Telecommunications Policy 36 (2012) 484492

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Telecommunications Policy
URL: www.elsevier.com/locate/telpol

Push-button-autocracy in Tunisia: Analysing the role of Internet infrastructure, institutions and international markets in creating a Tunisian censorship regime
Ben Wagner n
European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy

a r t i c l e in f o
Available online 18 May 2012 Keywords: Internet governance Tunisia Internet censorship Freedom of expression Arab Spring Internet Freedom

abstract
Internet censorship and control have been commonplace in Tunisia since the Internet became available to then public in 1996. It was not until the last days of the Jasmine revolution in January 2011 that the Tunisian government shut down the censorship regime, raising numerous questions about Internet censorship in Tunisia. This article will look at how former Tunisian president Ben Ali was able to shut down the Internet censorship regime within a matter of hours. In order to answer this question, it looks at the history of the Tunisian Internet and its Internet censorship regime, before analysing Internet architecture, Internet institutions, functional differentiation between elements of the regime and the role of international technology markets. Each of these factors contributes to the overall censorship regime and helps understand how former President Ben Ali was able to shutdown Internet censorship within a matter of hours. In conclusion, tracing the genesis of the Tunisian censorship regime may contribute to understanding the role of institutional, architectural and market-based factors in enabling other censorship regimes across the world. & 2012 Ben Wagner. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction On Thursday, 13 January 2011, the former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali held his last televised speech before eeing the country. The speech marks an extraordinary moment in the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia, although only later did its signicance become apparent. Ben Alis last public speech is interesting for many reasons, not least because of his rst ever public speech in Tunisian dialect rather than more formal Fusha Arabic (Souag, 2011), or his repeated use of the phrase I have understood you (Aouij, 2011) which has since become an integral part of the history of the Jasmine revolution (Al-Amin 2011, p. 44). However, the following paper will focus on one, quite remarkable, concession made by Ben Ali during his last speech:

In regards to the political demands, I have told you that yes, I have understood you [ana fahimtkum] and I have decided: full and complete freedom of information in all its media [wasail al ilan], no more blocking of the Internet websites and the rejection of all forms of censorship & surveillance [raqaba] (Ben Ali in Aouij (2011), Translation from Arabic by Heinrich Kollisch, University of Tubingen, Tunis, Tunisia.)

Tel.: 39 055 4685 036; fax: 39 055 4685 201. E-mail address: Ben.Wagner@eui.eu

0308-5961/$ - see front matter & 2012 Ben Wagner. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2012.04.007

