IGF 2018 WS #444
Cybersecurity and Participation:ICTs for democracy and sec

The question of ICTs and a viable internet infrastructure has been constrained in the global South by the narrative of “limitations and challenges”. These limitations are vastly attributed to a number of typologies that have been in currency since the inception of WSIS and the Tunis Agenda. In essence, these limitations fall within the spectrum beginning with limited public resources to promote connectivity, socioeconomic constraints of poverty and illiterate demographics whose alienation has aggravated by the “digital divide”, and the problem of cyberpolicy that is either lacking or in fact in excess. Though the discussion does not escape these typologies, it is important to highlight that cybersecurity (as the crux of cyberpolicy at the present moment) does not capture the implications on democracy, participation and integration.

We intent to survey important incidents in which cyberpolicy was devised o restrict online freedoms of expression and opinion, its implications on social capital and trust and examples of netizens’ circumvent to engage in the ongoing debates and evade state-sponsored censorship. One example is the media platforms that are citizen-centric which escaped censorship using Facebook pages and masking IP addresses. The use of pseudonyms for storytelling. Such is in order to evaluate and draw on proposals to reform cyberpolicy to embed the values of participation, digital rights and accountability and propagate for the use of technologies that allow participation in restrictive environments. One the question of trust, we are alarmed by the increased intolerance to different opinions and criticsm of government by netizens themselves. Manifest in the form of slander, cyberbullying or more severely, reporting to state authorities to prosecute the accused individuals. Under the cover of protecting social cohesion, public morality and national security and economy, these cybersecurity measures decrease the levels of social trust and trust in the government. In turn, not only public resources are geared to purchase of mass surveillance technologies but also the room for government to adhere to transparency, accountability and reflect on citizen voices necessary for development and progress is blocked.

There are three main problems in these typologies. First, it fails to explains the inability of societies richer societies with higher internet penetration rates to effectively utilize ICTs deliberation in decisions. Second, it does not capture the implications of these restrictive measures on introducing future technologies e.g. mining cryptocurrency in Egypt landed a number of individual to prison. Third, it does not capture the new face of North-South dependency, which is North exploitation of autocracy to export surveillance technologies used against citizens in the South.