U.S. State Department Promotes Social Media For Pro-Democracy Activists

The Huffington Post reported that the U.S. State Department is developing a cell phone "panic button" for pro-democracy activists as part of its U.S. Technology Initiative, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's push to expand Internet freedoms. This "panic button" is targeted towards pro-democracy campaigners, so that when their cell phones get confiscated by police, they'll be able to hit the "panic button," which is a special app that will both wipe out the phone's address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists. This is just one example of many that the State Department is "promoting to equip pro-democracy activists in countries ranging from the Middle East to China with tools to fight back against repressive governments" (Quinn). The "panic button" tool was inspired by the experience of pro-democracy protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square in February, an event that emphasized the importance of cell phones in today's grassroots political movements. In this way, the "panic button" and secure text message services (another tool the State Department is developing) will protect data and databases.

This technology initiative was inspired by the crucial role that many online resources like Twitter and Facebook have played in fueling pro-democracy movements in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere. The U.S. has budgeted about $50 million since 2008 to promote new technologies for social activists, "focusing both on 'circumvention' technology to help them work around government-imposed firewalls and on new strategies to protect their own communications and data from government intrusion" (Quinn). Furthermore, the U.S. has funded training for around 5,000 activists around the world, aiming to teach them how to use these new technologies. At one of these trainings in Beirut, one of the computers of a Tunisian activist was found to be infected with "key-logging" software that could communicate whatever he was typing to security agents.

The United States first began to publicly leverage new Internet technologies in 2009, when it asked Twitter to "delay a planned upgrade that would have cut service to Iranians who were organizing mass protests over disputed elections" (Quinn). Since then, the State Department has regarded new media technologies, especially social media, as a key part of its global strategy--it launched its own Twitter feeds in Arabic, Farsi, and Hindi, and also negotiated with China over the censorship of Google results.

Some U.S. lawmakers have criticized the Department for not doing enough to promote new media technology, but the State Department affirms that they are now going "full speed ahead to get the money out the door" (Posner, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor). The U.S. has helped to fund the development of a dozen new circumvention technologies, and there are more in the works, since activists are constantly coming up against different forms of censorship.

Posner stated that it is important to note, however, that these new technologies also carry some risks: "secure on-line tools useful for underground pro-democracy activists might also be useful for drug cartels or terrorist cells, raising new law enforcement and national security issues that need to be resolved" (Quinn). The goal of this technology is to protect people who are, in a peaceful manner, working for human rights, but what happens when this same technology falls into the wrong hands? The rapid advances of modern technology demonstrate how useful such tools can be--but also serves as a reminder that a tool is only as effective as its wielder.