Nationalized Internet Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Varsity Division
Nationalized Internet Disadvantage Affirmative – Table of Contents
Summary.............................................................................................................................................. 2
Glossary............................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Uniqueness Answers
Uniqueness Overwhelms Link – NSA is Proxy...................................................................................... 4
Uniqueness Overwhelms Link – Nationalization Inevitable ................................................................... 5
Internal Link Answers
No Internal Link – Government Control Fail .......................................................................................... 6
Impact Answers
No Impact – Cyber-Terror Overblown ................................................................................................... 7
Impact Turn – Democracy ..................................................................................................................... 8
Impact Turn – Destroys Economic Growth............................................................................................ 9
Impact Turn – Destroys Internet.......................................................................................................... 10
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Nationalized Internet Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Varsity Division
Summary
The core of the disadvantage states that the passage of the Affirmative plan would prevent the
nationalization of the Internet. This might seem confusing to some people: Why would an open
internet for all countries be a bad thing? The answer is a bit counter-intuitive, but we are already
beginning to see empirical support for this type of position.
As the Internet becomes a resource to which everyone has access, the question is about the trade-off
between the democratic ideals upon which the Internet was founded and the security of the users
(both people and nations). We’ve seen the beginning of both personal cyber-attacks on individuals,
as well as state-sponsored cyber-attacks on other nations. There are allegations that China has
attacked us and they allege that we have attacked them.
While the Negative argues that we should nationalize the internet to protect our infrastructure, the
Affirmative needs to weigh the impacts of Internet democratization against those of security interests.
In general, this could be done by mitigating the risks of cyber-terrorism, or arguing that the cost of
robbing people of Internet freedom is not worth the benefits of security. Controlling how a judge
should evaluate decision-making is key to winning this debate.
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Glossary
Balkanize – to separate into groups or categories. In this instance, it refers to breaking the internet
up into country-by-country sections. It is a common phrase used to describe the breaking up of
something. It is a historical reference to the Balkans region of the world. Several countries were
broken up from the larger Soviet Union. It is usually used by people to refer to breaking the internet
up into groups. Each country would control their own internet services and access.
Cyber – A prefix used to describe anything that happens online. A Cyber crime would be a crime that
is done online. Cyber Gambling would be gambling done online. If you read it, it is talking about the
internet.
Cyber-terror – committing an act of terror online. Any attack on a government website, an attempt to
gain access to a power plant, or to just generally be violent and destructive is considered cyber-terror.
The phrase is very broad as the Department of Defense says they experience 60,000 or more cyberterror attempts a day.
Cyberwar – use of an attack on someone’s internet access or services during a time of war. Estonia
is usually the example. During an invasion, Russia hacked into the Estonians internets and shut
them down. This act is often called cyberwar. There are also instances of people saying “cyberwar”
to reference fighting and hacking that is going on between countries.
DOD – Department of Defense – the cabinet of the United States that is in charge of the military
branches and answers to the President. Referenced in a few cards.
ICANN – the group that is in charge of maintaining all domain names on the internet. Established by
the U.S., ICANN is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world
dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable
https://www.icann.org/
ITU - International Telecommunication Union – the United Nations specialized agency for information
and communication technologies. It is the group that would be given control over the internet
internationally – http://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx
Multi-stakeholder – the ICANN and US supported model for the internet. Every group can control
and contribute to the internet without government interference. The idea is that Internet governance
should mimic the structure of the Internet itself- borderless and open to all.
Nationalize – when the government takes over something it is nationalized. Health care literature will
often reference ‘nationalizing health care.’ This disadvantage will use it to discuss the internet. When
the government regulates, controls, and is in charge of something it is said to be nationalized.
Partitioned – separated into parts. When a room is partitioned it is divided into parts. If the internet
were nationalized it would be partitioned between countries.
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Nationalized Internet Disadvantage Affirmative
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Uniqueness Overwhelms Link – NSA is Proxy
[___] Mistrust of the US in general is the driving force of global data localization. Other
nations were pushing for nationalization even before the NSA revelations.