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In public and at times even academic discourses that followed popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya in 2011, the answer to these questions seemed almost self-evident. Ben Ali was overwhelmed by the power of the Facebook Revolution in Tunisia and realised that he could no longer stem the tide which was soon to reach Egypt (Hauslohner, 2012). But for those, increasingly sceptical about this narrative, this statement raises many questions about the last days of the Ben Alis presidency. Many of the other concessions made by Ben Ali lowering food prices, ending police violence, introducing independent investigations into killings and corruption and guaranteeing a democratic electoral process are the bread and butter of the authoritarian political concessions and the revolutionary bargaining process both in Tunisia and beyond (Seddon, 1986; Zielinski, 1999). When considered in this broader historical context, the centrality of Internet censorship seems strange. The surprising relevance of Internet censorship in the Tunisian revolution is further emphasised by the swiftness in which this political concession was implemented: Several hours after Ben Alis speech all restrictions to the Internet were removed. This raises the following question: How was Ben Ali able to implement such a far reaching decision on Internet censorship in a matter of hours? This swift implementation of Internet policy is an interesting phenomenon with implications far beyond Tunisia. In early debates on the role of the Internet, scholars feared the rise of the push button democracy (Coleman, 1999, p. 368). Individual citizens would replace intermediate parties and political institutions by pushing buttons, empowering the individual, but disempowering important political institutions such as political parties. However it is, to no small extent, Internet technology which has empowered state institutions. The empowerment of state institutions and structures in contrast to empowering individual agency is what has been termed here push-button-autocracy. In order to understand how this button was created in Tunisia, this paper will rst look closely at the history and evolution of Internet architecture, institutions and regulation, with a particular focus on Internet censorship and control. Tracing this evolution can help understanding how Ben Ali was able to make a snap decision on 13 January 2011 and how he managed to control what Tunisians said on the Internet in the decades before the Jasmine revolution. In conclusion, it will be argued that a better understanding of how Ben Ali was able to make this decision may provide a valuable context to the wider debate on the role of the Internet in popular uprisings and revolutions in the Middle East, North Africa and Iran. 2. Building the Tunisian Internet: 199120121 2.1. Communications infrastructure modelled for control The Internet is the product of socio-technical evolutionary processes (Brey, 2005), which rely on private hardware and software to function. The hardware layers of Internet technology, as well as routing, switching, lookup and other basic functions of a distributed computer network are generally invisible to the users of the Internet, but are highly relevant for Internet governance (Mueller, 2004). One effect of the private hardware and routing arrangements at the base of the Internet is that corporations and non-state regulators frequently play a crucial role in Internet governance (Denardis, 2010). This is particularly relevant in the construction of Internet architecture, where private corporations play a fundamental role. The Tunisian Internet began in 1991 as a research tool, free of any censorship or surveillance (Silver, 2011, p. 6). While not available for public access, this period was marked by a lack of state control in which technically adept users could use the Internet as these pleased (York, 2012). However, this changed in 1996, with the introduction of the public Internet and the creation of the Agence Tunisienne dInternet (ATI), an agency tasked with providing Internet connectivity to government agencies, but also with controlling the Internet. The ability of the ATI to control the Internet stems from its central role in Tunisian Internet infrastructure, which is primarily operated and controlled by Tunisie Telecom. The ATI is embedded within the centralised telecommunications infrastructure of Tunisie Telecom, without which it could not operate in the same manner. As noted by Dhamir Mannai, a former Executive Director of IT Infrastructure at Tunisie Telecom: [e]verything goes through that agency, all Internet access, and all e-mail, so its very easy to monitor (Mannai in Silver (2011)). Evidently in Tunisia control of telecommunications infrastructure and Internet infrastructure are closely linked. Here the Internet regulation mirrors telecommunication regulation in which the Tunisian telecommunications market has long been characterised by the monopoly of Tunisia Telecom and the extensive role of the State as policy-maker, regulator and operator in the sector (Konan & van Assche, 2004, p. 4). Due to its close links to the government, it is often known as the Ofce National des Telecommunications (Konan & van Assche, 2007, p. 902). Until 2002, Tunisie Telecom (TT) had a monopoly over xed line and mobile telecommunications in Tunisia. Even after this date it continued to own most telecommunications infrastructure in Tunisia and retains a monopoly in Tunisia on xed line telecommunications (Abbassi, 2011). Notably, Tunisie Telecom was partially privatised in 2006, with a 35% stake sold to the Emirates International Telecommunications [EIT], an investment arm of Dubai Holding (Byrne, 2011). However, this external investment needs to be seen in the context of widespread politically engineered investment in the Tunisian telecoms sector during 2002 and
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This section is based on eld research in Tunisia in May 2009 and June 2011.

