The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.

The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it

The Internet is the most liberating tool for humanity ever invented, and also the best for surveillance. It's not one or the other. It's both.

The Internet may well disempower the nation state, but at the same time, it also strengthens certain specific state functions - like surveillance. As a political entity, it doesn't empower the nation sate. It creates the availability of much more data than the digestive system of the nation state could possibly assimilate.

There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Desire and innovation will trump policy, the argument goes, as clever programmers circumvent controls.

While the Internet is censored in China, the censorship is allowing a level of speech to take place that's unprecedented.