fort McMurray, including interviews with residents, and various political and industry figures, with a game platform that asks players to explore the town themselves, interact with various characters, and also participate in an online political discussion about federal, provincial, and municipal policy concerning Fort McMurray and the oilsands. Players of the game have already made one big decision about their ‘virtual’ oilsands policy: that taxes on petroleum products should be higher. As the game proceeds over the course of four weeks, different policy questions will be put to referendum (This week’s: “Should oil be nationalized?”), and the results of the referenda will be put into effect in the virtual town of Fort McMoney. The game contains a simulator that demonstrates the results of the virtual political discussions and policies on the population of the town.

I played the game for a couple of hours on the day it came out, and was mostly impressed with the beauty of the photography involved, the complexity of the platform the developers and filmmakers have built to facilitate discussion, and the sensitivity with which the documentary makers have engaged the human stories behind Fort McMurray’s boom. Though the documentary makers claim that the game represents a neutral perspective on the questions at stake, a probably unavoidable bias does show through; often it seems as though the portrayal is gloomy or negative. To be fair though, when faced with real human suffering as is displayed in some of the stories and interviews, it is hard and maybe not even a good idea to adopt a neutral perspective. The documentarians do a fairly good job maintaining choice for the player in how to explore and interpret the world that they portray.

The idea of combining documentary, game, and political discussion has a lot of appeal to me, and I really hope that Canadians and others will become engaged in the project and in so doing gain a more nuanced understanding of Canada’s oilsands and of the people of Fort McMurray. As an Albertan, and someone who has friends and family living in Fort McMurray, I am often frustrated by the way in which people ignore the human aspects of the oilsands, vilify Albertans and the oil industry for their involvement, while also vastly oversimplifying the policy discussion surrounding the place of petroleum products and the oil industry in Canada. I am happy to see an online platform that asks people to engage with the issues more deeply and come to conclusions only after having done so.

More Links:

• CBC – “Fort McMoney lets players decide virtual fate of oilsands territory”
• CBC Radio Q – “Fort McMoney docu-game plays out complexities of oilsands” (with photos from the game)
• Northern Journal – “Ideas battle online for control of Fort McMoney”

In a recent Foreign Policy article, Ralph Langner summarizes his 36 page report that in turn was the result of three years of analysis on Stuxnet and the much more sophisticated attack that preceded it – and the result of all of this was the surprising information that the cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program were actually much more sophisticated and more consequential for cybersecurity than most seem to think. The impact of this attack according to the report is very real; Langer estimates that the Iranian nuclear program lost up to two years of progress in particular areas as a result.

One of the most interesting thing that Langner points out about the Stuxnet attack is that while it was clearly the result of a coordinated effort by a nation-state, future attacks don’t necessarily have to be. He says that a lot of the expensive constraints on the Stuxnet attack were self-imposed by its makers; they weren’t aiming just for widespread damage, but specifically for damage that could be concealed as resulting from reliability problems inherent to the technology Iranian engineers were using. Absent the constraint of trying to conceal the presence of a cyber attack, a potential attacker would face much lower costs than those behind Stuxnet did. Furthermore, other potential attackers would probably focus on civilian rather than state-controlled infrastructure, which has the advantage of being more standardized and less protected. Essentially, the Stuxnet attack was a highly sophisticated, almost surgical operation, and other attacks may very well have no reason to be. Future attackers might just aim for indiscriminate destruction, and may even want their attacks to be immediately identifiable as cyberwarfare unlike the secretive nature of Stuxnet.

Langer also has particular insight into the place of the Stuxnet revalations in raising the profile of cyberwarfare in the 21st century. At some point in the development of the campaign, it became clear that “digital weapons work”. In the face of this growing understanding, it would have become important for the United States to identify themselves as dominant players in the world of cyberwarfare in the same way that they are in traditional warfare. The side-effect of revealing the true extent of Stuxnet is global recognition of the continuing preeminence of the United States in cyberwarfare, and this particular side-effect is probably not one that the United States would mind much. No matter what one’s opinion is of the idea of cyberwarfare, it is clear that military establishments around the world think that something big is happening, and the side effects for the rest of us will likely be consequential.

Much has been said about the some of the innovations of Barack Obama’s campaign team, particularly in their use of digital technology and data analysis. But now that the campaign is over, to what ends is this expertise being put? The New York Times recently did a profile of some of the “digital masterminds” of Obama’s campaign team, and it turns out that the intensive and expensive data analytics involved in the campaign and the young and motivated minds behind them seem more drawn to the private sector than to continuing to work in the less lucrative and more frustrating political world.

