6 - States as Standard Threats

Summary

States are primary duty-bearers and major threats to free internet access. The chapter sets out the second meaning of ‘free’ internet access as ‘free from arbitrary interference’. Most internet users live in states where internet access and use is unfree. Autocratic states use the internet to monitor, manipulate, and control their citizens by what has become known as ‘digital authoritarianism’. The chapter uses the examples of Russia and China to show that, when they disrespect free internet access, states turn the internet into a repression technology. Examples include Russia’s technological and legal control of cyberspace and China’s Golden Shield Project, its Great Firewall, and its emerging social credit system. Democratic states also misuse the internet to spy unjustly on their citizens, as was revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. The chapter explains why indiscriminate mass surveillance practices of democratic states are unjustifiable and harm people’s human right to privacy. It also sets out a list of moral obligations states have as part of the human right to free internet access: that they must respect, protect, and not undermine internet freedom.