Castro and McQuinn, 2015
(Vice President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and Director of the Center
for Data Innovation, and Research Assistant with the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation, Daniel and Alan, Beyond the USA Freedom Act: How U.S. Surveillance Still Subverts
U.S. Competitiveness, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, June 2015,
http://www2.itif.org/2015-beyond-usa-freedom-act.pdf?_ga=1.33178294.940386433.1435342104)
The ability of companies — both tech and traditional — to easily share data across borders has
brought a vast array of benefits to countries, companies, consumers, and economies through
increased efficiency, decreased costs, and improved services. 26 And yet nations have continued to
erect barriers to cloud computing and cross - border data flows, much to their own detriment. 27
While some defenders of these policies have asserted that they are designed to increase the privacy
or security of their citizens’ data, it is clear that they are also motivated by misguided self-interest. By
creating rules that advantage domestic firms over foreign firms, many countries believe they will build
a stronger domestic tech industry or gain short - term economic value, such as jobs in domestic
datacenters. In reality, these policies unwittingly limit the ability of a country’s own firms to innovate by
shielding them from international competition. 28 These policies not only limit the number of services
that a country’s citizens and businesses can enjoy, but also harm that country’s productivity and
competitiveness. Some countries used U.S. surveillance laws to justify data protectionism even
before Snowden’s NSA revelations. For example, when Rackspace built data centers in Australia in
2012, an Australian competitor stirred up fears that the United States would use the Patriot Act to
track Australian citizens as a means to force Rackspace out of Australia. 29 In addition, this same
Australian company funded a report calling on Australian policymakers to impose additional
regulations designed to put foreign cloud computing competitors at a disadvantage. 30 However,
since the recent NSA revelations, the use of privacy concerns to justify protectionist barriers has
grown significantly. Amid growing anti - U. S. sentiment, Europe has seen calls for data localization
requirements, procurement preferences for European providers, and even a “Schengen area for data”
— a system that keeps as much data in Europe as possible — as ways to promote deployment of
cloud services entirely focused on the European market. 31 France and Germany have even started
to create dedicated national networks: “Schlandnet” for the former and the “Sovereign Cloud” for the
latter. 32 The French government has gone so far as to put € 150 million ($200 million) into two start ups, Numergy and Cloudwatt, to create a domestic infrastructure independent of U.S. tech giants. 33
Furthermore, some groups have invoked U.S. cyber espionage to argue that European citizens are
not adequately protected and are calling for the removal of the “safe harbor” agreement — an
agreement that allows Internet companies to store data outside of the European Union . Yet if this
were removed it would cut Europeans off from many major Internet services.
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Uniqueness Overwhelms Link – Nationalization Inevitable
[___]
[___] Nationalization is inevitable.
Goldstein, Writer for the Atlantic, 2014
(Gordon M. Goldstein, The End of the Internet?,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/the-end-of-the-internet/372301/)
Some experts anticipate a future with a Brazilian Internet, a European Internet, an Iranian Internet, an
Egyptian Internet—all with different content regulations and trade rules, and perhaps with contrasting
standards and operational protocols. Eli Noam, a professor of economics and finance at Columbia
Business School, believes that such a progressive fracturing of the global Internet is inevitable. “We
must get used to the idea that the standardised internet is the past but not the future,” he wrote last
fall. “And that the future is a federated internet, not a uniform one.” Noam thinks that can be
managed, in part through the development of new intermediary technologies that would essentially
allow the different Internets to talk to each other, and allow users to navigate the different legal and
regulatory environments. Perhaps. But at a minimum, this patchwork solution would be disruptive to
American companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay, which would see their global reach
diminished. And it would make international communications and commerce more costly. The U.S.
government is resisting this transformation. But the Internet is simply too consequential—socially,
politically, and economically—for states to readily forgo control of it, and America, as Marc
Andreessen observes, has lost “the moral high ground” in the debate. Perhaps it was never realistic
to expect the World Wide Web to last.
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No Internal Link – Government Control Fail
[___]
[___] Government control won’t stop cyber-terror.
