In
internet governance
Internet governance consists of a system of laws, rules, policies and practices that dictate how its board members manage and oversee the affairs of any internet related-regulatory body. This article describes how the Internet was and is currentl ...
, network sovereignty, also called '
digital sovereignty
' or 'cyber sovereignty
', is the effort of a governing entity, such as a
state, to create boundaries on a network and then exert a form of control, often in the form of law enforcement over such boundaries.
Much like states invoke sole power over their physical territorial boundaries,
state sovereignty, such governing bodies also invoke sole power within the network boundaries they set and claim network sovereignty. In the context of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, the intention is to govern the web and control it within the borders of the state. Often, that is witnessed as states seeking to control all information flowing into and within their borders.
The concept stems from questions of how states can maintain law over an entity such like the Internet, whose infrastructure exists in real space, but its entity itself exists in the intangible
cyberspace
Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday rea ...
. According to
Joel Reidenberg, "Networks have key attributes of sovereignty: participant/citizens via service provider membership agreements, 'constitutional' rights through contractual terms of service, and police powers through taxation (fees) and system operator sanctions." Indeed, many countries have pushed to ensure the protection of their citizens' privacy and of internal business longevity by data protection and
information privacy legislation (see the
EU's
Data Protection Directive, the
UK's
Data Protection Act 1998
The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA, c. 29) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom designed to protect personal data stored on Computer, computers or in an organised paper filing system. It enacted provisions from the European Union (EU) Da ...
).
Network sovereignty has implications for
state security,
Internet governance
Internet governance consists of a system of laws, rules, policies and practices that dictate how its board members manage and oversee the affairs of any internet related-regulatory body. This article describes how the Internet was and is currentl ...
, and the users of the Internet's national and international networks.
Implications for state security
Networks are challenging places for states to extend their sovereign control. In her book ''Sociology in the Age of the Internet'', communications professor Allison Cavanagh argues that state sovereignty has been drastically decreased by networks.
Other scholars such as
Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1947) is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York City, and Centennial ...
and Joel R. Reidenberg agree. Sassen argues that the state's power is limited in cyberspace and that networks, particularly the numerous private tunnels for institutions such as banks.
Sassen further postulates that these private tunnels create tensions within the state because the state itself is not one voice.
Reidenberg refers to what he terms "Permeable National Borders," effectively echoing Sassen's arguments about the private tunnels, which pass through numerous networks. Reidenberg goes on to state that intellectual property can easily pass through such networks, which incentivizes businesses and content providers to encrypt their products. The various interests in a network are echoed within the state, by
lobby groups.
Internet governance
Many governments are trying to exert some forms of control over the Internet. Some examples include the SOPA-PIPA debates in the United States, the
Golden Shield Project in China, and new laws that grant greater power to the
Roskomnadzor in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
.
SOPA-PIPA
With the failed
Stop Online Piracy Act, the United States would have allowed law enforcement agencies to prevent online piracy by blocking access to websites. The response from bipartisan lobbying groups was strong. Stanford Law Professors Mark Lemly, David Levin, and David Post published an article called "Don't Break the Internet." There were several
protests against SOPA and PIPA, including a Wikipedia blackout in response to statements by Senator
Patrick Leahy, who was responsible for introducing the
PROTECT IP Act. Both acts viewed as good for mass media because they limited access to certain websites. The acts were viewed as an attack on net neutrality and so were seen as potential damaging to the networked public sphere.
Golden Shield Project
The Golden Shield Project, sometimes known as Great Firewall of China, prevents those with a Chinese
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
from accessing certain banned websites inside the country. People are prevented from accessing sites that the government deems problematic. That creates tension between the
netizen community and the government, according to scholar Min Jiang.
Roskomnadzor
Russia's Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in
the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) was created in December 2008 in accordance with President's Decree No. 1715. The agency was created to protect personal data owners' rights. According to the Russian government, the agency has three primary objectives:
* ensuring society demand in high-quality telecommunication services as well as information and communication technologies;
* promoting mass communications and freedom of mass media;
* ensuring protection of citizens' rights to privacy, personal and family confidentiality.
