In a piece for the Wall Street Journal on August 13, visiting scholar Evgeny Morozov cautions Western nations to be mindful of the dangerous precedent they set to authoritarian regimes when monitoring Internet content. While recent events in Norway and London may compel governments to employ surveillance tools, Morozov argues that Beijing and Tehran will be vindicated by their own repressive policies.

Did the youthful rioters who roamed the streets of London, Manchester and other British cities expect to see their photos scrutinized by angry Internet users, keen to identify the miscreants? In the immediate aftermath of the riots, many cyber-vigilantes turned to Facebook, Flickr and other social networking sites to study pictures of the violence. Some computer-savvy members even volunteered to automate the process by using software to compare rioters' faces with faces pictured elsewhere on the Internet.

The rioting youths were not exactly Luddites either. They used BlackBerrys to send their messages, avoiding more visible platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It's telling that they looted many stores selling fancy electronics. The path is short, it would seem, from "digital natives" to "digital restives."

As social media's role in the London riots is explored, British politicians are considering whether temporarily banning or censoring sites like Twitter and Facebook would quell or enflame the tensions, Cassell Bryan-Low reports from London.

Technology has empowered all sides in this skirmish: the rioters, the vigilantes, the government and even the ordinary citizens eager to help. But it has empowered all of them to different degrees. As the British police, armed with the latest facial-recognition technology, go through the footage captured by their numerous closed-circuit TV cameras and study chat transcripts and geolocation data, they are likely to identify many of the culprits.

Such regimes are eager to see what kind of precedents will be set by Western officials as they wrestle with these evolving technologiesAuthoritarian states are monitoring these developments closely. Chinese state media, for one, blamed the riots on a lack of Chinese-style controls over social media. Such regimes are eager to see what kind of precedents will be set by Western officials as they wrestle with these evolving technologies. They hope for at least partial vindication of their own repressive policies.

Some British politicians quickly called on the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion to suspend its messaging service to avoid an escalation of the riots. On Thursday, Prime Minister David Cameron said that the government should consider blocking access to social media for people who plot violence or disorder.

After the recent massacre in Norway, many European politicians voiced their concern that anonymous anti-immigrant comments on the Web were inciting extremism. They are now debating ways to limit online anonymity.

Does the Internet really need an overhaul of norms, laws and technologies that gives more control to governments? When the Egyptian secret police can purchase Western technology that allows them to eavesdrop on the Skype calls of dissidents, it seems unlikely that American and European intelligence agencies have no means of listening the calls of, say, a loner in Norway.

We tolerate such drastic proposals only because acts of terror briefly deprive us of the ability to think straight. We are also distracted by the universal tendency to imagine technology as a liberating force; it keeps us from noticing that governments already have more power than is healthy.

The domestic challenges posed by the Internet demand a measured, cautious response in the West. Leaders in Beijing, Tehran and elsewhere are awaiting our wrong-headed moves, which would allow them to claim an international license for dealing with their own protests. The yare also looking for tools and strategies that might improve their own digital surveillance.

After violent riots in 2009, Chinese officials had no qualms about cutting off the Xinjiang region's Internet access for 10 months. Still, they would surely welcome a formal excuse for such drastic measures if the West should decide to take similar measures in dealing with disorder. Likewise, any plan in the U.S. or Europe to engage in online behavioral profiling—trying to identify future terrorists based on their tweets, gaming habits or social networking activity—is likely to boost the already booming data-mining industry. It would not take long for such tools to find their way to repressive states.

But something even more important is at stake here. To the rest of the world, the efforts of Western nations, and especially the U.S., to promote democracy abroad have often smacked of hypocrisy. How could the West lecture others while struggling to cope with its own internal social contradictions? Other countries could live with this hypocrisy as long as the West held firm in promoting its ideals abroad. But this double game is harder to maintain in the Internet era.

In their concern to stop not just mob violence but commercial crimes like piracy and file-sharing, Western politicians have proposed new tools for examining Web traffic and changes in the basic architecture of the Internet to simplify surveillance. What they fail to see is that such measures can also affect the fate of dissidents in places like China and Iran. Likewise, how European politicians handle online anonymity will influence the policies of sites like Facebook, which, in turn, will affect the political behavior of those who use social media in the Middle East.

Should America and Europe abandon any pretense of even wanting to promote democracy abroad? Or should they try to figure out how to increase the resilience of their political institutions in the face of the Internet? As much as our leaders might congratulate themselves for embracing the revolutionary potential of these new technologies, they have shown little evidence of being able to think about them in a nuanced and principled way.

