Thomas Rid, author of the new book Cyber War Will Not Take Place discusses whether so-called “cyber war” is a legitimate threat or not. Since the early 1990s, talk of cyber war has caused undue panic and worry and, despite major differences, the military treats the protection of cyberspace much in the same way as protection of land or sea. Rid also covers whether a cyber attack should be considered an act of war; whether it’s correct to classify a cyber attack as “war” considering no violence takes place; how sabotage, espionage and subversion come into play; and offers a positive way to view cyber attacks — have such attacks actually saved millions of lives?

Download

Related Links

• Cyber War Will Not Take Place, Rid
• About Thomas Rid, Rid
• The Great Cyberscare, Rid
• Cyberwar: don’t believe the hype, Stilgherrian

That will be the subject of a Cato on Campus session this afternoon entitled: “The Internet and Social Media: Tools of Freedom or Tools of Oppression?” Watch live online at the link starting at 3:30 p.m., or attend in person. A reception follows.

The delight that so many felt to see protesters in Iran using social media has given way to delight about the use of Facebook to organize for freedom in Egypt. But this serial enthusiasm omits that the “Twitter revolution” in Iran did not succeed. The fiercest skeptics even suggest that the Tweeting during Iran’s suppressed uprising was mostly Iranian ex-pats goosing excitable westerners and not any organizing force within Iran itself. Coming to terms with the Internet, dictatorships are learning to use it for surveillance and control, possibly with help from American tech companies.

So is the cause of freedom better off with the Internet? Or is social media a shiny bauble that distracts from the long, heavy slog of liberating the people of the world?

Joining the discussion will be Chris Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at Cato; Alex Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media; and Tim Karr, Campaign Director at Free Press. More info here.

After cracking down on both international and domestic journalists, Iran is now looking to America for ways to squelch dissent. So, naturally, they’re copying America’s disastrous experience with censorship:  the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” imposed by the FCC (despite the First Amendment’s plain language) in 1949 until its repeal in 1987:

Iran’s State Inspectorate Organization, a sort of superregulatory agency that supervises a wide range of government administrations, said the guidelines will ensure that any criticism communicated through state media is “constructive,” “nonjudgmental” and doesn’t “stray from objectivity,” Iran’s state-controlled English-language news site Press TV quoted SIO chief Mostafa Pourmohammadi as saying. He didn’t give details of the new rules, and it wasn’t clear which outlets are being specifically targeted — the government-controlled media or the heavily monitored independent press. It is also unclear how much clout the agency has in pursuing violations or referring them to authorities for enforcement.

It’s fascinating to continue watching developments in Iran via Twitter and other social media.

The fact that Twitter delayed a scheduled outage to late-night Tehran time was laudable, but contrary to a growing belief it wasn’t done at the behest of the State Department. It was done at the behest of Twitter users.

Twitter makes that fairly (though imperfectly) clear on its blog, saying, “the State Department does not have access to our decision making process.”

As my Cato Institute colleague Justin Logan notes, events in Iran are not about the United States or U.S. policy. They should not be, or appear to be, directed or aided from Washington, D.C. Any shifts in power in Iran should be produced in Iran for Iranians, with support from the people of the world – not from any outside government.

People are free to speculate that the State Department asked Twitter to deny its involvement precisely to create the necessary appearances, but without good evidence of it, assuming that just reflects a pre-commitment that governments – not people and the businesses that serve them – are the primary forces for good in the world.

. . . follow @persiankiwi.