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[Servant Corps]

AGENTS of the Stasi could only have dreamed of the equipment that powered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s apparatus. The monitoring of messages, mails and chats — no communications seemed beyond the reach of the colonel.

What is even more surprising is where Colonel Qaddafi got his gear: companies from France, South Africa and other countries. Narus met with Colonel Qaddafi’s people just as the protests were getting under way, but shied away from striking a deal. As Narus had supplied technology to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it was probably a matter of relations, not ethics.

Amid the cheerleading over events in the Middle East, it’s easy to forget the uses of technology. In addition to the narrative celebrating how Facebook and Twitter have enabled movements around the world, we need to confront another tale: how companies have helped suppress them.

Libya is only the latest place where technology has turned up. Activists arrested and later released in Bahrain report being presented with transcripts of their own messages — a capacity their government acquired through equipment from Siemens, the industrial giant, and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks, and Trovicor, another company.

Earlier this year, after storming the police headquarters in Egypt, activists discovered that the government had been using a trial version of a tool that allowed them to eavesdrop on conversations, widely believed to be safe from wiretapping.

And it’s not just technology; some companies supply dictators with solutions to block sites. A report by OpenNet Initiative revealed that Netsweeper together with companies Websense and McAfee have developed programs to meet most of the needs of governments in the Middle East and North Africa — in Websense’s case, despite promises not to supply its technology to governments.

The government ruling the United States, the world’s defender of “freedom,” has little to say about such complicity. Though Hillary Rodham Clinton often speaks publicly on the subject, she has yet to address how companies from her country undermine her goal. In December the State Department gave Cisco an award in recognition of its “citizenship.”

Such reticence may not be accidental, since many of these tools were first developed for enforcement and agencies. Policy makers are therefore in a delicate spot. It is hard to rein in the companies they have nurtured; it is also hard to resist the argument from regimes that they need such technologies to monitor extremists. It’s getting harder to ignore the fact that extremists aren’t the only ones under surveillance.

The response is to ban the export of such technologies to governments. But as long as states continue using technologies themselves, sanctions won’t eliminate the problem — the supply will always find a way to meet the demand. Dictators are still welcome in Washington: it’s a good bet that much of the spying done in Egypt was done with the support of his allies.

What we need is a recognition that reliance on technology is undermining freedom in places where the system provides little protection. That recognition should fuel restrictions on the sector, including a reconsideration of the extent to which it needs technology in our world.

As countries like Belarus, Iran and Myanmar digest the lessons of the Spring, their demand for technology will grow. Tools could undermine the “freedom” agenda in the same way exports undermine initiatives. How many activists would trust the pronouncements of governments again?

Evgeny Morozov is a scholar at Stanford University and the author of “The Delusion: The Side of Freedom.”

Original Source

I have stripped most of the adjectives and adjective clauses in this paper to make a point. The article makes little, if any sense, if you do not have these adjectives and adjective clauses describing and telling you about all these nouns that it is naming. The problem is that some of these adjectives are really opinions in disguise: words like "repressive", "global", "eccentric", "freedom", "rosy", "Western", etc. and were considered so common that they required no backing, explanation, or even evidence to "prove" their truth. Could adjectives be overused, in the sense that they excuse the writer from defending his point?

[Bauglir]

I... actually like your version better than the original. It still makes its original point, but is subtler about it because it forces you to draw the conclusion (modern technology helps dictators, and companies have no problem with helping out if there's profit in it; caution needs to be exercised).

[scriver]

This was one of the first lessons, and definitely one of the hardest enforced, in my "Journalistic Writing" class - don't use emotionally loaded words. It's tricking the reader into feeling what you want him to feel (just like how sound and music is often used in documentaries), and it's very dishonest.

So yes, even though this seems to be more of an "opinion piece" than a news/journalistic article, I think words, any group of words, can be used wrongly. It won't defend your opinion from someone who disagrees with it, of course, but it is a good way to reinforce that opinion with people who already agree with it without having to back it up, as well as a sneaky way to plant opinions in people who did not have much of an opinion on the matter before.