 

The Program on Liberation Technology at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted two events in May, which brought together the technology and activist communities in support of a common cause-Egypt. The Program benefitted tremendously from the presence of two Egyptian activists, Ahmed Saleh and Sabah Hamamou, who traveled from Cairo to share their experiences and contribute ideas to help build a community between Tahrir Square and Silicon Valley. These events were coordinated by Stanford and Silicon Valley technology firms interested in leveraging their expertise in technology innovation to provide practical benefits for pro-democracy activists in Egypt and beyond.

On May 14, the Program on Liberation Technology in partnership with the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, Code the Change (a Stanford student group), CloudtoStreet, and Platform d, organized a Hack-a-Thon for Egypt at Stanford's design school. This event attracted more than 80 computer engineers, programmers, technologists, academics, activists, and members of the public. All expressed a firm commitment to volunteer their skills and time towards the development of technology applications to aid activists.

Volunteers connected in real time with Egyptian activists through videoconference and live presentations where they described the type of applications that would be beneficial to their work. Programmers and designers in the room listened intently as ideas for the following technologies were proposed; mobile phone applications for political mobilization, web-based training for election monitors, a crowdsourcing platform for constitutional negotiations, and a tool to monitor the Egyptian parliament.

Ahmed Saleh, a political activist and founder of the Kifaya movement (the Egyptian Movement for Change), provided a personal account of the revolution, captivating the audience's attention with his details of the 18 days leading up to President Mubarak's fall. Sabah Hamamou, a journalist and blogger, emphasized social media's impact on the public's capacity to organize and connect.

Hackers quickly got to work dividing into groups to begin designing the prototypes for some of the suggested applications. Sketching out designs on whiteboards and developing basic code, programmers worked late into the evening on four tangible projects: a web platform to crowdsource constitutional negotiations, a content management system for an Egyptian watchdog group to increase citizens’ ability to hold politicians to account, an election monitoring training and certification interface, and new visualizations of Twitter usage data emerging from the 18 days of protests.

Going forward, the teams will work with their Egyptian counterparts to scale-up their projects into applications with practical and broad application. The CloudtoStreet project led by CDDRL visiting scholar Ben Rowswell will work to incubate several of the projects and maintain connections with their Egyptian partners to aid in the implementation phase on the ground. A follow-on event to the Hack-a-Thon is planned for the summer quarter of 2011 to encourage the teams to continue the development of applications.

The second event hosted by the Program on Liberation Technology on May 20, brought executives from Google and Facebook to Stanford to explore social media's impact on democratic transition. More than 40 gathered to hear from Egyptian activists Saleh and Hamamou who spoke at length about their direct experience using social media and its impact on the uprisings.

According to Saleh, "Facebook had a humble start in 2008 (in Egypt) but quickly became viral when activists coordinated a national strike on April 6. This shocked the security services but they quickly learned from their mistakes.” The We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page communicated the message of the revolution, Saleh explained, but it still took a great deal of social mobilization to convince people to join the protests in Cairo. Once the power was cut, Saleh told the audience, the "keyboard activists" were then inspired to go to the streets.

If it wasn't for the world watching (the revolution) I am not sure we could have done it.
-Sabah Hamamou

Hamamou showed a variety of YouTube videos featuring cartoons poking fun at the deposed regime, which were produced by small Egyptian media companies. In doing so, she highlighted the fact that social media is becoming increasingly more popular in Egypt as politicians and civil society groups use this tool for civic education and outreach. Sabah explained this by noting that "people want alternative ways of being entertained outside of traditional media." She continued by pointing out that, "if it wasn't for the world watching (the revolution) I am not sure we could have done it."

Both activists outlined practical steps that the technologists in the room could take to help aid their efforts. Saleh underscored the importance of secure communication, which is an enormous challenge for activists who are confronted with sophisticated technologies used by regimes to survey their communication. With limited funds, activists are unable to afford expensive circumvention systems and require software and secure tools that provide user-friendly and cheap solutions. Saleh ended by emphasizing that these secure communication technologies can save lives and are urgently needed.

Hamamou suggested that Silicon Valley-based technology companies should expand their grant-making and philanthropic programs to include Egypt where they can engage directly with NGOs on the ground. She specifically highlighted YouTube's Partnership program and Google's digital journalism grant, which currently have no formal presence in Egypt. A representative from Google explained that engagement in Egypt requires them to comply with local laws to use the Egypt domain, requiring them to censor materials that are not permitted by the authorities. These laws and limitations make it challenging to maximize freedom of expression in this kind of environment.