The article points out that political marketing usually tends to lag behind commercial marketing; in the words of the author, presidential campaigns, in commercial terms, are “start-ups aimed at a one-day sale” to commercial marketing’s “billions of dollars a year [spent] developing ways to make many more billions of dollars a year”. In the case of Obama’s second campaign, however, the resources put towards developing brand new data analysis tools were extensive. Once the campaign was over, the young minds that had been brought in for the campaign had to find somewhere where they could continue to engage in challenging, important work. They, naturally, would want to feel as though they were given sufficient freedom to work, and not have to worry that their work would be destroyed by ineffective bureaucracy. In profiling one of the young people behind Obama’s campaign, the article states the following:

“McLean treated his shift from selling Obama to selling Caesars as a small discomfort that was necessary if he wanted to keep working on the technological advancements he and his colleagues developed on the campaign. In a nonpresidential year, no political effort would have the money to finance what he described as the “huge R.& D. project” that the Obama campaign effectively became. The resources for that kind of project could now be found only in corporate America. If companies with big budgets wanted members of Obama’s team to do for them whatever it was that they did for the president, McLean couldn’t see why they shouldn’t answer the call.”

Meanwhile, some of Obama’s campaign have been involved in more ‘civic-minded’ work, such as the Chicago data analysis firm Civis Analytics, which has been working on a project to map census tracts with the most uninsured people in order to improve outreach efforts for Obamacare, and in the future to help smaller community groups working in health law outreach. In this case, digital technology and data analysis are still being put to use in the political and non-profit arena, but still with the backing of a major government policy campaign. One can imagine this kind of analysis making a big difference in campaigns regarding other social issues, but it will require someone to put the necessary resources behind the task.

The power of data analysis that really takes advantage of digital technology has the potential to change the world in a lot of ways, whether it’s electing a politician who relies on a traditionally less active demographic, rooting out causes and symptoms of poverty, or disrupting the world of TV advertising in order to get casino customers back at the slots. However, outside of a presidential campaign, with a popular candidate that draws in fundraising money, the rising world of “big data” may remain mostly  within big industry.

“When confronted with a maddening user interface, human beings tend to throw up their hands and stop trying. So many people “hate computers” just because every modern operating system is so poorly designed, they don’t ever feel capable of making them do what they want them to do. Well, judging by voter turnout statistics, roughly half this country “hates democracy.”

Who could blame them?“

I recently came across a game entitled “Apathy” designed to spark conversation on some of the issues facing America’s democracy. In the artist’s statement, the game’s creator, Zacqary Adam Green, calls representative democracy the “user interface of America”, and seeks to make apparent some of the frustrations of that user interface by envisioning America’s democratic system as a video game. The game itself is frustrating by design; actions in the game (such as making a call to your Congressperson) have unclear results, the goal of the game, to achieve policy changes, seems to have no motivating force, and the end result of the game changes very little regardless of what strategy the player employs. In short, it is a bad game, but purposefully so.

Green also has an interesting perspective about the idea of games as art, saying that “for a game to truly be art, it needs to make its point not with the aesthetics, but with the game mechanics.” To me, an online videogame critiquing modern democracy is simply an incarnation of the long tradition of artists making political statements through their artistic expression. Right now, I would argue that many people would discount this kind of thing as art, but I think that in the future videogames that are also clearly artistic expressions will gain a higher profile. This has implications when it comes to political discussion on the Internet, given that online games probably have more potential for mass engagement and mobilization than, say, an artistic installation in a gallery.

Finally, the game is a welcome and refreshing take on some of the issues with our democracy. Green asks himself why, in a world where people with minimal resources and equipment can become Youtube stars overnight, we don’t seem to have any of the same kind of efficacy in the political realm. Given that the technological means are there for the vast majority of people to be much more active participants in politics than they are now, why isn’t this participation happening? But more importantly, why aren’t those with the power to do so actively seeking to build systems that facilitate this participation? The obvious answer this is simply that is isn’t in their interest, and the reason it isn’t in their interest is because there are not enough people loudly and openly pointing to the flaws in representative democracy. The flaws, at least to me, are clear and obvious, and action is needed. But Green makes this point much better than I do:

“The point is, our system of representative democracy is a usability nightmare. If the point of democracy is to empower people, we’re doing a terrible job of it. Perhaps our democracy is like Windows — it’s trying to be new and hip, but it’s held back by all this bloated code from the DOS era. Or in our case, from an agrarian society without 300 million people, without the 24-hour news cycle, and without the Internet.”

