Entry gate at East China Normal University. Photo by Peter Potrowl (CC BY 3.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This report highlights new policies in China that are increasing restrictions for netizens in the country.

Censorship

China's new so-called “Seven Speak-Nots” policy prohibits discussion of “universal values, civil society, citizen rights, judicial independence, freedom of the press, past mistakes of the communist party, and the privileged capitalist class” in university settings. Last week, East China University Professor Zhang Xuezhong described the policy on microblogging site Sina Weibo and subsequently had his account deleted. Mentions of the policy are no longer visible in search engine results in China and users report that all relevant comments on the policy have been wiped from Weibo [zh]. A government memo entitled “Concerning the Situation in the Ideological Sphere” reportedly notes that the “Speak-Nots” have also been incorporated into China’s Internet censorship policy.

A Chinese blogger known as B.Y. was interrogated by Chinese public security agents after she posted a petition on the US government website, We the People. The petition called for international attention to the environmental impact of a planned petrochemical plant in China's Sichuan Province. After authorities demanded she delete the petition, B.Y. posted on Weibo, asking for help in deleting the petition from We the People, which does not have a delete function. Her Weibo post has since been deleted.

Dr. King-Wa Fu at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre reported that users’ activities on Sina Weibo have dwindled [zh] since the implementation of China's real-name registration policy, which requires users to give their real names when registering for Internet services and social media accounts. Dr. Fu's team at the Centre developed WeiboSuite, a program that has restored more than 200 million posts in Weibo deleted by the Chinese censors.

At the request of the Australian government’s financial regulator, Australian network operators including Telstra and Optus blocked access to over 1200 websites including an education-focused community group called Melbourne Free University. The government claims the websites were blocked due to suspicion that the institutions had engaged in fraudulent activities. According to Delimiter.com.au, this could “open the door for other government agencies to unilaterally block sites they deem questionable in their own portfolios.”

In Equatorial Guinea, with parliamentary and municipal elections fast approaching, Facebook and the website of the country's opposition party have been blocked. The website of the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea remains operational.

Syria underwent an eight-hour Internet blackout on May 15, the second this month.

Thuggery

Slovenian blogger Mitja Kunstelj was sentenced to six months in prison for defamation. On his popular Mikstone Blog [sv], Kunstelj crudely described details of the private lives of two journalists with whom he had personal relationships. Kunstelj was prosecuted after refusing authorities’ demands that he pay a fine or cease writing posts of the same nature.

Six Bahraini Twitter users were sentenced to a year in prison for “misuse of freedom of expression”; making defamatory remarks about King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa; and “undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain's society towards the king on Twitter.” Many Bahraini activists and supporters have used Twitter to air their grievances with the regime amid the current uprising against the ruling monarchy.

Surveillance

Saudi telecommunication company Mobily solicited help from American developer and privacy advocate Moxie Marlinspike for aid in surveilling encrypted communication applications. Marlinspike publicized the request on Twitter. Reactions can be tracked under a hashtag that translates as “Mobily spies on the people.”

Access to Information

US-based magazine The New Yorker announced that it will become host to Strongbox, the last major open-source secure information sharing project that Internet activist Aaron Swartz worked on before his death. The New Yorker writes that the platform, which is highly secure, will enable the public to “share information, messages, and files with our writers and editors” anonymously.

Ericsson South Africa and the City of Johannesburg are set to activate a broadband network that will provide Internet access to all the city’s municipal buildings, thus allowing the city to achieve ‘Smart City’ status. Other ISPs and companies can use the network too, as the city government needs only a small percentage of the 1.2tb core capacity network. The three-year project is set to launch on July 1.

Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative, which seeks to provide affordable access to smart devices, has launched another partnership in East Africa. Working with the University of Dar es Salaam, the goal of the pilot project is to test the use of TW white spaces in Tanzania, where the wireless spectrum previously used for television is now used to for wireless broadband.

National Policy

Azerbaijan's parliament passed new legislation criminalizing online defamation that will carry a fine of up to US$1270 and a prison terms of three years. President Illham Aliyev, often criticized by human rights groups for suppressing the media, is expected to sign the legislation into law. Amnesty International and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have condemned the amendment as an attack on freedom of expression.

Nepal's Ministry of Information and Communications has established a committee to oversee the registration and regulation of online journalism. The committee, comprised of two government officials, two online news site editors, and a representative of the Federation of Nepali Journalists, is currently holding consultations on how to improve the web domain registration process for Internet media outlets.

In an alleged attempt to identify a source of leaked information regarding CIA operations in Yemen, the US Department of Justice obtained telephone records of the Associated Press news agency using an administrative subpoena. In response, US lawmakers introduced the Telephone Records Protection Act which would amend the current Telephone Records Act to require that government agencies obtain judicial approval before demanding such records. The current law allows federal law enforcement to obtain basic subscriber information with only an administrative subpoena.

Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter is planning to introduce amendments to the country’s Criminal Justice Bill, which would allow the government to demand telecommunications companies shut down mobile phone service if authorities suspect that an act of terror might occur in a given area.

Internet Governance

Governments, companies and civil society groups gathered in Geneva from May 14-16 for the Fifth World Telecommunication Policy Forum. Six non-binding opinions on Internet infrastructure have since been issued. One of the more controversial opinions focuses on the issue of multi-stakeholderism in Internet governance. A summary report by ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure is available here.

Cybersecurity

El Mañana, a newspaper in Mexico's northern state of Nuevo Laredo, underwent two cyber attacks on May 12. In recent years, the newspaper has sustained attacks both on and offline. After a series of violent attacks on its offices in 2006, the newspaper stopped reported on drug trafficking.

Internet security company Trend Micro uncovered an active cyber espionage operation known as SafeNet that has reportedly compromised computers in over 100 countries. Trend Micro asserted that SafeNet, which targets users by sending them malicious programs via email, is primarily designed to steal information.

Netizen Activism

Researchers at Humboldt State University developed an interactive map, Geography of Hate, which charts the origins of hateful tweets–homophobic, racist, or targeted at the disabled–by region of the United States.

Cool Things

A man from China’s Sichuan province who had been abducted and taken to Fujian at five years old found his way back home after analyzing Google Maps to figure out where he came from.

Publications and Studies

• Reforming Telecommunications in Burma – Human Rights Watch

• Mapping Digital Media: Kazakhstan Country Report – Open Society Foundation

• Impact of the Internet in Africa – Dalberg

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (0)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Ali Abdulemam on May 13, 2013 in Oslo, Norway. Photo by Hisham Almiraat.

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Renata Avila, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we begin with the stories of two prominent political bloggers from Bahrain and Chad, both living in exile and facing unique challenges in the online and offline worlds.

