Data and state control: the dark side of digital diplomacy
Ilan Manor
Philosophers and political theorists have argued that the goal of every society is complete control. This is also true of democratic societies and herein lies an inherent tension. Democratic governments are elected by people to manage their affairs, yet soon that very government strives to control its citizenry. Free people thus freely put on the shackles of their own domination. As the twenty-first century progresses, it is becoming ever more apparent that supposedly liberating technologies are providing new opportunities to enable this state control.
For governments to exercise control in the digital age, they must continuously amass information on their citizens. At times, this is achieved under the familiar and powerful pretences of national security and the ‘greater good’. Via the national security justification governments are able to film citizens’ through CCTV cameras, monitor their phone conversations, track their online discussions and reduce their privacy to an illusion. Likewise by invoking the idea of the ‘greater good’, governments can access personal medical histories, hospital records and even psychiatric evaluations. For if the state can track its citizens’ blood pressure, it can provide better healthcare.
The internet revolution has spread also into the practices of diplomats. The advent of ‘digital diplomacy’ has forced traditionally secretive institutions to open their heavy, antiquated doors to the public. This increased transparency provided by the digital sphere might be seen as a democratising force. However, I argue here that diplomats’ use of social media normalises the sharing of personal information online, and could therefore provide another means of ensuring government control over their citizens.
A profession shrouded in secrecy
Traditionally, diplomacy was a profession shrouded in secrecy. This was necessary as ambassadors to foreign courts would send dispatches to their Kings and Queens offering frank assessments of foreign nobles and monarchs. Had French monarch Louis XVI read the intelligence sent to Austria’s Maria Theresa, he would have been shocked by their detailed descriptions of his sexual inadequacies. So shocked that he may have shattered the Franco-Austrian alliance which had combined to defeat Prussia in the Seven Years War. Other times diplomatic cables detailed secret alliances between nations or identified the weaknesses of foreign states ready to be plundered by world powers. Intelligence gathered by ambassadors was the bedrock on which nations formulated their foreign and security policies.
Modern foreign ministries also rely upon secrecy to obtain their goals, as was seen during the negotiations around the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord between Israel and Palestine. Revealing these negotiations could have led to immediate failure as the Israeli and Palestinian leadership would have been pressured by local politicians to abandon the talks. As similar pressure existed during the negotiations that resulted in the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015. Initial trust-building measures were negotiated by diplomats in secret, as neither American nor Iranian leaders had the political capital to conduct them in the open.
Diplomacy in the digital age
In the digital age, diplomacy has been forced to become more transparent. While secret negotiations still take place, foreign ministries and diplomats routinely share information, images and videos from within the inner sanctums of diplomacy. Diplomats often live-tweet from international conferences such as the recent COP25 climate talks.
UN Ambassadors also regularly tweet from within the UN Security Council, as is the case with this example from Karen Pierce, the UK Ambassador to the UN.
Some ministries also allow digital publics to review diplomatic accords, trade agreements and transcripts from bi-lateral meetings. The America State Department published the Iran Nuclear Deal in full on social media while Indian MEA’s smartphone application allows users to review trade agreements.
Digital diplomacy facilitates the presentation of the state in everyday life. Online, states can comment on daily events, partake in online traditions (e.g., through back Thursday), employ popular memes, adopt popular hashtags and narrate local and global events as they occur. The state thus comes to life, daily, on the social media profiles of diplomats and embassies. This, I now argue, forces the presentation of the self in everyday life. For if the state has nothing to hide, do we? If the state sets information free, should its citizens not follow suite?
In this way, the advent of digital diplomacy further pressures individuals to lead open and transparent lives. To share their success and failures, romantic conquests and breakups, promotions and redundancies, holidays and family drama, weddings and mastectomies. And with each post, tweet or selfie, information makes its way to the databases of online companies. Yet as Zygmunt Bauman has asserted, digital information is liquid. It can never be contained to just one database. It flows from Facebook, to advertisers, to John Lewis and eventually to the government. This is the dark side of digital diplomacy; that the government, any government, no longer requires words like ‘national security’ or ‘the greater good’ to obtain total control over its citizens. It merely needs a flask into which digital data can flow and be analysed.
Ilan Manor is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford.
His book, The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.
His latest book review for International Affairs is available online here.
