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Abstract.

Social media has amplified voices from various communities and played a crucial role in implementing social change through bringing awareness to these issues via social networking platforms. However, increased government surveillance, data collection by big tech companies, and privacy breaches have compromised activists and advocates themselves. In this paper, the methods of how social media compromises activists’ identities will be discussed. By understanding how these identities are compromised, the ensuing risks and sometimes extremely harsh consequences will be exemplified through a case study of those who opposed the Iranian regime during recent years, including how the government attained intelligence about activists who opposed them, and the price these activists paid due to their compromised information.

A brief history of online activism.

In historical context, we can look at one of the most influential activists that has used online tools to help achieve social change: Julian Assange and his platform known as Wikileaks.  Assange began his work into activism during the 1990’s but became widely known around the year 2007 when he released a video, he had titled Collateral murder (Manne, 2011). The video had been received by Chelsea Manning, known at the time as Bradley Manning. The video itself contained footage showing the murder of 15 civilians by US military personnel in an Apache attack helicopter. The release of the video also happened alongside the release of what became known as the Afghan War logs, about 92,000 documents detailing various aspects of the war in Afghanistan, particularly, events which would have been considered criminal by most nations (Manne, 2011). Assange leveraged various online platforms in order to spread the leaks and still does to this day, although it is done on his behalf now as he is currently imprisoned in the UK. While it may seem that we have only high-profile activists that could be the centre of attention such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning, some issues that call for social change are promoted collectively, and the individuals may also be targeted in a collective manner also.

In more recent years, the world has seen the attention women in Iran have received globally, pushing for social change in regard to women’s rights and equality. The protest began in opposition against the Iranian government enforcing that women must wear the hijab, but over time, the protest evolved into one that opposed the ruling government and its heavy handedness in the country when it came to equality and women’s rights more broadly. University of Oxford Scholar Mahsa Alimardani has stated the importance of social media activism in this instance (Alterman, 2022), stating that while social media itself does not necessarily change circumstances, it does bring attention to the issue, which in turn brings in more support from people to pressure the authorities for change. However, the Iranian government are aware of this, and have leveraged social media themselves to promote influence of their own agenda, by using their access to large media organizations, while simultaneously limiting access to the internet for citizens, and also promoting their own views via social media (Schapowal & Schnur, n.d.). This demonstrates the double-edged sword social media can be for activists, bringing both attention to their cause, but attention to themselves, and in this instance, being leveraged by the government themselves.

While it would be easy to state that this kind of oppressive action may only occur in countries where totalitarian governments exist, it would be to our benefit to remember the rhetoric some western politicians have used in regard to online activists. For example, the current United States President Joe Biden once referred to Julian Assange a “high tech terrorist” (Manne, 2011), with Sarah Palin likening him to Osama Bin Laden, while Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump expressed similar sentiments. This opposition to an activist who exposed a war crime crosses the political spectrum from left to right, showing that any activist regardless of position could be a target of any party, whether conservative or progressive. This demonstrates that for activists, the issue of compromised identities and consequences for it is not an issue based on political spectrum and leanings, but one of citizenry and being subject to authorities or corporate entities abusing their power and influence.

Compromised identities.

When an activist’s identity is compromised, it can cause many complications for the individual or many individuals, often putting them in significant danger. We have seen the examples of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and the activists in Iran, and these are only a few. Activists, especially those using technology may often be well equipped with the tools to hide their identity if they choose to, such as Julian Assange or Edward Snowden who are well seasoned when it comes to hacking, programming, and cybersecurity protocols. However, with social media becoming more popular, activists now have easy access to platforms where they can spread information about their cause, but can come with the risk of compromising their identity with new metadata policies by social media sites. This is the issue many activists face now, and part of the problem is the terms of service these platforms use.

Papacharissi (2010) suggests that Facebook for example considers the data it collects from users as proprietary for marketing purposes. This may be true, or their original intention, but perhaps not the intention of other parties. Governments and authorities globally have begun to enact measures or regulations where if they deem an individual’s personal data to be of interest, they may compel social media sites to divulge the information to them. Papacharisso (2010) emphasizes the importance of ownership of ones data as different platforms, and data begin to coincide with each other, becoming a type of monolith where data have may once been owned by one platform could now be owned by many. For instance, Meta now owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp messenger. If an SNS can be copyrighted and that data created becomes proprietarily owned by the umbrella company, this could be a kind of treasure trove for interested parties looking into circumventing, discrediting, or in extreme cases, imprisoning activists, such as the 170 prisoners of conscience imprisoned in Vietnam (Pearson, 2020) for criticizing their government. Corporations may also take advantage of this, such as BP, who conducted surveillance on activists who opposed their green policies, stating they were deceiving the public and that the policies were essentially a public relations stunt (Uldam, 2018).

It may well be that Meta wants this data for marketing only, as previously stated, but that does not necessitate that governments or malicious actors would not try to attain this data for their own means, regardless of how genuine Meta’s initial intentions may be. This is not to mention the metadata retention laws being implemented in countries like Australia, where ISP’s must retain users’ metadata for 2 years (Sadler, 2023), an act that has already been exploited by private companies extending far beyond the original requirements of only 22 law enforcement agencies, showing the potential for corporate influence over activists if they choose to do so.