Thuggery

Bahraini blogger, political activist, and Global Voices author Ali Abdulemam, who had been living in hiding in Bahrain for two years, appeared in London last week, where he has been granted political asylum by the British government. The founder of BahrainOnline.org, a leading website for political expression and opposition in the Gulf state, Abdulemam was an active organizer of uprisings in the country in 2011. While in hiding, he was tried in absentia by a military court and found guilty of charges related to terrorism and subversion. Abdulemam will speak this week at the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Chadian blogger Makaila Nguebla, who took exile in Senegal in 2005 after facing threats from government officials, has been exiled to Guinea by order of the Senegalese government. Nguebla was known for his critiques of President Idriss Déby who has ruled Chad for more than two decades. In an interview with Global Voices author Anna Gueye, Nguebla said he believes that Chad's Justice Minister pressured the Senegalese government to deny him political asylum and exile him to Guinea. Human Rights Watch suspects that this came as part of an ongoing crackdown in Chad.

Censorship

Syria suffered an Internet blackout on May 7, with service restored the following day. Renesys Corporation was the first to report the restoration of access, which was later confirmed by Akamai and BGPmon. Syrian Arabic News Agency attributed it to an optic cable malfunction, but Internet rights advocates were skeptical of this claim. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien wrote that the blackout implied “either a massive infrastructure cut, or a deliberate silencing of online communication.”

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

In apparent observance of US economic sanctions on Syria, US-based domain name registrar Network Solutions LLC and its parent company Web.com have seized control of over 700 domains belonging to Syrian entities, including the Syrian Electronic Army. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control permits the sale of “certain services for the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email,” so as not to limit communications mechanisms for Syrian citizens, but domain name registration is explicitly banned under the sanctions. Nevertheless, it appears that Network Solutions was acting on its own accord, not in response to a government request.

Internet Governance

A new top-level Internet domain, “.africa” will soon be introduced. The new domain, which aims to promote adoption by commercial entities throughout the continent, is fully endorsed by the African Union, according to BizTech Africa. The application is still being assessed by ICANN, but will likely be evaluated by May 15, with the delegation of the new gTLDs due in the third quarter of 2013.

The International Telecommunication Union, the UN agency charged with telecommunication regulation, will address Internet governance issues at the World Telecommunication Policy Forum in Geneva, May 14-16. Delegates will discuss the adoption of IPv6 protocol for Internet addresses, the expansion of broadband access, and “multistakeholderism” in net governance.

A group of bloggers and active Internet users in Cote d’Ivoire have elected their first “web representative”. oAfrica reports that “web mayor” Emmanuel Aswan, a graphic designer by training, will “work with a core Ivorian online community to create a safe, welcoming, and productive environment for all Ivorian web users.”

Surveillance

Wired has catalogued five Russian-made surveillance technologies that are currently used by Western nations, including voice recognition technologies, facial recognition technologies, mobile phone interception and bus tracking.

US-based civil liberties organizations are condemning the use of automated license plate readers as an invasion of privacy. Up to 14,000 plates can be scanned during a single police shift and put into a database, creating a detailed record of geospatial movements.

Intellectual Property

Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement continue in Lima this week. Multiple petitions concerning the treaty's potentially detrimental effects on freedom of expression and information have been organized in response. NGOs in Peru, led by digital rights group HiperDerecho, have launched a petition urging Peruvian President Ollanta Humala not to sign the agreement, if it should infringe on fundamental rights. Canadian NGO Open Media has also initiated a petition to recently nominated US Trade Representative Michael Froman, who will be responsible for negotiating the treaty. The petition calls on Froman to oppose the criminalization of certain online activities under the treaty.

The New Zealand Government will change its patent rules to exclude software programs from patentability. The decision was praised by the Institute of IT Professionals, New Zealand’s largest IT representative body, for removing a barrier to software-led innovation.

Cybersecurity

The US Pentagon’s annual report to Congress directly accused China’s military of conducting cyber attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, the most explicit cyber security-related accusation leveled on the Chinese government by the US government thus far. The report surmised that the attackers’ primary goal was to steal industrial technology, but that they also sought to gain insights into American policymakers’ thinking. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded by calling the accusations “groundless”.

Two command and control servers for FinFisher spyware were found in South Africa, according to a recent report by Citizen Lab. South African government agencies and telecommunications company Telkom have refused to comment on the accusations.

National Policy

Parliamentarians in Hungary took action to change the country's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an effort to limit the scope of data accessible to the public under the law. Advocates suspect that the amendments were made in response to recent FOIA requests [hu] filed by a group of NGOs and media organizations concerning tobacco license tenders, as well as a FOIA-driven investigation of Parliamentary committee spending. Transparency organization Atlatszo.hu has posted a petition on Change.org [hu] calling on Hungarian president János Áder to withhold his signature from the amendment.

Netizen Activism

Transparency Morocco presented a set of best practices in fighting corruption at a Transparency International SpeakUp! event. The organization launched an online platform, Mamdawrinch.com (meaning “we will not bribe”) to anonymously crowdsource accusations of corruption.

Cool Things

Non-profit education organization Khan Academy has released a new course explaining digital alternative currency platform BitCoin through a series of videos.

Publications and Studies

• Copyright in the Digital Era: Building Evidence for Policy — National Research Council, Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy

• Media Laws & Regulations of the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries — Doha Centre for Media Freedom

• Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression — Frank La Rue (The UN Special Rapporteur of the right to freedom of opinion)

• Protest at the speed of light: social networking the revolution — LINKS

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (0)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Internet traffic map. Image by Joana Breidenbach, licensed for reuse.

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week, we examine a range of regulatory and legislative issues that have recently emerged in Azerbaijan, Brazil, Germany, and Ghana.

National Policy

Yahoo! Inc. has declared its support for an Internet rights bill in the Brazilian Congress. The Marco Civil da Internet seeks to protect privacy and free expression online. The bill would require Brazilian law enforcement to obtain a judicial order before it can demand Internet service providers (ISPs) comply with government requests for user data and provides a safe harbor for ISPs faced with government requests for content removal. The bill has faced several rounds of amendments over the past two years, some of which have reduced the bill's power to protect user interests, particularly in the face of copyright restrictions.

Ghana's National Communications Authority (NCA) issued fines to five telecommunications companies for providing inferior service to consumers in the country. Service was reportedly plagued by dropped calls and traffic congestion. The NCA hopes that the penalties will push the telecom companies to improve customer service, but critics worry the negligible amount of the fines will make little difference.

The Algerian government has come under criticism for continuing to postpone the adoption of 3G telecommunications standards. Activists in the country believe the government “seems intent on hiding behind the shield of one of the world’s most archaic information and communications frameworks” in order to make anti-government activism more challenging.

Censorship

India’s Supreme Court said it would investigate the validity of the nation’s Information Technology Rules, which require website owners to screen and censor specific kinds of content.