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2011, in which the main business partners were either state-held enterprises or members of the royal family (Byrne, 2011). Indeed these business deals became infamous in Tunisia, as they allowed for satisfying external demands for market liberalisation while at the same time trying to ensure the reassertion of power by the ruling elite. The Islamist al-Nahda party, one of the most prominent political parties in Tunisia post-Ben Ali, has continued this narrative claiming that the Ben Ali clan dug their swords into the telecoms sectory The wolves of corruption surrounded it (Byrne, 2011, p. 11). Finally, although Tunisie Telecom was partially privatised, its staff remained public sector employees. This has been particularly evident in the widespread union-organised strikes following the Tunisian revolution to ensure the protection of the rights of public sector employees within Tunisie Telecom (McGinley, 2011). Although the Tunisian state did not formally own Tunisie Telecom, it was in complete de facto control of the organisation and held great sway over its public sector employees. This control over Tunisie Telecom, gave the state a central role in telecommunications. This fact has had the effect of limiting any actual benets of liberalisation of the telecommunications market, centralising control over telecommunications infrastructure while setting fundamental constraints on the provision of Internet services in Tunisia (Konan & van Assche, 2004). The only provider allowed to provide international uplink capacity to other countries was Tunisie Telecom and the infrastructure for interconnection between ISPs was also provided by Tunisie Telecom. All of these measures gave a public company factual control over a substantial part of the physical Internet infrastructure in Tunisia, as well as the essential interconnection and international transit points. Finally but equally important, Tunisie Telecom has control of the last mile of Internet provision and consequently controls the infrastructure linking ISPs to their clients (Gouddi, 2011). These market conditions in the telecommunications sector signicantly constrained the market viability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Tunisia. Private ISPs in Tunisia are sandwiched between Tunisie Telecoms national Internet infrastructure and the last mile which is also provided by Tunisie Telecom. This substantially weakened ISPs ability to run protable businesses and resist government intervention, as they are entirely dependent on the infrastructure of a public company in the way they conducted their business. This market dominance also resulted in Tunisie Telecom alone account[ing] for about two-thirds of sectoral revenues, and only about 40 per cent of the remaining revenues are estimated to accrue to private telecommunications and Internet service providers (Cattaneo, Diop, & Walkenhorst, 2010, p. 114). 2.2. A short history of Internet ltering and censorship in Tunisia However creating a central institution such as the ATI was not a sufcient condition to create an Internet censorship and control regime in Tunisia. The ability to create such a regime required additional technical equipment, which needed to be installed at the central network transit point operated by the ATI. It will be argued in the following that the history of Internet censorship in Tunisia needs to be seen as a multi-stage process, in which different parts of the regimes capacity developed over time (Fig. 1). From 1991 to 1996, the Tunisian Internet was an open research network, which was not commonly accessible to the public but entirely free of censorship. The rst stage of Internet ltering from 1997 to 2003 marks the rst stage of Tunisian censorship infrastructure through web-blocking proxy ltering appliances. In the second stage, from 2003 to 2007, the existing ltering web-proxy based ltering regime was augmented with an additional manual email-ltering regime. In the third stage from 2007 to 2010, deep packet inspection technology was included in the ltering regime, both for ltering and capturing emails and for ltering-out websites. Finally in the fourth and last stage, from 2010 to 2011, additional hacking attacks and website defacement techniques were employed to stem the nal tide of the revolution. 2.2.1. The beginning: 19911996 In the initial period of Internet connectivity in Tunisia, the connection to the outside world was a relatively small affair. Tunisia Online proudly proclaimed that big improvements have been made as regards connecting up with the Internet. The national link has developed from 19.2 kbps in 1991 with Eunet to 512 kbps in 1996 with SprintLink (Tunisia Online, 1999, p. 1). 2.2.2. Stage1: 19972003 The creation of the ATI in 1996 began the process for the creation of the rst censorship regime in Tunisia in 1997. The ATI began installing web caching proxies on the centralised Tunisie Telecom Internet infrastructure where it had control. The ATI purchased the boxes used for this purpose from international companies and from 1997 onwards ATI were

Fig. 1. Stages of censorship & ltering on the Tunisian Internet.

