Global Voices Advocacy » Kacem Jlidi

Between Twitter and the Street: Tunisia Celebrates its Second Independence

Kacem Jlidi — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:06:06 +0000

Tens of thousands of Tunisians gathered just like the old days on the Habib Bourghuiba Avenue, Main Street of Tunisia’s capital. A year ago, on this same day and on this same street, Tunisians came united to shout “Dégage” (Leave), a key word of the Tunisian Revolution. Today, they come to celebrate the first anniversary of their revolution.

On the ground, the street is creating new rituals of celebration for what we claim to be the Second Independence Day for Tunisia. Different political parties are present along with a number of not-for-profit organizations and civil society organisations, each contributing a different gesture in this ritaul, patriotic songs, drawing workshops and revolutionary speeches.

By Wassim Ghozlani

There is a feeling of less unity among those present on the Avenue, a phenomenon easily noticed today. A year ago, Tunisians demonstrated together by waving the same flag and shouting the same slogans.

Twelve months later, and more diverse and divided groups belonging to different political parties and different ideologies are waving different flags and chanting different slogans. Such diversity is not alien to Tunisian society. Nevertheless, many would have preferred it except if everyone had decided for once to come together under the same umbrella of the Tunisian flag to celebrate such a day.

Haythem El Mekki, a journalist and well-known figure describes the Avenue: “Before the Ministry of Interior there are nationalists and communists chanting slogans against Qatar. Before the Municipal Theater (on the same street) nationalists and Islamists are chanting slogans against France.”

“I'll be back when there are Tunisians and nationalists against both Qatar and France and we are calling to continue the fulfillment of the objectives of the revolution,” he added.

The image of France, traditionally Tunisia’s favourite economic partner, has received a bit of a knock since Michèle Alliot-Marie, former French Minister of Foreign Affairs, offered French help to quell the uprising in Tunisia.

Qatar Leave Credit _Thierry Brésillon

Qatar too is getting its fair share of criticism over the biased coverage of events in Tunisia through its Doha based Aljazeera, news channel. Tunisians are watching with wide open eyes the deals taking place between the newly elected government and the Emir of Qatar, suspected to be financially supporting the Ennahda, Tunisia’s moderate Islamist Party.

On twitter, the revolution’s first anniversary is celebrated differently. The hash tag #BackToBenAli started trending quickly. Tunisian twitter users, or tweeps, started live-tweeting their memories of what they did, what they faced and what they fele one year ago on this same day, January 14.

Emna El Hammi, a blogger and doctor/engineer in biotechnologies tweeted [fr]:

“my mother dying of fear begging my father not to let me go to the avenue. My father said, this is important, let her go”.

Credit_ Thierry Brésillon

Slim Amamou, a blogger and former Secretary of State at the Ministry of Youth and Sports tweeted:

“it was the end of torture for @azyyoz and me. The Minister of Interior transferred us to the Ministry of Justice and then at night to Mornaguia prison”.

Afef Abrougui, a Global Voices blogger tweeted:

“I remember myself having a big fight with my sister because I shared an anti-regime song on Facebook: she was my own #Ammar404” (referring to the internet censor).

Emna Ben Jemaa, a journalist and marketing professor tweeted:

“A year ago, I stopped the lesson to listen to Ben Ali’s speech with my students in class and I was translating it for the foreigners”.

France24 covered the live tweet and tweeted:

“Yesterday, security forces killed 50 people in Kasserine and Thala. Today, the victims are buried”.

Amel Boussetta, a teacher and human rights advocated tweeted:

“In front of the Ministry of Interior, I was screaming out loud along with thousands of Tunisians #dégage #dégage #dégage #dégage #Jan14 #Tunisia

Moez Jaballah, a student, tweeted:

“A year ago, Tunisia was united and cohesive. Now, it is cut in two: The Islamists and others!”

Sameh Bel Haj Ali, a landscape and urban planning engineer, tweeted:

“A year later I am still looking for the man who put his jacket on the ground under my head when I fainted! Thank you”.

Credit_ Nicolas Fauque

As for me, I remember when I got arbitrarily arrested on the same Avenue by two secret policemen, for carrying a laptop and a Palestinian scarf. I wasn’t hurt but I will never forget the scenes of those young men heavily beaten, their big bruises, open cuts and their torn clothes in the cold winter. I will never forget the big blood drops almost everywhere on the ground of the Ministry of Interior.

Equally, I remember soon after Ben Ali fled the country the militias’ attacks, I remember the long cold nights young men spent outside watching their homes and streets and reporting to the soldiers camping in their trucks not so far away. I remember my mother up most part of the night making sandwiches and tea for the solders outside.

These are our celebrations of our new custom – Tunisia’s second independence day. We celebrate both online and offline, the way that our so-called Revolution actually happened.