Azerbaijan’s legislature may consider a bill that would “make profanity or libel on the web a crime” according to Net Prophet. If the bill passes, citizens could be punished with up to three years in prison for libelous statements made online.

Thuggery

The Ethiopian Supreme court upheld the conviction of journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega, who was arrested in 2011 on terrorism-related charges. Nega, who frequently wrote about politics and human rights violations in Ethiopia, now faces 18 years in prison. Last year the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion stating that his conviction was in violation of international law.

Surveillance

Mozilla Foundation, creator of the Firefox browser, has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Gamma International Ltd., demanding that the British spyware company stop misleading Internet users by attaching fake Firefox information to its FinFisher surveillance software. A report by the Citizen Lab indicates that Gamma misrepresented FinFisher as being affiliated with Firefox in order to gain users’ trust in the face of recent spyware attacks in Malaysia and Bahrain.

The US Department of Commerce has fined UAE distribution company Computerlinks FZCO US$2.8 million for its role in the illegal sale of Blue Coat Proxy SG Internet surveillance software to the Syrian government. The sale violated US sanctions that prohibit surveillance technology companies from selling certain products to Syria. The Syrian government has reportedly used Blue Coat to filter websites, block Internet access, and target dissidents. Blue Coat is believed to have been unaware that the distributor intended to re-export the product.

Copyright

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement between the US and nine Pacific Rim nations, mainly in Latin America and Asia, may pose a serious threat to the domestic copyright laws of its participants. The TPP would effectively allow the US to export some of its most stringent copyright laws to participating countries, including a ban on breaking digital locks on devices and creative works, increasing minimum copyright term lengths, privatization of infringement enforcement, and seizure of equipment allegedly used to commit infringement, to name a few.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released ‘Who Has Your Back? 2013,’ its annual scorecard for Internet communications technology companies that measures their commitment to protecting user privacy from infringement by law enforcement and other government agencies. Sonic.net and Twitter were the only two companies to score six stars out of six, while LinkedIn, Google, Dropbox, and SpiderOak came in close second at five stars. Apple, AT&T, and Yahoo received just one star each, while Verizon was the only company that received zero.

Internet Governance

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has announced the opening of a new hub in Istanbul, Turkey to cover operations in Africa. ICANN plans to spread its operations beyond it current headquarters in Los Angeles to Istanbul and Singapore to become increasingly international in its outlook. China

Cybersecurity

It was reported this week that British-owned defense contractor QinetiQ to the US suffered repeated hacking attacks by the Chinese government hacking unit known as the Comment Crew. From 2007 to 2010, the hackers reportedly obtained 13,000 passwords and accessed company servers in at least eight US cities. QinetiQ has been criticized for not taking sufficient measures to address security breaches.

LivingSocial, an American promotional coupon website fell victim to a cyber attack that may have affected over 50 million customers around the world. Attackers gained access to customer data, including names, email addresses, date of birth, and passwords, but the company has reassured customers that no financial or banking information was compromised.

Cool Things

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the launch of the World Wide Web, CERN, the organization behind the World Wide Web, restored the world’s first website.

Publications and Studies

• Freedom of the Press 2013 – Freedom House

• Collateral Freedom: A Snapshot of Chinese Users Circumventing Censorship – OpenITP

• Legal Guide to Digital Security [ar] – Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression

• 24th Activity Report on Data Protection – The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (0)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Israel – Lebanon border, Rosh Hanikra. Photo by campsmum. (CC BY 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Chan Myae Khine, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Renata Avila, Hisham Almiraat, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we focus on a new set of surveillance issues in Israel and the United States, as well as challenges to online activists in Singapore, Turkey, and Malaysia.

Surveillance

Israel’s Attorney General affirmed that Israel's Security Agency can legally demand to search of the contents of foreigners’ email accounts if they wish to enter Israel. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Justice Ministry to overrule the policy after a Palestinian-American woman was denied entry into the country last year for refusing to comply with a search request. The Attorney General’s office said that the policy will only be applied when “suspicious or pertinent information has been identified.” While travellers are not expected to give up their passwords, those who refuse to allow security officials access to their email may be denied entry to the country.

The Nigerian government awarded a US$40 million contract to Israel-based Elbit Systems that will allow authorities to monitor computers and email correspondence within the country, according to Premium Times Nigeria.

According to documents received by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Obama administration officials secretly authorized the interception of Internet communications by the US National Security Agency and the Department of Defense as part of a military-run cybersecurity pilot project aimed at protecting critical infrastructure.

A judge in the US state of Texas denied a request by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to install spyware on a computer to track a suspect in a bank fraud and identity theft case. According to Slate, the judge called the tactic “extremely intrusive” and refused to approve it because the FBI “did not know the location or identity of the suspect and could not guarantee the spy software would not end up targeting innocents.”

Thuggery

Singaporean cartoonist Leslie Chew was arrested in response to a complaint filed against him for publishing a satirical comic on his Facebook page, “Demon-cratic Singapore,” that accused the Singaporean government of racism and discrimination against the country’s Malay minority. Chew was released on a bail of over US$8,000. If convicted under Singapore’s Sedition Act, he could face up to three years in prison and/or a hefty fine.

With general elections approaching, independent news websites in Malaysia including Harakah Daily and Malaysiakini reported that DDoS attacks have left their sites difficult to access through certain ISPs. Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran called on ISPs to “stay out of politics” and “ensure shared gateways are free of tampering and restrictions.”

Privacy

Changes to EU data regulations could weaken provisions that protect online privacy. A group of consumer rights groups, including the Open Rights Group, Privacy International, Digital Gesellschaft, Access, and La Quadrature du Net have launched a “Naked Citizens” campaign opposing the changes, claiming the amendments “are an effort to strip EU citizens naked by making it almost impossible for them to control who sees their personal information and even how it is used.”

National Policy

ICT policymakers in East Africa are considering new ways to lower broadband costs for the region. Kenya has not build a broadband cable connection with Tanzania, largely due to competition between the countries; both wish to be the primary provider of fiber in the region. Others have argued that creating an Internet Exchange point may be the key to lowering broadband costs for East Africa.

Iceland's Supreme Court decided on April 24 to fine Valitor, a subcontractor of Visa ISK, US$6,830 per day for blocking DataCell, the processor for WikiLeaks’ donations, from their payment processes.

Copyright

Swedish authorities arrested an administrator for Sweden’s second most popular torrent site, Tankafetast, another in a series of police raids on torrenting sites in the country.

Finnish websites went dark on April 23 to promote a new Citizen’s Initiative Act, which would require Parliament to process bills proposed by the public that obtain 50,000 signatures of support. The bill currently has just over 27,000 signatures.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on a proposed EU-US trade agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. The resolution encourages the inclusion of copyright, patent, and trademarks. Many civil society groups oppose the inclusion of intellectual property and patent provisions in the agreement.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Advocates in the United Kingdom accused Facebook of political censorship after a post promoting the privatization of the UK health system was taken down. Written by Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the post chronicled the story of a cancer patient navigating the country's healthcare system, but was taken down after receiving over 1,000 shares.