Both events allowed the Program on Liberation Technology and its partners to match the technological ingenuity of Silicon Valley with the needs of activists in Egypt. Looking forward, the Program will be building on the applications created and the community established around this cause to make a more profound impact on the efforts of pro-democracy activists in Egypt and beyond.

Note: News of the Hack-a-Thon spread quickly through both the traditional and social media sectors, eliciting a great deal of interest and coverage of this event. The initiative was featured on the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page, home to over 100,000 international members generating an upwards of 350 "likes" and 80 comments. In addition, Fast Company.com published an article on the event and the Financial Post of Canada mentioned the CloudtoStreet project in their business section. See the links below to read more:

• http://business.financialpost.com/2011/05/26/the-myth-of-the-social-media-revolution/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/1755509/hacking-the-egyptian-revolution
• http://dschool.stanford.edu/2011/05/24/prototype-tools-for-change-in-egypt/

"What if we offered a prayer for the soul of bin Laden?" The question was tossed into the meeting of the February 20 Movement like a hand grenade. But the young men and women gathered in the Moroccan Labor Union building in Rabat didn't duck for cover. Instead, they angrily challenged the questioner, a bearded, middle-aged man representing the Islamist prisoners who have joined from behind the bars with the secular youth movement calling for greater freedoms. "Are you out of your mind?" asked one young man. "Just because we defend you people against torture, it doesn't mean we support terrorism. Don't you impose your creepy agenda on us."

The bearded man beat a hasty retreat. "No problem, let's just do a regular prayer," he said. "We're all Muslims, aren't we?"

The meeting had been held to discuss plans for protest outside the infamous Temara detention center, located in a cork-oak forest near Rabat, where terrorism suspects have been tortured, according to Amnesty International. The Islamist may have thought he could set the agenda: after all, his kind had for decades been the only antimonarchy group of any consequence. But as he discovered, change has come to Morocco.

It must annoy the Islamists that the shots are being called by these new kids on the block — and that their vibrant activism is shaking up the monarchy in ways the Islamists have consistently failed to for more than 30 years. The kids scored their first big success on Feb. 20, when tens of thousands of Moroccans hit the streets of more than 50 towns and cities, demanding change. The protests had been organized by young independent activists responding to calls made on Facebook.

Since that date — so glorious that the youth movement was named after it — hundreds of thousands have demonstrated, at least once a week. The pressure has already compelled King Mohammed VI to promise constitutional reforms, to devolve some of his absolute powers to the elected government. But many young Moroccans want the king to "reign, not rule." The political arm wrestling with the monarchy continues.

But many young Moroccans want the king to "reign, not rule."

The Islamists, long thought to have the only grass-roots organization, had no choice but to line up behind the Feb. 20 banner. But the youth set stringent conditions: they would tolerate no Islamic signs or banners, no chants of "Allahu akbar" (God is great), and no segregation of the sexes. It was a revolution within a revolution.

Not so long ago, the Islamists were condemning as apostates some of the same youth leaders. In 2009, they launched a Facebook group calling for a public daytime meal during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims can eat only before dawn and after dusk. The objective: to "open a debate on freedom of conscience." Predictably, a national scandal ensued. But this was not an isolated instance of iconoclastic behavior. For several years, groups of Moroccans have been using the power of social media — as well as the ability to attract the conventional media — to clamor for the freedom of belief, sexual liberty (notably for gays) and other individual freedoms that had until then been unthinkable.

The country's conservative majority was suitably horrified, but the young activists were able to rally growing constituencies among human-rights advocates, leftist groups and the middle-class youth. Even so, the core group of renegades continued to be perceived as little more than a bunch of crazy kids — until they and their sympathizers spearheaded the most powerful wave of change since the kingdom's independence, half a century ago.

What are the kids going to do with their newfound status? Nizar Bennamate, a leader of the Feb. 20 Rabat group, says some of their more envelope-pushing demands will have to wait for another day. "For now, democracy is our priority battle," he told me. Fair enough. But sooner or later, this battle will come to a close: Morocco's authoritarian system will irrevocably change, for that is the direction of history. When that day comes, Islamists and secularists will face off for a new fight over the soul of the new Morocco.