While social media has certainly changed many people’s political consciousness, and their means of gaining political information, this does not necessarily mean that information gained through social media will be accurate, or even better than traditional means.  This post is written in response to a post by a classmate, “social media leads to smarter voters”.

In the post, the author argues that since Twitter and Facebook users follow celebrities and their friends and get political news from them, these social media users are better informed than they would be otherwise. The author also argues that though the level of information received through this source is imperfect, it is better than nothing and that this is an improvement for voting and democracy. Finally, the post points out that social media facilitates a greater connection to politicians, since they join social media sites, connect with voters, and provide platform information on these sites.

However, I think there still remain some very big questions about the way that social media, and digital media more broadly affect voter knowledge and by extension, voting behaviour. First of all, the possibility that social media displaces rather than augments traditional sources of information is concerning. It’s possible that since social media makes voters feel informed, it prevents them from seeking out additional information when it comes time to inform themselves about their vote. Furthermore, informing yourself through digital media and social media subjects you to systemic biases that don’t exist within traditional media sources.

One Internet activist, Eli Pariser, argues that certain forms of digital media, such as Facebook’s personalized newsfeed or in some cases Google searches, subject users to a “filter bubble”. Over time, as information become more personalized to the user’s previous habits, they will be mostly subjected to information that is consistent with their existing opinions and understandings. Confirmation bias, though it also applies in traditional media, becomes more powerful when the user is able to filter out information that is inconsistent with their beliefs by unfollowing someone on Twitter, or blocking someone from their Facebook Newsfeed. These biases mean that a user subject to them would become more set in their ways, and less likely to respond intelligently to policy debates. To the extent that social media makes users feel comfortable in their level of knowledge, and in so doing displaces traditional media, it perpetuates biases that make people less informed and more set in their ways.

This is not to say that social media has no positive impacts on voters’ political awareness. Following politicians on social media certainly is a more personal means of connection than reading their comments in a newspaper, and there might be some people who never would have read news outside of what comes across their Twitter feed who are now informed. We should just make sure that we remain aware of some of the problems that come with relying on social media as our only source of political news, discussion and debate.

In a Washington Post blog post, “No, the Trans-Pacific Partnership isn’t ‘extreme Internet censorship’”, the author questions the efficacy of the reaction of Fight for the Future, an organization that was at the forefront of the campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), to the version of the TPP and negotiating positions leaked by Wikileaks. The organization characterized the TPP as an “extreme internet censorship plan”, calling for action against the treaty. As the post notes, this kind of reaction precludes a more measured analysis of the actual potential problems with the TPP, such as the expansion of US copyright law abroad.

I believe that this sort of reaction is also illustrative of the myopia sometimes displayed by organizations aiming to protect Internet freedom. Most such organizations originate in the United States, and are primarily concerned with US policy initiatives at the expense of seeing a broader picture. It is not enough to simply demand that the US change its conduct in international treaty negotiations, since no one familiar with the potential trade benefits to the US in the TPP would believe that they would be willing to adjust their position on the ground of how the intellectual property provisions contained within the treaty would affect the Internet. It would be better for organizations like Fight for the Future to engage in a more strategic activism that recognizes the global context of the Internet in the modern day, and the real potential affects that international agreements could have on the Internet. Treaty negotiations are not subject to the same mechanisms of political pressure as domestic policy, and drawing upon “Internet freedom” rhetoric will be less effective in an international context where the idea of Internet freedom is less entrenched than it is in the US.

On one hand, the Internet is drawing some new participants into politics and policy debates as online enthusiasts seek to protect the ‘way of life’ they have built themselves, based on a free and open Internet. The mobilization to stop SOPA is a prime example of the power of this kind of politics and of this particular organized interest group. However, I wish that political mobilization on the Internet could go farther than defending its own turf, and become a real force in political issues other than copyright and piracy restrictions.