Google released a new Transparency Report, illustrating a sharp increase in the number of content removal requests it received from July-December 2012. Large quantities of requests came from Brazil, the US and Russia. Google received requests from 20 countries concerning posts of the controversial film “Innocence of Muslims”.

Cybersecurity

The “Syrian Electronic Army,” a group alleged to have close ties to the Syrian government, took credit for a hacking attack on the Associated Press’ Twitter account. Attackers posted a false report that explosions had occurred at the White House and injured US President Barack Obama. The news agency’s accounts were suspended temporarily following the attack and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney issued a statement affirming that the report was indeed false.

In response to the hack, Twitter is now testing a two-step authentication feature that would increase platform security.

The self-proclaimed leader of LulzSec was arrested by Australian police this week. The Australian citizen is part of the group that took down the American Central Intelligence Agency website in 2011 and other Australian government websites more recently.

BadNews, a “malicious ad network library,” has widely infiltrated Google Play and has reportedly been operating for at least 10 months. The malware has been downloaded up to 9 million times, according to security researchers. The apps connect to a rogue server every four hours and report information including the device phone number as well as its unique serial number.

Cool Things

A new version of the Ubuntu operating system has launched. A review of the new operating system is available here.

Wolfram Alpha conducted research on Facebook user statistics using a free report feature on its computational search engine. The New York Times conducted an analysis of the aggregate findings.

A site similar to Reddit and directed at African Internet users launched this week. Called MyAfrika, it uses a similar format and interface, allowing users to ‘up’ or ‘ignore’ news and questions.

Publications and Studies

• “Spyware. HackingTeam” – SecureList

• “Understanding impact: an Internet Rights are Human Rights training curriculum from APC” – Association for Progressive Communications

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (0)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Image by Bernissimo. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Hisham Almiraat, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we focus on a series of attacks on digital news sites in Guatemala, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh, and examine challenges to online activists in Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria.

Cybersecurity

The website of Guatemalan newspaper El Periódico suffered its sixth cyberattack in recent months. The attack may have been triggered by coverage [es] of corruption allegations against Guatemalan Vice president Roxana Baldetti. Guatemala’s secretary of Communication has denied the government played any role in the attacks.

Hong Kong-based independent online news site inmediahk.net [zh] suffered a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) last week, which resulted in the website going offline on April 19. Inmediahk.net editors believe that the attacks, which mostly originated from China, may have been elicited by their reports on the ongoing Hong Kong's dock workers’ strike.

Thuggery

Four bloggers and a newspaper editor were arrested in Bangladesh for charges related to their exercise of free speech. The government has indicated further arrests and restrictions of Internet media are still to come.

Russian investigators have searched the offices and home of Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte, a Russian social media platform similar to Facebook. Although authorities claimed the search was related to a traffic accident, the Guardian reports that “a source inside VKontakte said that pressure against the site began after Durov refused to co-operate with the Federal Security Service (FSB) when Moscow erupted in protest.” A fund linked to state-owned oil company Rosneft bought 48% of the network on Wednesday, bringing the site closer to government ownership.

Prominent Russian blogger Alexey Navalny is currently standing trial on charges that he embezzled money from a state-owned timber company in Kirov. Navalny’s supporters have created a website, 6may.org, to spread information and collect donations for Navalny and other suspects’ legal defense.

Venezuelan Facebook user Andres Rondón Sayago was detained by the Interior and Justice Ministry for posting a photograph of burning ballots following the country’s presidential elections on April 14. He has been accused of sharing the photo with “destabilizing intentions.”

A documentary on the #OccupyNigeria movement, which saw civil demonstrations in response to rising fuel prices and government corruption, has been banned in Nigeria by The National Film and Video Censors board, who are appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan. However, the government has not be able to enforce the ban on dissemination as YouTube has not taken down the video.

Turkish pianist Fazil Say has been convicted of insulting Islam in a series of Tweets he sent earlier this month. The messages involved referenced a poem by an 11th century Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, that joked about Islamic practices.

Censorship

In an effort to combat Internet-based crime, Japan’s National Police Agency may encourage Internet Service Providers to block the Tor anonymization program, which allows users to browse and communicate anonymously online. A memorandum about the decision raises concern that individuals may be using Tor to assist in exchanging child pornography and identity theft schemes.

China’s new Anquan Lianmeng [zh], or “Safety Alliance,” which identifies itself as a “neutral and impartial third-party organisation” is hiring a Chief Pornography Officer who will research, monitor, and review online pornographic content in order to establish an industry standard for Internet safety. Although pornography is technically illegal in China, plenty of obscene content from overseas has found its way around the Great Firewall.

Surveillance

UK human rights group Privacy International is suing the British government over transparency concerns surrounding the UK-based company Gamma International, maker of FinFisher surveillance software. Government officials refused to respond to the group's requests for information about an investigation of whether or not Gamma had exported FinFisher software to Bahrain. The software, which can be used to log keystrokes and eavesdrop on users, may be prohibited under British law. Gamma has denied the charges, claiming that the Bahraini government must have acquired a stolen copy of its software.

Users of the Firefox browser may find strong warnings against visiting HTTPS-encrypted websites that have been verified by Swedish and Finnish telecommunications company TeliaSonera. Mozilla, creator of Firefox, may decide to reject TeliaSonera’s root certificate over claims that TeliaSonera was selling surveillance technologies to dictatorships. Before making a decision on whether or not to do so, Mozilla has asked its community of users for their views.

National Policy

The United States House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), sending the controversial cybersecurity bill on to the Senate. The bill has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation for its lack of provisions to protect user privacy.

Iran’s “Center for Managing National Development of the Internet” reports that 60% of Iranians are connected to the Internet, almost 2.5 million of whom are connected through mobile devices.

Copyright

The Pirate Bay is now on a list of blocked sites in the UK, according to TorrentFreak.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

An Italian prosecutor has appealed the acquittal of three Google executives in a suit over Google’s failure to block a video posted to now defunct Google Video, which showed a handicapped student being bullied. Although the Milan appeals court overturned the six-month suspended prison sentence handed to top Google executives, they must now face the highest court in Italy’s judicial system. Central to the case is the issue of whether Google can be held responsible for user-generated content that is in breach of Italy’s privacy laws.

Google lost a defamation lawsuit in Japan over the autocomplete function in its search engine. A Japanese man sued Google after he found that in a search, the autocomplete for his name suggested criminal acts that he did not commit. According to the plaintiff’s lawyer, Hiroyuki Tomita, “this [autocomplete feature] can lead to irretrievable damage, such as job loss or bankruptcy, just by displaying search results that constitute defamation or violation of the privacy of an individual person or small and medium-size companies.”

