Liberation Technology

The revolutions sweeping the Middle East provide dramatic evidence of the role that technology plays in mobilizing citizen protest and upending seemingly invulnerable authoritarian regimes. A grainy cell phone video of a Tunisian street vendor's self-immolation helped spark the massive protests that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt's &quote;Facebook revolution&quote; forced the ruling regime out of power and into exile. While such &quote;liberation technology&quote; has been instrumental in freeing Egypt and Tunisia, other cases-such as China and Iran-demonstrate that it can be deployed just as effectively by authoritarian regimes seeking to control the Internet, stifle protest, and target dissenters. This two-sided dynamic has set off an intense technological race between &quote;netizens&quote; demanding freedom and authoritarians determined to retain their grip on power.Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of &quote;liberation&quote; versus &quote;control&quote; with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia.This book also includes in-depth analysis of specific technologies such as Ushahidi-a platform developed to document human-rights abuses in the wake of Kenya's 2007 elections-and alkasir-a tool that has been used widely throughout the Middle East to circumvent cyber-censorship.Liberation Technology will prove an essential resource for all students seeking to understand the intersection of information and communications technology and the global struggle for democracy.Contributors: Walid Al-Saqaf, Daniel Calingaert, Ronald Deibert, Larry Diamond, Elham Gheytanchi, Philip N. Howard, Muzammil M. Hussain, Rebecca MacKinnon, Patrick Meier, Evgeny Morozov, Xiao Qiang, Rafal Rohozinski, Mehdi Yahyanejad