Consequences

The result of diminishing privacy, particularly for online activists, can be seen across the globe. We know the big names of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, but there are others who may have received less attention in the media, such as activists in Iran over recent years. According to the Freedom House Report (2016), 27 percent of the world’s population live in countries where people have been imprisoned for opposing against the ruling government. Iran is one of these countries. This has become far more common in Iran since the early 2000’s, particularly around the time of the Green Movement (Faris & Rahimi, 2015), which opposed the election results in 2009 which led to opposition leader Mousavi being defeated. Alongside Green Movement supporters using social media, perhaps the most well-known social media activist for this movement was Mousavi himself. Prior to using social media for intelligence to crackdown on the movement, the Iranian regime at the time attempted to suppress activists by more typical methods. Initially, and even before the Green Movement, the Iranian government had a history of imprisoning bloggers dissidents (Faris & Rahimi, 2015), among other methods like violent suppression. The Iranian government then saw the value in the possible intelligence they could gain on its opposition via social media that was not state controlled, and in a strategic move, unblocked Facebook for use by citizens (Faris & Rahimi, 2015). Prior to this, Iranian citizens were unable to access Facebook. This strategy of unblocking Facebook as suggested by Rahimi (2015) was implemented specifically as an intelligence gathering resource, with a priority placed on pro Mousavi supporters. This move gives a strong indication in how the Iranian regime viewed Facebook during this period, as a source of information for those who opposed them. This also coincided with attacks in the same year on Twitter which had been used by activists. The Iranian Cyber Army (Arrington, 2009) is a group suspected to be affiliated with the Iranian government.

This intelligence gathering move via social media may have had an effect, but internet control was the next attempt that occurred several years later. Essentially, this involved creating an internal internet for Iranian citizens, much like China, also with heavy state control and censorship (Faris & Rahimi, 2015). This involved creating parallel like websites that worked like conventional social media websites, such as Facebook. In essence, an internal, Iranian only social network with government control. This allowed the Iranian government to exert control over the information that Iranian citizens were subject to, generally, information that painted the government in a positive light. Although very oppressive, this also demonstrates that the Iranian government had seen the effect of online activism, enough so to deem it such a threat that it had to be controlled. Although tech savvy activists could work around this, those with less experience could still be monitored by the government, while giving the regime the simultaneous advantage of controlling the flow of information being spread. This exposure is what allowed for continued imprisonment and violent action by the government against activists, but in a more targeted and concentrated fashion. This undoubtedly was an effective tactic in helping the government suppress the Green Movement, which was ultimately defeated.

While the movement was defeated, Iran developed a culture of protest and activism in later years as characterized by protests during the last few years related to issues of economy, human rights, water shortages and political corruption. However, the current regime still exerts high levels of control over its online infrastructure, so the identities and information about activists is still very easily compromised, which can lead to violent repercussions, imprisonment or other consequences as previously stated. Iran is only one example of this, and it extends to countries like Saudi Arabia and citizens being imprisoned during the Arab Spring (Pan & Siegel, 2020), or activists arrested during the Hong Kong protests (Griffiths, 2020). We should also not assume that this is not something occurring in the western world. Barack Obama signed the Cybersecurity Act in 2015 (Rep. Dent, 2015), which worked as something of an extension to the Patriot Act (Jaeger et al., 2003), allowing for more access to citizens personal metadata, messages, email, and online interactions through social media. In essence, a measure that can compromise activists’ identities.

These are only a few of the currently imprisoned online activists. As can be seen in these examples, many of their actions can be considered quite harmless, amounting only to critique for the most part. To demonstrate the continued risk of actions being taken against online activists, the Freedom House report (2016) found that 27 percent of the world’s population live in countries where people have been jailed for critique against the government, while 67 percent reside in countries where it is illegal to criticize the government or currently ruling body. If these countries implement laws or regulations that are like Vietnam’s Article 17, disallowing criticism of the state, coupled with governments instating laws compelling social media platforms to hand over identity data where they see fit, we can see how easily a dissident’s identity, safety, and even their life can be put at risk.

Conclusion

Our ability to oppose authority without compromising our safety is integral to societal development. Today, our online identity is linked to that safety. We should not assume that legal always equals morally correct. The opposing position activists take is sometimes necessary to provide the catalyst for change, such as Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of a bus, leading to the civil rights movement. While it may be argued that some should take better measures to hide their identity, is the necessity of citizens having to hide their identity from authorities to oppose it not a commentary on that authority in itself and the justification for needing anonymity to begin with? Our willingness to incentivize change should come with the simple right to do so, without fear of social media and authorities cooperating in order to stifle that change.

 

References

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Pan, J., & Siegel, A. A. (2020). How Saudi Crackdowns Fail to Silence Online Dissent. American Political Science Review, 114(1), 109–125. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000650

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