No country for dissidents
Issue 143 - 14 June 2023 (8-min read)
In an ideal world, we would be free to hold any opinion without any fear of backlash. It would be only if we acted upon those opinions and caused harm to someone else that we would be punished. That seems fair, doesn’t it?
But we don’t live in an ideal world and we are increasingly ostracised or, worse, hunted down for having an opinion that doesn’t satisfy those around us. Dissent comes at a price and the shrinking space for dissent is a trend that should worry all of us — not only those who are living under authoritarian regimes.
This week, The Global Tiller looks at how state powers are clamping down on dissent, both in physical and in virtual spaces. What kind of technology is making this job easier than ever before and is there even a chance that we can reclaim some of this space?
When I googled the word dissident, I came up with likely offenders: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the likes. But I only had to scratch the surface before I discovered that Western, liberal democracies are as much a fan of clamping down on dissent as any other authoritarian regime. They’re just more subtle about it.
Between 2011 and 2023, at least 74 governments contracted with commercial firms to obtain spyware or digital forensics technology, according to data collected by Carnegie’s global inventory of commercial spyware and digital forensics. Among them was Spain, where Catalan politicians were targeted by the infamous Pegasus software. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and even good guy Canada have all been found to be using spyware technology on their own citizens.
Besides these liberal democracies, NSO Group — the Israeli company behind Pegasus — also sold its software to Hungary, India, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey and over 45 other countries, all of whom went after journalists, lawyers and activists. Meanwhile, the United States has both been a consumer and a victim of this technology. To spy on dissidents, both local and international, the NSA and the CIA have their own surveillance technology, but other US government departments have worked with the likes of the NSO Group. They’ve also used it as a tool of diplomacy, paying for Djibouti to acquire Pegasus to fight terrorism.
The main argument put forward for using spyware is counter-terrorism. When intelligence agencies spy on suspects, they can foretell when nefarious activities are being planned and prevent them before any loss of life can occur. It’s a good argument, in theory. In reality, the usage of these spywares has no oversight and is often misused by state actors to go after anyone who dares to challenge the official narrative. In fact, the Pegasus Project revealed that over 50,000 journalists and human rights activists in over 50 countries have had their phones compromised since 2016.
It would be premature to take comfort in the fact that the NSO Group has come under heavy fire for Pegasus. This company is just one of the hundreds of such companies offering spyware technology. Besides the Chinese firm Huawei, the Canadian company Sandvine, which provided censorship technology to Belarus and Egypt; the French firm Nexa Technologies, which sold internet surveillance equipment to Libya and Egypt; and the US-based company Oracle, which provided surveillance products in China, all of them have a long track record of selling powerful tools to bad governments. More recently, India has also emerged as a global hub for hackers-for-hire working for its own government as well as anyone else willing to pay the fees.
If you made it this far without reading your own country’s name, don’t worry, these companies do not discriminate who they sell their services to. And if your country is too poor to pay for these softwares, they could always rely on age old tactics to physically intimidate dissidents. A Pakistani journalist was found dead in Sweden in 2020, widely believed to have been targeted by the country’s powerful military for covering human rights abuses in the Baluchistan province. Another one was gunned down all the way in Kenya in October last year, after he had a falling out with the powers that be. Saudi Arabia went so far as to butcher Jamal Khashoggi at its embassy in Turkey and China conveniently ran a secret police station in New York so its dissidents are never too far from the state’s watchful eye.
But let’s not get into this game of choosing the worst offender. Even if a country has done it once, it’s bad enough. If their political systems, social structures and economies are as strong as they claim, why are they so afraid of dissent? Are the house of cards really so fragile? For all the humdrum around sovereignty, how come these states don’t see borders when it comes to going after those they don’t like to hear from?
One way for us to reclaim this space would be to have a global justice entity, or in other words, an international criminal court. But when that court rightly issues an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and fails to do the same for Australian soldiers who murdered scores of Afghan civilians or Israeli soldiers for targeting Palestinian children, it’s promises of justice sound a little hollow.
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Dig Deeper
Discover the shady world of cross-border surveillance and how state sovereignty reigns supreme when those states have loads of money. This long read, which reads like a crime thriller, uncovers the numerous attempts by UAE princesses to escape.
…and now what?
‘RealPolitik’ — this German expression has been at the heart of international relations since a long time. It is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical premises.
To put it more clearly, it’s a way for governments to argue that the end justifies the means or, even worse, to pretty much say: “but the others are doing the same or worse so it’s ok if I did it.”
Yes, I know it sounds like the kind of excuses a kid would give to a teacher during recess after being caught doing naughty stuff. But when states do it, it’s named RealPolitik. And it comes under the veneer of the sacrosanct concept of “sovereignty”. I have the power so I can do whatever I want, even if it goes against any values or principles I claim to fight for.
One could consider RealPolitik as a good rationale: you have to play by the rules of the game if you don’t want to lose the game. Should we finger point at the football player rolling on the grass pretending to be hurt in order to get his opponent a red card, knowing that the other team did it in the previous half? When it comes to winning a championship, aren’t the stakes high enough? Because, eventually in this case, one always pretends to be coming from higher grounds than their opponents, that their reasons are more justified than others. But those higher grounds end up utilising the same lowly tactics their opponents use too.
When saying that I hear the pragmatists telling me that is just how the world works and not everything is about rainbows and unicorns. So should we just give up and accept RealPolitik as a matter of fact, something that is just the necessary element of state power? Is RealPolitik an idea that will never die (like one of its proponents Henry Kissinger)?
Or, as citizens, should we eventually demand our governments to be more ethical? Because the same government will come right at you if you don’t pay your taxes, if you go over the speed limit or if you dare to question their legitimacy, their ideology.
So, if they claim to be the guardians of high moral and universal values, shouldn’t they live by them too? Yes some others will not act the same way but isn’t this the reason given to “fight” them? Why would you send your soldiers to take down a government if yours is eventually acting the same way?
It’s easy to say all this and, on paper, life can be black and white, and ethics is simple to apply. But if we want to change the world, we have to believe we can and that the current state of affairs is not how it should be.
If we want to change the world, we should be hungry for accountability from those who pretend to lead. If we want to change the world, we should start building up new foundations for it. If we want to change the world, we should start questioning those old time principles that are used as an excuse for the worst behaviours of our governments, the kind of principles such as borders, sovereignty, that are easy to claim to justify your deeds, and easy to forget when hunting citizens around the globe.
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely,” as Lord Acton used to say. It may be time for us to find a remedy against this sickness and to find ways to question the behaviours of those who are serving the public, and who are not paid to sever the voice of the public.
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury