In her book Sociology in the Age of the Internet, communications professor Allison Cavanagh argues that state sovereignty has been drastically decreased by networks.
Sassen argues that the state's power is limited in cyberspace and that networks, particularly the numerous private tunnels for institutions such as banks.
[8] Reidenberg refers to what he terms "Permeable National Borders," effectively echoing Sassen's arguments about the private tunnels, which pass through numerous networks.
[9] Reidenberg goes on to state that intellectual property can easily pass through such networks, which incentivizes businesses and content providers to encrypt their products.
Some examples include the SOPA-PIPA debates in the United States, the Golden Shield Project in China, and new laws that grant greater power to the Roskomnadzor in Russia.
[12] The Golden Shield Project, sometimes known as Great Firewall of China, prevents those with a Chinese IP address from accessing certain banned websites inside the country.
[13] Russia's Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) was created in December 2008 in accordance with President's Decree No.
According to the Russian government, the agency has three primary objectives: On 1 September 2015, a new data localization law provided Roskomnadzor with greater oversight.
The law itself stipulates that any personal data collected from Russian citizens online must be stored in server databases that are physically located in Russia.
"[15] Even with staunch pressure from those who promote "free flow of information," President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin remain stolid in assertions of network sovereignty to protect Russian citizens.
As Law Professor David Post at the University of Georgetown argued, "'[States] are mapping statehood onto a domain that doesn't recognize physical boundaries,'" at least in the context on the internet.
Yang gives the example of pornography stating that with VPN, "smut that's banned in the US can wind its way into American homes through electrical impulses in, say, Amsterdam.
[citation needed] One of the most significant reasons for enforcing network sovereignty is to prevent the scanning of information that travels through other countries.
For example, any internet traffic that travels through the United States is subject to the Patriot Act and so may be examined by the National Security Agency, regardless of the country of origin.
[27] With global standards it is easier to enforce network sovereignty because it builds respect for intellectual property and maintains the rights of content creators and providers.
[22] In his 2015 book Data and Goliath, American security expert Bruce Schneier says the cyber sovereignty movement, in countries such as Russia, China, France and Saudi Arabia, was given an enormous boost by the 2013 revelations of widespread international NSA surveillance, which those countries pointed to as justification for their activities and evidence of U.S. hypocrisy on Internet freedom issues.
[30]: 121 The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically.
[30]: 129, 250 As part of its response, the Chinese Communist Party in 2014 formed the Cybersecurity and Information Leading Group and the National People's Congress passed the 2017 Cyber Security Law.
[30]: 251 It also empowers the Chinese government to conduct national security audits over firms operating in China which gather user data.
[30]: 250 openDesk is a project to create administrative workspaces to enable digital sovereignty, initiated in 2023 by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and the public IT service provider Dataport.