Navigating Cyberspace: Independence, Interdependence, and the Digital Arms Race

In case you didn’t know, and it may even sound a bit laughable now, there was a time when the US government tried to ban “obscenities” and other things from the Internet, as they did on radio and TV. They called it “Decency Act”, and it was part of a federal law: the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This, among other reasons, prompted the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by the libertarian activist John Perry Barlow.

The mentioned declaration is a manifesto of sixteen short paragraphs, inviting government powers not to interfere with the sovereignty of cyberspace. It was first commissioned for the global event “24 Hours in Cyberspace,” and distributed via email in February 1996 from Davos, Switzerland.

Barlow insisted there that the thing we call “cyberspace” is a very different place, far from physical jurisdiction and meant to have its own rules. Governments shouldn’t, and ultimately wouldn’t be able to interfere. This new place would regulate itself based on the Golden Rule: treat others as you want to be treated, instead of submitting to the laws of a "foreign" government. As it reads:

“You [governments] claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

(…)

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.”

Declaration of “Interdependence”

As you may imagine, not everyone agreed with Barlow and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that he co-created and later published the paper. And we’re not talking about the governments only, but also individuals and other institutions, like the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Indeed, they issued their manifesto about it in 2013: "A Declaration of the Interdependence of Cyberspace."

This new declaration emphasizes the interdependence of the Internet, acknowledging its governance by the norms, beliefs, laws, and values of its users and their societies. Contrary to the call for independence, the ITIF advocates for a balanced approach to maintaining individual rights and benefits without falling into chaos.

It rejects the notion of an Internet far from physical governments and urges collaboration among sovereign nations to ensure progress without compromising fundamental rights.

An important fragment reads as follows:

“We do not want an Internet controlled by the nations of the world, but neither do we want an Internet divorced from government. We seek a balance that recognizes both the rights of the individual and the benefits to the community of well-ordered systems (...) We reject your declaration of independence and take up a new call for interdependence among sovereign nations and peoples. We will work together in common cause so that no one can arrest our progress.”

However, governments have been repeatedly known for applying unjustified censorship and surveillance. And it’s not always possible to collaborate with them in this sense. North Korea and other dictatorial states are great examples of this.

What’s happening now?

Barlow passed away in 2018, still believing his own words. Meanwhile, over the years, governments all over the world have tried different measures (sometimes even drastic measures) to apply their own rules to the Internet —at least, for their citizens. China’s Great Firewall, NSA global surveillance, government DNS blacklists, and the hunt for important activists like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange (Wikileaks) are just examples of unjustified censorship attempts and privacy rights violations.

Luckily, while some groups tend to believe in “interdependence,” there are still others defending a full independence of cyberspace. Crypto anarchists and cypherpunks, for instance, are talented cryptographers who have given birth to numerous tools designed to protect privacy, defend against suppression, and wrest complete control from centralized authorities.

Satoshi Nakamoto and other figures in crypto are considered cypherpunks. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Obyte were designed, indeed, to fight against censorship and external control in financial transactions. They can be paired with other powerful tools like privacy browsers, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), non-corporate operating systems, one-time emails, encrypted online communication apps, metadata cleaners, and password managers to reach full protection in attacks against cyberspace independence.

We’d say that’s what we have now. A sort of digital cold war to see who’ll have control of cyberspace in the end. And it’s just up to their native citizens to defend their land with the proper tools.

Featured Vector Image by Freepik