Holmes, former assistant secretary of state & distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 2013
(Kim R. Holmes, Washington Times, April 17, 2013,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/17/holmes-staying-one-step-ahead-of-cyberattacks/)
Imposing an old-fashioned, top-down regulatory solution as the Obama administration and some in
Congress want to do is tempting. After a proposed Senate cybersecurity act failed to pass, the
administration issued an executive order that reflects this regulatory approach. But heavy-handed
regulation is a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem. Federal regulations are slow to
implement, cumbersome to manage and unable to keep up with the rapid advances of hackers and
cyberwarriors, who continually change their lines of attack. This approach ushers in a clumsy
bureaucratic regime that undoubtedly will become even slower and more cumbersome over time.
That is the nature of regulatory bureaucracy. There is a better way. The rule of thumb for
policymakers should be to encourage companies and other entities to find methods to better protect
themselves from cyberattacks. They need to be able to share information voluntarily and protect
themselves from liabilities associated with doing that, while ensuring that their proprietary information
is safeguarded. Companies sharing information on cyberattacks need to know that they will not be put
at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. All shared information should be exempted from
Freedom of Information Act requests and regulatory use. Moreover, private-public partnerships
should be established so information could be shared fully and in a timely manner. Developing a
cybersecurity liability and insurance system would be another step in the right direction. As explained
in the Heritage report, “such a system returns cyber-security liability to those who are largely
responsible for cyber-security losses” i.e., not the consumer but the software manufacturers who,
through negligence or other reasons, fail to offer safeguards against cyberincursions and companies
that do little about security weaknesses in their cybersystems. The Heritage report contains another
innovative recommendation: Create a nonprofit organization that can assess the surety of an
organization’s supply chain, similar to the way Underwriters Laboratories Inc. assesses the safety of
various commercial products. Once a company is given a grade, consumers of software and technical
equipment can decide for themselves how safe a purchase would be. Finally, there is the critical
issue of cyberattacks by states, terrorists and criminals. A model to pursue is the one used by the
former Soviet state of Georgia in response to cyberattacks from Russia in 2012. The Georgian
government planted a malware booby trap in a file that Russian intelligence hacked, foiling that
attempt at espionage and, more importantly, identifying the perpetrator. U.S. companies should be
allowed to execute similar operations, either in cooperation with law enforcement or on their own.
Cybersecurity is a complex problem. That is why a one-size-fits-all, top-down regulatory regime run
by the federal government is unwise. To stay a step ahead of hackers, Americans need a system that
empowers them to protect themselves.
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No Impact – Cyber-Terror Overblown
[___] Cyber-terror is all hype.
Singer, 2012
(Peter W. Singer, Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy @
Brookings Institute, The Cyber Terror Bogeyman, Armed Forces Journal, November 2012,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyber-terror-singer)
We have let our fears obscure how terrorists really use the Internet. About 31,300. That is roughly
the number of magazine and journal articles written so far that discuss the phenomenon of cyber
terrorism. Zero. That is the number of people that who been hurt or killed by cyber terrorism at the
time this went to press. In many ways, cyber terrorism is like the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,”
when we obsess about shark attacks despite the fact that you are roughly 15,000 times more likely to
be hurt or killed in an accident involving a toilet. But by looking at how terror groups actually use the
Internet, rather than fixating on nightmare scenarios, we can properly prioritize and focus our efforts.