Cross-posted on openDemocracy

G8 taking over the Internet

Kacem Jlidi — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:29:24 +0000

For the first time and on the occasion of the Summit of Heads of State and Government or as known for Group of Eight (G8) (a “ritual” created by France in 1975 for the governments of 8 major economies (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, USA, Canada and Russia) –that will be held in Deauville, France on 26^th -27^th May 2011; an internet summit or referred to “e-G8 Forum” is wrapping up today in Paris. At least 600 people attended.

The e-G8 taking place 24^th -25^th May brought together CEOs and the leaders of the Internet’s most leading companies and organizations whom over these two days, worked together before sharing their proposals with the Heads of State and Government in Deauville. (Below you may find agenda of the forum).

Video overview of the forum: Debates, meetings, talks, check out the film illustrating the highlights of the first day at the e-G8 forum.

It’s reported that Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia are among the key speakers today.

Surprisingly, until today I came by very little press coverage for an event of this magnitude, and that’s the reason why I’m compiling my findings in this humble post.

What is crucial here is that this year, and for the first time ever, the Internet’s role in society and the economy will be formally on the G8 Summit agenda.

The program of the summit included discussions on economic growth, social issues such as human rights, intellectual property protection and privacy, and the Internet of the future.

The Internet is the place where we meet, communicate, create, learn, share and organize. Yet, such event (e-G8) tells us that we came by a turning point in early web history. Governments and top web companies are now discussing if internet to become a primarily tool for improving our societies, knowledge and culture, or a totalitarian tool of surveillance and control.

What bugs here is knowing that President Nicolas Sarkozy, along with the other G8 leaders, have generally supported policies which are not always in the best-interests of Internet users certainly around issues of privacy, freedom of speech, taxation, and net neutrality.

To this effect, a collective of associations defending internet rights and networks neutrality has issued a call against French president “e-G8 forum”.

Among the organizations calls the FCForum, the website BoingBoing, the Free Art and Technology Lab, Telecomix and the French “la quadrature du Net”

Nova Spivack , one of the attendee of the e-G8 raised a number of concerns around this unprecedented summit saying: “Will this event result in helping Big Corporations and Big Governments be even Bigger, or will it also provide a voice to the people, the citizens of the Web? Will the delegates be thinking about themselves and their companies, or will they try to bring larger issues to the table?”

Fabrice Epelboin former editor of ReadWriteWeb France says: “Sarkozy actually has a very bad track record in terms of internet freedom. The Hadopi law (three strike and you're out) was initially supposed to fight against copyright infringements by monitoring P2P sharing and looking at IPs, it turns out to move toward putting a monitoring device in citizen's DSL modem.

The Hadopi law, also passed under his legislation, basically gives the right for the interior minister to censor whatever he wants, without any warrant of any kind, using a state secret blacklist, without any sort of control or authority monitoring the process. In Iran, this is called censorship, in France, it’s about fighting pedophiles, but the list of content to fight is getting larger and more secret.

Last summer, the sec. of state for the internet issued a report about net neutrality who was basically a cut and paste exercise aggregating most of the lobbies anti net neutrality arguments.

Today, the government is looking to install a ‘civilized internet', e.g. heavily filtered and monitored internet.

In September, Reporter Without Border issued its latest report on internet freedom, and for the first time, France entered the ‘under surveillance’ list, a very severe warning for a democracy.”

There have been several calls for creative actions to take place on Friday May 13^th. (Images used in this post are from the said campaign).

Video: Call for creative action – Friday, 13 May 2011

Addressing concerns that flooded the event, President Sarkozy said that states were subject to the will of their citizens who were currently engaged in a revolution, empowered by the internet.

“The global revolution that you incarnate is a peaceful one. It did not emerge on battlefields but on university campuses,” he said.

“However, Iain Mackenzie- Technology reporter, BBC News, Paris reported that President Sarkozy claimed that countries could not remain neutral and allow completely unchecked internet use.”

“The world you represent is not a parallel universe where legal and moral rules and more generally all the basic rules that govern society in democratic countries do not apply.”

According to Reporters Without Borders “Civil society representatives gave an unofficial news conference this morning (May 25^th) in one of the conference rooms of the “e-G8” forum on Internet issues in Paris, voicing their opposition to attempts to regulate the Internet and criticizing the lack of representativeness of most of those who were invited by the French government to take part in the forum.”

Jarvis said he was “scared by those who are scared of the Internet.” Julliard said he was “extremely disappointed” by the course taken by discussions during the e-G8 forum, including the lack of a strongly-worded message to governments that target journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents.

Unknown says “As a host of the G8, France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to step up centralized control over the Internet. He has convened world leaders to a summit aimed at working towards a “civilized Internet”, a concept he borrowed from the Chinese government. By creating fears such as “cyber-terrorism”, their objective is to generalize rules of exception in order to establish censorship and control, thereby undermining free speech and other civil liberties.”

AGENDA OF THE EVENT

(Credit: Nova Spivack)

e-G8 Forum
The Internet: Accelerating Growth
Pre-program

MONDAY 23 MAY
17h00 – 21h00: Welcome and Registration -Tuileries Gardens

TUESDAY 24 MAY

08h30 – 10h00: Registration, coffee and networking

10h00 – 10h10: Welcome & Introduction, Maurice Lévy, Chairman & CEO, Publicis Groupe, Chairman of the e-G8 Forum

10h10 – 10h45: Opening Keynote
Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, current President of the G8
10h45 – 11h00: Q&A with President Sarkozy

11h00 – 12h00: Plenary I
“Silicon Power: The Internet & Economic Growth”
Information Technology and the entire digital ecosystem have been a powerful creator of jobs and wealth around the world. How to ensure this continues?

12h00 – 13h00: Plenary II
“Rewiring Societies” The Internet has empowered people around the world, most recently and most spectacularly in the Middle East, but also in many other instances. Are we seeing the emergence of a new society: more open, transparent and free?

13h00 – 14h30: Lunch

14h30 – 15h30: Plenary III
“Future of the Net: What Next?”
Broadband, booming data, video, the explosion of cloud computing, storage: the financing of infrastructures, how value is created and shared

15h30 – 16h00: Coffee break and networking
16h00 – 17h00: Content and intellectual property
17h00 – 18h00: Conversations with legendary figures of the Internet
20h00 – 22h30: e-G8 Dinner at the Louvre Museum and private visits of the museum

WEDNESDAY 25 MAY
08h00 – 09h00: Continental breakfast and networking

09h00 – 10:00: Plenary I
“Innovation and Financing”
The impact of new technologies on strategies for innovation and R&D What are the best strategies for creating innovative ecosystems and clusters?

10h00 – 10h30: Coffee break and networking

10h30 – 12h00: Parallel Workshops I
1. Fostering Innovation and Education
2. The impact of the digital revolution on small and medium-sized businesses
3. Entertainment and Culture in the Digital Age

12h00 – 13h00: Parallel Workshops II
1. Mobile Internet: how mobile is transforming commerce
2. Protection of privacy and the youth
3. The Net and the Media: the future of media in a digital society

13h00 – 14h30: Lunch

14h30 – 15h30: Parallel Workshops III
1. In the Social Media Age: the impact on society
2. Creativity and entrepreneurship on the Net
3. Trust: Creating and maintaining trust in a world of booming data

15h30 – 16h00: Coffee break

16h00 – 17h30: Plenary II
“Start-up Nations: the best and the brightest start-ups”

17h30 – 18h30: Closing Plenary of the e-G8 Forum

The US government forcing twitter to hand over personal data on its users.

Kacem Jlidi — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:55:30 +0000

Adapted from a RWB article.

The US Department of Justice is so determined to prosecute WikiLeaks and its leading supporters.

“After exerting pressure on Paypal, Visa, MasterCard and Amazon, the US government is now stepping up its harassment of WikiLeaks and its supporters,” Reporters Without Borders said.

“The federal government is trying at all costs to pursue a criminal investigation. This constitutes a serious breach of personal data protection by the Obama administration, which has repeatedly proclaimed its support for online free expression.”

A district court in Alexandria, Virginia, sent Twitter a subpoena signed by federal magistrate Theresa Buchanan on December 14^th asking for “relevant” information about users suspected of links with WikiLeaks for an “ongoing criminal investigation.”

The subpoena requests information dating back to November 2009 about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, (the US army private who is being held on suspicion of leaking the US diplomatic cables to Assange); Rop Gonggrijp, (a Dutch citizen who used to work with WikiLeaks); Jacob Appelbaum, (a US computer programmer); and Birgitta Jonsdottir, (a member of the Icelandic parliament and former WikiLeaks volunteer).

Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union are calling now on the US government to abandon its attempt to obtain this personal data and to close this investigation for the sake of fundamental constitutional principles.

Mark Stephens, one of Assange’s lawyers, said the subpoena shows how desperate US officials are to pin a crime on Assange.

The range of information requested in the subpoena from Twitter by the Department of Justice is extraordinary! It includes all the records of Tweets and conversations between users, IP addresses, email addresses and postal addresses, and all “means and source of payment” including bank account and credit card details. Access to exchanges between users and the possibility of accounts being jointly managed mean investigators will have the chance to identify new “suspects.”

Judge Theresa Buchanan declared that the ruling did not violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. “The Twitter Order does not seek to control or direct the content of petitioners’ speech or association,” she said.

However, Reporters Without Borders hails Twitter’s decision to notify the users who are the target of the investigation.

The authorities initially ordered Twitter to say nothing about the court order but after what appears to have been a legal battle, the microblogging service obtained the court’s permission on 5 January to notify the targeted users.

In an email to the users who are being investigated, Twitter said it would have to surrender the requested records within 10 days unless it received notice that a legal motion had been filed to block the court order.

WikiLeaks thinks similar subpoenas may have been sent to Facebook and Google, which have not yet issued any statement.

We need to note in this context that at the time of writing this post the WikiLeaks Facebook page has more than 1.7 million “fans” while its Twitter account has more than 868,206 followers and growing.