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actively using NetApp technology for this purpose (Silver, 2011). The technology installed by ATI was the NetCache web proxy solution (OpenNet Initiative, 2005), which was used in conjunction with the SmartFilter product. SmartFilter is a product developed by Secure Computing, which has since been purchased by McAfee which was in turn purchased by Intel (Noman & York, 2011). Notably from the earliest days of the Tunisian censorship regime there was a distinction between the ltering classication technology and the ltering implementation technology, with classication done using an URL list provided by SmartFilter and implementation enacted via a NetCache web proxy. While the technical systems of Internet censorship and control implementation were augmented and changed over time, the same classication system for website ltering remained in place during these implementation changes. 2.2.3. Stage 2: 20032007 In response to the perceived insufciency of web-based Internet ltering and dissidents [who] started using e-mail to distribute the contents of banned sites (Silver, 2011, p. 7) the ATI introduced email ltering solutions in the early 2000s, with strong suggestions that this took place in 2003. The solution is the only kind of censorship technology the ATI developed in-house, using the FOSS product Postx as an email proxy (Silver, 2011). Although using externally available technology, they did not need to purchase additional hardware systems from international vendors. The email ltering was done manually by operators in the interior ministry rather than the ATI which saw itself as a technology provider that enabled censorship and control but did not actually partake in censorship (Elkin, 2011). Instead the interior ministry operators went through emails, sometimes dropped or modied the contents and then forwarded emails, often hours later to their intended recipients. 2.2.4. Stage 3: 20072010 The solutions employed thus far were relatively effective at controlling content on the Tunisian Internet. However, particularly the introduction of broadband in Tunisia made the amounts of data too large for the existing NetApp NetCache appliances to handle (Silver, 2011), even though there were dozens of boxes in place in the Tunisie Telecom network. The same goes for the custom build Postx email proxy, which was unable to deal with the load. Moreover the solutions were not only unable to cope with the sheer amount, but increasingly degraded network performance on the Tunisian Internet. Both email and web ltering systems in use in 20052006 were typical corporate solutions at the time and were no longer considered effective for government grade operations. As a result Kamel Saadauoi, one of the most important engineers of the Tunisian Internet who is now the President of the Tunisian National Telecommunications Authority went shopping for more sophisticated solutions at the ISS World trade shows (Silver, 2011, p. 7). While some vendors refused to provide Tunisia with the kinds of solutions it desired, many were prepared to do so and the ATI eventually installed systems from two European contractors that each used deep-packet inspection one supplier for ltering websites and another for capturing e-mails (Silver, 2011, p. 7). As noted by Mueller and Asghari in this special issue, the use of deep packet inspection technology in response to the challenge of increased data trafc created by broadband can also be observed in the U.S. and Canada (Mueller & Asghari, in press). Closely linked to the purchase of internationally-sourced deep packet inspection (DPI) technology is the long-standing support of the Tunisian censorship and control regime by European technical consultants, although their role has mainly been to provide important maintenance and technical support to the Tunisian ltering regime vendor. The French Internet provider Wanadoo is one such technical provider to the Tunisian state, offering technical support for Internet censorship (Krempl, 2008). While activists (Ben Gharbia, 2008) and academics (Wagner, 2008) have suggested since 2008 that Tunisia did indeed seem to have deep packet inspection infrastructure in place, it is not until after the revolution that it became completely evident that Tunisia did indeed have a DPI ltering system installed from 2007 onwards. Interestingly Tunisia continued using the SmartFilter ltering lists, while implementing the website ltering with more effective DPI solutions. Consequently DPI represents more effective ltering implementation technology in Tunisia, but not a substantive change in ltering classication technology. 2.2.5. Stage 4: 20102011 The fourth phase in the evolution of censorship and control on the Tunisian Internet needs to be understood in context. The Tunisian government was aware of the danger to its existing ltering system that stemmed from social media and had signed a deal to add monitoring of social networks (Silver, 2011, p. 8) to their existing monitoring capacity, but the supplier hadnt yet delivered the solution (Silver, 2011, p. 8) when the events of the Jasmine revolution overtook the country. Lacking a fully edged social media monitoring system, the Tunisian authorities instead resorted to a makeshift and piecemeal approach to social media monitoring and ltering. By leveraging their central role in the Tunisian Internet architecture, they were able to steal the passwords of Facebook users and Internet bloggers. These details were then used as part of widespread hacking attacks in Tunisia which involved attacking social media groups, defacing websites and deleting blogs (Ragan, 2010). These attacks were orchestrated together with a website ltering campaign which leveraged existing web ltering infrastructure. The head of the Agence Tunisienne dInternet (ATI) [stating that] the number of websites blocked by the authorities doubled in just a few weeks (RSF, 2011, p. 1). While the number of websites ltered increased, this development was coupled with ofine censorship methods. The targeted arrest of bloggers, journalists and Internet

