Introduction
Sovereignty 2.0
The Internet was supposed to end sovereignty. “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, you have no sovereignty where we gather,” John Perry Barlow famously declared. Sovereignty would prove impossible over a world of bits, with the Internet simply routing around futile controls. But reports of the death of sovereignty over the Internet proved premature…
The state (both nation-state as well as nearly every U.S. state) strikes back. When Thomas Hobbes imagined an “Artificial Man” in the form of a state, he was not picturing Facebook. But the reality is that modern leviathans like Facebook and Google, and even Reddit, Spotify, and Twitter, exercise enormous power over daily life. Increasingly, governments across the world have sought to bring these companies under their control. While China pioneered data sovereignty, it is now the demand of governments from Australia to Zimbabwe. The era of countries unsure whether they had the power to regulate the Internet is over.
Consider, for example, Vietnam’s 2018 Law on Cybersecurity, which explicitly declares as its goal the protection of “national cyberspace.” Its definition of security includes not just national security, but explicitly also “social order and safety, and the lawful rights and interests of organizations and individuals in cyberspace.” While there may be no official signs that one is “Now Entering Vietnamese Cyberspace” to greet visitors, the government clearly believes that Vietnamese cyberspace is not some metaphysical place outside its control.
In February 2022, Vietnam’s Southeast Asian neighbor Cambodia suspended its plans to route all Internet traffic into or out of the country through an Internet gateway. Human Rights Watch declared that the true purpose of this infrastructure plan was to “tighten the noose on what remains of internet freedom in the country.” Even while suspending its plans, the Cambodian government defended itself, arguing that its goals were to “strengthen national security and tax collection as well as to maintain social order and protect national culture.” At the same time, the government insisted, without evidence, that such national Internet gateways “prevail in almost all countries around the world.”
Against this backdrop, scholars are sharply divided about the increasing assertion of what is called variously “data sovereignty” or “digital sovereignty.” Some scholars see it as a natural extension of traditional Westphalian sovereignty to the 21st century. They are joined by other scholars, often from the Global South, who support data sovereignty in order to repulse imperial ambitions for data colonialism, a barricade against the exploitative and extractive practices of Western (and Chinese) technology giants. Other scholars, however, worry that data sovereignty will break the Web apart, jeopardizing its numerous global benefits. As Mark Lemley astutely laments, “The news you see, the facts you see, and even the maps you see change depending on where you are.”
(2023-11-29T22:58:59.000). Data Sovereignty. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
Just saw a review in my new Science Magazine.
There's a solid prior post tie-in here:
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There's a fairly ample Amazon "look inside" preview of Data Sovereignty (about a one-hour read). However, the Kindle edition price is $104.99 ($140.00 hardcover). Given all of the other titles I need to buy and read, this one is way too pricey for a 408 pg book. The sample includes some 17 pages of end-notes pointing to many of the subtopics (147 in all, most w/URL links). I will certainly gumshoe that stuff.
Recall the recent calamitous dustups around the fatuous non-state libertarian "cryptocurrency" craze? I've posted numerous times on the topic. Yeah, digital "DeFi" (Decentralized Finance). Never mind that around 40% of humanity has no internet access.
apropos of the issue, the current issue of Science Magazine has this little morsel:
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