Saturday, April 5, 2014

Freeing Cuba One Tweet at a Time

Freeing Cuba One Tweet at a Time
2 APR 4, 2014 12:35 PM EDT
By The Editors

Rarely is a government program shut down because it is too successful.
Yet that is essentially what happened to a U.S. initiative to create a
Cuban version of Twitter.

From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. Agency for International Development funded
and developed -- through contractors, front companies and offshore
accounts -- a mobile-phone text-messaging service for sharing news and
exchanging opinions that attracted more than 40,000 Cubans, according to
the Associated Press. As the service gained popularity, however, U.S.
officials realized that the only way to keep its Yanqui origins under
wraps was to spin it off as an independent company, an effort that
failed when they could find no way to generate sufficient revenue or
recruit new private management.

Some commentators are spinning this as yet another cautionary tale of a
U.S. covert operation run amok. The program undermined USAID's
integrity, they say, and reinforced the reputation of the U.S.
government as a surveillance-mad rogue operator. It also showed that,
when it comes to Cuba, the U.S. still has a Cold War mentality.

These points may be good enough for Twitter, but they don't withstand
more thorough scrutiny. First, this was not some kind of super-spooky
deal. Not many "covert operations" get reviewed by the Government
Accountability Office: As it noted last year, the U.S.'s efforts to
promote democracy in Cuba "have included a greater focus on information
technology, particularly on supporting independent bloggers and
developing social networking platforms." The GAO found nothing unlawful
about the program.

Promoting democracy and human rights is squarely in USAID's bailiwick --
it's right there on its website, on a page titled "Democracy, Human
Rights and Governance Strategy." The idea that USAID is some kind of
vestal virgin dispensing surplus wheat and well pumps ignores the "U.S."
before the AID.

None of this is to say that humanitarian aid programs should be used as
a cover for intelligence programs. What the Central Intelligence Agency
did in Pakistan -- use a vaccination program to try to locate Osama bin
Laden -- was outrageous and wrong. But USAID's democracy assistance
programs are designed to strengthen the ability of citizens to
peacefully resist and undermine authoritarian and abusive governments.
In Cuba -- which has an aggressive intelligence service that actually
had an agent within USAID -- a certain amount of subterfuge is necessary
for those programs to be effective and to protect their intended
beneficiaries.

The biggest weakness of USAID's Cuba program was that the agency wasn't
prepared for its success. When the messaging platform began growing
beyond easy control, the agency's concerns about disclosure and cost led
to its shutdown. Maybe the agency should have put some of those
government lawyers to work creating a less ad hoc structure that would
have provided stable financial support while maintaining a more formal
arms-length separation from the U.S. government.

Yes, the Cold War is over, and the end of the Cuba embargo is long
overdue. But the Cubans are not gentle socialists. And there is a kind
of Cold War 2.0 -- between democratic nations and a growing cadre of
repressive states that stretches from Russia to Egypt and onward to
Latin America. These countries will use any digital means necessary to
stifle free expression. USAID's so-called "Cuban Twitter" plan was by no
means perfect, but arguing that such programs are unnecessary is the
equivalent of bringing pen and paper to a flame war.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View's
editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net.

Source: Freeing Cuba One Tweet at a Time - Bloomberg View -
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-04/freeing-cuba-one-tweet-at-a-time

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