Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

It is significant in this regard that most governments have tried to monopolise postal delivery by outlawing, heavily taxing or tightly regulating private delivery services. In the historical development of the post, this was done in order to raise revenue and to prevent enemies from communicating without the ruler’s knowledge.[19] This shows that secure and reliable postal delivery — not easily monitored centrally — is of great value to nonviolent opponents of tyranny.

More fundamental than formal ownership of postal services is the attitude of postal workers. If they are sympathetic to the resistance, then they can ensure that important letters or parcels are delivered without inspection. They are also in a good position to deliver messages from the resistance along their delivery routes. It’s also possible for the resistance to avoid interception by using false names and addresses, putting one letter inside another, and various other techniques.

There are a few technological systems that are relevant. One is automatic sorting of letters by postcode. If this is used in some way to help monitor the post, the machines could easily be disabled. In any case, it would be an interesting problem to design such equipment so that it provided no advantage for any group wishing to monitor the post. Another issue is the surveillance of postal workers using videocameras and other apparatus. Such surveillance could be used by agents of an aggressor to detect postal workers supporting the resistance. For the purposes of nonviolent resistance, it would be best to get rid of technology that puts workers under surveillance.

Conversations and Meetings

In spite of all the technological advances, face-to-face conversations remain one of the very best means of communication. Also quite useful are meetings, whether this involves 3, 30 or 300 people. The smaller the number of people in a meeting, generally, the more each person can contribute and the fewer opportunities there are for manipulation or domination. It may be worthwhile for an aggressor to send observers or arrange for surveillance of mass meetings of hundreds or thousands of people. But monitoring of hundreds or thousands of small meetings becomes impossible.

It might seem that technology is largely irrelevant to face-to-face conversations, but this is not so. Modern technology has greatly increased the capacity for surveillance, for example by electronic listening devices.[20] Investigations are needed into convenient, low-cost ways of avoiding or foiling such surveillance.

Computer Networks

Computer networks are a powerful means of communication most suitable for nonviolent struggle.[21] Such networks are interactive and cannot easily be dominated by a small number of users. Information on the network is transmitted by telephone lines and, indeed, computer networks are very similar to telephone systems. There are several major differences. First, computer networks deal mainly with text rather than voice. Second, it is much easier to save, copy and distribute text via computer networks than via phone. Third, the skills and investment required to become a skilled user of computer networks are much greater than to become a proficient user of the telephone.

The first two factors generally make computer networks a more powerful means of communication, from the point of view of nonviolent struggle, than the telephone. The third factor considerably reduces its value. As the price of computers declines and the software for hooking into networks becomes more user-friendly, computer networks will become more and more valuable as a people’s communication technology.

Computer networks — collectively called “cyberspace” — will undoubtedly play an increasing role in communication in crisis situations. They have been used to send alerts about human rights violations, to mobilise opposition to vested interests and to provide information to activists opposing repressive regimes. For example, computer networks have been used for communication by the peace movement in former Yugoslavia,[22] to resist the 1991 Soviet coup[23] and to organise publicity about persecution of minority groups in Iran.

Computer networks have several vulnerabilities, again similar to the telephone. If the telephone system is shut down, so is most computer communication. But this is not so likely because, like the telephone system, computer networks are used more and more for functions such as commercial transactions. Therefore, anyone who shut down the networks would risk alienating a large proportion of the population, including powerful organisations.

Another key problem with computer networks is surveillance, namely logging into particular accounts or intercepting particular electronic messages. The system administrator in charge of local networks has the capacity to monitor or cut off the accounts of individuals. Hackers are able to surreptitiously enter other people’s computer files or to read their messages.[24] There is also the less elegant method of tapping telephone lines and deciphering computer-generated data that is being transmitted.

System administrators are key individuals in computer networks. If they support the resistance, then the networks become a powerful tool for resistance. But system administrators could also serve the aggressor, whether as a result of sympathy, bribery or intimidation, for example by monitoring messages from certain individuals or by closing down their accounts. Therefore, it would be useful to design networks so that the power of system administrators is limited, either permanently or just in emergencies.

Another solution to the problem of surveillance is encryption of messages, namely putting them into code. There are various ways to do this, including some extremely powerful encryption techniques that also give a highly reliable way of verifying the sender’s identity: an electronic signature.

There was an enormous controversy over the US government’s promotion of a system of encryption designed by the National Security Agency (NSA), a multi-billion dollar spying enterprise focussing on electronic communication. The NSA’s proposed encryption system — commonly associated with one of its components, the Clipper Chip — relied on a system of coding that could be deciphered using information obtained from two specified organisations, given the permission of legal authorities. Some sceptics, though, did not trust the claims of the NSA, and believed that the agency designed the algorithm and Clipper Chip so that all messages could be read by the NSA.[25]

Generally speaking, secure communication is valuable to a nonviolent resistance, which therefore would be better served by unbreakable encryption. The most popular system outside the government is called Pretty Good Privacy or PGP.[26] It reportedly has been used by guerrillas in Burma and dissidents in Russia.

There may seem to be some contradiction here, in that many proponents of nonviolence argue against secrecy. For example, they inform police and other relevant authorities about details of their planned nonviolent actions. They argue that openness reduces fear and hence the possibility of violence by authorities, and that this approach is the best way to win more supporters.

However, this opposition to secrecy is quite compatible with support for confidentiality and privacy in other circumstances. The point is that the nonviolent activists choose to communicate their plans for rallies, strikes or occupations to others. This is quite different from eavesdropping on friends having a personal conversation. Encryption of telephone or computer communication is roughly similar to ensuring the confidentiality of a private talk.

19.

On the early history of the British post office, including attempts to shut down alternative posts, see Herbert Joyce, The History of the Post Office from its Establishment down to 1836 (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1893). On postal worker struggles in Britain, see H. G. Swift, A History of Postal Agitation from Fifty Years Ago till the Present Day (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1900). For a comprehensive history of disputes in the US Congress over what things should be allowed to be mailed, censorship and wartime controls, see Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, Unmailable: Congress and the Post Office (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977). On government attempts to monopolise the post, see Carl Watner, “’Plunderers of the public revenue’: voluntaryism and the mails,” The Voluntaryist, No. 76, October 1995, pp. 1-7. A pilot study of the post in relation to social defence is reported in Alison Rawling, Lisa Schofield, Terry Darling and Brian Martin, “The Australian Post Office and social defence,” Nonviolence Today, No. 14, April/May 1990, pp. 6-8.

20.

See, among others, Ann Cavoukian and Don Tapscott, Who Knows: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997); Simon Davies, Monitor: Extinguishing Privacy on the Information Superhighway (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1996); David H. Flaherty, Protecting Privacy in Surveillance Societies: The Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, France, Canada, and the United States (Chapel Hilclass="underline" University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993); Simson Garfinkel, Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, 2000); David Lyon, The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994); Gary T. Marx, Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

21.

There is a vast body of writing about the net. Useful treatments of net culture include Wendy M. Grossman, Net.wars (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in a Computerized World (London: Secker and Warburg, 1994).

22.

David S. Bennahum, “The Internet revolution,” Wired, Vol. 5, No. 4, April 1997, pp. 122-129 and 168-173.

23.

Bob Travica and Matthew Hogan, “Computer networks in the x-USSR: technology, uses and social effects,” in Debora Shaw (ed.), ASIS ’92: Proceedings of the 55th ASIS Annual Meeting, Vol. 29 (Medford, NJ: Learned Information, 1992), pp. 120-135.

24.

On hacking see the magazine 2600 and The Knightmare, Secrets of a Super Hacker (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics, 1994).

25.

For the dabate over government-sponsored encryption, see Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, Privaacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) and Lance J. Hoffman (ed.), Building in Big Brother: The Cryptographic Policy Debate (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995).

26.

See for example Simson Garfinkel, PGP: Pretty Good Privacy (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, 1995).