Internet Governance

The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and European Digital Rights (EDRi) sent a letter to the European Commission on behalf of over 80 organizations calling for new laws to protect net neutrality and user privacy. They argue that encouraging competition and transparency alone (as the EC has done) are insufficient, since consumers have limited option for suppliers.

Netizen Activism

Anonymous has raised $54,798 through the fundraising platform Indiegogo to set up a dedicated news site, Your Anon News. The platform will expand its Twitter and Tumblr services and “provide a space for people on the ground, or ‘citizen journalists’” to generate news coverage of issues of interest, according to The Next Web.

Digital activist Cameran Ashraf, an Iranian-American citizen who was involved in facilitating activism online during Iran’s Green Movement, wrote a compelling piece for Global Voices Advocacy about his personal experiences during the movement. The piece has drawn substantial commentary from the digital activism community.

Publications and Studies

• The New Gatekeepers: Controlling Information in the Internet Age – Center for International Media Assistance

• The Global Information Technology Report 2013 – World Economic Forum

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (2)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Renata Avila, Chan Myae Khine, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we focus on the Wikimedia Foundation, which is challenging take down orders in both Russia and France, and chart a wave of threats against netizens in Chad, Mexico, and various countries in the MENA region.

Censorship

Roskomnazdor, the Russian government agency responsible for managing the nation’s blacklist of illegal websites, has blocked ten Wikipedia articles on topics related to narcotics and suicide. Wikipedia’s article on cannabis has since seen its traffic increase by 13,000%. It appears unlikely that Russian Wikipedians will seek to reconcile the content to fit Russian censorship laws. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales responded, saying “catering to the demands of weak and cowardly politicians – the kind who fear the spread of knowledge – is not the Wikipedia way.”

The Wikimedia Foundation reported that the French Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) asked that the organization remove a French-language Wikipedia entry about a French military compound, claiming it contained classified information. After Wikimedia refused to grant the request, DCRI forced a Wikipedia volunteer (who had not contributed to the article) to delete the entry, threatening that he would be prosecuted if he refused to do so.

Athens Indymedia, a popular independent news website in Greece, has been shut down by Greek judicial authorities, according to tweets from a Greek Member of Parliament. The website announced [el] it was being suppressed by the government, along with 98FM radio, and provided a Tor link [el] offering users an alternate method for accessing the site. In the past, right-wing politicians have campaigned to block the site based on accusations of anti-state incitement. Athens Indymedia was also blocked last September [el] and had several administrators arrested.

Thuggery

Chadian blogger Jean Laokolé was arrested on March 22 and is currently being held in an undisclosed location, according to Internet Without Borders. Known for his coverage of corruption and poor governance, Laokolé was arrested for making allegedly “false accusations” against a group of people who may have filed a complaint against him. Internet Without Borders issued a petition this week calling for his release. Amnesty International is soliciting letters of appeal for submission to the Chadian government.

Two Tunisians were arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison for “violation of morality and disturbing public order” after posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.

In Egypt, video blogger Ahmed Anwar is being tried for “insulting the Minister of the Interior” and “deliberate harassment of others using communication techniques.” The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information have both condemned the charges and have called on the Egyptian government to end its persecution of Internet activists.

An Iranian store owner was arrested for selling illegal software that enabled Internet users to access blocked websites. Iran outlawed most VPN connections last month to prevent users from circumventing online censorship in the country.

The administrator of the Facebook and Twitter pages “Valor por Tamaulipas” announced the impending closure of both accounts after being threatened for reporting on drug-related violence in northern Mexico. This comes after flyers were circulated in the state of Tamaulipas (presumably by a drug cartel) offering a reward of nearly US$50,000 for any information that would help identify the administrator.

Internet Governance

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held its 46th meeting in Beijing last week. ICANN is the entity responsible for allocating and setting standards for the Internet's domain name system and what are known as “top-level” domain names (.com, .net, etc.) for websites. ICANN's president announced that it will introduce Chinese character options for top-level domains later this year.

Mali announced plans to give national domain (.ml) to users for free starting in July. Despite low Internet penetration in the country, the policy aims to bring in outside investment and support for Malian businesses. A representative from Mali's Information and Communication Technology Agency explained that the plan was based on the .tk domain model of Tokelau, which has become one of the most popular in the world. Officials hope that the domain will be particularly attractive to businesses in Malaysia and Manila (Philippines), given the shared letters in their names.

Cybersecurity

Peruvian lawmakers announced the resuscitation of an IT crimes bill introduced in 2012. Known among netizens as #LeyBeingolea (named for its author, Congressman Alberto Beingolea) the bill raised concern among civil liberties advocates who fear the law would infringe on users’ rights to privacy and free expression online. Congressional web services indicate that the bill will be discussed in Congress in the near future.

The Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives approved language for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a controversial data-sharing bill aimed at protecting the US from cyber threats, without including any amendments to limit intelligence agencies’ capacity to collect sensitive user data. The House of Representatives will vote on the bill as soon as next week. Last year, members approved the legislation but a veto threat by President Obama prevented it from advancing to the Senate.

According to researchers at the Hack in the Box security conference, Wireless IP cameras from Foscam and other vendors have security weaknesses that could allow hackers to attack and access them remotely.

Netizen Activism

Pakistani digital rights NGO Bytes for All (B4A) has begun legal proceedings against the Federation of Pakistan seeking to challenge “rampant censorship, surveillance and Internet filtering in the country.” B4A is working in collaboration with the international media law advocacy network, Media Legal Defence Initiative.

Canada’s SecDev Foundation has launched the Syria Digital Security Monitor to visualize “reports of disruption to critical infrastructure in Syria including Internet, telecommunication, electricity and water.” The project relies on crowdsourced data derived from reports by Syrians as well as monitoring through Syrian social media.

Cool Things

Afrinnovator discusses the ramifications that pan-African trade and business could face if Bitcoin were to be adopted as a continentally-accepted currency.

Publications and Studies

• Social Entrepreneurship and the Web in Africa – Internet Sans Frontieres

• Iranian Internet Infrastructure and Policy Report – Small Media

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (2)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Surveillance camera. Photo by IMs BILDARKIV. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Hisham Almiraat and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. Highlights this week include China's efforts to deploy new surveillance tactics against users in Tibet, the questionable prison sentence of an Azeri web editor, and WordPress’ decision to step up their game on user security.

Surveillance

Chinese government security forces appear to be using new tactics for carrying out digital surveillance in Tibet. Last week, Kaspersky Lab and Citizen Lab reported a surge in attacks on Tibetan and Uyghur activists as well as the greater Tibetan community, in which users are being targeted with malware that captures information about the user’s location, SMS message history, calls and contacts. This comes after the Tibet Action Institute campaign, Detach from Attachments, educated Tibetan users on how spear-phishing attacks could compromise their online security.