On 1 September 2015, a new data localization law provided Roskomnadzor with greater oversight. The law itself stipulates that any personal data collected from Russian citizens online must be stored in server databases that are physically located in Russia. It "creates a new procedure restricting access to
websites violating Russian laws on personal data." Even with staunch pressure from those who promote "free flow of information," President
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
and the
Kremlin
The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...
remain stolid in assertions of network sovereignty to protect Russian citizens.
Other examples
China's approach could also be repeated in many other countries around the world.
One example was the
Internet censorship in the Arab Spring
The level of Internet censorship in the Arab Spring was escalated. Lack of Internet freedom was a tactic employed by authorities to quell protests. Rulers and governments across the Arab world utilized the law, technology, and violence to control ...
, when the Egyptian government in particular tried to block access to
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
. Also, during the
2011 England riots
The 2011 England riots, more widely known as the London riots, were a series of riots between 6 and 11 August 2011. Thousands of people rioted in cities and towns across England, which saw looting, arson, as well as mass deployment of police ...
, the British government tried to block
Blackberry Messenger
BBM, also known by its full name BlackBerry Messenger, was a proprietary mobile instant messenger and videotelephony application included on BlackBerry devices that allows messaging and voice calls between BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10, iOS, Andr ...
.
Response to Internet governance
Many believe that the government has no right to be on the Internet. As Law Professor David Post at the University of Georgetown argued, "'
tatesare mapping statehood onto a domain that doesn't recognize physical boundaries,'" at least in the context on the internet. He went on to say, "'When 150 jurisdictions apply their law, it's a conflict-of-law nightmare.'"
Some proponents of the internet, such as
John Perry Barlow, argued that the current form of the Internet is ungovernable and should remain as open as possible. Barlow's essay was written about the 1990s Internet, and while it has changed very much since then, the ideas in his work are still salient in the ongoing debates surrounding the future of the Internet. In his essay
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is a widely distributed early paper on the applicability (or lack thereof) of government on the rapidly growing Internet. Commissioned for the pioneering Internet project '' 24 Hours in Cyberspace'', ...
, he advocated that governments should stay out of the internet.
Network Sovereignty can affect state security, law enforcement on the internet, and the ways that private citizens use the internet, as many people attempt to circumvent the protections and legal devices, placed by many governments on the Internet, by using tools such as VPNs.
Impact of VPNs
Virtual Private Networks
A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...
(VPNs) are a significant tool to allow private citizens to get around network sovereignty and any restrictions their government may place on their access to the internet. VPNs allow a computer to route its Internet connection from one location to another. For example one would connect from a connection at point A to a connection at point B, and to others, it would appear that they are accessing the Internet from point B even if they are in point A. For example, in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, VPNs are used to access otherwise-blocked content. Yang gives the example of pornography stating that with VPN, "smut that's banned in the US can wind its way into American homes through electrical impulses in, say,
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
."
In that example, by using VPNs, an Internet user in the United States could access banned material that is hosted in Amsterdam by accessing through a server, hosted in Amsterdam, to make it appear that the user is in Amsterdam, based on the IP address. Therefore, citizens have a way around network sovereignty, simply by accessing a different server through a VPN. That greatly limits how governments can enforce network sovereignty and protect their cyberspace borders. Essentially, there is no way that a government could prevent every citizen from accessing banned content by means such as VPNs.
Rationales
Protection of national traffic
One of the most significant reasons for enforcing network sovereignty is to prevent the scanning of information that travels through other countries. For example, any internet traffic that travels through the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
is subject to the
Patriot Act and so may be examined by the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
, regardless of the country of origin. Jonathan Obar and Andrew Clement refer to the routing of a transmission from a point in state A to another location in state A through state B as ''Boomerang Routing''.
They provide the example of traffic from Canada being routed through the United States before returning to Canada, which enables the United States to track and examine the Canadian traffic.
