An Internet cafe in Burkina Faso. Flickr: intransit (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, James Losey, Weiping Li, Renata Avila and Sarah Myers.

This week the spotlight turns to Sub-Saharan Africa where Internet freedom advocates are demanding reform as a range of governments across the continent continue policies of censoring dissent. In Nairobi, Kenya, a Pan African Civil Society Workshop on “Who Controls the Internet?” published a statement calling for African nations to prioritize the UN Human Rights Council Resolution affirming freedom of expression online. The participating organizations also called on governments across Africa to endorse the African Platform for Access to Information and to apply its principles.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has called upon United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to increase pressure for free expression during her 11-day tour of the region. In one of her first stops on the tour Clinton visited South Africa, where proposed legislation could mandate up to 25 years in prison for journalists and government whistleblowers who leak, possess or publish classified government documents. This week Clinton is also visiting Nigeria, whose Senate President David Mark has called for a clampdown on social media. Amidst a backlash by Nigerian netizens, Mark said that his comments were taken out of context.

Censorship

Human Rights Watch has also issued a report calling upon Angola to stop censoring free speech in advance of its elections on August 31. Opposition party leader Isaias Samakuva has criticized attacks on press freedom by the ruling party, a repeat of government-biased media crackdowns practiced in 2008.

Two newspapers in Gabon, Ezombolo and La Une [fr], have been suspended by the government for six months for criticizing political figures in their columns. The government’s National Communications Council also accused Ezombolo of “threatening public order” by running an opinion piece urging troops not to obey orders to shoot protesters.

Moving on to Asia, two newspapers in Myanmar, The Voice and The Envoy, were also suspended for failing to submit stories to government censors, but solidarity support from other online publications caused the government to back down and allow their return as of August 18. Taking a cue from Wikipedia’s website blackout used to protest the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), The Messenger, Express Time and The Nation blacked out their websites in protest on August 6, following a protest march on August 4.

Four employees at Chinese-based search engine Baidu were fired and three of them were arrested for accepting bribes to delete online messages.

Copyright

France’s new Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti plans to cut the budget of France’s Internet piracy police group, Hadopi, which some speculate could be part of a larger plan to shutter the agency by newly-elected French President Francois Hollande.

Leaked text obtained by nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International from negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement indicates that the United States and Australia would require that fair use exceptions to copyright to be subject to an international standard.

Embedding copyright-infringing video content from third party websites is not a crime, according to a US Court of Appeals ruling that favors social video bookmarking website MyVidster in a lawsuit leveled by Flava Works, a pornography production company.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, the Authors Guild says Google should pay for US$ 750 for every book the company has digitized.

A leaked memo authored by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) describes how its employees are being briefed to tell reporters that TVShack.net founder and UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer “profited handsomely from advertising on the site,” which links to infringing videos rather than hosting them. With the help of Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, O’Dwyer is fighting extradition to the US to face charges of copyright infringement.

Thuggery

Supporters in Washington, DC, New York, and elsewhere are campaigning for Ethiopia to release journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega. Nega was found guilty in June along with 23 other activists for “participation in a terrorist organization,” and in mid-July was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Nazir al-Majid has been released without charges by Syrian authorities after spending a year in solitary confinement.

Two Sri Lankan news websites, the Sri Lanka Mirror and Sri Lanka X News, have been raided by the Criminal Investigation Department’s Colombo Crime Division. Sri Lanka X News is tied to the primary opposition party the United National Party (UNP).

Iranian blogger Ahmad Shariat has been arrested. The National reports that Shariat is among pro-administration bloggers that have faced arrest in an ongoing power struggle.

A Vietnamese woman, Dang Thi Kim Lieng, self-immolated outside of a government building to protest the detention of her daughter, blogger Ta Phong Tan. She died of her burns on July 30. In a trial that began on August 7, which barred family from attending, Tan and two other bloggers face 20 years in prison for maintaining the Free Journalists Club blog, which the government states “distort[s] the truth, denigrat[es] the party and state.”

National policy

The Verge reported that “Olympic ‘Wi-Fi’” police were spotted shutting down unsanctioned Wi-Fi hotspots, officially including Wi-Fi on the list of items controlled at the Olympics. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games also shut down a free service that would alert users when tickets for Olympics events were available.

Next month Iran will unplug its ministries from the global Internet as part of a move to operate a national intranet.

Brazil’s government will vote on August 8 on the proposed Marco Civil, a legal framework of civil rights for Internet users in Brazil. The bill outlines protection for Internet users’ personal data and requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to inform the public of content removals.

Internet governance

The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution opposing ITU proposals to increase control over the Internet, drawing support from Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf.

Freedom House has launched a contest called the Internet Governance Forum Incubator Project. Project finalists will be part of Freedom House’s delegation to the IGF and at least two projects will receive funding.

A 24-hour Global Voices marathon to translate the Declaration of Internet Freedom has brought the number of translation of to 63, including five indigenous languages from the Americas.

Netizen activism

In Sudan, bloggers are using online channels such as tweeting the hashtag #sudanrevolts in response to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's crackdown on conventional media stifling protests against government austerity.

Sovereigns of cyberspace

Amidst rumors that Chinese-based telecommunications company Huawei is providing wiretap backdoors for the Chinese government, German security researcher Felix Lindner has told CNET that security flaws in Huawei’s routers already offer monitoring opportunities. In response Huawei stated that it seeks out such security gaps and requested input from businesses.

The now publicly-traded Facebook estimated 83 million of its approximately 955 million registered users were “fake” (not under the user's real legal name) according to its latest SEC filing released on Thursday, available here. It claims some use pseudonyms to seek privacy, but 14 million “undesirable” users estimated in the report use fake names to spread links to malware.

Cybersecurity

In the US Senate, the Cybersecurity Act was defeated, gaining only 52 of the required 60 votes. The bill would have established a National Cybersecurity Council to coordinate with network managers in critical infrastructure industries such as emergency services, energy, banking, health care and communications. President Obama supports the bill and is considering an executive order to strengthen security measures if Congress does not pass the legislation.

The Twitter account and blog of Reuters were hacked and posted phony news tweets favoring the Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad and fake White House statements taking Al-Qaeda off the terrorist agency list. While the hacks are unattributed, they resemble hacks by the Syrian Electronic Army on Al Jazeera’s Twitter account in January.

A set of recommendations released by the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) outlines how to defend against a botnet attack.

Surveillance

An article by India's Economic Times reports that Research in Motion (RIM), best known for its popular BlackBerry mobile services, has bowed to years of pressure from Indian authorities and provided a data solution allowing the government access to encrypted communications. The company stated in response “RIM cannot access information encrypted through BlackBerry Enterprise Server as RIM is not ever in possession of the encryption keys.” RIM set up servers and interception facilities in Mumbai in October after India threatened to shut down BlackBerry services because it could not wiretap encrypted communications.

Privacy

The Norwegian Data Authority is investigating the privacy implications of Facebook’s Tag Suggestions feature, a default facial recognition option, which Facebook states complies with EU privacy laws because user can opt out of the feature. The US Senate questioned Facebook about facial recognition use on the website’s photos in July.

Cool things

The World Wide Web turned 21 on August 6.

Global Voices Advocacy announced a new Facebook page.

Santiago Atitlan, an indigenous Guatemalan village, has declared Internet access a human right and is working to build a community wireless network to provide access.

Publications and Studies

• La Quadrature du Net: Proposals for the Reform of Copyright and Related Culture and Media Policy
• Liberation Tech: How Companies Could Fix Social Media’s Net Censorship Problem
• Journal For Communication Studies: Evaluating Press Freedom: Have Social Media Changed the Landscape?
• Internet Society: Internet Interconnections Proposals For New Interconnection Model Comes Up Short
• Freedom House: Safety on the Line:Exposing the Myth of Mobile Communication Security
• Department of Homeland Security Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan: Published Privacy Impact Assessments on the Web

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Image courtesy Flickr user Mataparda (CC BY 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, Renata Avila and Sarah Myers.

While the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics was meant to celebrate freedom and creativity, its organizers have exercised strict copyright control. World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee appeared at the opening ceremonies of Games amid a dance about social media with a lights display of his live-tweet “This is for everyone.” Yet at the same time, the International Olympic Committee was busy censoring unauthorized videos of the ceremonies. In the offline world, a British florist was nearly sued for displaying the Olympics’ five-ring logo while the Games’ organizers have restricted vast amounts of online content linking to the official website or referencing combinations of words such as “games” and “gold.” With the help of YouTube, the Games are being live streamed to 64 countries, but users in the US still need to pay for cable or use a proxy server to access coverage. In opposition to these restrictions the file-sharing platform Pirate Bay re-labeled itself The Olympic Bay for sports fans seeking coverage, with a tagline echoing Berners-Lee’s message: “This is for everyone.”

Censorship

Twitter has been another a point of controversy for NBC, which owns the broadcast rights for the Olympics in the United States. The account of Guy Adams, columnist for The Independent, was deleted after Adams tweeted a public email of an NBC official as a complaint about the Games’ tape delays. The account has since been reactivated, and Twitter’s General Counsel Alex Macgillivray responded with a post outlining Twitter’s guidelines on the publication of private information and explaining its actions.

The London Olympics website filed for an Internet Content Provider license in China, which allows it to avoid being blocked by firewall protections. However, it also opens up website content to manipulation in China, and live feeds could be delayed.

According to the Chinese state media, more than 10,000 people suspected of committing Internet-related crimes have been arrested by the police since the country began its campaign against “illegal and harmful” information in March. According to a statement released by the Ministry of Public Security, 3.2 million “harmful” online messages had been deleted and 30 Internet service providers have been punished for granting access to unlicensed websites.

This summer, Chinese netizens in Beijing have experienced much more strict censorship from the local government. Global Voices writer Oiwan Lam reported that the Beijing public security bureau has set up police accounts on 239 social media platforms and has vowed to strengthen law enforcement against those who spread rumors attacking political leaders and the political system.

Tajik authorities have blocked the local independent news website Asia-Plus for its coverage of the regional clashes between government military forces and local militants in Khorog, the capital of the southeastern Gorno-Badakhshan region. The blockage happened after the website revealed that a high-ranking security official was murdered.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Twitter is playing such a big part in the Olympics that organizers advised sports fans at the Games users not to overload networks with non-urgent tweets, which they said were interfering with television signals.

Internet companies including Google, Facebook, eBay and Amazon will open a lobbying organization named the Internet Association in September to exert their influence on political and regulatory issues in Washington D.C.

In France and the UK, Google has acknowledged failing to delete some of the data from unsecured wifi connections belonging to homes and offices that was controversially collected by cars taking pictures for Google Street View in 2010.

Surveillance

Activists in Bahrain are being targeted by the government with spyware called FinFisher, which is manufactured by British-based Gamma International. There are also indications the company discussed surveillance software business with Turkmenistan and with Egypt under former President Hosni Mubarak. The surveillance program allows its users to control computers of people who click on phony links or download attachments on strange emails.

Microsoft denied allegations that it redesigned Skype’s technical architecture to make data disclosure to law enforcement more convenient, as reported by a Washington Post article. Microsoft stated it installed self-hosted supernodes in company data centers to act as a distributed directory of Skype users, but peer-to-peer messages do not flow through data centers.

A new trojan called OSX/ Crisis has been determined to be directed at a group of Moroccan bloggers, according to Mac security blog Intego.

Privacy

A US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee reviewed the privacy risks of Facebook’s Tag Suggestions feature, which uses facial recognition software.

Security and privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian blogged that media outlets should take a more objective view on the quality of privacy and encryption tools such as Cryptocat, after the circumvention tool Haystack was found to fall short of media praise in 2010. Cryptocat was created by college student Nadim Kobeissi, and allows users to chat online using secure encryption.

US Congressman Hank Johnson has launched a mobile app privacy initiative and invited mobile users to help him craft a law on mobile privacy. He encourages people to send him ideas about the legislation and will make the process of drafting the law transparent.

The Tor project, a project which enables netizens to go online anonymously and enjoy privacy, is considering paying those who are willing to provide “exit nodes” for the Tor network.

Cybersecurity

During a conference in Las Vegas hackers displayed ways to gain control over Android smartphones by infecting them using the smartphones’ near field communications sensors, which allow phone users to share data by aiming at another phone.

A Peruvian computer crime bill is being criticized for its potential restriction of Internet freedom and because it has been partially copied from other sources rather than independently researched with Peru in mind. With support from digital rights group Access, Peruvian civil society and academia sent an open letter [pdf] to the Peruvian Congress protesting the bill.

In the US Senate, politicians are seeking a compromise on the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 , including how to address protections for critical infrastructure and information sharing between the government and private sector on data breaches.

Thuggery

The government of the United Arab Emirates has waged another crackdown on bloggers and human rights activists. Several dissidents have been detained by the government after it announced its investigation into a group alleged to be a threat to national security.

The Belarus journalist Anton Suryapin has been charged with “organizing illegal migration” and faced a sentence of 7 years in jail. Suryapin posted photos of teddy bears carrying posters which supported free speech. The bears were dropped on July 4 in Belarus from a plane flown by two members of Swedish advertising agency Studio Total as a free speech protest.

In Cuba, online journalist and dissident Guillermo “El Coco” Fariñas Hernández, who is also the winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2010, was assaulted and arrested by the Cuban police along with other activists at the funeral of activist Oswaldo Paya.

The Sudanese blogger and web developer Usamah Mohamad was detained without charge in Khartoum, the country's capital city. It has taken a month for news of his detention to become public. He was arrested shortly after his speech against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, which was broadcast on Al-Jazeera English TV.

National Policy

The Iranian government is reportedly seeking cooperation from Facebook to attack pornography and prostitution messages online. Facebook forbids such content in its terms of service, but Iran’s definition of pornography is much broader than in the United States.

The Sri Lankan government has made an amendment to a press law which mandates news websites be charged registration and annual renewal fees. Mass Media and Information Minister Keheliya Rambukwella stated the fees would ensure website content does not harm “defenseless individuals,” and that under the amendment news websites would also be monitored to prevent “mud slinging.”

Paul Chambers, the man who was convicted of sending a “menacing communication” via Twitter, was acquitted by the High Court in England. Mr. Chambers tweeted that he would blow an airport sky high if his flight was cancelled. The court ruled that the message could not be considered as “menacing.”

Internet Governance

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philip Verveer said the US State Department will file recommendations to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for revising its International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) in a manner that preserves the free and open nature of the Internet. The ITRs have not been revised since 1998 by the ITU, which in December will review a range of recommendations being submitted by governments to determine how regulations covering telephones and satellites might address the Internet.

As the World Conference on International Telecommunications approaches, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association put forth a proposal requiring a fee system for the providers to pay other networks fees to route content, charge content operators a delivery fee and develop a two tiered system for Internet traffic. This could threaten an open Internet by allowing Internet service providers to prioritize certain traffic.

In an effort to increase transparency, the multi-stakeholder Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which coordinates the global domain name system, has launched an online register of advice made by governments to the ICANN board. ICANN also announced that it has simplified the process for evaluating and deciding on applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

Netizen Activism

People in Turkey have turned to social media for unfiltered news as the Turkish government seeks stricter regulations on the media and traditional news outlets are gradually avoiding controversial topics. Turkey now ranks as 11th in the world for Twitter usage.

A fake New York Times Op-Ed defending Wikileaks and purportedly written by former editor Bill Keller fooled the Times’ own tech columnist, Nick Bilton. Wikileaks claimed responsibility for the hoax, as several of the group’s loyal followers claimed they had ‘punked’ the New York Times.

Tunisia’s Pirate Party is seeking a more active role in politics and a more transparent government with the help of Internet technology such as crowdsourcing platform and social media.

Copyright

BitTorrent announced a plan to help artists get paid while sharing free content. The idea is to provide BitTorrent users with a bundle including a piece of sponsored software which users can decide to install or not. If a user installs the free software, then both the artist and BitTorrent receive proceeds.

A copyright lawsuit filed by Capitol Records against ReDigi, which will begin oral arguments on October 5, will determine whether users on the cloud service will be able to stream or sell  legally purchased digital music. The website hopes to re-sell e-books via the same legal precedent that allows bookstores to sell used books.

A leaked anti-piracy strategy dated April 2012 of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, obtained by TorrentFreak, suggests that Internet service providers should deny Internet access to copyright infringing sites.

Another leaked memo from the Recording Industry Association of America states the now-defeated Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was “not likely to have been an effective tool” for dealing with music piracy.

Cool Things

UK-based digital hardware manufacturer ARM has launched a forum of companies to coordinate on an “Internet of things” in which devices will have connections with each other.

Publications and Studies

• Daegon Cho, Soodong Kim, Alessandro Acquisti: Empirical Analysis of Online Anonymity and User Behaviors: The Impact of Real Name Policy  
• Ana Keshelashvili, Nino Danelia & Ninia Kakabadze: Mapping Digital Media: Georgia
• Betsy Masiello and Derek Slater: Embracing an Innovation Stimulus Package

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Image via Flickr user Defence Images (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, Renata Avila and Sarah Myers.

We begin this week’s Netizen Report in Washington DC, where supporters of the revised Cybersecurity Act of 2012 are pushing for a vote before Congress goes on break in August. The revised bill was released on Sunday by five senators including Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). New amendments would make any government cybersecurity standards optional. The bill would establish a National Cybersecurity Council to coordinate with network managers in critical infrastructure industries such as emergency services, energy, banking, health care and communications. Privacy advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union support the amendments as an improvement, but have called for vigilance on privacy concerns ahead of a Senate vote. President Barack Obama also wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal supporting the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.

The European Commission is considering similar cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure companies to report security breach notifications to the government and institute risk management. There is a public input forum on the upcoming EU Strategy on Cyber Security running until October 12.

Cybersecurity

The British government is calling on universities to apply for grants to operate two Centres of Doctoral Training in Cyber Security, which would be expected to deliver at least 24 graduates over a three year initial life span. The centers are expected to begin taking students in October of 2013.

In a similar effort to fill a cybersecurity skills gap, NATO has developed a Cyber Defense Awareness course for affiliated personnel.

Four months after gaming website Gamingo was hacked, eight million passwords, usernames and emails were published online on password-cracking forum Inside Pro. The user information was removed last week. Users of Gamingo can check on data breach alert website PwnedList if their information was included in the leak.

Surveillance

Privacy International is taking legal action against the British government for failing to control the export of surveillance technologies.

US government surveillance efforts conducted under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act have “at least once,” violated the Fourth Amendment providing freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, according to an information request made by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The US Department of Defense will monitor American media for disclosures of classified information, according to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. A letter from the Pentagon Press Association to Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey calls for assurance [pdf] that the government is not spying on their email or phone calls.

Privacy

Twitter will appeal an order by a New York Criminal Court to turn over tweets made by Occupy Wall Street protester Malcom Harris from Sept. 15 to Dec. 31, 2011. In early July the court ruled Harris, who was arrested in an October protest on the Brooklyn Bridge, had no ability to challenge a subpoena of his Twitter account.

A new opt-in Google service called Google Now is intended to give Google users “just the right information at just the right time” by tracking their search engine patterns and offering cards with information related to user history and location, such as map directions after searching for a restaurant.

Online compliance training service company WeComply is offering an online course on European Union data privacy policies.

Apple's iOS App Store removed an application called Clueful, which reported on the behavior of 65,000 of the App Store's most popular apps. Apple would not specify why the app was removed. Since developer Bitdefender uploaded Clueful in May, the app found that 41 percent of apps studied could track locations, 33 percent stored user information without encryption and 18.6 percent of apps could access all user contact information.

Censorship

The Chinese government is ordering media outlets to report only positive news about weekend floods that killed 37 people, according to the Beijing Times via Agence France-Presse. The scale of damage in the outskirts of the city suggests that the death toll could be higher than reported. On Tuesday more than 72,000 social media postings calling for donations were deleted.

Hong Kong’s government free wi-fi service was found by a local newspaper to be filtering access to several politically sensitive websites. Hong Kong retains free expression rights autonomous of mainland China, but a not yet published Internet service provider contract requires the wi-fi service to block indecent, obscene and illegal content.

The government of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, has blocked access to 1 million pornographic websites on Wednesday in an effort to commemorate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. This marks the second time in two years Communications and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring has blocked pornography during Ramadan.

Thuggery

Brazilian journalist André Caramante received threats from supporters of former Sao Paulo military police commander Adriano Lopes Lucinda Telhada in response to an article he wrote condemning hate speech that Telhada posted on his Facebook page.

Three Vietnamese bloggers were injured by government officials who smashed their car window after following them home from a party. In a trend of repression against bloggers, a different group of three activists were sentenced to more than five years in prison last week on the charge of spreading anti-government propaganda. At least 18 people are currently detained in Vietnam for expressing their views freely online.

Artist and government critic Ai Weiwei lost his appeal to a $2.4 million tax evasion conviction. Weiwei spent 81 days in secret detention last year as the Chinese government rounded up dissidents and online activists to prevent a Chinese version of the Arab Spring.

National Policy

Newly approved laws in Costa Rica criminalize online behavior including imprisonment for false representation on social media. The revised criminal code, available here [Es] would jail bloggers and journalists who publish classified information, a provision which is earning a reputation as an “anti-WikiLeaks law.”

Google has been ordered to censor piracy-related terms such as ‘Torrent’, ‘RapidShare’ and ‘Megaupload’ by a French court in a case initiated by French music industry group SNEP. The court is not holding Google responsible for piracy related infringements conducted via the search engine.

California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris is forming a new Privacy Enforcement and Protection Unit to prosecute companies who violate privacy laws. Harris plans to use the unit to enforce a recent agreement requiring privacy policies for mobile applications, which was signed by Apple, Google, Research In Motion, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Facebook.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

YouTube is adding an option aimed at protecting the identity of protesters that would allow people to blur faces in any video.

Washington is the first state to offer voter registration and voter updates through Facebook. The new voter info application “My Vote” was created by Facebook and Microsoft, with the state of Washington processing the information.

Google has created a version of Gmail on SMS for users to text email in Africa. The application expands options for many Africans who access networks using mobile phones, but the app has been criticized because such a connection is not as secure as using a computer.

Microsoft is not confirming or denying allegations that changes made this year to peer-to-peer messaging service Skype allow backdoor monitoring of users. According to Skype’s privacy policy the company stores messages for 30 days and the company can disclose information to law enforcement agencies who request it.

The Chinese company Huawei has overtaken Ericsson as the world's largest telecom equipment vendor.

Internet governance

Seeking to create dialogue about a net neutrality law for the European Union, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes announced a public comment period to run through Oct. 15 about transparency, switching and internet traffic management. The public feedback will supplement a report issued in May by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications calling for a net neutrality law.  

Copyright

Mexico’s Congress passed a resolution calling for newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Mexico’s Ambassador to Japan, Claude Heller, signed the treaty on July 11 despite criticism by Mexico’s Senate that the treaty’s set of international online copyright laws could restrict users’ rights.

Netizen Activism

A march in Mexico City organized by Twitter-fueled activist group #YoSoy132 rallied approximately 32,000 people on Sunday in opposition to newly elected President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Because of a block on donations to WikiLeaks set up by VISA and MasterCard, the document-publishing website says its cash reserves are running out and it needs 1 million Euros to keep operating. To bypass the blockade, the Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality set up an account to solicit funds via French credit card Carte Bleue, which partners with VISA and MasterCard.

The Internet Defense League launched a campaign on July 19 across the United States to fight legislation that would curtail Internet freedom and innovation. The group includes activist organizations that helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Fight For the Future and the Open Technology Institute.

Cool Things

During the London 2012 Olympic Games, the London Eye ferris wheel will become a Twitter mood ring in a nightly 30 minute light show, reflecting popular sentiments of tweets with blinks of yellow for positive tweets, green for neutral and purple for negative.

China's online population is now 538 million people, increasing its lead as the world's largest nation online.

Pro wrestler Sean Morley, known Val Venis, is boycotting World Wrestling Entertainment because of the group’s support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

All e-books from science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor/Forge will now be sold without digital rights management limits against use of the e-book on certain devices.

The Creative Commons interactive license chooser for online content is now live.

Publications and Studies

• Open Net Initiative: From Bahrain With Love: FinFisher’s Spy Kit Exposed?
• Sarah Kendzior: Digital Freedom of Expression in Uzbekistan
• World Bank: Maximizing Mobile [pdf]
• Hibah Hussain, Danielle Kehl, Benjamin Lennett, Chiehyu Li,and Patrick Lucey: The Cost of Connectivity
• Bipartisan Policy Center Cyber Security Task Force: Public Private Information Sharing [pdf]

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Image by Flickr user Free Press Pics (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, Renata Avila, Rayna St. and Sarah Myers.

We begin this week’s Netizen Report with South Korea’s net neutrality advocates and telecommunications companies, who are at odds after the Korean Communications Commission allowed three domestic mobile carriers to block access or add surcharges for mobile voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) services. The decision, which would also affect peer to peer apps such as Skype, emerged after Korean mobile telecoms SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ claimed their data networks would be degraded by the expanding use of applications such as KaKao Talk, which is used by 36 million Koreans. Net neutrality advocates protesting restricted access include several civil society groups and Google’s Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, who told the Korea Times it would stifle innovation.

Net neutrality

As we first reported two weeks ago, the debate over net neutrality continues to rage in the United States, where Verizon Wireless is arguing it has a First Amendment right to edit Internet search results based on what it determines is a “priority,” and is suing the Federal Communications Commission to drop its 2010 ruling against such gatekeeping. John F. Moore, founder and CEO of “Government in The Lab”, claims he has been receiving threats from Verizon for an article he published describing how the company aims to monitor and interfere with online content.

In the European Union, consumer rights umbrella group BEUC sent a letter to the European Commission requesting legislation to define net neutrality and the obligations of Internet service providers. Member of the European Parliament Marietje Schaake supports the request, having pushed for net neutrality regulation in May.

A remarkable effort to establish a civil rights-based legal framework for the use of Internet in Brazil, entitled Marco Civil, is in its final stages but a vote on the legislation has been postponed until the first week of August. A controversy arose this week on the wording of the final text and its implications for net neutrality. Recent changes to the bill make clear measures to protect Internet users’ personal data and to require Internet service providers (ISPs) to inform the public of content removals.

Censorship

Researchers at the Internet research organization Citizen Lab found that some Oman Internet users have been affected by Indian Internet restrictions and cannot access certain content blocked by an Indian ISP. The researchers explained that there is an ISP routing arrangement between Oman ISP Omantel and Indian ISP Bharti Airtel, and Oman Internet traffic routed through India is thus subject to Indian restrictions.

Chinese broadcasting regulators, the State Internet Information Office and State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), have announced that video websites must self-censor video containing pornography, violent or vulgar material before publishing them online.

On the Chinese social network Sina Weibo, the account of the US Consulate in Shanghai disappeared last Thursday for reasons unknown. Sina Weibo, a website resembling Twitter, said the incident could be the result of technical glitch. The Consulate’s account is popular among Chinese citizens for its witty comments on democratic reform in China.

The Sudanese news website Hurriyat Sudan has confirmed that its site has been blocked by the Sudanese ISP as a part of an attempt by the Sudanese regime to censor anti-government protests in the capital city of Khartoum against austerity policies. Other news websites rumored to be blocked in that nation include Sudanese Online and Al Rakoba [Arabic].

Thuggery

Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega has been sentenced to 18 years in jail by an Ethiopian court. Nega and 23 other activists were found guilty last month for “participation in a terrorist organisation.”

The United Arab Emirates has stripped online activist Ahmed Abdul Khaleq’s right to reside in the emirates and deported him to Thailand. Khaleq’s website has advocated for wider public involvement in politics in the UAE, where political parties are not allowed.

National Policy

The Ethiopian parliament has approved a law to void a 2002 prohibition against private uses of voice over IP services such as Skype, but the legislation also requires service providers to obtain permits before operating.

US President Barack Obama signed an executive order to ensure the operation of telecommunication networks in the event of a natural disaster or national security emergency. Critics worry this order would grant the president the “on and off switch” to the Internet.

The Reykjavík District Court ruled that the Icelandic payment provider Valitor (formerly VISA Iceland) unlawfully blocked donations to Wikileaks, an organization which publishes leaked documents online. The court ordered the provider to reopen the service or face a penalty.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Facebook announced read receipts of names for people who view timeline posts will soon be available in Facebook Groups to anyone with permission to see the post. Read receipts are also applied for reading chats and messages.

Skype has quickly moved to fix a software bug that accidentally sent some users’ instant messages to unintended recipients on their contact lists.

Last week Yahoo suffered a serious password breach affecting as many as 450,000 users of Yahoo Voices, formerly known as Yahoo Contributor Network.

Internet governance

The United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union announced it will publish a document entitled TD 64 containing proposals to update the group’s International Telecommunication Regulations. Internet freedom advocacy groups remain critical because TD 64 has already been leaked on WCITleaks.org alongside other documents related to the ITU and the upcoming World Conference on International Communications (WCIT). Internet freedom advocates have urged the ITU Governing Council to be more transparent with its planning documents and to allow stakeholders to submit comments and proposals to the WCIT.

Surveillance

The FBI opened an investigation into claims that Chinese networking equipment manufacturer ZTE provided US-made hardware and software to the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI). The gear allegedly includes a powerful surveillance system.

Tajikistan’s government announced its intention to monitor and censor websites and social networks for subversive content. According to the State Telecommunications Chief, the new institution will recruit volunteers to “track down and identify” individuals publishing materials deemed offensive to the government.

Surveillance by the US Food and Drug Administration that began in an effort to track five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about medical devices expanded to capture emails of numerous politicians, journalists and labor lawyers suspected of releasing defamatory information about the agency, the Washington Post reports. The FDA still claims the monitoring was limited to the five scientists.

The Canadian government is promoting a new bill to increase government Internet surveillance powers. Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Dick Fadden supports the surveillance bill, which would allow police, the Intelligence Service and the Competition Bureau to access Internet user information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, emails and Internet protocol addresses without a warrant.

The French Final Court of Appeal overturned prior rulings requiring hosting sites not only to remove copyrighted content but also to block further uploads. According to the verdict, earlier “take-down, stay-down” rulings conflicted with the European Commission’s 2000 E-Commerce Directive and the French 2004 law on Confidence in the Digital Economy.

In a ruling on a similar subject, the German Federal Court of Justice stated hosting services such as RapidShare are liable for infringement if illicit content is stored through them and they are notified by copyright holders. The court ruled RapidShare has to take content down, check if copies of the same material are available on the site and do what is “technologically and economically reasonable” to prevent piracy.

Privacy

New iPhone application Wickr allows users to enable message encryption on any type of message (text, image, video). As its name indicates, it allows messages to delete themselves after a short amount of time like a burning candle wick.

Apple is also working with Facebook and Google to develop voluntary privacy guidelines for mobile devices in an effort to forestall expected data privacy regulation by the US Department of Commerce.

The New York Times analyzed the impact of GPS tracking technology following reports that cell phone carriers granted 1.3 million law enforcement requests for call data last year.

Copyright

Mexico’s ambassador in Japan signed the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) shortly after the European Parliament voted against it.  The treaty to establish international copyright regulations could also be used to restrict free expression. The treaty still needs to be ratified by the Mexican Senate, which had previously rejected it.

The Fair Deal advocacy campaign launched last week in New Zealand to raise awareness of copyright changes that could impact the nation under the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

New Zealand Judge David Harvey is encouraging broader public debate ahead of an upcoming review of the Copyright Act in 2013.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) now allows the use of its anti-piracy logo on all copyrighted material.

Officials of the 2012 London Olympic Games are restricting links to their website and use of their logo if user content portrays the Games in an “objectionable manner.”

Online payment service PayPal is concerned about piracy crackdowns and has made itself unavailable on file-hosting websites such as MediaFire, Putlocker and DepositFiles.

Amendments that would expand government power to sweep away copyright protections have been added to the British Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which was designed to strengthen regulation in the finance industry of the UK.

Cybersecurity

Syrian hackers supporting embattled President Bashar al-Assad are adapting malware attacks against opponents of the regime to include Blackshades Remote Controller, which logs keystrokes and captures screenshots by remote access.

A Russian applications developer named ZonD80 has developed a way to hack the purchase process of In-App on Apple iOS devices. As of Tuesday Apple has not responded to ZDNET’s report on the security breach.

Secure network appliance designer Cyberoam broadcasted a fix for a vulnerability with its deep packet inspection devices used to monitor real time connections with the Tor Project anonymous connection network. Cyberoam did not state which other deep packet inspection devices or manufacturers could have the same flaw seeking false certificates to access the Tor website.

Netizen Activism

Internet activist Markus Beckedahl of Digitale Gesellschaft e.V. shared his experience with Global Voices Advocacy about organizing a campaign against ACTA with a limited budget.

Cool Things

New York City has launched a program to turn payphone kiosks into free public Wi-Fi hotspots, beginning with 10 payphones in three boroughs of the city.

Publications and Studies

• Qian Gang: China’s malformed media sphere.
• Global Partners & Associates: Who Governs the Internet?
• Privacy International: Privacy in the Developing World: A Global Research Agenda
• Sean Aday, Henry Farrell, Mark Lynch, John Sides and Deen Freelon: Blogs and Bullets II: New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring
• Sergio Sánchez García, Ana Gómez Oliva, and Emilia Pérez Belleboni: Towards a secure eDemocracy platform based on Web service standards.
• CELE:  Vigilance on the Internet: What does it mean to monitor and detect online content? (in Spanish).
• SEO Economic Research: Digital Thresholds (a summary of a Swedish language report)

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For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Screenshot of ru.wikipedia.org's blacked-out homepage, 10 July 2012. Text reads: “Imagine a world without free knowledge.”

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, James Losey, and Sarah Myers.

This week’s Netizen Report continues our coverage of the Russian government’s censorship of the Russian Internet (Ru Net), which could escalate to include a draft bill that would create a blacklist for websites dedicated to pornography, drugs, or extremist activity. Global Voices reported on Tuesday 10 July that this censorship effort could resemble the Great Firewall of China, and would require a website owner to delete content deemed controversial within 24 hours or risk being shut down. Wikipedia’s Russian website went dark on Tuesday in protest, mimicking a prior website blackout that helped galvanize criticism of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States. The Russian blackout coincided with a debate on the bill in the Russian parliament on Tuesday.

More posts on this issue can be found at Global Voices’ RuNet Echo, a project that aims to expand and deepen understanding of the Russian language Internet and related online communities.

Censorship

On Friday 6 July Facebook removed a post by Article 19, an organization focused on promoting freedom of expression, which highlighted a Human Rights Watch report on torture in Syria. Facebook has apologized, calling the removal a mistake in part due to the high volume of takedown requests. The Article 19 post had been reported as offensive.

According to Index on Censorship, last week China disabled mobile text messaging and Internet services for two days in the Tibetan region of Ganzi prefecture, Sichuan province. Those two days happened to coincide with the Dalai Lama's birthday.

Thuggery

Malaysian blogger Syed Abdullah Hussein Al-Attas is being detained for blog posts deemed insulting to the Sultan of Johor, following a complaint by a group of 30 people. A young woman who was with him at the time of his arrest is also being detained.

The father of a student who contributed to a Facebook page satirizing politics, religion and a Shi’ite imam (religious leader), has been arrested by Iranian authorities and threatened with execution unless the page is shut down. Yashar Khameneh, a 25-year-old seeking asylum in Holland, said he does not administer the page, and has issued an open letter on the case after failing to negotiate his father’s release.

Vietnamese blogger and activist Huynh Thuc Vy faces prison time after being charged under Article 79, which allows harsh penalties for vaguely defined “anti-state” activities. Authorities raided Huynh’s house last week for the second time since November 2011 to confiscate her family’s computers, but would not specify whether the charges are related to her blogging or protest activities.

Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders are condemning the conviction of human rights activist Nabeel Rajab for posting an “insulting” tweet.

National policy

Vietnam has proposed an Internet decree which would extend government speech restriction to websites and would mandate web companies to remove content not approved by the government. The law would also require social network companies to open offices and build data servers in Vietnam, which could make user data more vulnerable to government access. The United States (US)-based Human Rights Watch has pressured US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make Internet freedom a focus of her visit to Vietnam on July 10.

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has approved a bill co-sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), which increases penalties for online child pornography and increases protection for children involved, but removed a previous amendment that would have required Internet Service Providers (ISP) to store user data for 18 months.

Smith was the author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was voted down amidst protest. A new bill introduced by Smith entitled the Intellectual Property Attache Act would assign officers to trade negotiations to push for intellectual property restrictions similar to SOPA in foreign law.

Sovereigns of cyberspace

A freedom of information request has revealed that Google’s UK Privacy Manager Stephen McCartney held a senior role in data protection promotion with the Information Commissioner's Office prior to joining Google in November 2011, the BBC reports. The Information Commissioner had previously investigated Google for collecting personal data as part of street view mapping.

The US Federal Trade Commission has fined Google US$22.5 million for having violated user privacy when it was found to have overridden the default privacy settings of the Safari browser in iOS which runs on iPhones and iPads. The breach has since been corrected.

Surveillance

New emails released by WikiLeaks revealed the Italy-based SELEX and Greece-based Intracom, both subsidiaries of Italian defense contractor Finmecchanica, continued conducting business with the Syrian government despite US and European sanctions. Among the revelations is that SELEX sold Syria a secure software-defined radio network.

European advocacy group Freedom Not Fear announced plans on its website to coordinate with Australian civil society groups for demonstrations on September 14-17 to protest Australian security laws that restrict civil liberties. The annual demonstration for digital rights is organized by FoeBuD, a German digital liberties group, which in turn part of European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Privacy

A US-based mobile security firm called Lookout released new security guidelines for mobile advertisers, following a report that 80 million apps have been downloaded which carry invasive ads that download users’ phone data.

A British Airways customer service program in place for the past year called “Know Me” allows airline employees to search via iPad for passengers’ previous travel arrangements, food preferences, Google images and other online information.  

Copyright

Leaked documents about trade negotiations dated February 2012, reveal plans by the European Union and Canada to implement intellectual property enforcement provisions similar to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as part of a treaty between the two powers entitled the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA).

Fifty US law professors have sent an open letter to the Senate Finance Committee, arguing that ACTA is unconstitutional without Congressional approval.

Cybersecurity

An Australian firm hired by the government to provide online security alerts has lost the personal information of 8,000 subscribers including their user names, email addresses and passwords.

Last month, researchers at the University of Texas were able to hijack a civilian drone by remotely changing sending new GPS coordinates. The GPS transmission was unencrypted.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has shut off the servers initially commandeered to support users infected with the malware DNSChanger. DNSChanger, which originated in Estonia, would redirect user traffic when they attempted to type an address into their browser for the purpose of collecting advertising revenue. Despite fears that computers infected with DNSChanger might not be able to access the Internet, no significant outages were reported once the servers were shut off.

Members of the Cyber Warrior Invasion, a Bulgarian based hacker group, have been arrested following an extensive investigation. The group are reportedly responsible for hacking over 500 websites.

Six months after Chinese search engine company Baidu started operating in Vietnam, the CMC Information Security company and the Hacker Vietnam forum each claim Baidu services are infecting computers with spyware and adware.

Netizen activism

The Anonymous online movement is now targeting pedophiles for online attacks.

Eighty people in Japan wore Guy Fawkes masks, the figure popularized by Anonymous, while picking up litter in Tokyo to protest recent copyright legislation.

Members of Swedish advertising agency called Studio Total parachuted 1,000 teddy bears into Belarus as a protest of free speech repression in that nation.

Publications and studies

• Anonymous: The Collateral Damage of Internet Censorship by DNS Injection
• Privacy SOS: Your phone may not be safe at protests
• Max Senges: A Hippocratic Oath for Techies and Policymakers
• Janna Anderson & Lee Rainie, Pew Internet: The Future of Corporate Responsibility
• Min Jiang: National Identity, State Ideological Apparatus, or Panopticon? A Multiperspectival Analysis of Chinese National Search Engine Jike

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Image by Flickr user European Parliament (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written and edited by Weiping Li, James Losey, Tom Risen and Sarah Myers.

The past few weeks have seen promising developments in the use of online journalism to counter official narratives in countries under political upheaval.

The Network for Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism launched in mid-June, becoming the first investigative journalism website in Iraq devoted to stories of “corruption, mismanagement of funds and power across Iraq.” Its articles will be published in Arabic, English and Kurdish. Syrian video activists have also launched an effort to create an online alternative to state-run media. Rami Jarrah, founder of the Activists News Association, hopes the network will transform the activists, who have been using video cameras to document the uprising, into citizen journalists whose work could eventually supplant that of the state media should Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be forced from power.

Independent websites have also played an important role in covering the Mexican presidential election, which took place on July 1, as an alternative to the mainstream media which have been accused of favoring the front-runner candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. Online news websites such as Animal Político, SinEmbargo.com, and ADN Político have provided investigative reporting and data analysis.

In this week’s Netizen Report, we cover more Internet innovations created by netizens to promote political and social change, alongside other developments related to the global struggle for freedom and control on the Internet.

Netizen Activism

Netizens around the world are using the Internet to monitor the performance of elected politicians. For instance, Egyptian non-profit initiative Zabatak created a website to track progress on campaign promises made by newly-elected Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. In Taiwan, netizens started creating Facebook fan pages (in Chinese) to oversee the performance of legislators; Facebook users create a fan page for each lawmaker and post the lawmakers’ voting records, speeches, events and legislation information.

As the global battle over the Internet's future rages, more than 85 organizations including free speech advocacy group Free Press, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation jointly announced a “Declaration of  Internet Freedom” on July 2. The declaration emphasizes five core principles of Internet Freedom: free expression, access, openness, innovation and privacy.

Shortly after the declaration's announcement, libertarian internet policy think tanks TechFreedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a rival declaration.  TechFreedom president Berin Szoka warned that the Free Press declaration leaves the door open for government intervention in the name of Internet freedom, or for favoring certain digital business models over others. Free Press’ Internet Campaign Director Josh Levy dismissed those claims but welcomed further debate about the declaration’s principles.

Microblogging is thriving in China despite the intensified censorship and crackdown on online “rumors.” The Washington Post profiled microbloggers in China and how they push for accountability while adapting to shifting censorship laws.

Censorship

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong released WeiboScope, a tool for detecting censorship on the China’s popular microblogging website Sina Weibo. The tool downloads pages over time to detect changes that may be politically motivated.

Bloomberg was reportedly blocked in mainland China following a report about the financial assets of Vice President Xi Jinping and his family. Following the incident, a U.S. State Department Official noted that the U.S. supports freedom of expression online in China.

Even as Chinese government tightens its Internet censorship, The New York Times has launched a Chinese language news website. Editor Joseph Kahn said that the newspaper is aware of the censorship issue in China, but will still “follow the paper’s journalistic standards.” The Times also launched microblogging accounts in popular Chinese web portals: Sina, Sohu and Tencent. However, the Sina Weibo account has already been deactivated and other accounts have been unstable over the past week since their launch.

Thuggery

A Chinese court in the Chongqing province dismissed the conviction of Chinese blogger Fang Hong for lack of evidence, and ruled that he was illegally detained in a labor camp for a year after publishing a poem ridiculing former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai who is currently under investigation for corruption and potential knowledge of a murder case in which his wife is a suspect.

Renowned Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega was found guilty by an Ethiopian court for “participation in a terrorist organisation” and for inciting terrorism via his blog. Nega was one of 24 activists convicted under the country’s anti-terrorism laws which have been criticized for being used as a means to silence dissent. He could face life in prison.

Sri Lankan police raided independent news website the Sri Lanka Mirror last week for unknown reasons. The police arrested nine journalists and confiscated computers and documents from their office. Sri Lanka’s government blocked the Sri Lanka Mirror for a month last year and still blocks four other websites.

Numerous websites and individuals launched the #freebassel campaign to urge the Syrian government to release Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian open source developer and Creative Commons volunteer who has been unjustly detained in Damascus since March.

Internet Governance

The United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution affirming that human rights must be protected on the Internet as much as it is offline. The full text of the resolution is here.

The European Parliament has overwhelmingly rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which opponents argued unfairly favored the rights of copyright holders over the rights of Internet users. One commentary in The Guardian newspaper argues that the treaty stood no chance. However Euronews points out that the battle for Internet freedom is far from over. Infojustice reports that the fight now turns to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) which critics denounce for being shrouded in secrecy.

The United States Commerce Department has awarded a new contract to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for management of key Internet functions.

In other ICANN news: outgoing CEO Rod Beckstrom said goodbye, and reports emerged that at least some of Google's applications for new top-level domains are expected to be turned down. The process for awarding top-level domains has been full of glitches and subject to criticism, but continues to move ahead.

Surveillance

The US House Judiciary Committee passed the extension of the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 (FISA Amendments Act of 2008),  and rejected changes that would make the process of collecting Americans’ overseas communication more transparent. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) also passed the extension. Digital rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a statement opposing the extension. The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity to telecom companies that help the government conduct warrant-less wiretapping, also caused an over-collection of domestic communications among Americans.

Privacy

The Pirate Party Australia has raised concerns over Telstra’s logging of users’ web history. The Party is also concerned that the data is reportedly stored in the United States, beyond Australian jurisdiction.

The website We Know What You’re Doing, which collects public social media updates about drug use, hangovers and contempt towards employers, highlights the potential risks of users not realizing how their public data can be aggregated.

On July 1,  a New York City court ordered Twitter to release three months’ worth of an Occupy Wall Street protesters’ tweets.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Inspired by Google’s transparency report, Twitter released its own report on July 2, providing information on government requests for user information, government requests to withhold content, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices received from copyright holders. According to the report, the United States government has made the most requests for user information since January 1, 2012.

Telecommunications company Verizon has continued its legal fight against the US Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality rules arguing that they violate the company's free speech and property rights.

Facebook issued a reporting guide demonstrating what happens when content is reported as abusive by a user. The EFF calls it a “step in the right direction.”

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and 12 other organizations wrote an open letter to 11 heads of technology companies including Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook, urging them to end a blockade on Internet technology for people living in repressive countries like Iran.

Copyright

OfCom, the UK telecom regulator, outlined a new three-strikes system that is intended to reduce copyright infringement. Customers accused of copyright infringement will be responsible for paying for their appeal. A commercial court in Ireland granted record labels and Internet Service Providers the ability to move forward with their own version of a three-strikes approach to reduce copyright infringement.

The New Zealand High Court ruled that the search of Kim Dotcom’s residence was illegal and based on an “invalid” warrant. Dotcom is the founder of file-sharing website Megaupload, which was shut by the US Department of Justice in January for copyright infringement.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales launched a petition to protect TVshack.net founder and British citizen Richard O'Dwyer from extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 10 years in prison for copyright infringement. O’Dwyer’s lawyers argue that TVshack.net did not violate UK law since it linked to copyrighted material but did not host content.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity researchers at Kaspersky Labs detected Mac-based malware and AlienVault security researchers uncovered Windows-based malware aimed at Uyghur activists in China. The researchers said that the malicious programs could take control of and spy on victims’ computers.

The Indian Express also reported that Chinese hackers exploited Indian Navy computer systems using a virus transmitted by USB thumb drives.

Internet research organization Citizen Lab found that supporters of the Syrian government may be behind two cyberattacks against Syrian activists.

Cool Things

Agence France Presse launched a new tool called the “E-diplomacy Hub” which collects the Twitter accounts of politicians, activists and experts from 150 countries to visualize and analyze the influence of international diplomatic figures, as well as top issues trending on Twitter.

Publications and Studies

• Päivikki Karhula: Data Driven Futures – Censorship Takes New Forms
• Tim Davies: What Does Internet Governance Have to Do with Open Data?
• Sir David Omand, Jamie Bartlett, Carl Miller: #Intelligence
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Widespread Participation is Key in Internet Governance

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

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Image by Flickr user Leo Reynolds (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, James Losey, and Sarah Myers.

Disproportionate penalties for copyright violations have reached new heights in Japan with the passage of a new bill this month that will make downloading copyrighted material punishable by imprisonment or fines. Previously, imprisonment was possible for uploading files, but this bill expands the penalty to downloaders as well. The bill will go into effect on October 1.

This is not the only recent law to criminalize copyright infringement. Canada’s House of Commons has passed a copyright bill that penalizes circumvention of digital rights management as well as imposes fines on copyright violations. The bill is expected to pass the Senate. Artists in Hong Kong are also resisting an amendment to criminalize copyright infringement beyond “beyond minor economic damage” in a manner eliminates fair use for the creation of derivative works. A French law called HADOPI instituted in 2009 requires Internet Service Providers (ISP) to sever a user’s Internet connection after downloading copyrighted content three times, a law which United Nations Special Rapporteur Frank la Rue called “a violation of article 19” on the right to free expression of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In Europe, due to civil society pressure, governments are increasingly attentive to how copyright enforcement affects human rights and free expression. For this reason, the European Union’s (EU) International Trade Committee recommended that the European Parliament reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which seeks multinational standards for intellectual property rights. This is the fifth EU committee to vote against the agreement. The European Parliament is expected to vote on the agreement on July 4.

Thuggery

Several Twitter activists in Sudan have been arrested by police and National Intelligence Security Service officials, including Usamah Mohammed Ali, who tweeted about arrests made during protests on June 22, in the capital of Khartoum and promoted more protests slated for June 30. The protests in Sudan’s capital city are a response to planned austerity measures by the government in the wake of the secession of South Sudan last year. Bloggers are following the protests on Twitter via #FreeUsamah or #Sudanrevolts.

Censorship

Also in Sudan, bloggers are tweeting about rumors that the government plans to shut down the Internet to prevent the Khartoum austerity protests from growing.

Google blocked access to its Google Analytics web statistics feature in Cuba to comply with United States (US) sanctions. Other countries where some Google features are restricted include Myanmar (Burma), Iran, Syria, Sudan, and North Korea.

Belarusian police arrested Andrzej Poczobut, the foreign correspondent of Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, on June 21, in Grodno for libelling Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Jerzy Pomianowski demanded Poczobut’s release. Last year Poczobut spent three months in prison for a similar offense and now faces five years in prison, which activists say would encourage self-censorship.

Internet governance

Fadi Chehadé will be the new president and chief executive officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit in charge of assigning domain name spaces and coordinating Internet protocol address spaces. During his speech at ICANN’s 44th set of public meetings in Prague on Monday 25 June, Chehadé promised to make all his decisions for the public interest and to place a priority on transparency.

The European Telecommunications Network Operators (ETNO) has proposed changing the regulations set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) by introducing new fees for online content delivery in an effort to shift revenue from Internet content providers and applications. The nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology warns that this proposal slated for the World Conference on Telecommunications (WCIT) in December could negatively impact Internet costs and freedoms for users in developing countries.

During the June 14-15 European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) telecommunications conference, discussions by speakers such as European Parliament Member Marietje Schaake called for an increased role for civil society in Internet policy processes. The EuroDIG organization is the regional chapter of the United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum, which is a multi-stakeholder debate platform for global Internet policy.

On June 20 the Secretary General Hamadoun Touré of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) addressed a working group planning the December World Conference on Telecommunications (WCIT), and proposed greater transparency for the process. Touré alluded to an open letter requesting transparency which was sent in May and signed by a number of civil society organizations. The letter expressed concerns that the upcoming WCIT could expand the ITU’s communications governance to include the Internet.

National policy

Russia’s government is planning to create its own Facebook-style social network, slated to launch in June and attract private capital. Russia recently overtook Germany as the European country with the most Internet users, so this is criticized as a state effort to co-opt the Internet rather than suppress it.

China’s government will spend the next two months reviewing a proposal for the Broadband China Project, which would expand broadband access to 35 million new households in urban and rural areas.

Hamburg, Germany, passed a new transparency law requiring government to publish all public data in an information register.

Netizen activism

As Mexico’s presidential election approaches on July 1, the online activist movement ‘Yo Soy 132’ hosted an online presidential debate as part of its goal to bring more objectivity to the media and the presidential campaign process. University students used the hashtag #YoSoy132 to rally hundreds of thousands for marches after posting video on Twitter to refute media claims that they were “porros” or thugs paid by Leftist politicians, for protesting against Enrique Peña Nieto. Peña Nieto is the front-runner candidate for the Mexican presidency and member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (also known as the PRI).

The Army Court of Criminal Appeals denied a request from the Center for Constitutional Rights for access to the court documents of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst charged with aiding the enemy by allegedly leaking diplomatic cables and Iraq war data to whistleblower data website WikiLeaks. Manning could face life imprisonment for this charge.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is afraid of being extradited to the United States to face similar charges, so the Australian citizen is seeking asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador in London after a United Kingdom court ruled he could be extradited to Sweden to face sex abuse charges.

Sovereigns of cyberspace

Last Thursday 21 June, Twitter suffered a considerable outage. The company clarified that the outage was not the result of a hack but a system bug.

Privacy

A security researcher has revealed that KLIK, a mobile application that allows real time face tagging for photos uploaded to Facebook, had a vulnerability that would allow anyone to access private authentication information for KLIK users’ Facebook or Twitter accounts. A user could then post as another user or access their photos. Last week, Face.com, software company that develops KLIK, was acquired by Facebook for as much as US $100 million.

Copyright

ISPs in Denmark are working on a voluntary Code of Conduct that would include blocking websites even if a court order only applies to one ISP in the nation. Court orders in the UK require ISPs to block content and British Telecom has agreed to block access to Pirate Bay; the block has already been circumvented.

Cybersecurity

Malware based on PCs has impacted thousands of printers, ZDNet reports. The malware places a file on the printer queue, continuously printing documents as long as the printer is on and has paper.

Cool things

The Knight Foundation has awarded US $1.37 million to six winners of the Knight News Challenge with projects to solve problems of journalism using online networks. Winners include the Tor Project, which will work on tools to help people in politically dangerous parts of the world to publish and communicate safely with sources.

Publications and studies

• Mobile Active: mClerk:Enabling Crowdsourcing in Developing Regions
• Open Society Foundations: Mapping Digital Media: Macedonia
• New York Times Op-Ed by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu: ‘Free Speech for Computers?‘

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

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Facebook photo posted to promote harmony in Myanmar. Image by New Mandala.

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, Grady Johnson, and Sarah Myers.

Myanmar’s resolve for an open Internet is being tested this week as the government declared a state of emergency on June 10, to contain deadly clashes between Muslims and Buddhists in the nation’s western Rakhine state. The country’s military junta was dissolved in 2011, so the government's response to website comments inciting hate and murder could set a new tone for freedom of expression as the state goes through a seminal transitional moment.

Despite moves toward democracy, Myanmar was still listed as one of the ‘Enemies of the Internet‘ this year by free speech advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. The government began political reforms last year and has increased access to the Internet by lowering firewalls that had blocked social media such as Facebook and the use of VoIP software.

The conflict between Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya minority has galvanized Internet activity in this developing nation, but hate speech, ruthless pictures of dead bodies and street protests have spread quickly online. The independent Burmese website Democratic Voice of Burma also had its server overwhelmed in a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) by hacker group Blink, which used computers with IP addresses based in Singapore or Russia. The Blink website posted numerous anti-Islamist messages including “Get Out From Our Land .. Rohingya .. We Love RaKhine .. We Love Myanmar”, directing comments at the Muslim minority, which traces its origins to neighboring Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s government remains silent on these social media messages, but military officials have warned news media not to inflame the conflict through their reporting and demanded all articles be submitted for government review before publication. As in many countries under transition, it remains to be seen whether Internet freedom can survive this political and humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, the struggle for online freedom continues around the world:

Censorship

Last week, the independent news agency Asia Plus was inaccessible for several days in Tajikistan. While officials cited “maintenance reasons”, critics argued that this was a deliberate act of censorship, as readers of the site had posted comments critical of the regime. In March Facebook was inaccessible in the country along with three Russian-language news websites due to “technical reasons”.

To increase transparency in examples of “soft censorship,” when authorities obscure details on what content is blocked, Google developers have proposed a new HTTP status code. Under the proposal a browser would return the status code “451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons” when someone attempts to access a restricted site. The error message would include details about the relevant laws, the legal authority behind the restrictions and the class of content targeted.

Google's latest transparency report reveals an increasing trend of governments seeking removal of political content between July and December 2011. Such content removal requests came from law enforcement and governments in “Western democracies not typically associated with censorship”. Notable mentions include a request granted to British police for the removal of 640 videos allegedly supporting terrorism; in India content removal requests increased 49 percent since the last six month reporting period.

Iran’s online monitoring task force announced plans to crack down on virtual private networks (VPNs), which an estimated 20-30 percent of Iranians use to circumvent restrictions on content within Iran.

The top-level domain name registry “.co.jp”, which is used mainly by Japanese companies, was blocked for 30 hours on June 15 by China’s national firewall for unknown reasons. This marks the first time China’s Internet censors have filtered an entire top-level domain. The sites were made accessible again on June 16.

Thuggery

Police in Azerbaijan released 23-year-old video blogger and pro-democracy activist Mehman Huseynov on bail last night, after his arrest for allegedly assaulting police while covering the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest protests to highlight human rights abuse in that country. Huseynov may be jailed for up to five years if convicted.

After being arrested on May 29 while leaving an Internet cafe, Moroccan blogger Mohamed Sokrate was sentenced to two years in prison for “drug trafficking and possession,” in a trial fellow activists claim was unfair and hasty because of Sokrate’s criticism of the monarchy. An activist group is rallying for a retrial, and Sokrate’s lawyer said Moroccan authorities ignored evidence, such as the arrest of his father and brother in a possible effort to pressure Sokrate into acknowledging his “guilt”.

Since the end of May the Omani government has arrested at least 33 bloggers and activists who have urged government reform, following up on a June 4 statement warning that it will take legal action against those who publish content deemed offensive or that incites action “under the the pretext of freedom of expression”. Activists told Human Rights Watch that they believe authorities have increased surveillance and hacking activities in recent weeks.

National policy

British Justice Secretary Ken Clarke proposed amending a defamation law to require international websites such as Twitter and Facebook to reveal the identities of users who post harassing anonymous comments upon request.

Surveillance

The British government also presented a draft bill to require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to record all online and mobile activities and even track postal mail. All this data would be stored and made available to authorities for a year. A petition campaign by progressive non-profit 38 Degrees calls on British Prime Minister David Cameron to stop the bill.

In the recent Telecom Edition of the Netizen Report, we highlighted the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) by Ethio-Telecom to surveil netizens in Ethiopia. According to French newspaper La Croix, the French company France Telecom helped the Ethiopian government to implement its DPI activities, as part of a two-year agreement to take over the management of the Ethiopian telecoms network, Ethio-Telecom. The French government is one of France Telecom's main shareholders. (NOTE: A previous version of this item incorrectly characterized the relationship between France Telecom and Ethio-Telecom. It was corrected on 24/6/2012.)

Internet governance

Our coverage continues this week on leaked documents that were prepared for the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which is organized by the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU). A proposal by the Chinese government would allow member states to regulate communications infrastructure and information technology companies’ operations in their territory. The International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) slated for review would regulate telephones and satellite orbits, but in December the WCIT may adopt proposals that include Internet regulation.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a United States (US)-based non-profit responsible for domain name control, has released a list of more than 2,000 applications for new top-level domains. Each application for a new domain (.google, for example) costs US$185,000, and requires a 10-year maintenance agreement, which ICANN has estimated would cost applicants US$25,000 annually. Critics argue the proposal is a commercial landgrab by ICANN and that the explosion of domain names could make it harder to verify existing web brands, thus threatening security.

The majority of the nearly 2,000 applications came from rich companies such as Google and Amazon. Approximately 911 came from North America, with only 17 from Africa. There are numerous competing claims for domains such as .app, .home, and .inc.

Sovereigns of cyberspace

Major Internet companies are finding new ways to leverage user information for Internet advertisements. Facebook plans to launch Facebook Exchange, which will provide advertisers with information of Facebook users’ browsing history and let them bid on access to users’ attention.

Non-profit news organization ProPublica also revealed that Microsoft and Yahoo are selling users’ information entered during website registration to allow US political campaigns to target voters with online ads.

Meanwhile, Google, Facebook, Twitter, America Online and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are working with Internet safety non-profit StopBadware to launch an initiative called ‘Ads Integrity Alliance‘. The alliance will expand on StopBadware's mission to identify websites that engage in malicious behaviour which harms users by sharing information about online advertisements that compromise Internet users’ privacy and security, and developing policy recommendations for web safety.

Australian online electronic store Kogan is the first online retailer to collect a 6.8 percent Internet Explorer 7 Tax on its customers who are using the outdated browser to shop in its online store. The company says the tax is necessary “due to the amount of time required to make Web pages appear correctly in IE7”.

In an effort to counter unwanted spam messaging the news-sharing website Reddit temporarily banned users from submitting links to several major media websites, including Businessweek.com and TheAtlantic.com.

Privacy

A Japanese man has sued Google for violation of privacy and demanded the company revise its autocomplete search function, which suggests keywords automatically on Google search. The man claimed this function inappropriately shows terms related to crimes and defamatory articles when his name is typed in the search box, and may have resulted in his rejection from several applications for jobs.

Cybersecurity

The websites for two South Korean newspapers were hacked last week, destroying the sites’ database and editing systems. The attack happened after North Korea threatened to target several South Korean media outlets that were critical of a children's event held in Pyongyang. South Korean police are still investigating whether North Korea was involved.

During the June 12 protests in Moscow against the Russian President Vladimir Putin, independent media outlets in Russia were once again the targets of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelm a website’s bandwidth. Putin reclaimed the Russian presidency for a third term in March, and independent media organizations in Russia have suffered repeated DDoS attacks to minimize coverage of protests against his re-election.

Cool things

An iPhone app named Siggly will allow its users to record, upload and geo-tag mini-news by iPhone, before using a feature similar to Reddit to allow communities vote for the top stories.

Publications and studies

• The Global Network Initiative: Report on Digital Freedoms in International Law
• Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society: White Paper on Net Neutrality and Quality of Service
• South African Civil Society Information Service: South Africa: The Turning Point for Internet Freedom
• Kevin Macnish at the University of Leeds: Unblinking eyes: the ethics of automating surveillance

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Image by opensourceway on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Hibah Hussain, Weiping Li, James Losey, and Sarah Myers.

Throughout this week's edition we highlight examples of government intervention to limit free speech online, ostensibly “for the greater good”. In Kuwait, a Shi’ite man has been sentenced to prison for ten years for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammad and Sunni Muslims via Twitter. Pleading innocent, Hamad Al-Naqi said the posts were written by someone who had hacked his Twitter account.

Kuwait Human Rights Watch reported that the conviction was based on Article 15 of Kuwait’s National Security Law, which punishes citizens for “intentionally broadcasting news, statements, or false or malicious rumors… that harm the national interests of the state”. The court also found Al-Naqi guilty of violating Article 111 of the Kuwaiti Penal Code, which bans mocking religion.

Human rights and free speech groups believe Al-Naqi’s conviction represents a shift toward a more restricted civil society in Kuwait, highlighting political tensions between the country’s opposition Islamists and moderates. In May nearly all members of Parliament endorsed a bill to issue the death penalty for insulting the Prophet Mohammad for Muslims, with non-Muslims facing a lower ten-year prison sentence. Kuwaiti Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah rejected the bill on June 6, but the veto could be overruled by a two-thirds majority vote by Kuwait’s Parliament and Cabinet Ministers. For more information on the situation in Kuwait and other challenges netizens in the country are facing, read Mona Kareem’s article on Global Voices Advocacy.

National policy

In another example of the trend highlighted above, the Malaysian Minister of Information, Communications and Culture Dr. Rais Yatim has declared his support for regulating content online. Rais expressed agreement with former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, who has called for regulations to block “filth” and punish those who corrupt the minds of others online.

China has proposed changes to expand the scope of Internet law to include forums, blogs, and microblogs. Additionally, Reuters reports that the changes will also require microblog operators to obtain an administrative license to run a service.

According to IT News Africa, South Sudan has been invited to connect to Kenya’s broadband.

Speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum on 11 June, United States (US) Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) proposed the idea of a Digital Bill of Rights to be enshrined in the US Constitution. A draft version of the bill is available for comment on Rep. Issa’s personal site KeepTheWebOpen.com.

Censorship

Protests over a South African ‘secrecy bill’ have led the ruling African National Congress to offer amendments to the legislation to include protection for government whistleblowers and journalists if the information uncovers criminal activity. However, the nation’s State Security Agency opposes the amendments to the proposed legislation, which could mandate up to 25 years in prison for those found in the possession of classified government documents, without any defense of acting in the public interest.

Thuggery

The Guardian reported four journalists were killed during the month of May in Pakistan, where reporters lack protection from violence and intimidation by armed groups or government officials. The Balochistan Union of Journalists recently held protests to call on their government to provide protection to media persons and arrest the killers of a local Balochi reporter who was murdered a few days ago.

The Azerbaijani Supreme Court released activist Bakhtiar Hajiyev on parole, who has been imprisoned since March 2011 after his arrest for promoting peaceful demonstrations via social media. The court sentenced Hajiyev in May 2011 for evading required military service and sentenced him to prison for two years.

Reporters Without Borders is condemning a wave of arrests of bloggers in Oman. Al Jazeera has collected more information on the story through the social media curation website, Storify.

Internet governance

In a speech to the International Conference on Cyber Conflict, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves declared that the Internet has forced countries with different political realities into “almost inevitable conflict” and a “cold peace”. At stake, he argued, is the “liberal-democratic model of an open society, and of market economies that are transparent and rule-bound”.

As we reported in last week's edition, a new document leak website, WCIT Leaks, was recently launched to increase transparency in the lead-up to the 12th World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), organized by the International Telecommunications Union. Some of the leaked documents reveal proposals that do not seek to change the role of the multi-stakeholder Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), but which could have a dramatic on other areas of Internet governance including Internet routing. One proposal by European network operators would include a global Internet tax targeting the largest web content providers that could limit their ability to reach users in developing nations.

For more information and analysis see the Center for Democracy and Technology's ITU resource page, the Internet Society's information page and news page, and a three part “Threat Analysis of WCIT” by Milton Mueller at Syracuse University (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

The African Internet Governance Forum will be held in Cairo in October.

Tunisia signed an agreement with the ITU to launch the Arab region's first open source software support center.

The non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will announce the applicants of more than 300 new domain names on Wednesday, such as .group and .college, culminating the non-profit’s six year process to create new Internet real estate. An appeals process for companies to control a domain name could follow the announcement.