Censorship

A member of Brazil's lower house of congress, Claudio Cajado, has requested Google remove videos and content deemed offensive to members of congress from search results. Cajado claims that by issuing the request directly, rather than reporting to the judiciary, he's not seeking to restrict freedom of expression but rather to speed up the process of resolving complaints regarding content found on YouTube or Google’s Blogger platform. Judicial procedures around take-down requests can take months or even years to resolve in Brazil.

Thuggery

An Azeri judge sentenced Araz Guliyev, editor of a website [az] that reports on religious life and news affecting the Muslim community in Azerbaijan, to eight years in prison. Guliyev was tried on charges of ​​”participation in activities that disrupt public order” and “inciting ethnic and religious hatred” among other things, but according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, these charges were not substantiated in court. Guliyev's brother suspects that he may have been targeted for covering protests of a ban on headscarves and veils at a local public school.

Cybersecurity

A group of hackers claiming to be part of Anonymous took over the North Korean government’s Twitter and Flickr accounts. The government deactivated its Flickr account after postings of satirical images and criticisms of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared on the site. An anonymous statement attributed to the hackers claims that over 15,000 user records on government websites like Uriminzokkiri.com had been compromised.

WordPress recently enabled two-step authentication for greater security by using Google’s Authenticator smartphone app. It also allows users to print backup codes in the event their phones are lost or stolen. This is a positive development for the many netizens who use the platform to host their blogs.

Privacy

The UK is attempting to opt out of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which is aimed at standardizing Internet data protection regulations across the EU. The UK takes issue with the proposed Article 17, or “right to be forgotten,” which would require companies to comply with individuals’ requests for their personal information to be removed from the Internet. The UK argues the regulation sets unfair expectations for companies, as implementing the provision would require extensive resources. The EU Justice Commissioner has asserted that the burden to protect users should lie with companies, as it has become increasingly difficult for individuals to control the way that personal information appears on the Internet on their own.

National Policy

Proposed changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in the US would treat any violation of a website’s terms of service as a criminal act. These changes could lead to untold violations of users’ rights to free expression and access to information. The International Business Times notes that such a policy would criminalize users under 18 years of age for reading certain news websites.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Six European nations announced that they would conduct formal investigations of Google’s privacy policy after the company refused to undo recent changes in which 70 different policies were bundled into one terms-of-service document. After Google failed to comply with the recommendations of the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty investigation, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK said they would follow suit. Authorities plan to evaluate whether Google’s actions were in compliance with the European Data Protection Directive.

Cool Things

The Tibet Action Institute has collaborated with Ushahidi and Open Street Map to create an interactive digital map of Tibet that will be used to track incidents such as natural disasters and protests in the region. It will be fully localized into Tibetan, English, and Chinese.

United Press International’s media development division, UPI Next, is developing a wiki for Pakistani journalists to use as a resource and guide during Pakistan’s May 11 election.

Publications and Studies

• Mobile Leapfrogging and Digital Divide Policy – New America Foundation

• Permission to Spy: An Analysis of Android Malware Targeting Tibetans – The Citizen Lab

• Mapping Digital Media: Bulgaria – Open Society Foundations

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (0)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Thousands honor blogger Ahmed Rajib Haidar, who was killed last month in Dhaka. Image by Firoz Ahmed. Copyright Demotix (16/2/2013)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Hisham Almiraat and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week, we begin with Bangladesh, where authorities are targeting bloggers accused of “anti-Muslim” writings. We then look at cases of netizens in Vietnam, Egypt, and Kuwait, all of whom are facing government threats for political expression online.

Thuggery

In Bangladesh, government authorities have taken a series of actions against local bloggers associated with political protests in Shahbag Square. The Home Ministry has formed a nine-member committee to “track bloggers and Facebook users who made derogatory remarks about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.” A group of Muslim clerics submitted a list of 84 bloggers [bn] to the committee, accusing the bloggers of atheism and criticizing Islam. Since then, three bloggers – Rasel Parvez, Mashiur Rahman Biplob, and Subrata Adhikari Shuvo – have been detained for their “alleged write-ups demeaning Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.” Award-winning blogger Asif Mohiuddin, a self-proclaimed atheist, was detained this morning. Somewhereinblog.net [bn], parent site for many of the blogs in question, complied with a request from the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission to take down four blogs related to the controversy.

Bangladesh is a non-religious parliamentary democracy that protects the right to free expression in its constitution. If a person claims to be an atheist, he or she has the same rights as other citizens. However, under Section 295A of Bangladesh's Penal Code (1860), any person who has a “deliberate” or “malicious” intention of “hurting religious sentiments” can be subject to imprisonment.

The Kuwait Society for Human Rights reports that a Kuwaiti Twitter user has been sentenced to two years in jail for “insulting the country’s emir.”

The blog Anh Ba Sam, described by Asia Sentinel as Vietnam’s “leading source of alternative news,” has been hacked repeatedly over the past few weeks, with hackers deleting articles, compromising the e-mail accounts of the blog’s editorial team, and posting a letter attributed to the blog’s managing editor on the website. While critical of the regime, the blog’s first priority “has been to publish an objective summary of newsworthy events in and about Vietnam” according to retired US diplomat David Brown.

An arrest warrant was issued for Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah for “inciting aggression” against members of the Muslim Brotherhood and for a mention he received from another Twitter user, known as Princess Joumana. The investigation has received widespread criticism from the netizen community, because of its focus on comments posted by others rather than the actions of El Fattah.

Censorship

A Saudi English-language newspaper reported that Saudi authorities plan to limit access to Twitter to those who have registered their national identification documents on the site, thus barring Saudi citizens from using Twitter anonymously.

Officials at Egypt’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said Internet service providers in Egypt are prepared to block pornographic content at the request of judicial authorities. Filters have been installed on ISP networks since January, but the Authority has requested that a judge specifically identify which websites should be blocked rather than agreeing to block pornographic sites on the whole.

Surveillance

The Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has asked online and mobile communication companies such as Skype and  WhatsApp to monitor their customers’ communications in the interest of security. Saudi authorities said they will “consider” blocking the services if those companies choose not to cooperate.

Privacy

A new study on anonymized phone location data, published in Nature, found that with just four data points of location, researchers could accurately identify 95 percent of the supposedly anonymous users in their sample. The “uniqueness of human mobility” meant that the researchers from MIT and Belgium could use carrier-collected data to circumvent the layer of privacy that anonymity is meant to guarantee the user.

National Policy

Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement authorities cannot force telecommunications companies to hand over email and text message content with an easy-to-obtain general warrant; the court ruled that they must instead secure judicial wiretap authorization, which is typically granted only for the investigation of serious crimes. Telus Communications Corporation, which sought to contest a request for SMS content from Ontario police, argued that laws written years ago were never intended to be applied to future forms of communication like SMS messaging.