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activists on January 7 2011 was just one example of a string of arrests that come in the midst of what is being described as a nationwide uprising (Ryan, 2011, p. 1). While such arrests had taken place beforehand, their large scale reached a new level in January 2011. Their scale was symptomatic of a situation in which a regime felt threatened by widespread popular protests on the streets of Tunisia in December 2010, which by early January 2011 had spread to all parts of the country (Rifai, 2011). Lacking a similar level of technological sophistication in monitoring social networks to the technologies they had purchased for email, the government was forced to resort to more direct home-made solutions for repressing activity on social media. 2.2.6. Stage 5? 2011 On the evening of 13 January, Ben Ali held his I have understood you speech on Tunisian television. Several hours after this speech all restrictions to the Internet had been removed. With the ick of a switch Tunisia suddenly had access to an unltered Internet connection, although the technical ltering and surveillance infrastructure remained in place. Despite these nal concessions, Ben Alis attempt to win over his population was not successful and he was forced to ee the country the following day, 14 January 2011. Since then, the new post-revolutionary CEO of the ATI Moez Chackchouk has been at pains to shift the focus of his organisation away from being an enabler of Internet ltering and surveillance (Chakchouk, 2011). Instead he envisages a role for the ATI as a neutral Internet Exchange Point (IXP) which retains a central role in Tunisian Internet infrastructure, but has a less political role in the operation of Internet infrastructure. Moreover he strongly believes that the ATI can play a positive role in developing the Tunisian Internet economy, by providing hosting solutions and its own expertise. At the same time the ATI has again become the central focus point of political contestation in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Several months after turning off all Internet censorship, a Tunisian military court ordered the ATI to block 5 Facebook pages which were seen as defaming the honour of several high ranking military generals. While the ATI implemented the military courts judgement following the ruling, the implementation of the judgement was suspended due to technical constraints in August 2011 (Abrougui, 2012). Following the decision of the military court, a group of four lawyers in Tunisia sued the ATI at a civilian Tunisian court, to ensure that all forms of pornography are censored across Tunisia as they are un-Islamic and harmful to children (Berrjab, 2011). Notably, the court decision was appealed by the ATI, however the appeal to the Tribunal du Premier Instance du Tunis was unsuccessful and the ATI appealed the decision to the highest Tunisian Court, the Court de Cassation, with success. On 22 February 2012 the Tunisian Court de Cassation overturned a judgement by a lower court last August banning pornographic Web content and referred the case back to appeal (RSF, 2012, p. 1). Following elections in Tunisia in October 2011, it remains to be seen how the regulation of content on the Tunisian Internet will continue (Abrougui, 2012). Whether the period from 2011 onwards will simply be stage 5 in the on-going politics of censorship in Tunisia remains to be decided and constitutes one highly contested component of the post-revolutionary political changes (RSF, 2012). 3. Analysis Having sketched out the history of Internet censorship and control in Tunisia, the paper will now turn to an analysis of the factors which might assist in answering the research question: How was Ben Ali able to implement such a far reaching decision on Internet censorship in a matter of hours? In response to this question, there are three dimensions that will be explored here as possible answers to this question: a) Centralised Internet architecture and institutions. b) Functionally differentiated content regulation. c) Access to censorship technologies through international markets.