Copyright protection
Governments may want to enact network sovereignty to protect copyright within their borders. The purpose of SOPA-PIPA was to prevent what was effectively deemed theft. Content providers want their content to be used as intended because of the property rights associated with that content.
One instance of such protection is in
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
.
E-commerce
Currently, private networks are suing others who interfere with their property rights. For the effective implementation of e-commerce on the Internet, merchants require restrictions on access and encryption to protect not only their content but also the information of content purchasers. Currently, one of the most effective ways to regulate e-commerce is to allow
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s (ISPs) to regulate the market. The opposing argument to regulating the internet by network sovereignty to allow e-commerce is that it would break the Internet's egalitarian and open values because it would force governments and ISPs to regulate not only the Internet's content but also how the content is consumed.
Role of WIPO
The
World Intellectual Property Organization
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, 15 specialized agencies of the United Nation ...
is a
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
body, designed to protect intellectual property across all of its member states.
WIPO allows content to traverse various networks through their Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The PCT allows for international patents by providing security for content providers across state borders. It is up to states to enforce their own network sovereignty over these patents. Global standards for copyright and encryption are viewed as one way that governments could cooperate. With global standards it is easier to enforce network sovereignty because it builds respect for intellectual property and maintains the rights of content creators and providers. It is possible that governments may not be able to keep up with regulating these initiatives. For example, in the 1995
Clipper Chip system, the
Clinton administration
Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Re ...
in the United States reneged on its original policy because it was deemed that it would soon be too easy to crack the chips.
One alternative proposed was the implementation of the
digital signature
A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...
, which could be used to protect network sovereignty by having content providers and governments sign off the content, like for a digital envelope.
This system has already been implemented in the use of
Wi-Fi Protected Access Enterprise networks, some secured websites, and software distribution. It allows content to pass through borders without difficulty because it is facilitated through organizations such as WIPO.
Countries
In his 2015 book ''
Data and Goliath'', American security expert
Bruce Schneier says the cyber sovereignty movement, in countries such as
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
and
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
, was given an enormous boost by the
2013 revelations of widespread international NSA surveillance, which those countries pointed to as justification for their activities and evidence of U.S. hypocrisy on Internet freedom issues.
China
Cybersovereignty (网络主权) has been a mainstay of Chinese Internet policy in recent years, and the international promotion of cybersovereignty forms an integral part of Chinese foreign policy, although it remains ill-defined within Chinese discourse.
The
Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
to regulate the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
domestically. Its role in
internet censorship in China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) affects both publishing and viewing online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of th ...
is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic.
The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g.
Google Search
Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world.
The ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, and others) and mobile apps, and
requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.
The Chinese government and ruling
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
asserts cyber sovereignty, or control over all of China’s digital resources, including servers, user data, technical infrastructure, and tech firms operating in China, both within the country and overseas. China’s 2017
Cybersecurity Law
Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...
fo 2017 requires firms that offer "critical information infrastructure" in mainland China to store their data on Chinese government-run servers, allowing the state to access resources such as Apple’s China-based iCloud data. The
Data Security Law of 2021 also empowers the Chinese government to conduct national security audits over firms operating in China which gather user data.
France
Project Andromède launched in 2009, with the aim to spend €285 million on "cloud souverain" or sovereign cloud..The government spent €75 million on each of its two national champions,
Cloudwatt and Numergy, but these two sold only €8 million worth of services, combined..On January 1, 2020, all services were terminated and clients were advised their data was deleted.
Russia
The
Sovereign Internet Law
The Sovereign Internet Law (russian: Закон о «суверенном интернете») is the informal name for a set of 2019 amendments to existing Russian legislation that mandate Internet surveillance and grants the Russian government ...
is a set of 2019 amendments to existing Russian legislation that mandate
Internet surveillance
Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be comple ...
and grants the Russian government powers to partition Russia from the rest of the Internet, including the creation of a
national fork of the
Domain Name System
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...
.
References
{{reflist, colwidth=30em
Internet censorship
Sovereignty