Techniques of dissidence and digital repression

The fight for online freedom of expression is conducted using the same weapons that authoritarian regimes employ in trying to suppress it. A fight in which the role of Western democracies is increasingly ambiguous: noble and impassioned declarations are made in support of dissidents and those seeking social&political change while at the same time giving the green light to companies to export the technology which permits regimes to spy on, identify and liquidate those same dissidents. Hypocrisy or outrageous hypocrisy?