3.1. Building centralised Internet architecture and institutions: Creating focal points of control Having looked at the history of the architecture of Internet ltering and censorship, the rst obvious factor is the centrality of Internet Architecture in supporting censorship. The Tunisian Internet infrastructure is constructed in a manner which explicitly creates one central focal point of control. Although the intentionality of such decisions is hard to ascertain, the infrastructural decisions can be seen in the wider context of Ben Ali and the Tunisian state wanting to maintain close control over telecommunications infrastructure. As such, the centralised Internet infrastructure can be seen as a logical extension of this desire, while still acknowledging that the development of the infrastructure into this form is part of a wider systemic evolution. However, a centralised Internet infrastructure is not sufcient to create an Internet censorship regime. It is also necessary to create institutions with the capacity to manage the infrastructure and implement the censorship regime. In the Tunisian case a centralised administrative agency, the Agence Tunisienne dInternet (ATI), was created in 1996 by the Tunisian Ministry of Communication. The ATI holds all relevant administrative functions for regulating and controlling the Tunisian Internet. First the ATI is responsible for the management of the Tunisian domain name system.tn, and assigns IP

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addresses as a national Internet registry (NIR). Moreover as previously discussed, the ATI is the exclusive Tunisian gateway to the international Internet and acts as the sole Internet exchange point. ISPs are required to obtain their upstream bandwidth from the ATI (OpenNet Initiative, 2009). From an architectural perspective this means that all Internet trafc passes through the ATI before leaving Tunisia, making ltering and censorship of Internet content technically relatively easy to accomplish. By bundling all relevant Internet governance functions in one centralised Internet institution, the Tunisian government has created a centralised control structure that is able to make far-reaching decisions about the Tunisian Internet. The empowerment of one specic state institution within the organisational hierarchy of Tunisian government also allows for decisions on Internet censorship and control to be implemented extremely rapidly. This was evident during December 2010 and January 2011, in which the government was able to make the Internet control regime increasingly restrictive and ne tune its censorship requirements. The ATI also leveraged its central institutional and architectural position within Tunisian cyberspace to enable attacks on individual users and steal the passwords they were using on social networks (Ragan, 2010). The key role of the ATI was also clearly evident on the evening of 13 January, in which the former President of Tunisia was empowered to make concessions to demonstrators extremely quickly and shut down the censorship regime in a matter of hours. In a sense, the ATI represents the metaphorical button that was pressed when Internet censorship was turned off: an institutional control structure that could be used to implement Internet governance swiftly and efciently. The ATI represents a key institution explaining how Ben Ali was able to implement the concessions at such short notice. These two factors enabled him to use the Internet censorship and control regime as a bargaining chip during the Jasmine revolution. 3.2. Functional differentiated Internet ltering and censorship Another interesting aspect of Tunisian content regulatory regime is the extent to which the regime functionally differentiated (Luhmann, 1982). Most noteworthy in this context is the role of the ATI, a censorship technology provider, which acted as a technical and institutional enabler of Internet censorship without factually which content was being censored (Elkin, 2011). Instead it saw itself as a technology provider, which brought together the expertise and infrastructure necessary to create an Internet control regime. While this narrative about the ATI may have been created in post-revolutionary revisionism to protect the agency and its employees past and present, the research data suggests that the ATI did indeed take this enabling role. Actual decisions about what to censor were made by a special unit within the interior ministry, although the ATI was still branded as Ammar404 in public (Silver, 2011). A second, equally interesting form, of functional differentiation of the Tunisian censorship regime is the separation between specic censorship decisions and aggregate ltering rules. While the former were individual decisions about politically sensitive websites such as Nawaat, the latter were more general decisions about the types of content which should be ltered. While the former decision was made on an individual basis by a special unit in the Tunisian interior ministry and, after the 13 January 2011 by Tunisian courts, the latter decisions were made on the basis of aggregate ltering rules provided by a private U.S. company: McAffee Smart Filter (Noman & York, 2011). It is a quite extraordinary example of functional differentiation within world society, that the Tunisian state did not see itself t or was not itself willing to consider how to dene pornography. Instead it preferred to outsource this decision, not to a Tunisian agency or institution, but to an American company, which provides a ltering classication system. Even after the Jasmine revolution, a Tunisian court has ordered pornography to be removed from the Internet, assuming that a technical classication mechanism of some kind or another will be found. The ATI for its part is unwilling to intervene in the precise selection of individual sites to be ltered, as a result of which any mistaken denition of pornography by McAfee in the U.S. will be repeated in Tunisia. There are several other examples of functional differentiation as well. The ltering classication technology provided by McAfee is distinct from the ltering implementation technology within Tunisian Internet architecture. The separation of these two functions makes the overall system more exible and able to adapt. Particularly with the introduction of broadband the Tunisian Internet was faced with a series of problems to which the existing system was not able to respond. As classication and implementation were distinct, this allowed the overall censorship system to adapt to the growth in bandwidth without having to change the functioning classication system. The last but equally important form functional differentiation within the Tunisian censorship regime is between Internet censorship and surveillance. While the technological systems were capable of fullling multiple functions, this functionally was not typically implemented. Internet surveillance and censorship systems were typically kept technologically separate and were purchased from separate vendors, as were the systems for web ltering and email ltering (Silver, 2011). There are strong indications that these choices were intentional, to avoid capture by or dependence on one vendor. This stringent separation of technological systems with multiple capacities was part of a wider strategy of compartmentalisation within the Tunisian censorship regime. Within the context of the overall ltering system compartmentalisation made a great deal of sense and functional differentiation was an obvious consequence of these political decisions. Those with actual control over the system in the Tunisian interior ministry did not require specialised knowledge or expertise in Internet infrastructure to operate the system. At the same time the engineers operating the infrastructure at the ATI could absolve themselves from