Part of the problem is the way we talk about the issue. The FBI defines cyber terrorism as a
“premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs
and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents.” A key word there is “violence,” yet many discussions sweep all sorts of
nonviolent online mischief into the “terror” bin. Various reports lump together everything from Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent statements that a terror group might launch a “digital Pearl Harbor”
to Stuxnet-like sabotage (ahem, committed by state forces) to hacktivism, WikiLeaks and credit card
fraud. As one congressional staffer put it, the way we use a term like cyber terrorism “has as much
clarity as cybersecurity — that is, none at all.” Another part of the problem is that we often mix up our
fears with the actual state of affairs. Last year, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, the
Pentagon’s lead official for cybersecurity, spoke to the top experts in the field at the RSA Conference
in San Francisco. “It is possible for a terrorist group to develop cyber-attack tools on their own or to
buy them on the black market,” Lynn warned. “A couple dozen talented programmers wearing flipflops and drinking Red Bull can do a lot of damage.” The deputy defense secretary was conflating
fear and reality, not just about what stimulant-drinking programmers are actually hired to do, but also
what is needed to pull off an attack that causes meaningful violence. The requirements go well
beyond finding top cyber experts. Taking down hydroelectric generators, or designing malware like
Stuxnet that causes nuclear centrifuges to spin out of sequence doesn’t just require the skills and
means to get into a computer system. It’s also knowing what to do once you are in. To cause true
damage requires an understanding of the devices themselves and how they run, the engineering and
physics behind the target. The Stuxnet case, for example, involved not just cyber experts well beyond
a few wearing flip-flops, but also experts in areas that ranged from intelligence and surveillance to
nuclear physics to the engineering of a specific kind of Siemens-brand industrial equipment. It also
required expensive tests, not only of the software, but on working versions of the target hardware as
well. As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly massscale action using cyber means “simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational and personnel
capacities of even the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of
even the most sophisticated international criminal enterprises.” Lucas said the threat of cyber
terrorism has been vastly overblown. “To be blunt, neither the 14-year-old hacker in your next-door
neighbor’s upstairs bedroom, nor the two- or three-person al-Qaida cell holed up in some apartment
in Hamburg are going to bring down the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams,” he said.
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Nationalized Internet Disadvantage Affirmative
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Impact Turn – Democracy
[___] Internet freedom provides the necessary infrastructure for democratic transitions.
Howard, 2010
(PhD sociology, Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society, studies the impact of information
technologies on democracy and social inequality (Philip, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and
Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam, p. 11)
Cyberactivism is no longer the unique provenance of isolated, politically motivated hackers. It is
instead deeply integrated with contemporary social movement strategy and accessible to computer
and mobile phone users with only basic skills: it is a distinguishing feature of modern political
communication and a means of creating the élan that marks social change. Twitter may have been
the branded information tool of choice for some of Iran’s opposition opinion leaders, and other tools
will emerge in the years ahead. The service routes messages from many sources to many users
through varied outlets from webpages, mobile phones, and many other kinds of consumer
electronics. But it is the networked design that is a distinguishing feature of social media that will be
ever more threatening to authoritarian rule. Information and communication technologies are the
infrastructure for transposing democratic ideals from community to community. They support the
process of learning new approaches to political representation, of testing new organizational
strategies, and of cognitively extending the possibilities and prospects for political transformation from
one context to another. It does not matter that the number of bloggers, twitterers, or internet users
may seem small, because in a networked social moment only a few “brokers” need to be using these
tools to keep everyone up to date.
[___] And democracy is key to overall peace.
Silva, MA International Relations, 2011
(Shanila De, MA International Relations, Department of Politics & International Studies, University of
Warwick,https://www.academia.edu/1139228/Facilitating_Peace_Democracy_Building_Following_Vio
lent_Conflict)
The idea of democracy building as a solution to violent conflict is a challenging one. Statistically, with
high levels of stable and evenly distributed growth, and sufficient governance, regime type becomes
unimportant to peace. However, democracy’s strength lies in its inherent ability to deliver these
conditions. Where policy-makers and theorists run into problems is in the transition and design
process of democracy following civil conflict. The following paper argues that in combination with
growth and governance, democracy can have a positive impact on the peace process. While
democracy building can be challenging, there are ways to mitigate potential instability and to design
around potential hurdles. Given democracy’s intrinsic qualities, policy makers should focus on
effective design of democracy and on facilitating conditions for growth and governance. Such a
combination should theoretically result in a stable system. While reality does not always follow theory,
the cases examined in this paper show that these conditions are effective and mutually reinforcing.
They go on to demonstrate, that while there is no perfect model to create post-conflict stability, with a
carefully managed transition, and a series of necessary conditions, democracy can help to facilitate
peace in a developing country.
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Impact Turn – Destroys Economic Growth
[___] Internet localization will destroy global economic growth.
Chandler and Le, 2015
(Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall
Research Scholar, University of California, Davis; A.B., Harvard College; J.D., Yale Law School AND
**Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale College; J.D.,
University of California, Davis School of Law (Anupam and Uyen, “DATA NATIONALISM” 64 Emory
L.J. 677, lexis)
Many governments believe that by forcing companies to localize data within national borders, they will
increase investment at home. Thus, data localization measures are often motivated, whether explicitly
or not, by desires to promote local economic development. In fact, however, data localization raises
costs for local businesses, reduces access to global services for consumers, hampers local start-ups,
and interferes with the use of the latest technological advances.
