Global Voices Advocacy » Iran

The Psychological Strains of Digital Activism

Cameran Ashraf — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:53:22 +0000

Iran's Green Movement began in 2009 when citizen groups accused government officials of altering outcomes in national elections. Citizens and activists gathered in the streets to protest and also relied on social networks such as Twitter to disseminate their message and coordinate action. When the government sought to control media reports of what was happening inside the country, activists used tools for circumventing blocked websites and sharing content for broader distribution to the world, often with help from supporters in other parts of the world.

This marked one of the first large-scale movements where new media served as a platform for coordination and communication between activists and played a vital role in showing the world what was happening on the ground. The following narrative comes from Cameran Ashraf, an Iranian-American citizen living in the United States who helped facilitate communication and information exchange for activists and protesters during this period.

Green Movement demonstration in Iran, 2009. Photo by Jeff McNeill. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

My blog has remained silent for quite some time. The reasons lie in the post I am about to write.

From 2009-2011 I played a pivotal role on the Internet side of the Iranian Green Movement. This brought me many opportunities, such as co-founding AccessNow, media attention (including from the Iranian government), and deep connections with like-minded individuals. It helped me frame my passions and desire to do good in the world, to understand a lot about who I was and how I saw the world. It was also psychologically devastating and something I am still coming to grips with.

There are different kinds of digital activists. Some focus on Twitter or spreading information. Others mobilize support on Facebook. A few make posters, motivational videos, or leverage other talents. Some, and I include myself in this class, provide direct technological support to movements and activists in-country. Our team provided secured hosting to dozens of key websites, supported key reporters and activists in-country, and I facilitated more than 3 million video downloads from inside Iran, amongst other activities. I was on call 24-hours a day from 2009-2011 and can only rarely recall more than 4 hours of sleep a night.

If it sounds as if I am bragging or inflating myself, I am not – this is part of the healing process and part of coming to terms with feelings of not doing enough, not helping enough, and not being enough. There is something to geographically distant material engagement which pushes ones feelings to the margins, to the point where your body lives on the time in another land and the only thing motivating you is the pureness of help itself.

While much is made of digital activism and the ability afforded us by the Internet to help, little is made of its costs on those who do help. Because of one's extreme virtual proximity, intense feelings of inadequacy and of “not doing enough” emerge. You're doing what you can, to the detriment of your own health – the people you support and whose digital security depends on you are there facing all of the risks you experience by proxy. You recognize the seriousness yet at the same time the absurdity, as even mundane annoyances, such as being stuck in traffic, become extraordinary moments where you see what is “truly important” in the world. Constantly focusing on what is “truly important” means you often neglect the mundane side of what is “truly important” – your mental health, relationships with family and friends, and fun time to relax. The pleasure of normal conversations, the absurdities of daily life, the sun, stars, hugs, all slowly dissolve as you begin to live the crisis and realities of others thousands of miles away. Those anxieties become internalized and externalized in anger, irritation, lashing out – all of which I did.

It is “the cause,” after all. That movement which will make the world right, which will correct the horrific injustices you were privy to on a daily basis. It will avenge the friends arrested, tortured, or killed. You live, breathe, eat, feel, touch, anything related to it. The moments away from the computer are engaged in phone calls, texts, or in-person meetings and events. My body was in Los Angeles, but my mind was in Iran.

Being so connected to something you are disconnected from is, I believe, deeply disturbing to your psyche. Sooner or later things make sense and your mind realizes it's been seeing and reading one thing and living another. At that moment it just happens – you “go dark”. Vanish. I didn't tell anyone. I stopped replying to emails, texts, and phone calls. It was a complete breakdown from which I am still recovering. To this day I turn my cellphone face-down and keep it permanently on silent as I associate much trauma and bad news with it.

I sat silent for a year, seeing a therapist but keeping everything inside. The few individuals I confided in could only distantly try to understand, in the sort of way we empathize with someone who has lost a loved one while we are still whole. Though I didn't realize it at the time, a good friend and important activist told me four words which would slowly embed themselves within me: You did your part.

That was it. You did your part. I kept repeating those words – you did your part – day and night. It was my own Green Movement – one which stood up for myself. It was right, but it was not an epiphany. It did not cure me or bring me closure. What it did was open up a door for me to see what I did and to realize that it was what I could do based on where I was. I had done my part. I had answered the question which I had asked myself in June 2009: What will you say if your children ask you what you did when Iranians came to the streets? I could answer this now, as if I hadn't known all along: I did my part. I could remain engaged with digital activism, but in manageable ways which honor the causes I support as well as myself.

Each digital activist involved with in-country activists will encounter the stresses differently. The trauma of crisis at a distance will speak to their psychology in a unique way with unique repercussions. This is a different yet still heroic side of digital activism, far removed and hidden from the ideals of privacy, security, democracy, and human rights. It is a personal heroism which only a few see and only one person feels.

I have briefly shared my own story as a means to open a real dialogue on mental health and digital activism – something I wish I had done much sooner and which should be part of any activist toolkit and training. Each digital activist will ultimately have their own story, their own confession which allows them continue down the path to a sense of personal normalcy and wholeness. This is the start of mine.

Blogging on behalf of Hamid

Yusur Al Bahrani — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 06:29:23 +0000

Antonella has not blogged since long time. Her last blog post was on April 25, 2012 in which she wrote:

“Dear Hamid,

Every day I discover how vast a heart can be,
like a new landscape at the horizon
where sadness, hope, forgiveness, fear, joy and pain run far and fast
as if they were clouds.
Stay strong my darling, my heart will hold.

Antonella”

When I met Antonella Mega, I could feel that she is not a blogger. At least she is not someone who blogs frequently or uses Twitter, Facebook, or other social media all the time (unlike me!). If Antonella blogs, she is blogging for Hamid. I think blogging is a very important tool. I will keep my promise to blog about Hamid and other prisoners of conscience in Iran.

Who is Hamid Ghassemi?

Hamid is Antonella’s husband. While visiting his mother in Iran in 2008, Hamid disappeared. He was mistakenly imprisoned, charged for being a spy, and sentenced to death. Hamid is now in Tehran’s Evin prison and he needs our help. He needs our help urgently. It's a nightmare to think that an innocent man is facing a death sentence.

Blogging in and on Iran

Iran is very well known for its Internet censorship. There is no doubt that bloggers might end in prison if they speak up about injustices. I assume that there is risk for Iranian bloggers in Iran if they decide to write about Hamid. For instance, Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti was arrested, and he died in custody after being held on charges of “actions against national security on social networks.”

Bloggers in Iran are censored and can’t speak up. Knowing that, it’s now the duty of other human rights activists to raise awareness and demand actions regarding prisoners of conscience in Iran including Hamid.

Things to share on your blog:

- FREE HAMID (www.freehamid.com). This website has more informational on Hamid's case, and on how to help him.

- Video of children (Hamid’s neighbors in Toronto) talking about him and urging others to take action to help release Hamid.

- “Cities for Life”: Over 1000 municipalities around the world will be taking a stand against death penalty. Toronto is one of them. Antonella will be speaking at the Cities for Life event in Toronto on November 30.

Sharing information on prisoners of conscience and unfair trials in Iran is very important. Blogging on behalf of those at risk is very crucial. If Iranians in Iran face the risk of persecution if they use social media as a platform for reform demanding justice, then we can blog on their behalf!

Netizen Report: Halal-net Edition

Netizen Report Team — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 22:23:03 +0000

Image via Flickr user ix4svs (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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

After years of planning Iran appears to have laid the foundations for a national Internet network, separate from the global Internet, according to the U.S.-based researcher Collin Anderson who is preparing to release a report on his findings in the near future. Anderson has previously unearthed evidence of Iranian government plans to build what some officials have previously described as a “halal” or “clean” Internet. Based on news reports about Anderson's research, groups such as the U.S.-based Human Rights First warned last week that Iran may have taken “one more step towards fragmented access to information.” According to Anderson, the national service relies on components sold by China-based telecommunications company Huawei.

Some are speculating about the nature of the network: whether it will be completely disconnected from the global Internet, or whether it will instead emulate China’s Great Firewall which blocks access to many outside websites while enabling Chinese Internet users to communicate with the rest of the world. Your Middle East quoted Mohammad Soleimani, former Minister of Communication and Information Technology and now head of a parliamentary communication committee, who said the new network “will not cut access to the Internet…because it would amount to imposing sanctions on ourselves, which would not be logical. However, filtering will remain in place.”

Reporters Without Borders reports that government offices and civil service departments throughout the country were supposed to be connected to the new national network on September 22. The actual launch of the network is still pending. Meanwhile, Iran has banned Gmail and to a lesser degree Google search, which officials said was to protest the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims. Earlier this month Iran launched a national email service, Iran.ir, which requires extensive information about the user's identity to join.

Censorship

The controversial film, Innocence of Muslims, continues to be used as an excuse by governments to block access to YouTube. Among the countries that have blocked YouTube pages are Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan. Some Chechen Internet service providers have also blocked access to YouTube, but a court will now determine whether the move was legal. The case is testing the implementation of a new law in Russia to censor websites the government finds disagreeable or indecent. Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov has threatened to shut down YouTube nationwide using the law.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Superior Court Judge Luis Lanvin denied a request to remove the controversial video from YouTube. The request was made by Cindy Lee Garcia, who acted in the film and claimed she was misinformed and misled about its actual content. YouTube itself blocked access to the film in Egypt, Libya, India and elsewhere.

As Myanmar loosens censorship, government officials and journalists have started talking about the way forward. One journalist from International Herald Tribune had the chance to meet his former censor and speak about the censorship process in Myanmar.

Jordan’s King Abdullah endorsed a new media law which requires “electronic publications” to be licensed by the government. Critics say it could restrict freedom of expression.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) blocked some websites within its offices, including those of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, and American Civil Liberties Union because the locations were dubbed “political” or “activist,” but then stopped filtering after the news spread and provoked criticism.

Thuggery

Syrian citizen journalist Abdel Karim al-Oqda, who used the pseudonym Abu Hassan to report from Hama, Syria, was burned to death after regime forces targeted his home.

Famous United Arab Emirates (UAE) blogger and political activist Ahmed Mansoor was beaten by an unidentified man at the university where he studies law.

Three founding members of Vietnam’s Free Journalists’ Club, a group of citizen journalists who advocate free speech and independent journalism, have been sentenced to jail for distributing “anti-state propaganda.”

In China, the famous Internet writer and former journalism professor Jiao Guobiao has been detained by Beijing’s public security bureau for “inciting subversion of state power” after he published articles on the Diaoyu Islands (known as “Senkaku” in Japan) territory dispute between China, Taiwan and Japan.

Surveillance

After recent violence in Assam, the Indian government is planning to set up a dedicated surveillance agency to monitor the Internet for false rumors and malicious content and warn national security agencies beforehand so that preventive measures can be adopted.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle spoke publicly against the sale of spying technology to repressive regimes. Several European political figures such as French Secretary of State for the Digital Economy, members of the Dutch Green Party and the EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda have also expressed their concern over European technology corporations selling spyware to authoritarian countries.

In New Zealand, the Prime Minister John Key has asked the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to investigate a case in which New Zealand’s intelligence agency helped the US government to illegally spy on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and other people involved in this case.

Privacy

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) which could raise legal risks to plugin program developers and website operators. According to the proposals, plugin developers could face legal liability for collecting childrens’ information if they receive IP addresses from plugins installed on childrens’ websites; another proposal seeks to expand the definition of sites “directed to children.”

The latest Facebook audit review by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner shows that Facebook has decided to turn off its controversial facial recognition feature and related data in Europe on October 15. The decision applies to the “tag suggestion” feature which automatically tag names on faces in the pictures when users upload photos to Facebook.

The browser feature “Do Not Track”, which prevents advertisers from tracking users’ online activities, has been added to several browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Opera. Google has also promised to add this function by the end of this year. Here is a guide on how to enable “Do Not track” in various browsers.

The “cryptoparty” concept has spread from Australian cities such as Melbourne to international locations such as London, as people aware of privacy issues are getting together to learn about anonymity techniques and how to protect their right to privacy.

Cybersecurity

According to a recently unsealed court document in a computer fraud case that Microsoft has filed against Chinese Web domain 3322.org, some new computers had malware installed and were ready to attack websites from the moment they’re turned on. The malware may come from counterfeit software which some Chinese computer manufacturers had used to save costs.

To cope with the security breach dubbed “CRIME” (Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy), which targets HTTP sessions, researchers have suggested that website operators should turn off a bandwidth-saving compression feature.

Security researcher Chris Soghoian recently discovered that a company called Packet Forensics is developing equipment that could intercept secure communications by using forged website security certificates without breaking encryption, and then marketing the equipment to law enforcement agencies. The boxes would have to be connected to an Internet service provider by a law enforcement agency and then persuade a Certificate Authority such as Verisign to collaborate.

National Policy

The Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK plans to issue guidelines to help prosecutors decide whether to press charges in cases involving social media. The agency has announced they will start public consultation procedures.

A leaked document of the European Commission-funded “Clean IT” project, which aims to combat online terrorist content by encouraging cooperation between governments and Internet companies, has revealed that EU officials have proposed extreme measures such as authorizing the police to “patrol” the Internet and strengthening regulations to prevent anonymous use of online services.

Copyright

According to the 2012 International Piracy Watch List released by the US Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus (IAPC), Switzerland and Italy are now on the list of countries of concern along with countries such as Russia, China, and Ukraine. IAPC said Switzerland’s inadequate copyright law has made it “a home for rogue sites,” and that Italy needs substantial copyright reforms to combat illegal downloading.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

A trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK and a high-level editor at Wikipedia have been discovered to have edited Wikipedia’s “Did You Know” feature and other projects to benefit their private clients for more exposure on Wikipedia pages. The trustee has resigned after the revelation of the pay-to-play relationship.

Recently Google was granted a US patent for a technology that allows users to create multiple pseudonyms online and decide when to reveal true identities to others. However experts have held different positions toward this development: some have worried Google could gather more sensitive personal information, while others have thought it is positive to have different levels of online identities for online activities.

Google has shut down its free online music download service in China in order to put more resources on “high impact products.” Google’s music service is one of the few remaining services on its China-based landing page after the company moved its search engine servers to Hong Kong in 2010.

Internet companies including Google, Facebook, AOL, Yahoo! and LinkedIn have formed an organization named “The Internet Association” to coordinate their efforts in lobbying for Internet freedom and economic issues in Washington D.C.

Internet Governance

Freedom House has published the report “Freedom on the Net 2012: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media.” The report argues that governments around the world have grown more sophisticated in controlling the flow of online information. At the same time, civil societies have fought back and won several important victories. The report says that people in Estonia enjoy the greatest degree of Internet freedom, while people in Iran, Cuba and China have the lowest among the countries examined.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency of the United Nations, released the “State of Broadband 2012” report on international Internet usage data. It showed that currently one-third of world's population has access to the Internet. The nation with the highest Internet usage rate is Iceland.

Cool Things

Ecuador will become a “free software” [es] territory, President Rafael Correa recently announced.

Riot police had to be called to the town of Haren in The Netherlands after a teenager’s Facebook event reportedly attracted 30,000 people to the tiny town of 18,000 inhabitants.

Publications and Studies

Omer Tene and Jules Polonetsky: Big Data for All: Privacy and User Control in the Age of Analytics.
Nathaniel Levy, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Edward Crowley, Meredith Beaton, June Casey, and Caroline Nolan: Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review.
Katitza Rodriguez and Renata Avila-Pinto: Privacy Rights Activism in Latin America.

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.

Iran: A Blogger's Life in Danger

Fred Petrossian — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 09:51:27 +0000

Hossein Ronaghi Maleki,jailed blogger,has started his hunger strike since last Saturday.His health conditions are in dire situation and he was moved for two hours to a hospital [fa].Another political prisoner started[fa] hunger strike to support him.

Internet Regulation and the ITU: Civil Society Must Be Heard

Ellery Roberts Biddle — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:35:55 +0000

Since its infancy, the Internet has benefited from a lightweight and decentralized approach to governance—a combination of targeted government regulation, technical coordination by companies, and a number of formal and informal multistakeholder organizations to help guide the Internet’s development, such as the IETF, W3C, and the IGF, just to name a few.

Typically, these multistakeholder organizations include technologists, academic experts, and civil society representatives, as well as governments and corporate voices. They have historically operated using principles of openness, transparency, inclusiveness, and consensus. This framework has given users in most countries considerable freedom to innovate, participate, and build out the network on their own terms. In other words, it has created and supported the open, decentralized, and global Internet as we know it.

Global Internet traffic map. Labeled for reuse. Posted by Martin Irvine.

But this framework is not set in stone. This December, the International Telecommunication Union, a government-centric UN treaty body, will decide whether and how it might regulate policy and technical standards for the global Internet in the future. Until now, the ITU has been dedicated to setting technical standards for interoperability of international telecommunications, radio, and satellite systems, in addition to promoting access to ICT. However, some member states have expressed interest in expanding the ITU’s mandate to cover Internet-related technical and policy matters.
The emergence of the ITU as a regulatory body for the Internet would shift authority away from the decentralized, multistakeholder approach that has served the Internet since its inception, and make Internet regulation a more centralized and less inclusive process.

A diverse group of civil society organizations and academics in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Egypt, the EU, India, Kenya, Pakistan, the US and beyond have come together to request, in the form of an open letter, more transparency from the ITU and its Member States as it considers proposals that could give it power to regulate the Internet. This request is grounded in commitments of the World Summit on Information Society (a conference organized by the ITU) to build a people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information society. Summit commitments require international organizations to ensure meaningful participation of all stakeholders, particularly from developing countries, in the regulation and management of the global ICT environment.

The letter states:

The continued success of the information society depends on the full, equal, and meaningful participation of civil society stakeholders (along side the private sector, the academic and technical community, and governments)…such participation depends on transparency and openness of process at every stage of substantive and procedural dialogue.

The letter asks ITU leaders and Member States to remove restrictions on the sharing of documents related to the treaty process and to open the process to meaningful civil society participation by “providing formal speaking opportunities and according civil society views an equal weight as those of other stakeholders.” It encourages Member States to “open public processes at the national level to solicit input on proposed amendments to the treaty from all relevant stakeholders, including civil society, and release individual proposals for public debate.”

When governments regulate the Internet without input from civil society, and academic and technical experts, the resulting policies are more likely to place undue limitations on users’ rights to free expression, freedom of information, and privacy.

While advocates often focus on extreme cases such as surveillance practices in Syria and filtering policies in China, ACTA in Europe and SOPA in the US also provide strong examples of policies that were formulated with little or no participation by civil society. Particularly in 2012, we have also seen that Internet users and concerned citizens are eager to participate in public debate about how the Internet should be regulated. At their core, the information society – and the Internet – are people-centered, and citizens have a clear stake where regulation could impact their rights to freedom of expression, freedom of information, and privacy.

The emergence of the ITU as a regulatory body for the Internet would represent a sea change in Internet governance at the global level. The negotiations in December could lead to unintended consequences, especially if not all stakeholders are allowed input into the process – new regulations could undermine the success of the Internet as a platform for innovation, economic growth, human development and democratic participation.

Civil society organizations and academics are invited to join this call to address deficiencies in the ITU treaty process. The letter has been posted on various civil society organization websites. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has posted the letter in English, along with an up-to-date list of signatories, and information on how to sign the letter. Chilean NGO Derechos Digitales has posted the letter in Spanish. This post will be updated as translations in other languages become available.
This post was co-authored by Ellery Biddle and Cynthia Wong, Director of CDT's Project on Global Internet Freedom.

Iran: Another blogger was arrested

Fred Petrossian — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:09:13 +0000

Nama Jafari,blogger and journalist was arrested. He was editor of a cultural site. He also wrote a book called “a gathering in solitary confinement”.

Iran: Journalists Threatened by Email “You Will be Punished”

Fred Petrossian — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:43:44 +0000

Reliable sources, including one Iranian journalist, have told Global Voices that several Iranian activists and journalists have received an email threatening that they will be punished according to the “Islamic Punishment” law of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The subject of the email is “warning” [hoshdar in Persian] and the message says they have information and documents that implicates a list of people who are working actively “for the goals of foreigners” and who support seditious activity. The sender of the email is anonymous.

A screenshot of the email's subject line and sender with the body blacked out. Source: Global Voices

The email in Persian says:

هشدار: بر اساس اطلاعات و اسناد بدست آمده، لیست برخی از ایمیل ها و اسامی مختلف فعال در راستای اهداف بیگانگان و حمایت از فتنه گران شناسایی گردیده که ایمیل شما نیز در لیست مدنظر وجود دارد.
لذا در صورت اصرار بر فعالیت غیر قانونی، برابر مواد 498، 499 و 510 قانون مجازات اسلامی، تحت پیگرد قرار خواهید گرفت.

Your email is on the list. If you continue your illegal activity, you will be punished in accordance with articles 498,499,510 of the Islamic Punishment Law.

These articles [fa] refer to crimes against the country's security.

According to article 498, anybody who organises a group with more than two people who aims to disturb a country's security will be jailed from two to ten years. Article 499 says any member of this group can face three months to five years in jail. Article 510 says people who hide spies who want to hurt country with the help of an enemy, can face from six months to three years of jail.

The email is intended to provoke fear, but has no signature. One recipient demonstrated to Global Voices that the email was sent from an anonymous Live.com email account (breaking_news@live.com) a Microsoft email service.

Iranians know to be concerned of violations of their online privacy. On September 2011, A growing number of Iranian bloggers expressed their anxieties after learning that their Gmail inboxes may have been an open book for the Iranian state to read and target dissidents for two months.

In 2011, people who once sent SMS mobile phone messages to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Persian service, received a threatening message:

“Dear citizen, based on information we received you have fallen under the influence of the anti-security propaganda of media connected with foreign powers.

“If you establish contact with media based outside the country, you will be guilty of violating the following articles of Islamic law (…) and we will deal with you according to the law.”

Today it is threatening email, yesterday it was an SMS text. But the message is the same: To sow fear and reap inaction.

Iran: Innovations in Cyber Dictatorship

Fred Petrossian — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:23:47 +0000

In the latest examples creative repression over the internet, the Islamic regime has used Skype as a long-distance interrogation tool, and wrested control over a Facebook group for photos of hot guys and girls from its administrators.

Skype interrogation

In order to increase the pressure on one foreign-based Iranian journalist for the BBC, a relative in Iran was arbitrarily detained for nearly two weeks, and the journalist was interrogated over the internet on Skype video.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them.

Iranian blogger Tahriyeh Khamoush writes [fa]:

… reading this story we can see what a monster the Islamic Republic has become. 40 minutes of interrogation via Skype while the journalist’s sister was jailed. The journalist was at her home in London while she was interrogated by revolutionary guards intelligence agents. The journalist only heard the voices in Iran while the interrogators could both see her and listen to her voice.

The journalist’s sister was released after the interrogation. She said she was forced to make false confessions broadcast on TV.

There are three jailed bloggers and journalists, Parastou Dokouhaki, Mazieh Rasouli and Sahmoldin Borghani who are under pressure to confess collaboration with BBC.

Attacking a Facebook group

Message by cyber police on what was formerly the 'Daaf & Paaf' Facebook page promoting a photo contest.

About a week ago a Facebook page called Daaf & Paaf (meaning “hot girl & hot boy”) came under the control of Iran's cyber police who announced [fa] on the group's Facebook “wall” that “the administrators of this group have confessed to promoting banality”.

The group promoted an online photo contest for hot Iranian men and women, and had around 27,000 fans [the content is not available anymore].

Cyber police reportedly arrested four men and women for administrating the Facebook page.

Faryadeazadi collected and republished [fa] several comments that users left on the Daaf & Paaf Facebook page after it came under control by Iranian security forces:

You beat the poor guys and got their passwords, and now you think you performed a masterpiece by controlling this page… Look at our cyber police, instead of running after criminals and thieves, it gets involved with this kind of story… Mark Zuckerbeg was involved too, go arrest him as well.

A long history

The Iranian regime not only represses bloggers and filters websites and blogs, but has many times used the internet creatively as a tool to increase pressure or spread fear.

In 2009, the regime employed crowd sourcing to target suspects when the protest movement erupted. Using widely disseminated online photos from post-election demonstrations, a website of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called Gerdab (which means ‘vortex'), encouraged people to submit information that could lead to the arrest of protesters.

We can add to this menu of creativity, the recent “Law of Computer Crimes” that make almost all ordinary users computer criminals.

Indeed, the internet is not only a gift for freedom lovers but also for repressive machines.

Iran: Blogger was sentenced to 14 years in prison

Fred Petrossian — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:26:54 +0000

Several bloggers reported that Mehdi Khazali, a blogger and publisher was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The blogger was sentenced to 90 lashes too. He can appeal this sentence.

New Book on Global Struggle for Internet Freedom

Bernardo Parrella — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:26:18 +0000

How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy? Given the strong push provided by social media to the recent uprisings in the Middle East region and elsewhere, how can people ensure that the same tools are not being used for government censorship and surveillance (often with more than a little help from Western technology companies)? And ultimately, how can we stop thinking of ourselves as passive “users” of technology but rather as “netizens” who take ownership and responsibility for our digital future?

These questions provide the general framework for discussion in Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, a new book by Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices (and co-author of the twice-monthly Netizen Report on GV Advocacy).

A comprehensive and timely effort, it is a call to action for every blogger or user of Twitter or Facebook, and particularly for cyber-activists at large, to collectively address the urgent issue of how technology should be governed to support the rights and liberties of citizens around the world. With a rigorous analysis and a positive tone, the final message is to get involved in a struggle that all of us have the power and ability to influence (even in small ways), if we only try to understand the complex forces at work, and how we might help shape them.

Divided in five major sections (Disruptions; Control 2.0; Democracy’s challenges; Sovereigns of cyberspace; What is to be done?), the book covers a variety of events over the past decade and is quite up to date, with parts devoted to the Arab Spring and the Egyptian government’s surveillance capabilities, privacy and control in Western democracies, and the rise of “Facebookistan and Googledom”. The book's companion website offers fresh updates and more resources.

The Global Voices network is mentioned here and there, with direct quotes and references. For instance, the book preface speaks briefly about the community's inception, growth, and crucial role in recent events:

As protests erupted in Tunisia in late 2010 and demonstrations spread around the Middle East and North Africa in early 2011, Global Voices contributors worked around the clock to spread information about what was happening in multiple languages, on our own site as well as Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

The first part of the book focuses on interconnections in technology, society and business that fueled the Internet's development so far, giving rise to a “digital commons” that includes innovative practices, digital activism, and people's empowerment. This is an exciting environment that nonetheless faces opposition, defined as “Control 2.0”: “…how opaque, unaccountable relationships with Internet and telecommunications companies enables authoritarian governments to control and manipulate citizens.”

China is a primary case study here, with a detailed description of its refined censorship system and recent developments to maintain authoritarian control, while at the same time enabling, “…high levels of lively and even contentious online debate and deliberation, within certain limits.”

After describing similar (or worse) situations in countries such as Iran, Pakistan and Syria, the focus shifts to Western democracies — who unfortunately appear inclined to emulate authoritarian regimes, even if in subtle and insidious ways. That is, technology companies are establishing equally opaque and unaccountable relationships with government agencies, and fail to, “…take responsibility for their power over citizens’ political lives, and their lack of accountability in the exercise of that power.”

The various examples discussed here include WikiLeaks, privacy complaints on Facebook, ‘Big Brother’ Apple, and Net Neutrality. Along with the on-going battle about intellectual property vs. free speech and sharing (see the global initiative against SOPA-PIPA, and the recent ‘selective censorship‘ announced by Twitter). Also addressed are lesser-known issues, such as a 2011 proposal to create a “single European cyberspace” that would block “illicit content” at Europe’s borders.

Finally, the last section of the book attempts to answer the question of “What is to be done?”, proposing the development of a Netizen-centric Internet. This part explores efforts by some governments, a few companies, and a growing number of concerned citizens to address the threats to freedom in cyberspace through new initiatives and movements. Some suggestions include: boosting corporate transparency; building processes for corporate engagement with users, customers, and other stakeholders; and building a more citizen-driven information environment.

At the end of the day, this Struggle For Internet Freedom is taking place here and now — in Arab countries, in East Asia and even in Western nations. It is a common struggle, and it is up to each and all of us, as netizens and citizens of the world, to monitor the state of affairs and make sure the Internet remains a force for freedom of expression and political liberation — rather than a tool for alienation, censorship and repression.