Activists hold a hackathon aimed at strengthening communications and information access in Cuba. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
According to an Associated Press investigation released on Thursday, the U.S. government secretly ran a Twitter-like social media service in Cuba with the goal of encouraging an uprising against Cuba’s communist government. ZunZuneo, a text-based social media network, was allegedly set up in 2009 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a means of circumventing Cuba’s strict internet censorship in order to foment social unrest.
The revelation of the covert operation — which, obviously, never succeeded in its goal of fomenting a revolution, with ZunZuneo having shut down in mid-2012 with a mere 40,000 users — is embarrassing for the Obama administration for a number of reasons. That the U.S. government was effectively paying the Cuban regime (through its state-run cell-phone company) to subsidize this failed program is only the tip of the iceberg.
via The Economist
It also serves to provide Cuba with more justifications — i.e., by validating concerns about U.S. attempts at regime change — in justifying heavy restrictions on freedom of information. As Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez said back in 2011,
The euphoria around social networks coexists with the risk of regime change operations, which have increased, as well as the threat to peace. These hazardous conditions make it necessary and urgent that we appropriate these platforms.
Far from triggering a “Cuban Spring,” as some U.S. officials were hoping would happen, this ham-fisted attempt at sparking a political movement will only give the regime cover for its repressive methods. And with social media networks like Twitter recently feeling the heat from governments like Turkey’s, this news will also be of interest to states with already precarious relationships with channels of free expression.
This kind of blowback is not conducive to the aims of USAID, which will have its credibility questioned as a result of its participation in this operation. The defense offered up by a spokesman for the group has attempted to re-frame the agency’s involvement:
USAID is a development agency, not an intelligence agency, and we work all over the world to help people exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms, and give them access to tools to improve their lives and connect with the outside world . . .
In the implementation has the government taken steps to be discreet in non-permissive environments? Of course. That’s how you protect the practitioners and the public. In hostile environments, we often take steps to protect the partners we’re working with on the ground. This is not unique to Cuba.
Though the White House has taken a similar tack in defending the ZunZuneo program, it’s still not entirely clear whether the project was legal under U.S. law. USAID’s role in this should be a major concern since, as the aftermath of the CIA’s polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan has made clear, even the perception of political meddling in humanitarian initiatives can have devastating results on the very populace they were intended to help.
