MICHAEL LEDEEN: Bad Guys and the Internet.

Reading around the Net today, I am awed by the dramatic reversal of attitude. Compared to those happy early days, most of what I read is fearful and/or angry. As a Russian commentator observed back when, the Internet did indeed threaten tyrants, because it provided internal challengers with information that both exposed the malefactions of the regime and also enabled the opposition to plan their actions. If you talk to Iranian anti-regime activists and ask them what they most need, they will usually reply that they need secure communications with one another, along with access to detailed, reliable reporting on their own country.

However, as that smart Russian commentator observed, the same Internet that threatened the tyrants could also be used to suppress the promised wide-open exchange of facts and ideas. And so it has. The world’s most effective oppressors, those in places like Iran, Russia, North Korea, China and Cuba, have all developed technology to isolate their citizens from the Net, and to inundate their cyberspace with the regime’s own disinformation. No doubt they have helped each other, as free and open communication threatens them all.

The latest example comes from Putin.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.