The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency: Why the Information Revolution May Not Lead to Security, Democracy, or Peace

1. The Complexity of Transparency

Chapter 1 ____________________________ The Complexity of Transparency “No government can control the global information environment.” —Former U.S. State Department official, Jamie Metzl 1 “Information, whatever the quantity, is not the same as understanding.” —Financial Times writer Christopher Dunkley2 In November 2002, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out in the Guangdong Province of China. The virus ultimately killed nearly 800 people, and infected approximately ten times that number around the world.3 The Chinese government initially ignored the disease . However, though the government issued no official reports during the first months of the epidemic, news spread quickly via mobile phone text messages, E-mail, and Internet chat rooms.4 A regional Chinese newspaper broke the story, reporting that word of a “fatal flu in Guangdong” had reached 120 million people through mobile phone text messages. With the news so widely known, Chinese authorities were forced to acknowledge and respond to the outbreak.5 Officials were reluctant to report the full number of SARS cases at first, but the World Health Organization (WHO) began reporting its own data, which pressured Beijing to bring its figures in-line.6 When the government announced that the number of SARS cases was ten times higher than reported earlier, one Chinese student expressed no surprise. “We already knew it was much worse from reading about it on the Internet,” she said. “I don’t think they can continue to cover up the truth.”7 More than two years later, on May 9, 2005, Newsweek magazine published a two-sentence article reporting that an American interrogator 1 at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba had flushed the Koran of a Muslim detainee down a toilet.8 The story, which Newsweek later retracted after an anonymous Pentagon source said he could no longer stand by it, prompted a press conference by a Pakistani opposition party member named Imran Khan. Khan called on his government to request an apology from the United States and announced that “Islam is under attack in the name of the war on terror.”9 Urdu- and English-language newspapers in Pakistan gave the story front-page coverage and the Pakistani parliament debated the matter. The governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia issued critical public statements and mass protests followed in Pakistan, Gaza, and Indonesia. Protests in Afghanistan spread to several towns and turned violent, leading to the deaths of seventeen people and injuries of over one hundred more. Though there are numerous credible reports of other cases of Koran desecration , the Newsweek story appears to be false.10 These events show two faces of rising global transparency, the increasing availability of information around the world. The first depicts the conventional view: authoritarian governments losing control over information thanks to technology, the media, and international organizations . The second shows the darker side of global transparency, in which some of the same forces spread hatred, conflict, and lies. This darker side of transparency is less noted but, unfortunately, it will be at least as influential in the coming decades. Global transparency will indeed bring many benefits, but predictions that it will lead inevitably to peace, understanding, and democracy, are wrong. The trend toward greater transparency is transforming international politics. Greater transparency reduces uncertainty, which can decrease the likelihood of war and increase international security if it shows that nations have neither the intent nor the capability to harm each other. Greater transparency also increases knowledge of other peoples, which can increase tolerance toward others and decrease the likelihood of conflict . When armed conflicts do break out, greater transparency may facilitate grassroots support for intervention. Finally, greater transparency decentralizes global power by breaking governments’ monopoly over information and by empowering Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) and citizens. Armed with information, NGOs build coalitions in order to encourage political change, spark public protests when they publicize transgressions, or merely threaten publicity—a phenomenon known as “regulation by shaming.”11 Citizens, for their part, can use information to mobilize support for change and even overthrow authori2 The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency  tarian governments. Greater transparency gives citizens and NGOs new tools of influence and, when wielded appropriately, can be a force for good governance, freedom, and democracy. These possibilities have raised hopes that transparency will usher in an era of unprecedented justice and peace.12 Optimists predict that greater transparency will reduce the incidence of conflicts caused by misunderstandings. It can...