Internet activism

Tunisian journalist Ramzi Bettibi suspended his hunger strike to promote transparency in the trial of ousted leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali after the Constituent Assembly pledged to take up his cause. Bettibi began his strike on May 28, in response to officials confiscating his cameras during filming of Ben-Ali’s trial. An initiative from the Tunisian presidency returned Bettibi’s cameras a few days after he and several other activists began refusing food.

While switching planes in the United States en route to Canada last week, CryptoCat developer Nadim Kobeissi tweeted he was detained by US authorities and questioned about the encryption used in his open source private chat room application.

Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have targeted Indian web censorship, staging protests in 16 cities around the country. While organizers anticipated more than 2,000 people would participate in a protest in Mumbai against the government’s ban on the websites Vimeo and Pirate Bay, no more than 100 supporters and media showed up. Reasons suggested by Tech2 include protester apathy, lack of leadership and government restriction of the demonstration space. Anonymous also claimed responsibility for taking down the website of an Indian telecom operator as part of its online censorship protest called “Operation India”.

Sovereigns of cyberspace

Facebook has launched an app center for the distribution of third-party applications for the social network. Like the Apple iTunes store, Facebook will take a 30 percent cut of sales. Facebook increased its lead as the world’s most popular social network, recently exceeding Orkut as the most popular social network in Brazil.

Major television networks in the US will apply content maturity ratings systems to full-length shows broadcast online.

Privacy

Facebook closed a week-long vote on its proposed privacy policy changes on June 8. Ars Technica reports only 342,632 votes were cast, significantly short of the 270 million votes needed for the procedure to be binding.

Advertisers protested Microsoft’s implementation of a Do Not Track feature by default on the next version of its browser, IE10, claiming it would threaten their business model to have the program automatically refuse cookies. A compromise proposal draft is being written by a multi-stakeholder partnership, which would make Do Not Track opt-in.

Copyright

Elected officials in Australia are raising concerns over Australia’s participation in negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free trade agreement between the US and eight other nations which could offer priorities to foreign investors. US Senators have also raised concerns about the relative secrecy of the negotiations around the deal.

The United States Supreme Court will soon examine a case that will determine whether a person can re-sell their mobile device or computer without having to obtain permission from dozens of “copyright holders”.

Cybersecurity

Poor security for professional social network LinkedIn led to the theft of six million customer passwords by hackers.

The Stuxnet virus and the Flame malware were created by the same developers, announced Russian tech security firm Kapersky Labs on Monday. Unnamed officials from the United States and Israel recently confirmed their nations created the Stuxnet virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Publications and studies

• Samuel A. Greene, Center for the Study of New Media & Society: Twitter and the Russian Street: Memes, Networks & Mobilization
• Peter Swire, Ohio State University: From Real-Time Intercepts to Stored Records: Why Encryption Drives the Government to Seek Access to the Cloud
• Ann Nelson, Center for International Media Assistance: The Medium Versus the Message: US Government Funding for Media in an Age of Disruption 
• Cory Doctorow, Technology Review: “The Curious Case of Internet Privacy”

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

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Image by Xeni Jardin via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Tom Risen, Weiping Li, James Losey, and Sarah Myers.

In countries whose governments disrespect free speech and privacy, the introduction of new telecommunications (telecoms) infrastructure generally creates a new layer of censorship and  surveillance. One of the latest examples is Ethiopia. Last week Ethio Telecom, the sole telecommunication service provider in Ethiopia, announced a plan to relaunch its 3G wireless network to improve the quality and speed of Internet connections. However Tor, a project which supports anonymous online communication, recently found that Ethio Telecom has deployed or begun testing Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of all Internet traffic, and has also blocked Tor. The Tor team has since developed a workaround for users in Ethiopia.

This latest move to deepen censorship and surveillance comes on the heels of last month's ratification of the Ethiopian Telecom Service Infringement Law, which is meant to impede Internet telephony such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls and faxes. As the use of computer-to-telephone call services is expanding in Addis Ababa, legislators have argued that the trend not only threatens the profits of Ethio Telecom, but also poses a threat to national security. The law also  includes anti-terrorism and anti-defamation provisions, which bloggers fear will dampen free expression in Ethiopia's thriving blogging culture.  

Censorship

On the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government escalated its crackdown on discussion of the tragedy. Sina Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging platform, banned the account of Japanese public TV channel NHK for posting for a message on Weibo about the Tiananmen anniversary. A large number of Hong Kong Facebook accounts were deactivated soon after they posted political messages about a candlelight vigil commemorating the massacre. [Note: The Netizen Report has learned that a Facebook executive told several activists that the reason for the deactivation was caused by a global technical problem which has now been fixed - and had nothing to do with local political events or actions. However, to our knowledge Facebook has made no public statement explaining what happened.]

Last week, Sina Weibo also introduced new rules to control its users. According to the rules, Sina will establish content requirements for Weibo posts and “community committees” to judge on cases violating these requirements. The system will operate on a points system, which will adjudicate the actions Sina will take to punish violations.

Last week, a netizen in China's northwestern province of Xinjiang was detained for 15 days for spreading the news of a youth’s death in a detention facility.

To alert Chinese users of censorship, Google has announced that it will incorporate new tools into its search engine that indicate when sensitive search terms are typed in.

Malaysia has amended its Evidence Act, shifting the burden of proof to website owners to prove their innocence and making them responsible for abusive or politically incorrect comments.

Malawi’s government removed an amendment to its penal code that would have banned all news content “not in the public interest,” bowing to pressure from the same press freedom advocates that prevented the amendment from being implemented after it was passed in 2010.

The South African City Press was forced by the African National Congress to remove an image of a controversial portrait of President Jacob Zuma on its website.

Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger called for better awareness that some Wikipedia entries include adult content and advocates the creation of a pornography filter.

Thuggery

Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, charged with inciting illegal rallies online, was released on bail last week, then arrested again this week.

Fox News reports that agents at Israel's international airport have been requiring some people of Palestinian descent to open up their emails for search before being allowed into the country.

National policy

The Dutch parliament voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), placing it back at the top of the agenda for the European Union (EU) parliament to determine whether 20 European signatory nations will be able to institute the treaty. Three EU committees also voted not to recommend adoption of the treaty, and the next vote by the EU’s Committee on International Trade on June 21 could determine the outcome of the final vote in July.

By the end of 2012, the European Commission will draft proposals to institute net neutrality, following a report that indicates between 20 and 50 percent of Europeans have their online access restricted by their Internet Service Providers (ISP).

China’s CNNIC altered its policy and again will allow individuals to register domain names. The organization has not allowed individuals to register domain names since 2009.

Internet governance

Panelists and members of the United States (US) House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology expressed opposition to expanding the United Nations’ control over the Internet. Such a move would hold profound and hazardous implications for the future of the Internet, said Vint Cerf, the computer scientist known as “the father of the Internet” for his work in the 1970s with the US Defense Department.

Digital freedom non-profit organisation Access is close to collecting 20,000 signatures on a petition for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) requesting it not expand its control over the Internet.

Technology researchers Jerry Brito and Eli Dourado have launched a new website, WCITleaks.org, a platform for the publication of leaked documents related to the ITU and its upcoming World Conference on International Communications to be held in Dubai in December 2012, at which proposals related to extending the ITU's authority over the Internet will be discussed.

The non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has collected approximately 2,000 applications for new generic top-level domain names and will reveal the winners on June 13, with an appeal and dispute period to follow until August 12.

Internet activism

The Knight Foundation awarded a grant to a Miami-area high school project to connect online with undocumented immigrant students and let them know about their opportunities for higher education.

Members of hacktivist groups Anonymous and Telecomix differ on their approach to helping protesters in nations such as Syria, yet the Swedish-based group Telecomix claims to have more of a defined political strategy.

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who has been under house arrest in the United Kingdom for rape allegations, lost his case in a British court about whether he could be extradited to Sweden to face the charges. He will have to decide whether to request an appeal. Despite slow activity on the website because of recent legal and political troubles, the whistleblowing culture it helped galvanize continues.

Following Reddit’s 12-hour blackout in 2011 to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Reddit’s founder Alexis Ohanian has partnered with the advocacy group Fight for the Future to form the Internet Defense League to bring attention to other efforts to expand Internet governance. They call the effort “a bat signal for the Internet” for other websites to cooperate with to advocate against legislation such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and to “make sure the Internet never loses- ever.”

Inspired by the electoral success of the digital liberty-focused Pirate Party in the recent German elections, some French citizens are seeking to establish their own version of the party ahead of parliamentary elections.

Privacy

According to the “When the government comes knocking, who has your back?” report surveyed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an independent ISP in California, Sonic.net, is the Internet company which provides the best protection over customers’ privacy against governments’ requests for user data.

The European Commission is referring Germany to the European Court of Justice because the country has failed to implement a EU rule demanding the Internet and phone companies to keep records of users’ emails and phone calls.

Facebook has opened up a vote on users’ proposed changes to its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” and the social network's “Data Use Policy.” The vote started June 1 and will end at 9 am PDT on June 8. In order for the changes to be binding, over 30% of the Facebook user base must participate in the voting.

Cybersecurity

An article in the New York Times reveals that the US government and Israel coordinated an effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program through the Stuxnet virus. Meanwhile, Iran announced that computers in the country have been attacked by a more harmful form of malware than Stuxnet, called “Flame.” The Flame virus is designed for cyber espionage rather than cyber warfare. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have also reported that they have detected the same virus in their computers.

Simurgh, an important software used by the Iranian and Syrian Internet users to circumvent censorship has a malicious version, which plants backdoors in victims’ computers.  

Publications and studies

• King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Molly Roberts: How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression
• Aaron Smith and Joanna Brenner: Twitter Use 2012
• David Fidler for the American Society of International Law: The Internet, Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Global Online Freedom Act of 2012

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

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