The views expressed herein represent the views of a majority of the members of the Caravel’s Editorial Board and are not reflective of the position of any individual member, the newsroom staff, or Georgetown University.

A constellation of surveillance cameras keeps watch over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, the site of the quashed 1989 protest movement.

The rapid technological advances in the fields of electronics, communications, and processing presaged a new era of connectivity and a new advance in the spread of democracy. The unrest across the Middle East in the early 2010s seemed to prove to many that social media and technology would unite communities in the fight for greater freedom and help them throw off oppressive governments. We were misguided.

These governments instead adapted, appropriating the very technologies that once threatened them to augment their oppressive arsenal and secure even further their deadly grip on power. Malicious states throughout the world now employ artificial intelligence, advanced monitoring and prediction software, and mass censorship to preemptively eliminate threats to their authority.

Activists and freedom-seeking communities have been forced to adapt—sometimes by moving back to an analog world—but often by creatively harnessing new advances in technology to expose the truth, express their opinions freely, and advance their causes. Whether technology advances freedom or oppression depends entirely on who uses it and how. We see this struggle in play around the world today, from the U.S. southern border to Hong Kong, Cameroon, and Egypt.

The United States

The Trump administration has announced a plan to drastically expand DNA collection from migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. This data will be stored in an FBI-run criminal database, allowing the U.S. government access to large amounts of biometric data on migrants. Under the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, anyone arrested on federal charges can have DNA taken, and crossing the border between ports of entry is considered a federal crime.

President Donald Trump receives a briefing from Customs and Border Protection officers on efforts to secure the southern border.

Police at the border already use rapid-test DNA kits to identify fraudulent cases of migrants traveling with children who are not biologically theirs. This new policy responds to the large increase in illegal border crossings, which reached nearly one million in fiscal year 2019. It also represents a shift in the use of DNA-gathering technology for the U.S. government as it moves from criminal investigation to popular surveillance. Legal experts and migrant rights’ activists have raised concerns about privacy and how this data might be used to identify or track family members already residing in the United States.

Xinjiang

CCTV cameras, often equipped with infrared (night-vision) and facial recognition capabilities, dot public spaces in Xinjiang, the western autonomous region of China home to the Muslim Uighur minority group. Wifi sniffer programs track all computer use in the region, and a Chinese speech-recognition company provides the government with the ability to identify targeted citizens’ voices.

Officials pore through legal, bank, and health records to create a comprehensive record of the lives of non-Han Chinese, minorities that the government considers a threat to stability. Incessant vehicle checkpoints expose citizens’ movements across the region. Under the guise of free annual physical exams, Chinese authorities steadily expand a database of citizens’ DNA and blood types, directly linking the data to patients’ national ID numbers. Legions of government-chosen cadres conduct “homestays” with families in Xinjiang, ostensibly “fostering ethnic harmony” but in reality collecting and updating all sorts of qualitative data about the residents upon whose lives they intrude.

In Xinjiang, the Chinese government has quietly constructed a scarily sweeping surveillance state. All the repression—the “reeducation” camps, the forced homestays, the disappearances of minority leaders—could be possible without such a thorough police apparatus, but it certainly would not exist at its present scale without the comprehensive set of data that even now is being updated on each and every minority in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government’s plans for totalitarian control, its pursuit of complete and total stability, walk hand in hand with the technology it creates and deploys to deadly effect. If knowledge is power, the Chinese government intends to maximize both. Fellow authoritarian states will certainly take note. Xinjiang is but the first example of how surveillance and data collection, when integrated, can force a population to its knees.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, the Beijing-beholden government has weaponized technology to defeat massive protests that started in June when millions contested a proposed law allowing extradition to mainland China. Demonstrators (most of them initially peaceful) charged with “rioting” can face up to ten years behind bars.

The Hong Kong government and police have an arsenal of high tech tools to identify protestors, including the use of facial recognition technology, which is already widespread in China (telecoms providers on the mainland will now be required to take face scans of all applicants for a phone number). In a modern and built-up city like Hong Kong, the government can leverage ubiquitous video recordings to identify protestors. Doxxing, or the unauthorized online dissemination of a person’s identifying information as a means of intimidation, has become rampant as pro- and anti-government advocates alternately unmask each other over the internet.

As the city’s relationship to China closens under the quickly eroding fiction of “one country, two systems,” its citizens also fear that their biometric identities will be noted by the central government in Beijing and used to seek retribution. Hong Kong’s promised (if largely unfulfilled) “high degree of autonomy” is set to expire in 2047. Many of today’s protestors will still be in the workforce then, and—barring unforeseen developments in mainland politics—it is easy to imagine them facing consequences for their youthful actions.

