by
Les May
A
FEW hours
after
war was declared at 11 p.m. on 4 August 1914, the
paddle driven cable laying ship Alert
was sent out from Dover
on a planned mission to drag for, and cut, the
five German
cables in the English
Channel
which
linked to the rest of the world.
The idea was to force German communications
on to radio where they
could be intercepted more easily and
so give
British
codebreakers a better chance of gaining useful information.
Although
they may seem old and outdated undersea
cables,
now having the benefit of fibre optic technology, still carry the
majority of the Internet
traffic around
the world. The amount of Internet traffic which a cable can carry at
any one time is called its ‘bandwidth’.
The more people who want to use the Internet at any one time, the
more bandwidth is necessary. Compared with America,
Asia
and Europe
the cables linking Africa
to the rest of the world are seriously lacking in bandwidth.
Whether
changing this situation is more important than improving access to
clean water and sanitation, and improving access to health care, is a
moot point, though
in my book I regard these as
a ‘human
right’.
But
earlier
today I heard two
Africans,
one in Ethiopia
and one in South
Africa
claiming that access to the Internet was itself a human right.
(Remember
how
six
months ago Corbyn was laughed at when he said a Labour government
would promote free Internet access?)
Within
Africa mobile phones and the Internet have expanded what people can
do even in areas where not everyone has access to an electricity
supply. Some enterprising individuals allow mobile phone owners to
recharge their device for a small sum. Potentially there is a huge
unsatisfied market in Africa. Unsurprisingly this has attracted the
attention of cash rich multi-national businesses.
Facebook
and Google
are intending to team up to lay 37,000 kilometres of fibre optic
cable to link African countries with the rest of the world. The
Chinese
company Huawei,
Microsoft,
like Facebook and Google a USA based company and the Norwegian
company Opera, (see below), also have projects targeting Africa.
Should
we be worried about this? Should Africans be worried?
Huawei’s interest seems clear.
It supplies the hardware which makes systems run. Microsoft has an
interest in making sure that the millions of new users become hooked
on its software.
Potentially
the ownership by Facebook and Google of the physical network and
their control over what content Internet users have access to, seems
to me problematic. It
has been suggested that Facebook has harvested up to 4,000 snippets
of data about many users.
This is enables
the company to form a profile of every individual user. Likewise
Google has the power to harvest a great deal of information from the
search terms we
use.
There
is good evidence that Facebook was used to sway the outcome of the
2016 elections in the USA
when about 77,000 voters in three states were targeted. Trump lost
the popular vote by about 3 million ballots, but gained the
presidency because the make up of the electoral college had been
influenced via
Facebook. Not
all African leaders are models of integrity and defenders of
democracy.
Another
issue is that Europe in particular has gone a long way to recognising
the importance of personal privacy and protection of personal data.
This
is not the case in other countries and many African states may have
legal systems which are very weak in this regard. Facebook
and Google will only respect these issues if they are made to.
We
are familiar with the term ‘Scramble
for Africa’
which refers to the invasion, occupation, colonisation and annexation
of African territories by European countries in the period 1880 to
1914. Are we about to see this process happening again, but this
time led not by nation states. Has
colonialism been privatised?
(I
struggled
to determine the exact ownership of ‘Opera’. It may be owned by
a Chinese private equity firm or it may still be Norwegian. I am not
sure which of these is correct.)
Author's Note:
Author's Note:
-
In the above piece I suggested that many African states which may have
legal system that are weak with respect to personal privacy and data
protection, and that Facebook and Google will be in a position to take
advantage of this.
A report by several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) published today (18 June) highlights the problems facing a country, Nigeria, which had weak laws regarding the protection of the environment, which was taken advantage of by Shell. So polluted by oil contamination is the water supply for people living in the delta of the Niger that the cannot by any reasonable standards be said to have access to a clean water supply.
https://cloud.foeeurope.org/index.php/s/LyqrCFskx2RRdcf#pdfviewer
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/nigeria-shell-still-failing-clean-pollution-niger-delta
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