As of today almost 17 million adult Ukrainians are active Internet users. Ukraine is among top ten countries in Europe for Internet use and is in 9th place according to Internet growth. For the past three years the number of Internet users above the age of 50 has doubled in both urban and rural areas.
Up to 12 percent of the population now chooses to have Internet access at home instead of television. 90% of Internet users in Ukraine (almost every third citizen) regularly visit social networks; building the potential foundationfor the development of an Internet revolution in the nearest future. Internet business is also flourishing: in 2011 Internet stores sold products for Hr 20 billion ($2.5 billion).
As a growing population, the influence of the Internet community on Ukrainian politics should not been ignored. It has already become one of the principal platforms for politicians and political parties to hunt for supporters, by publishing their ideas, concepts and other messages. It is worth noting that many leading Ukrainian politicians already have profiles on Facebook and / or Twitter. Currently around 10% of deputies have publicly accessible Facebook pages.
Direct e-democracy might well become reality – cementing the bond between Internet communication and politics. The European Union recently introduced the European Citizens’ Initiative, effective as of April, which provides that any petition signed by over 1 million European citizens, who must represent over one quarter of the EU states, will be eligible for review by the European Parliament. The newly-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered a similar system which involves the review of all the issues that collect over 100 thousand signatures. Ukraine also shows some early signs of development of new initiatives in the area of direct electronic democracy.
So far this year we have witnessed some very disturbing conflicts between the governing authorities and Internet community, through which state officials attempted to wrestle strict control over the Internet. The first example being the government seizure of servers from the file-sharing website EX.ua – under the guise of the fight against Internet piracy.
By targeting this particular web-site the governing authorities deprived millions of Ukrainians of the access to their favourite video, music and games – for many, their primary source of entertainment. The result was an on-line protest in the form of DDoS attacks on the official web-sites of the Ministry of Interior, Cabinet of Ministers and President of Ukraine. Even the Internet activist group Anonymous have offered support to Ukrainian Internet users and computer hackers; the group announced a digital war against the government of Ukraine if Internet censorship continues.
The president’s son Viktor Yanukovych Junior has made some steps to resolve the conflict between the government and Internet community. He contributed to the establishment of a working group advocating for the rights of Internet users. Despite this, the government won the first battle and the Ex.ua servers were never returned.
The second clash was over Internet publication Roadcontrol.org.ua, a service which provides information about violations and abuses by traffic officers. Kyiv district court, at the behest of an offended militia traffic officer, ordered the shut-down of Roadcontrol.org.ua. It was the first time that a court has closed an Internet resource. Within a short period of time Roadcontrol was back up, following a strong response from Ukrainian citizens and lawyers. But the judge who exceeded her authorities in ordering the closure of the web-site was never punished. Rostislav Shaposhnikov, co-founder of Roadcontrol.org.ua was kidnapped and heavily beaten by unknown attackers who mentioned that they had been ordered to do so.
So the government won another battle and continues to strengthen its control over the Internet in Ukraine through law enforcement resources and administrative measures. Nevertheless, the Internet community in the country now has some experience of fighting back and is fully aware of the government’s intentions. How effective the community’s self-defense strategy will be remains to be seen.
Another important fact is that up to now the government has yet to demonstrate any real intention to maintain a constructive dialogue with the people of Ukraine. This fact alone is cause to predict further conflicts in cyberspace. Internet civil activists might start networking online to protect historical Kyiv, particularly Andriyivsky Uzviz, from being completely destroyed by state officials and oligarchs. As with any emerging phenomenon, the results will not be easy to predict.
People First comment: Whether politicians or governments like it or not the Internet is here to stay. It is probably the only public service in the world where the content cannot be regulated. It may be possible to hive the pornography off into a separate domain, it may be possible for some reactionary governments to block websites or even key words but in the greater scheme of things most politicians know that they are fighting a losing battle.
There have been numerous attempts to control the web. The American government has tried on at least three occasions recently to bring in legislation in the interests of counter terrorism which would allow certain government departments and approved companies to spy on internet users. In each and every case the proposals have been defeated by public pressure as no politician in his right mind is going to vote against a petition carrying a couple of million signatures.
In this part of the world the security services don’t even bother to ask – they just listen to and read just about everything that goes over the Net particularly if the authors are bold enough to question the status quo. But the SBU, the FSB and the CIA are not alone as almost every security service in the world is listening and reading to the extent that it has become a whole industry employing thousands. In the UK the government listening station GCHQ at Cheltenham filters every international telephone call and email that goes to and from of the country. It started by employing a few hundred but today has a staff of over 10,000 monitoring electronic traffic.
Cyber crime has become the financial crime of the 21st century. Nowadays people don’t rob banks for the cash they hold, they go online and divert millions. The international banking networks have to set aside billions of dollars just to cope with the theft. Cyber warfare is the warfare of the future as weapons and defence systems become robotised, the need to protect a nation’s electronic infrastructure has become critical. The Russians and the Chinese are believed to have already tested their cyber warfare capabilities with low-level attacks on neighbouring states causing whole computer systems to crash without warning.
All of these systems utilise the Internet in some form or other thus turning it off or slowing it down is very difficult to do without severely damaging the economic infrastructure of the nation and this has become the politicians’ nightmare scenario. They want to turn it off to stop aspects of the public using it as a communication tool against them but they can’t because it would hurt them politically and possibly financially if they do.
There is however one way that politicians can deal with the issue and that is to harness the power of the Internet for their own political ends. President Obama writes a daily blog on his work in the White House and many other western and Russian leaders have followed suit. Whole political campaigns are developed specifically for the Internet and even the most conservative of politicians has had to learn the art of Twitter.
Whilst the Internet is the tool of the next generation of politicians and civil society activists, not all senior citizens are conservative in spirit. The number of Ukrainian Internet users aged 55 to 65 has grown by more than 300% in the last year alone. Sadly, the current regime do not seem to fit within this group and see the Internet as nothing more than an irritation which they would happily close down if only they could find out how.
Viktor Tkachuk is chief executive officer of the People First Foundation, which seeks to strengthen Ukrainian democracy. The organization’s website is: www.peoplefirst.org.ua and the e-mail address is: [email protected]