Who will win? That's hard to predict. But the secular youth have done well to position themselves as the leaders of the antigovernment protests. That planned demonstration at the Temara detention center was brutally broken up by police: 16 protesters were taken to the hospital, but the others reconvened in Rabat's city center to keep protesting. Nobody's calling them the crazy kids anymore.

Eight-four percent of Fortune Global 100 companies worldwide now utilize at least one social media platform (SMP), indicates a recent study by the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.

Numerous statistical studies such as this exist, but how do we understand the numbers in terms of the actual impact of SMPs on business?

Despite the growing adoption of SMPs as a business tool, this is still a relatively new and under-studied area of technology—even in Silicon Valley where many SMP innovations originate, says Rafiq Dossani, a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). Dossani defines SMPs as “information and communications technology platforms designed for interaction among participants.” He and other academic and industry experts convened at Stanford on May 25 for a discussion of SMP business trends, especially in the areas of recruitment and business development in Silicon Valley.

Their goal? To begin developing a theoretical framework for the study of SMPs as a tool in today’s global business environment. Findings presented during the conference suggest that SMPs serve as another tool for doing business, but do not supplant existing systems and practices. In addition, a great deal of future research is needed on the subject.

Organized by Shorenstein APARC’s Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), the conference was the sixth in an annual series dedicated to examining the globalization of business services. Previous conferences have addressed topics including outsourcing, system integrators, international recruitment, and clean technologies.

Opening the first session about social media trends among Silicon Valley employers, Philip Jordan and Stephen Jordan of Green LMI Consulting presented findings from a recent survey they conducted of over three hundred firms, especially of larger and technology-related companies. Their study found that over half of Silicon Valley firms surveyed are utilizing social media for external communication and/or for the recruitment and evaluation of new employees, pointing to the utility for job seekers to maintain a professional-looking online presence. Nonetheless, they emphasized that “real” skills and expertise still matter the most to employers.

Manuel Serapio, faculty director and associate professor of international business at the University of Colorado Denver (UC Denver) moderated the panel discussion that followed. Panelists Rahim Fazal, CEO and co-founder of Involver, and Tuomo Nikulainen, a researcher at ETLA, the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, provided commentary during the session.

Dossani led the second session about social media in the workplace with a presentation summarizing a study he conducted on the value of SMPs to business organizations. Surveying employees at twenty Silicon Valley companies, Dossani tested the hypothesis that a SMP has value “only if it improves the reliability of existing information or enables the generation of new information.” SMPs do not automatically generate such information, he stated. Some SMPs are better at generating reliable information (eg., a CEO’s blog) and others enable the generation of new information (eg., a discussion forum). Dossani categorized SMPs in the study by the extent of collaboration they permitted among participants in the creation of new information, as well as the control that was possible over the flow of information. Depending on how the usage of an SMP is organized—who participates and its governance structure—information of potential value to corporates is generated. Dossani noted the difference between individual SMPs, such as Twitter, and websites, such as YouTube, that integrate a number of different social media functions, including video and discussion forums.

In the study, Dossani proposed a theoretical framework for research on SMP business trends, informed by work about strong and weak “ties” conducted by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter. The survey results indicated that SMPs are found useful for project management (low control/high collaboration SMPs) and building employee and consumer awareness (high control/low collaboration SMPs). While this provided support for the hypothesis, said Dossani, other evidence did not support it, such as the limited use of SMPs for human resource functions and strategic planning. This might be due to the nascency of technologies, lack of diversity of platforms, or limited familiarity with the potential of SMPs—clearly, exciting subjects for future research, he concluded.

Henry S. Rowen, co-director of SPRIE, moderated the panel discussion that accompanied Dossani’s presentation. Panelists included Matt Ceniceros, director of global media relations at Applied Materials; Ankit Jain, a software engineer at Google; Don McCullough, vice president of marketing for IP and broadband at Ericsson; and Saurabh Mittal, head of customer experience practice at Wipro.

Emerging from the conference is the understanding that companies are increasingly embracing SMPs as a tool to enhance their current business practices, but not uniformly. To understand the role of SMPs in business—both in Silicon Valley and worldwide—a theoretical framework, such as Dossani suggested, and further studies are needed.

Papers and slides from the two main presentations are now available online, with full audio from the event to be added soon.

In addition to longtime Globalization of Business Services conference co-sponsors Wipro, UC Denver, and ETLA, Adobe and Ericsson also provided co-sponsorship for this year’s event.