The Internet has made space for lots of people to express themselves in ways that would have previously been impossible. This can be construed as positive and negative; positively, those who belong to marginalized groups can find communities online that don’t exist for them offline, while on the negative side, anonymity can allow for individuals to engage in behaviour that, were it attached to their name, they would face social censure for. This post is in response to a post arguing that we need censorship in order to make the Internet a safer place for everyone, and that we should prefer safety over rights. I agree that we should be concerned about the effects of Internet anonymity on vulnerable people, but I strongly disagree that this justifies censorship.

Holly says that “I think that everyone should be able to say what they want… as long as they are not harming another person.” However, as is the typical response to this ‘harm principle’ approach, what do we mean by harming others? And who gets to decide? I think that there are plenty of good reasons to shy away from allowing the government to censor the Internet, even with the noble goal of protecting youth. It sounds obvious but is often true that governments censor the Internet with the expressed goal of “protecting citizens” when the actual goal is preserving the government. Free speech is as valuable online as it is offline, and in Canadian society we have very few if any restrictions on the kinds of speech that are allowed. The government doesn’t actually ban speech that is harmful to people, only speech that specifically incites hatred, and we are still very cautious about doing so.

Furthermore, I think that the anonymity and freedom that the Internet provides does more good in creating ‘safe’ spaces than harm. There are plenty of moderated and semi-private ‘spaces’ online where people can get together and create new kinds of community. In this way, people have been able to shield themselves from the potential consequences of revealing some part of themselves (for example, their sexual orientation or sexual preferences) to their family, friends and neighbours, while still being able to express and develop their identities. The idea of legitimizing censorship of online speech threatens people’s ability to freely express even stigmatized aspects of their interests or identity. Just because the government or a majority of society would seek to suppress certain ideas or practices does not mean that they be allowed to do so, which is why certain forms of expression are protected by rights in the first place.

So, how do we protect people? We need to equip people and families with the tools to protect themselves. Cyberbullying is not the only, and not necessarily a distinct way in which youth are vulnerable to bullying. If we really want to protect children from bullying, we should encourage outreach in schools to help these children. For individuals in general, there is no reason to believe that they cannot remove themselves from online ‘spaces’ in which they feel threatened. Censorship of the Internet it by no means a reasonable way of going about protecting vulnerable individuals from harm.

A ‘digital divide‘ refers to the idea of an economic inequality between groups leading to differential access to information and communication technologies. This idea can refer both to such a divide on a global scale, but also between rural or urban regions in a country, and even within communities. What has been called the ‘second-level digital divide’ is especially important to online politics, and refers to the idea that there is a further divide between the producers and consumers of content online. The important characteristic of these divides is that they systematically affect specific groups through structural inequalities, particularly those living in rural areas with less Internet infrastructure, the elderly who have had less exposure to technology, those who can’t afford home Internet access or devices capable of Internet access, and those who have had less education about technology and the Internet.

Jen Schradie lays out “7 Myths of the Digital Divide” in an article that brings up several important issues regarding Internet access and use in modern Western society. In particular, she suggests that the most prevalent divides are of social class, and also that we should think of the ‘divide’ not as such but as a complex form of inequality. She also generally criticizes those who consider the digital divide to be gone. In terms of methodology, she questions studies that look at primarily the young, those who are already online, or those who neglect to quantify whether Internet use of survey participants is frequent or occasional. People’s perception regarding Internet access and use tends to be myopic (“Everyone I know has a smart phone!”) and as in other discussions of inequality, most people do not generally perceive class divides or structural inequality in their day-to-day lives.

There also are many people who may access technology occasionally, but who have rarely or never ‘participated’ in social media in the way that advocates of political mobilization and discussion online are so enthusiastic about. Furthermore, who produces content matters. Both journalists and policy-makers use the online conversation as a proxy for the entirety of public discussion and public opinion. We should therefore be concerned about this ‘second-level’ divide concerning content production vs. consumption.

Many would see the solution to this problem as solely a matter of getting more people online faster. I would argue, however, that we must approach such a divide not solely with the goal of getting more people online, but also attempt to accommodate the current, real world barriers that people are facing. Lack of access and knowledge of technology creates basic issues, for example when forms must be filled out online, but also causes problems when certain groups have less access to information than others, and less ability to have an online voice than others. We should not abandon tried and tested ‘real world’ means of political empowerment yet in favour of a purely digital political conversation. As Schradie says in her article, “If we develop policies, journalism, social movements, as well as academic theories assuming that everyone has instantaneous Internet access and knows how to participate online, then we are even farther from creating a digital democracy than any utopian could hope for.”

A recent experimental study of Chinese Internet censorship confirms the emerging view that Chinese censorship of Internet communication is particularly directed at any communication with “collective action potential”, while criticism of leaders and policies is often allowed to stand. This study is particularly interesting in that it provides empirical evidence regarding the selectivity of censorship that did not exist previously in such an extensive form. The researchers conducted “a large scale randomized experimental study by creating accounts on numerous social media sites spread throughout the country, submitting different randomly assigned types of social media texts, and detecting from a network of computers all over the world which types are censored .”  The Economist characterizes the goals of China’s Internet censorship similarly, as being especially concerned with preventing social media from being used to organize real-world activity, while allowing criticism of mid-level officials and policies.

The study relied upon two sources of information. First, they conducted a randomized experimental study by created social media accounts of different sites in different areas of China from which they made posts similar to existing content in order to study the immediate review process and outcomes of censorship, in a way that is not possible by simply observing content in a non-randomized fashion. They also created a social media platform using popular software. In this process they were able to collect information about how censorship is implemented, discovering that local social media sites have a fair bit of flexibility in interpreting the censorship mandated by the central government.

Internet censorship in China is the largest example of selective control of the Internet in the world, and other authoritarian states in the world seem to view China’s censorship model as one to follow. The most interesting thing that I learned from reading the study is the considerable leverage that does exist in what communications are allowed. China seems to have struck a fine balance between allowing sufficient criticism to be able to gain information on the concerns of the people, but disallowing communication that would explicitly facilitate mobilization. This means that though social media in China does facilitate some communication about government failings, the content is carefully controlled to prohibit such mobilization facilitated by social media as we have seen in Arab Spring countries. The cold war between authoritarian governments and people on social media is one that the people in China interested in social mobilization do not seem likely to win any time in the near future.

Recently, it has been confirmed that the FBI took control of Freedom Hosting, a provider of anonymous online hosting services to both legitimate and criminal enterprises, and used their servers to serve malware to all visitors to sites hosted by Freedom Hosting. The malware was specifically designed to provide information about the users of the anonymous Tor network (software allowing for users to anonymize their online activity) to the FBI, and was used to shut down a massive online child porn ring. Eric Eoin Marques, the alleged CEO of Freedom Hosting, has been arrested on charges of the distribution and promotion of child porn on the internet.

The Tor Project originated in the US Naval Research Laboratory, receives financial support from the US government, and is currently operated by volunteers around the world,. It allows for users of all sorts to improve the privacy of their online activity and communication, access sites blocked in their region, and to generally prevent the collection of personal data that might betray their association with particular organizations or types of communication. Obviously, such anonymous communication is appealing both for legitimate purposes and to criminals who perpetuate societally devastating activity such as child porn. Tor is used by the government for intelligence gathering, by journalists seeking to protect the anonymity of their sources, by dissident groups living under oppressive governments to protect themselves, but the software is also used by criminal groups. Freedom Hosting is not associated with the Tor project, but uses the same protocols to host sites that can only be accessed through the Tor anonymous network.

The FBI’s use of malware to de-anonymize both legitimate and illegitimate Tor users has raised questions about the security of the network, but also about Internet surveillance and anonymity generally. Clearly, child porn and other criminal activity conducted through services providing anonymity is an incredibly serious concern that deserves to be relentlessly pursued by law enforcement. However, the use of malware by the FBI to target users regardless of the legitimacy of their use of the network is legally questionable. Though the malware distributed through Freedom Hosting’s servers was designed to be limited in use, it collected information indiscriminately, including that of human rights activists that we presumably want to protect. The promotion of the free exchange of information using the Internet around the world has allowed for people living under all governments to evade oppression, and undermine oppressive governments. Furthermore, the US government has shown increasingly less regard for the protection of journalists and their sources, and the FBI’s use of this security exploit to undermine the security of Tor, which is frequently used by journalists, has caused people to question whether the US government would act similarly in violation of their privacy in the pursuit of less noble causes.

Finally, the right to speak anonymously may be worth protecting in itself, and has been upheld in a number of a cases by US courts as an extension of the right to free speech. Those who are vulnerable to political and social power have historically relied on anonymity to question the legitimacy of that power. We should question the erosion of privacy even when the goal is laudable, because the protection of privacy is one of the only ways that citizens are able to hold governments to account without having to fear for their personal safety.