NEUTRALITY IMPOSSIBLE

"The worst thing about the information war is that it is the people who speak the truth who are always the losers. They are bound by the truth, but the liars can bear anything." Few could ignore this remark by the American science-fiction writer Robert Sheckley on Facebook. Which means but one thing and that is that the events of the past few months prove convincingly that the attractive and fashionable expression "information war" has long since become a daily reality, in which, as in a real war, battles are going on for every home, or rather, every computer.

The satirical comedy "Wag the Dog" brilliantly depicted a situation where a whole war breaks out in order to cover up a sexual scandal in the White House and to rescue the president's reputation. Film producer Stanley Motss, brilliantly played by Dustin Hoffman, helps politicians turn an imaginary threat from a fictitious Albanian terrorist group into reality. A completely phoney news show is created, from interviews with witnesses of the "war" to American spies being sent to Albania. The film was made at the end of the last century when the Internet had only just started to invade our homes, the personal computer had not yet become a normal part of the home, nobody spent time on social networks and nobody had even dreamed about always being "in contact" by mobile phone.

Now, 15 years after the release of "Wag the Dog", everything is much simpler. The Internet is the main media platform and more and more people not only no longer watch television but have even stopped getting their news from one specific source (newspapers, agencies, and so on). Whereas at the dawn of the development of social networks they were focused on the media, now the media is focused on social networks. Essentially, a new mass-media product is being born before our very eyes - a personal tape of a social network user, where news from many favourite sources gets mixed in with the comments of friends and enemies, references to various resources, along with photographs and video clips…It is impossible to verify the authenticity of such "information" - the internal "filters" of the user are stuffed with quantity (information noise) - and it is important that we are able to find out and register, and not to dwell and analyze. And so this kind of "personal newspaper" opens up such unique opportunities for influencing public opinion that Dustin Hoffman's hero would surely have choked from envy. That is if he survived, of course.

Now, armed with all this, even the most unsophisticated user can create photographs and videos to satisfy his aims and fantasies. And the media at large are also indulging in this. Recently Russian Television's Channel One illustrated a story about "the mass exodus of Ukrainians to Russia" with pictures taken from a control point on the border with Poland. Western TV channels were also often captured in this "montage" when, for example, a dispatch on the events in Libya was beefed up with pictures from Iraq. On the other hand, truthful reports by leading and respected news agencies are at times easily discredited by the comments of two or three eye-witnesses, who have "literally just returned from the street where all this is happening". Because people believe what they see more than words, it is important to create as quickly as possible visual and eloquent proof of this or that situation. For example, at the height of the stand-off between the Yanukovych government and the Euromaidan in Kiev, every caring person saw what was happening in his own way, irrespective of what and how much he chose to believe.

As a rule we trust our friends and, at least, pay increased attention to what concerns most people. It is a protective response - "if everyone thinks like that, and not otherwise, then I, too, will stick to my social group". If you express a different view or try to argue without using "catchphrases" you'll get so much abuse you'll wish you'd never bought a computer.

The whole diverse contradictoriness of the concept of freedom of speech and opinions has probably never been so vivid and frustrating as it is now. Because it is one thing to have a right, and quite another to have a specific opportunity to exercise this right. The Internet, where a teenager can have an audience of 100-200 people, and some times many more, provides the latter in abundance. The World Wide Web is the main force of globalization that creeps under all borders and can bring together the impossible. But, on the other hand, one should not overestimate its potential because the Net only appears to be a lovable, self-organizing organism, uncontrollable and unadjustable.

We have all known for a long time that there are certain programmes which enable one person to own up to a hundred accounts on Twitter and Facebook.  Such professional computer "nerds" argue, provoke, exhort, pontificate and execrate and it doesn't even occur to you that, in point of fact, you are conversing with yourself. Or rather, you reach a certain opinion which may suit someone. And that's it, the trap has shut. Having once believed something, it's then very hard to see it in a new perspective.

Today's geopolitical events - from the "Arab Spring" to the Kiev Maidan -  show with special clarity the possible scale of information wars and the importance of control over information. For either side to triumph it is not enough to have economic dominance - a race is underway between special Internet-technologies which can effectively influence "listeners and viewers". Why does this need to be done?  To promote a commodity. To change a regime. To justify a scheme. To hide the truth. To detract attention from a more important issue to one that is less significant, but well "heated". One could continue with this list for a very long time.

And this is precisely the time when the limits of the essential merge with the limits of the unacceptable. For example, it is obvious that having been caught in the whirlpool of events over Ukraine, Russia thought hard about ensuring control over her own information space. Most likely, the reorganization which affected the leading RIA Novosti agency and the Russia Today channel, the sacking of the chief director (and practically the whole team) of the popular RunetaLenta.ru internet publication and the initiation of laws allowing certain sites to be blocked (for example, the opposition leader [Aleksey] Navalnyy's blog was blocked) was also linked with this. Russia, having earlier failed to find more subtle ways of ensuring its information sovereignty, was now forced to act very clumsily, justifying it by the old adage that "anything goes in war".

It is prescribed in all international documents that freedom of speech may be restricted if national security is at stake. But does that then mean that each state itself has the right to decide what threatens it and can impose its own rules of the game? As the Columbia Journalism Review" writes, the Faculty of Journalism of Columbia University is worried about what is happening with the media after [CIA operative Edward] Snowden's disclosures. "Whereas before we were threatened with prosecution as they tried to identify the source, now we have found ourselves in an even more chilling position, of being co-conspirators," Janine Gibson, the American Guardian's editor-in-chief, believes.

This view is backed up by Jill Abramson, executive editor of New York Times: "…Journalism on sensitive issues of national security, which I see as vitally in the public interest, is effectively being criminalized." Furthermore, one should not forget that the Internet is the perfect spying instrument. After Snowden exposed details about the agency's bugging of US' national security through the social media millions of users closed their accounts.

The upshot is that in order to prevent any undesirable actions and consequences, each state should consider its own information shield. In the opinion of experts in this field, this goal cannot be achieved by using other people's technologies (processors, operational systems, browsers, and so on), relying on other people's ideology and other people's laws. Only by exploiting all this can one effectively repel cyber attacks - hacking, viruses, leaks of important data and passwords and prevent spam. But, most importantly, this is the only way to prevent the destruction of important real facilities in the county. We all recall the conversations about the computer virus Stuxnet, which struck Iran's nuclear facilities. At the time it was reported that this had caused the IRI's nuclear programme to be put back at least two years, without invasion or bombing.

But all of us need an information shield. However, if on a nationwide scale it is created with the aid of technology, what is the ordinary person to do? And everywhere there will be a search for vulnerable spots. The human brain contains prejudices, instincts, dreams, psychological illnesses and addictions… Handling this is not too easy. The most stupid thing in this situation - is suddenly to consider your own vulnerability or to declare neutrality. Everyone takes part in the information war, regardless of one's strength of will and desire.