Win-win situation

In a concerted effort to support the right to freedom of speech the Obama administration last week reversed part of a long-standing US policy toward Iran, Cuba and Sudan and lifted sanctions that have prohibited US firms to export Internet tools to those regimes.

While the Treasury Department amended the export regulations to the three countries to allow the export of personal Internet service tools like instant messaging, chat, email and social networking, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained the rationale behind the move.

"We're supporting the right of free expression," she said, adding that "in the 21st century expression and assembly are carried out on the Internet as well as in person." Focusing on Tehran, Clinton said: "We believe that if Iran calls itself a democracy it should act like one and that means respecting the right to free expression and assembly of its own people."

All three countries targeted by the US move impose different levels of control over the Internet and communication tools. Washington for its part has an embargo against Cuba in place since 1962 and a trade ban against Iran and Sudan since 1997.

Open floodgates

The Obama administration's decision to allow the export of Internet tools is welcomed by experts. "It is definitely going to help the democratication process or even some sort of freedom of speech process," Lorenzo Valeri, the research leader on information policy at Rand Europe, told Deutsche Welle.

"It can be considered a gesture of open diplomacy in a sense that here is a country that is opening up itself and that is not really confrontational."

At least not confrontational vis-a-vis the citizens of those countries, who stand to benefit from the move. The governments in Tehran, Havanna and Khartoum, however, may perceive the decision as a way of supporting the various opposition movements in their countries.

And rightly so, explains Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, director of the Information and Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore: "What the state department decision really does is that it opens up the floodgates to many more products."

Due to the trade sanctions US Internet technology companies have until now refrained from actively distributing many of their systems to those countries. As a consequence, only a relatively small number of social networking services were known and used by citizens and non-governmental groups - and were targeted by censors.

Governments can't complain

"If you only have one or two tools like Twitter or Facebook that you have to prohibit and interdict that is relatively easy to do," says Mayer-Schoenberger. "If you have a dozen or two dozen or three dozen variable tools with variable protocols available clamping down on each and every one of them it gets harder."

While Washington's decision clearly increases the pressure on government control over the Internet in those countries, the regimes can't raise the issue publicly.

"After all, it lifts economic sanctions," says Mayer-Schoenberger. "At the same time of course it plays more into the hands of the opposition than into the hands of the regime and so it is not a welcome change for these countries, but it's not a change that they can oppose."

For the Obama administration, allowing the export of Internet tools to Iran, Cuba and Sudan is thus a win-win-situation. It openly supports freedom of speech and democracy movements in a way that can't be criticized by those regimes and it highlights a break with the previous administration.

Soft power

"It is also a change from the Bush era in the sense that it makes available and mobilizes soft-power tools rather than the hard-power tools of tanks and bombs," says Mayer-Schoenberger.

Google, the world's largest search engine provider, which is currently mulling its business in China amid increasing censorship pressure by the government, called the move a "great accomplishment."

While experts applaud the US decision, they also caution against expecting too much from it. "The democratisation process in this field will not be sorted out by the arrival of these technologies," says Valeri.

"They can help out, especially things like Twitter, to make the fight within their countries more open, but they are not going to change the world. It will be an internal process that will probably be caused by other developments."

Author: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge