And one day we will be your friend... by Sanne Stevens

A short story about both cunning and clumsy digital attacks by shady regimes.

The internet has been heralded over and over again as a liberating low threshold medium for critical voices in repressive environments worldwide. The perfect free-space - outside the control of power-hungry totalitarian censorship regimes. But alas - where resistance flourishes repression steps up. Regimes worldwide have discovered the potential of the medium for repression. And it turns out that the same characteristics that makes it such an attractive place for freedom of expression - the anonymity, the low threshold, the reach - serve these regimes just as well to censor, identify, track down and attack dissidents. These digital attacks are getting both more common and though in some environments the methods are crude and clumsy - over all they are getting more sophisticated. A short story about the digital threats in repressive environments, and examples of the cunning ways present day regimes in found to use the internet to weave a digital web of repression.

Sanne Stevens works for the Digital Defenders Partnership, that was established to increase and better coordinate emergency support for the internet’s critical users, such as bloggers, cyber activists, journalists and human rights defenders, whenever and wherever they are under threat.