Only a month after announcing it would allow foreign tourists to use a new 3G mobile Internet network called Koryolink from their own cellphones, North Korea has terminated Internet access for visitors. However, Koryo Tours says that visitors to North Korea will still be able to purchase prepaid SIM cards for international calling. There is speculation that the 3G service may have been terminated after North Korean officials decided they did not like some of the content that journalists had posted using the new service.

Copyright

South Korean National Assembly member Choi Jae-Cheon announced a plan to repeal the “three-strikes” copyright policy in South Korea. Passed in 2009, the law authorizes the government to issue notices to Internet users who violate copyright restrictions online. If the users continue to violate copyright policies after receiving three warnings from the the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, their web accounts can be shut down without a court order. Opponents of the policy argue that it not only violates due process but that the punishment is disproportionately grave in comparison to the crime.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Portuguese media companies are demanding that Google pay for content on publishing links to articles and article leads in its Google News search engine.

A US court dismissed a lawsuit brought by Chinese pro-democracy activists against Chinese search engine giant Baidu and the People’s Republic of China. The plaintiffs in Zhang et al v. Baidu.com alleged that Baidu had violated their First Amendment rights under the US Constitution, repressing their freedom of speech by censoring content they had posted. The decision to dismiss the case, on the grounds that the defendants were not properly served with court papers, came after China claimed the case infringed on its sovereignty and the court determined it lacked jurisdiction over the case.

Cybersecurity

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), an independent body tasked with supervising the upcoming general election this May, had its website defaced on March 29, 2013. According to local media, an “[Indian hacker] defaced the home page and has possibly compromised its availability to visitors.”

Widespread lags on the Internet worldwide are the result of a online brawl between a Dutch web host, Cyberbunker, and Spamhaus, a spam-fighting group based in Geneva. Cyberbunker is retaliating against its position on a Spamhaus blacklist through distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Collateral damage from the attacks took out critical infrastructure on the London Internet Exchange. The New York Times offers an infographic of the largest of these DDoS attacks here.

Cyberattacks intended to steal information have become increasingly destructive in the past month, with attacks on American Express, JP Morgan, and 32,000 computers in South Korea’s bank and television firms. This has led US corporations to be more willing to seek government regulation and action in the area of cyberdefense as the attacks become more erratic and damaging.

US government agencies will soon be required to carry out formal “cyber-espionage or sabotage risk” assessments before purchasing information technology systems from entities “owned, directed, or subsidized by the People’s Republic of China.” The sanctions are likely in response to growing concerns about the recent Chinese cyber-attacks on American companies.

Netizen Activism

Advocates in Pakistan are going to court to challenge the country's ban on YouTube. The NGO Bytes for All in conjunction with the Media Legal Defence Initiative has requested the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression intervene, arguing website blocking “constitutes a serious violation of the Pakistani electorate’s right to seek and receive information.”

European Digital Rights (EDRi), a leading network of digital rights defenders in Europe, has called for bloggers not to be considered liable “for third-party comments on their posts in cases when they have not specifically intervened in the content at issue.” EDRi members are currently defending a Polish municipal councillor at the European Court of Human Rights. The defendant was sued for defamatory comments attached to one of his blog posts.

Publications and Studies

• Mapping Digital Media: India – Open Society Foundations

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (2)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Internet interconnectivity map by Ches of Lumeta. (CC BY 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week, our report looks at new research on the insecurity of the global Internet, ISP surveillance practices in a range of countries including Indonesia, and the political influence of “opinion leaders” on Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblogging service.

Cybersecurity

An anonymous person or group released a report that Ars Technica describes as one of the most comprehensive surveys of Internet insecurity to date. Entitled “Internet Census 2012,” data for the report was obtained by conducting a massive, continuous scan of almost 4 billion IP addresses over the course of nine months. According to Reddit poster rep, the person or group used insecure and default passwords to log into devices and turn them into “scanning nodes” for the project. The project also features a detailed map of the global Internet. For many, the report raises ethical questions around hacking as research that can be used for the greater good.

Major banks and media outlets in South Korea underwent a cyber attack on March 20 which caused many of their online banking systems and internal computer networks to crash. South Korean officials claimed that the attack came from China, but later withdrew the allegation. Some experts also suspected that North Korea was responsible for this incident. The attack happened at a particularly sensitive time, as the United States and South Korea prepare to conduct a joint military drill this month that could raise already heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.

A study commissioned by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence has argued that civilian hackers conducting online attacks as part of a nation’s cyber warfare efforts could be vulnerable to attacks by foreign entities. The study is not a statement of official policy by NATO, but a consensus view of a large group of legal scholars and practitioners, according to the Washington Times.

Censorship

Al Jazeera reports that its English and Arabic websites may be blocked in Ethiopia. Google Analytics data shows traffic to both sites plummeting in the fall of 2012; while the Arabic site garnered over 5,000 visits in July, it saw a mere two in September. An anonymous blogger has suggested that Ethiopian censors have been targeting Al Jazeera ever since the network began covering election-related protests in the country.

Former Google China President Kai-Fu Lee published data demonstrating how often posts on his Sina Weibo microblog account have been deleted by Chinese censors.

Global Voices Advocacy analyzed a Hong Kong University study that found that less than 5% of Sina Weibo users form the most active and influential cohort of voices on the site. GVA explores the implications of a select group of bloggers creating most of the content on the site and China’s focus on taming this minority in order to control the platform.

Twitter agreed to block accounts or posts that the Russian government has blacklisted. The posts and accounts, which include content “assisting [in] the distribution of narcotics” and “promoting suicidal thoughts” will be blocked for users with Russian IP addresses.

Thuggery

Last month, a drug cartel in Mexico [es] offered a bounty of nearly US$50,000 in exchange for information about Twitter user @ValorTamaulipas who has been using the platform to report on drug-related crime in the northern state of Tamaulipas. Many people are using citizen media to report on drug violence in Mexico, particularly as traditional news outlets have gone silent in the face of threats from both drug organizations and the government. A new post on Global Voices Advocacy charts the recent history of Mexico's drug war and its effects on both traditional and new media.

A Tunisian blogger has been charged with criminal defamation for alleging that now former Foreign Minister of Tunisia Rafik Abdessalem had misused public funds while in office. The blogger, Olfa Riahi, could face a prison sentence.

The Venezuelan Twitter user (@Uliloa) who was arrested after sending a tweet that mocked recently deceased President Hugo Chavez has been released. Though free, Lourdes Alicia Ortega will have to appear before a court in Venezuela every thirty days for the foreseeable future.

Surveillance

China's Caijing business magazine reported that a university in Guangdong set up a 15-member committee of faculty and students to monitor student discussions on sites such as the microblog service Sina Weibo and messenger service QQ. Committee members are tasked with posting replies to student complaints and “correcting errors in public opinion.” Caijing readers expressed dismay that the committee’s mission to keep tabs on public discourse harkens back to the Red Guards of the China's cultural revolution. The original Caijing report on the committee and subsequent re-postings have since been taken down from the web.