In an Information Age, the global flow of data has become the lifeblood of economies across the
world. While some in Europe have raised concerns about the transfer of data abroad, the European
Commission has recognized "the critical importance of data flows notably for the transatlantic
economy." n209 The Commission observes that international data transfers "form an integral part of
commercial exchanges across the Atlantic including for new growing digital businesses, such as
social media or cloud computing, with large amounts of data going from the EU to the US." n210
Worried about the effect of constraints on data flows on both global information sharing and economic
development, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has urged
nations to avoid "barriers to the location, access and use of cross-border [*722] data facilities and
functions" when consistent with other fundamental rights, in order to "ensure cost effectiveness and
other efficiencies." n211 The worry about the impact of data localization is widely shared in the
business community as well. The value of the Internet to national economies has been widely noted.
n212 Regarding Brazil's attempt to require data localization, the Information Technology Industry
Council, an industry association representing more than forty major Internet companies, had argued
that "in-country data storage requirements would detrimentally impact all economic activity that
depends on data flows." n213 The Swedish government agency, the National Board of Trade,
recently interviewed fifteen local companies of various sizes across sectors and concluded succinctly
that "trade cannot happen without data being moved from one location to another." n214 Data
localization, like most protectionist measures, leads only to small gains for a few local enterprises and
workers, while causing significant harms spread across the entire economy. The domestic benefits of
data localization go to the few owners and employees of data centers and the few companies
servicing these centers locally. Meanwhile, the harms of data localization are widespread, felt by
small, medium, and large businesses that are denied access to global services that might improve
productivity. In response to Russia's recently passed localization law, the NGO Russian Association
for Electronic Communications stressed the potential economic consequences, pointing to the
withdrawal of global services and substantial economic losses caused by the passing of similar laws
in other countries. n215 For example, besides the loss of international social media platforms,
localization would make it impossible for [*723] Russians to order airline tickets or consumer goods
through online services. Localization requirements also seriously affect Russian companies like
Aeroflot because the airline depends on foreign ticket-booking systems. n216
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Nationalized Internet Disadvantage Affirmative
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Impact Turn – Destroys Internet
[___] State control destroys the value of the internet.
Alford, Senior Program Officer, Internet Freedom, Freedom House, 2014
(Gigi Alford, State Partitioning of the Internet Harms Users Everywhere,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/freedom-house/state-partitioning-of-the_b_5843162.html)
For as long as the global internet has withstood attempts by states to subjugate its cables, servers,
and protocols, the virtual world has been a refuge for users who are deprived of their fundamental
freedoms offline. This boon of technology is what led UN experts to declare the internet “an
indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights” and to debate whether access to such an
engine of human progress constitutes a right in itself. However, since Edward Snowden disclosed
documents on secret U.S. and British data-collection programs, the internet has faced intensified
challenges from all sides—some genuine and others opportunistic—that could lead states to partition
the digital commons into national and regional demesnes. An internet that is fragmented by political,
legal, and technical boundaries would throttle the animating purpose of the International Bill of Human
Rights, while an indivisible and global internet is able to facilitate such goals. As states fully fathom
the internet’s disruptive power and rush to impose choke points in the name of national sovereignty,
the digital world increasingly mirrors the analog world’s human rights deficiencies, which it once
transcended. The virtual refuge is being dismantled, and for individuals on the wrong side of the new
borders, it has been replaced with separate and unequal “splinternets.” Such digital apartheid flies in
the face of the universality of human rights, and it contradicts international jurisprudence that rejects
separate-but-equal regimes. As the UN Human Rights Council has affirmed, “the same rights that
people have offline must also be protected online.” Champions of a unified internet are putting forth
strong economic and geopolitical arguments to counter these challenges—including earlier this month
at the ninth annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul, Turkey, and next month at the
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) plenipotentiary meeting in Busan, South Korea. But
stakeholders often miss the bigger picture when they overlook the human rights case against a
“Westphalian web” model of internet governance.
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