Technology is not just a means of oppression. It is also a vital pathway to the sharing of information and the organizing of dissent. The Hong Kong protests lack a clear hierarchy of leadership. Intentionally decentralized and organized on platforms like encrypted messaging service Telegram, these protests have pitted human ingenuity against the nascent surveillance state. The European Information Security Summit (TEISS) reports that Telegram will shield the phone numbers of its users from Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.

Protestors in Hong Kong topple a street lamp in order to disable surveillance cameras used by police to identify demonstrators.

The umbrellas first used to defend against tear gas in the 2014 movement for direct democracy have been repurposed to block the view of surveillance cameras. One protestor, Carl Chow, told the Wall Street Journal that demonstrators have worn masks, dressed in identical clothing, and destroyed countless police cameras during marches through central Hong Kong. Subway riders have paid in cash or jumped over turnstiles to avoid being tracked by the transactions on their credit or transit cards. The government has struck back by invoking a colonial-era emergency powers law to ban face masks, while likely excepting police officers.

Cameroon & Sudan

Civilians in Sudan and Cameroon living under oppressive governments use social media to their advantage. This activism comes in the form of coordinating protests and launching hashtag campaigns. In Cameroon, a separatist conflict has marred the country’s Anglophone regions for three years. Anglophones based in Cameroon and in the diaspora have taken to Twitter to air their grievances and protest the brutal government crackdown. They share their opinions about the crisis and circulate gruesome photos of civilians allegedly killed by the government—while Cameroonian forces are the main culprit, the separatist fighters have also targeted civilians. Researchers Julius Nganji and Lynn Cockburn found that these efforts have provided an alternative space less vulnerable to government messaging.

In Sudan, many protesters organized their successful demonstrations challenging then-President Omar al-Bashir’s rule via social media. They used platforms like Twitter and Instagram to publicize developments in the country with hashtags like #SudanUprising and #KeepEyesOnSudan. One particular social media campaign, #BlueforSudan, caught the attention of many observers. Social media users around the world changed their profile pictures to solid blue fields in solidarity with the Sudanese.

It is no surprise that both the Cameroonian and Sudanese governments countered these efforts by shutting down the internet. In Cameroon, the internet was turned off in the Anglophone regions for more than 200 days. Cameroonians in the diaspora (and some on the ground) responded by launching a campaign with the hashtag #BringBackOurInternet. The Sudanese government also attempted to crush dissent with an internet shutdown that lasted more than one month. The shutdown ended only when the military council and democracy movement leaders reached a power-sharing agreement.

Beyond the organization and popularization of protests on social media, these two countries have also witnessed a proliferation of viral photo and video media to raise awareness about oppressive governments and gain the attention of international audiences. In Cameroon, the pursuit of justice for victims of an abusive military comes in the form of investigating video evidence of soldiers committing atrocities.

In July 2018, a grainy video began circulating on social media, showing several soldiers leading two women and two children down a path at gunpoint. They were blindfolded, forced to the ground, and shot more than 20 times. Some on social media doubted that the video was even from Cameroon, and the Cameroonian government dismissed it as fake news.

One month after the video surfaced, a new team of investigative journalists called BBC Africa Eye produced a video report titled “Anatomy of a Killing.” The investigation included satellite imagery and crowd-sourced analysis and uncovered the exact location of the killings, the range of time during which the video was recorded, and the identities of the soldiers. The report, shared on social media around the world, was informed by tips and insights from Cameroonians themselves. Cameroon’s government has since arrested seven soldiers in the video on charges of participation in murder, breach of regulations, and conspiracy.

Just like in Cameroon, videos and photos in Sudan have been used to publicize atrocities committed by government forces, but they have also been sources of inspiration for audiences both in Sudan and abroad. Video footage and a photo of a woman standing above a crowd of protestors—mostly women—leading a chant went viral in April 2019. Women have long played an important role in the Sudanese resistance, and the imagery of the photo is powerful.

The protestor is wearing a white thobe, a cotton robe that Sudanese women activists donned in the 1940s and 1950s, according to historian Marie Grace Brown. Her large gold earrings “[evoke] women’s wealth and domestic power” since jewelry has served as the vehicle for passing wealth from mother to daughter in Sudan. Viral images like this one put a face to the #BlueforSudan campaign that captured the attention of so many.