[Pistolero]

Without reading the original, I want to say that aside from the last sentence, your version makes complete sense. However, you seem to be quoting from an opinion article anyway, expecting neutral language there might be a little too much to ask.

Edit: yes, clicked the link and right at the top it says 'opinion pages'.

Funny story Scriver: My high school english class was taught by a former news ltd journalist and involved a lot of discussion on how to use language to manipulate your audience and get away with it. Actually, if we're defining emotionally loaded words as including some of the language that was edited out of this article, emotionally loaded words were presented as your starting point. The entire focus was on how to push your message, rather than present the information for consideration. Not even joking. He was a really cool teacher too.

[Dsarker]

Well, if no information was beyond Gadaffi, how did the revolution succeed? He could have eleminated the rebel ringleaders one by one before they'd even started the revolution.

[fqllve]

Oh boy, this thread title got me all excited and then ends up being about neutrality in writing.

I think words, any group of words, can be used wrongly.

This is it really. Any word can be used to excuse the writer from making their point themself. Any label a writer uses without defense can be contested. And I think some of the adjectiveless sentences are more loaded than the unaltered ones.

The government ruling the United States, the world’s defender of “freedom. . .”

Unfortunately, the American government, the world’s most vociferous defender of “Internet freedom. . .”

'The government ruling the United States' has all kinds of implications that aren't present in 'The American government' simply because the latter is the unmarked and expected form. Deviation from expectation is highly significant in writing and unusual forms draw more examination because of it.

[nenjin]

Funny story Scriver: My high school english class was taught by a former news ltd journalist and involved a lot of discussion on how to use language to manipulate your audience and get away with it. Actually, if we're defining emotionally loaded words as including some of the language that was edited out of this article, emotionally loaded words were presented as your starting point. The entire focus was on how to push your message, rather than present the information for consideration. Not even joking. He was a really cool teacher too.

I brought journalism classes in my college to a standstill when I would say stuff like "Isn't using the word [something] manipulative?" I was often told I was just debating semantics.

Teachers almost didn't know how to handle being questioned like that. They talk about their duties to the people and to the industry, in the same breath they use the equivalent of the "little white lie" speech to get you to sell the story to the reader. Their argument was, without some sort of emotional weight, people wouldn't read the story even if it was important. Which just goes to show you how much stock, ultimately, the professional media puts in truth. It's a means to an end, not the end.

[Pistolero]

What they say is correct though. The majority of the population is reading for entertainment. In fact, almost all of the population is reading for entertainment, what I should have said is that the majority of the population is not entertained by learning, they're entertained by emotion. If you don't break the bullshit meter on every story, no one wants to read it. People who might want to actually get the facts will recognise what you are doing and either take it quite personally because they don't understand why, or try to sift through to see if there is anything of value in what you have written, under the manipulative language.

Almost everyone prefers to read 'news' that tells them something they already believe. You don't watch fox if you're looking for an education on how the democrats are secretly communists trying to ruin america from within, you watch it so that someone who you think is an authority will validate your opinion for you . Same goes for other forms of entertainment. You don't watch the daily show because jon stewart is telling you stuff you never realised about republicans being ignorant bigots, you watch it so that he will validate your opinion on that. It's very polarising, but we do it to ourselves. There are unbiased news services out there, Reuters is pretty good for example, but the only stories that people are interested in are the ones that are highly polarised conflict laden and emotional in and of themselves. If a story doesn't have that, the big networks will add it. People watch the news so they can get outraged at the bad guys and cheer for the good guys, not for information. How does it go? 'Give them the circus'?

Ignoring those facts is setting yourself up to be a Cassandra. The most important story in the world means nothing if no one wants to hear it. Almost every news service does it, people get outraged at fox, but for all the wrong reasons. The real problem with fox is not that they're pushing a line, everyone is pushing a line. The real problem is that fox constantly misrepresents the truth, and slides into 'just make something up' territory occasionally. Other networks will at least tell you the truth while they're telling you how you should feel about it. Although they already know how their readers and viewers feel about it, they're actually just validating those feelings so that people will come back for more.

[Dsarker]

I believe you're referring to 'bread and circuses'