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responsibility, as they were not actually making individual decisions about censorship. This compartmentalisation also allowed the Tunisian state to remain independent from any one international vendor of technology while allowing Ben Ali to remain independent from any specic institution within the Tunisian state. Finally, it gave the overall censorship regime the ability to respond exibly and adapt to increases in Internet trafc, or increased censorship evasion through the use of different channels and platforms. 3.3. Access to censorship technologies through international markets The last aspect that will be explored in the context of this analysis is the international dimension of Internet censorship and control in Tunisia. From the rst generation of Tunisian censorship infrastructure in 1997, the ATI consistently employed internationally sourced ltering systems from Europe and North America. While some limited elements could have been developed within Tunisia, the vast majority was provided by international vendors. The one notable exception to this trend is the open source email product Postx, which was used as part of the rst generation of Internet censorship systems and was adapted to the needs of the Tunisian state by the ATI. Beyond Postx, all other elements of the Tunisian censorship and ltering infrastructure rested on technology completely built and developed outside Tunisia. Indeed, for all other elements of the censorship regime, the Tunisian state did not have the technical ability to build these solutions themselves or have them built in Tunisia. This is evident starting from the rst NetCache boxes the Tunisian state imported, which were built by NetApp in the U.S., to the McAffee SmartFilter categorisation system also used from 1997 onwards and also produced in the U.S. Particularly the use of deep packet inspection from 2007 onwards (stage 4) increased the dependency on foreign technology vendors, as the systems provided were increasingly closed and opaque to their operators. In response, representatives of the Tunisian government specically ensured that they were not locked in to one vendor and ensured that they had access to DPI technology from multiple vendors. Furthermore Tunisia was not only dependent on international markets for much of its censorship and ltering architecture, it also heavily used international technical consultants to help build and maintain the ltering infrastructure (Krempl, 2008). It is unlikely that the Tunisian state would have let foreign technical consultants gain access to sensitive national infrastructure unless it specically required their support. An alternative explanation is that the involvement of international technical consultants may have been part of the wider strategy of compartmentalisation within the censorship regime. This strategy could have ensured that no Tunisian actors or institutions gained too much power as a result of their capacity to maintain the censorship systems without external support. Whether the involvement of international technical consultations to maintain the system suggests dependence or strategy, their importance in keeping the overall regime functioning would still seem evident. Although government dependency on international technical consultants is lesser than their dependence on internationally developed technologies, it constitutes an important and often overlooked component of the Tunisian censorship regime. 4. Preliminary conclusions Puzzled by the events of 13 January 2011, the paper has attempted to understand how former Tunisian President Ben Ali was able to implement such an extraordinarily swift snap decision within a very short space of time. Understanding how Ben Ali was able to do so requires a broader understanding of the history of the Tunisian ltering and censorship regime. A further analysis of the key enabling components of this regime was then conducted to try to understand how such a decision could be made. How was Ben Ali able to implement such a far reaching decision on Internet censorship in a matter of hours? The preceding analysis suggests three responses to this question: a) The Tunisian state had created a centralised Internet architecture, thereby creating focal points of control. At these central control points institutions were situated who allow for quick and efcient changes to the Tunisian censorship infrastructure to be made. This architecture and these institutions form the core part of the censorship regime. b) The compartmentalisation and functional differentiation of the censorship system limited the number of individuals with the actual ability to make changes within the system. This general strategy limited dependency from any one national or international actor and allowed the regime to adapt to new challenges to the censorship regime. c) Access to Internet censorship technologies through international markets is an essential component of the overall censorship regime. The Tunisian state does not have the capacity to develop these technologies themselves and was only able to build and develop its censorship regime with the help of international consultants, importing international technology and access to international ltering systems. The combination of these three elements helps explain how Ben Ali was able to implement his snap concession within a matter of hours. However none of these arguments is itself a sufcient condition for a state to create such a censorship regime. Rather all three elements in unison seem to contribute to the creation of the overall censorship regime. In this context it does seem reasonable to suggest that these three factors together created a push-button-autocracy in Tunisia, in

