Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Controlling the Web Is the Dream (and the Nightmare)

Authoritarian governments regulate what their citizens can see online. The U.S. lets tech companies make similar decisions.

March 22, 2018 at 5:33 PM UTC

By Stephen L. Carter

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

It's easy to get entangled.
Photographer: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

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Russia’s recent declaration that it is prepared to operate its own internet should the West cut off access has struck some observers as more Putinesque bellicosity, which indeed it might be. But Moscow’s desire to build a web it can control is the dream of authoritarians everywhere. And not all the authoritarians are in government.

Regulating the flow of information has been the goal of every tyrant ever since Emperor Qin Shi Huang burned the books in 213 B.C. in the hope that later generations would believe that history had begun with his reign.1521737152818 Nowadays one country after another wants the ability to control its own intranet -- or at least to throw a kill switch.