In the weeks following the Iranian election, Internet users around the world found themselves glued to their computers, while Iranians inside Iran suddenly found themselves transformed into accidental citizen journalists, passing on information through Twitter, Facebook and other social networking Web sites. This explosion of online activity could not have happened were it not for Iranians' long experience with government constraints on technology.

Questions over Internet content regulation confront free societies with an unpalatable dilemma: to either systematically re-border Internet communications; or to develop a global system of content regulation. The problem remains intractable until one questions the inevitability of state sovereignty over Internet-based expression.

Is modern information technology changing what we can expect of actors in the international political system? Is it creating new actors, and presenting new issues of policy and security? Specific answers have yet to fully emerge. But we have a responsibility to define national and international security interests in cyberspace and to develop the tools to pursue them.