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which one individual was empowered in a short space of time to push a button, which changed the nature of the entire Internet. While the metaphorical button was functionally provided by the ATI, which considered itself a censorship technology provider, its existence was equally enabled by international technology provision and the compartmentalised nature and functional differentiation of the overall censorship system. That these three dimensions could together be used to create a push-button-autocracy has implications far beyond Tunis. When the Internet was turned off in Egypt (Simmons, 2011, p. 591), protestors in Cairo encountered a similar situation in which one individual actor had the capacity to make far-reaching changes over the Internet. Given the fundamental role the Internet has in enabling human rights around the world (La Rue, 2011, A/HRC/17/27), the very existence of such a push-button system is highly problematic. This does not mean that well meaning regulators should have prevented the Tunisian state from accessing free and open source software like Postx when it was building an email censorship system in 2001 (which in any event would have been a futile endeavour). But it does suggest a reconsideration of many of the often simplistic assumptions of the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, particularly in countries like Tunisia.

Acknowledgements The research for this article could not have been conducted without the support of the Humanist Institute for Co-operation with Developing Countries (Hivos). I am grateful for the valuable comments on earlier version of this article by Kave Salamatian, Monique Doppert, Eric King, Fieke Jansen, Eva Wagner, Johanne Kubler, Matt Crosston, participants in the GIGANET Washington DC Symposium 2011 and three anonymous reviewers. Particular gratitude goes to Vernon Silver for his erudite knowledge of the international censorship & surveillance trade and the straight-talking perseverance of Milton Mueller. Any errors or omissions are my own. References
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