Egypt

Social media has played an important role in facilitating the creation, dissemination, and preservation of resistance art in Egypt. While political street art, graffiti, and calligraffiti have existed for centuries in Egypt, the Egyptian revolution of 2011 against then-President Hosni Mubarak gave artists an unprecedented canvas on which to showcase their work.

Egyptian artist Ganzeer garnered international attention for his participation in the 2011 revolution. One 13-feet-tall mural he created depicted a 16-year-old boy who had been shot dead by police. Another work featured a confrontation between a tank and a bread-delivery boy riding a bicycle. Art like Ganzeer’s played a crucial role in spreading ideas not represented by Egyptian mass media organizations, which usually shied away from criticizing Mubarak’s regime.

Ganzeer’s “Tank Versus Bread Biker & Sad Panda” in Cairo.

The linkage of social media and resistance art magnified the impact of already powerful images. Facebook pages such as Graffiti in Egypt, Street Art in Egypt, and Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution act as online archives to preserve opposition art destroyed by government forces after the 2011 revolution as they repainted walls or demolished and rebuilt them. Unfortunately, the end of Mubarak’s reign did not mean the end of oppression for the Egyptian people. Artists recreated their works only to see them removed again in an unending battle for free expression.

Cairo-based artist and activist Bahia Shehab spoke to this reality: “Our work gets erased very quickly on the street. That’s why TV and the Internet are very useful tools—you can communicate your messages in the digital sphere. That’s the game-changer now. The government can resist you, it can try to hide what you try to communicate, but it’s a completely different ballgame now.”

Protests rose again against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on September 20. Ganzeer continues creating art that protests el-Sisi’s rule, including a popular image of el-Sisi as a burglar. In a statement to the Caravel, Ganzeer noted how “combined use of ‘the cloud’... and social media has aided tremendously in the spreading of work for on-the-ground use. The Sisi poster, for example … made its way to print in Paris, Berlin, New York, Oslo, and Cairo in practically a matter of hours of it having gone online.” The image also appears on the front page of the September edition of the Caravel.

While el-Sisi’s government has cracked down on dissenters and has imprisoned over 2,000 people, citizens continue to persevere, and artists continue to spread their messages online despite the risk of being charged with “misuse of social media.”

A Global Problem Needs A Global Solution

The technology debate is defined mostly by a handful of companies. Twitter, Facebook, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Apple, Microsoft, Tencent, and Huawei dominate much of the social media, hardware, and information systems industries. These companies will determine whether technology tips the balance in favor of oppression or resistance. Their current reactions portend trouble ahead.

With great fanfare on August 19, Apple CEO Tim Cook signed onto a Business Roundtable statement redefining the purpose of the corporation. Companies, the statement argued, should “[support] the communities in which [they] work.” Just two months later, Cook shows that Apple will eagerly and shamefully kowtow to the demands of authoritarian Beijing in service of profit: Apple removed HKmap.Live from its App Store recently under pressure from Beijing. The app used crowdsourced data to show the real-time location of police in Hong Kong and allowed protestors to avoid law enforcement. Apple said the app failed to comply with local laws. In doing so, it revealed that the communities it serves are only so valuable as the dollars they bring in.

Apple’s Tim Cook sits with President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, at an event for the American Technology Council in 2017.

Other companies have reacted similarly, opting to pursue greater profits at the cost of their values and morals. In the face of threats to their profit margins, companies spanning technology, retail, travel, sports, and other industries have submitted to Chinese demands. Technology companies have similarly pursued profit at the expense of the morals they claim to uphold by contracting to build AI systems for various governments, including Google’s infamous Project Maven, which built an AI system for the U.S. military’s drone program. Employee protests at the company forced it to back off the project but not abandon it entirely.

It is time for consumers and employees of the technology sector to take a stand on this issue. Much of the time, higher profits and a company’s stated values will happily align. When profit and what is right are opposed, however, companies must be reminded that there are lines that cannot be crossed. Consumers and employees must hold companies accountable and side with those that support the technologies of resistance, not those that actively undermine freedom and human rights by empowering oppressive states with the tools to make their populations toe the line.

Former-President Bill Clinton once famously, and wrongly, described Chinese efforts to censor the internet as “sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” In hindsight, he naïvely underestimated the capacity of governments to design and leverage technologies of oppression. As technology continues its tireless sprint into a yet-unknown future, we cannot afford to make the same mistake.

Have a different opinion? Write a letter to the editor and submit it via this form to be considered for publication on our website!