Three Indonesian Internet Service Providers have been accused of spying on their users using the surveillance software FinSpy. The allegation emerges in a report published this month by Citizen Lab which found that as many as 25 countries are infected by FinSpy. The ISPs, Telkom, Biznet, and Matrixnet Global, could face 15 year imprisonment charges if proven guilty.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation collaborated with SHARE Defense to publish two infographics drawn from Google’s semi-annual transparency report. The first shows the quantity of user data requests Google received from governments in the last six months and compared this with the past 3 years. The second offers a comparison between the number of accepted and rejected requests Google processed from different world regions, excluding Africa and China.

National Policy

The Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) reports that a new draft telecommunications law could be read to encourage online censorship and place higher controls on Internet access in Jordan. JOSA has formally requested that articles of the law that could threaten free expression and Internet openness be removed.

A bill before the House of Commons in the United Kingdom has raised fears of increased fines for bloggers found guilty of libel. While it does not apply to individual blogs, student newspapers, or not-for-profit community newspapers, blogs that produce news material would face such fines.

Amendments to the United States’ Electronic Communications and Privacy Act would require law enforcement authorities to obtain a judicial warrant before requesting access to private emails or other online communication from online communication service providers. The bill would also require law enforcement officials to notify users when their online communications are under investigation.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Microsoft released its first Law Enforcement Requests Report, disclosing publicly for the first time the number of requests for user information it received from government law enforcement agencies this year. The report stated that overall, the company received 75,378 law enforcement requests, 79.8% of which resulted in disclosure of non-content information and 2.2% in the disclosure of customer content. A handful of other Internet companies including Google and Twitter have released transparency reports, but Microsoft’s is the first to reveal how it responds to certain types of requests and explain why it may reject them.

According to London-based social media agency WeAreSocial, the number of Facebook users in Vietnam, where approximately 30 million people use the Internet, has reached 12 million. The company also claimed that Facebook has displaced the local company Zing as the most popular social networking website in this country.

Netizen Activism

Thirty thousand websites have joined together in a campaign opposing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in the United States. The bill’s critics warn that CISPA threatens Internet privacy by authorizing companies to disclose user data to a range of government agencies including the National Security Agency, which is know for its secrecy and limited accountability to the public. Websites and organizations — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Reddit — are posting the Internet Defense League’s interactive banner on their homepages, encouraging privacy advocates to voice their opposition directly to their congressional representatives.

A Change.org petition to “save Google Reader” has drawn 12% of its 125,000 signatures from users who live in countries where there is substantial government-imposed Internet censorship, including Iran and China. For many, Google Reader was one of the few ways to access banned content such as foreign blogs.

Publications and Studies

• 2013 Europe Digital Future Report – Comscore

• The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare – Microsoft Research

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (2)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

RSS graphic by Travelin’ Librarian. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Chan Myae Khine, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we examine the “death” of Google Reader and its impact for countries with pervasive online censorship practices, regulatory challenges in France for Skype, and the arrests of citizens in Venezuela and Bahrain for criticizing government leaders on Twitter.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Google will discontinue its Google Reader RSS service this July. Users and Internet rights advocates are pushing back on this decision as Google Reader has served for years as an effective platform for circumventing censorship in several countries including Iran.

Google has agreed to settle a case with 38 US state governments that took the Internet giant to court for unlawfully collecting users’ email account data on unsecured wireless networks by way of its “Street View” vehicles. Google has promised to secure and destroy the information it has collected and will pay US$7 million to the states.

The French government is investigating whether Voice Over IP (VOIP) provider Skype should fit into the category of a “telecommunications company,” a shift that would require Skype to comply with government telecommunications regulations that affect licensing, taxation and other areas. The investigation has raised concerns that other countries will follow suit, making it easier and more common for governments around the world to force Skype to cooperate with law enforcement and other investigations.

Netizen Activism

Internet users around the world voted to elect Vietnamese blogger Huynh Ngoc Chenh “Netizen of the Year.” Chenh’s blog focuses on democracy, human rights, and territorial disputes between Vietnam and China. Despite being blocked by the Vietnamese government, the site attracts an average of 15,000 visitors per day.

Censorship

Iranian authorities have blocked access to the virtual private networks (VPN) many of its citizens use to get around the government’s robust Internet filtering system. The government draws a distinction between “legal” and “illegal” VPN access. “Legal” VPNs must be registered with the government and are often used for secure communications such as financial services. Many suspect VPNs have been blocked in anticipation of the country’s upcoming presidential election in June, recollecting the “Green Movement” in which citizens used social media to communicate during their protests of the 2009 elections.

A group of US-based computer scientists published a study that reveals just how quickly China’s microblogging site Sina Weibo is able to censor posts by its users. “The Velocity of Censorship: High-Fidelity Detection of Microblog Post Deletions” found that 90% of all deletions occur within 24 hours; nearly a third of these occur within 30 minutes of the post's publication. The study described a “sensitive” (dissident) user group as well as a list of frequently used keywords that are likely to attract the attention of censors. These included “Support Syrian rebels,” “Beijing rainstorms,” “human rights news,” and “group sex”.

Anti-censorship activists from around the world sent an open letter to Iceland's interior ministry, calling for the government to abort plans to ban pornography in both print and online media. Coordinated by Iceland’s International Modern Media Institute, the letter warns that the ban amounts to a breach of freedom of expression. Officials maintain that the legislation is necessary to combat sexual violence, especially against children.

Thuggery

Jaime González Domínguez, editor of news website Ojinaga Noticias, was killed [es] in northern Mexico's Ciudad Juarez. The Ojinaga Noticias website has since been shut down. González's death has stoked persistent fears of drug-related violence in Mexican border states, a trend that has caused newspapers in the region to censor their own coverage of organized crime to protect their journalists.

March 15 marked the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian web developer and open technology advocate who has remained in prison ever since. Internet rights and open technology advocates around the world continue to campaign for his release.

Trinidad and Tobago may see its first online defamation case this year. Facebook users report that Public Prosecutor Roger Gaspard cleared former Prime Minister Patrick Manning's name of “criminal misconduct” charges in the construction of a multi-million dollar church. Gaspard has said that he has not seen the comments, but claims online defamation is “actionable”.

Bahraini authorities arrested six Twitter users on the World Day Against Cyber Censorship, charging them with defaming King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa. The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights has demanded the release of the users and an end to all government restrictions on social media use in Bahrain.

State police in Venezuela detained Twitter user Lourdes Ortega for sending tweets that were deemed “destabilizing to the country” in the wake of the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Surveillance

A university researcher has discovered a functionality in TOM-Skype, the voice chat service available to users in China, that surveils users that mention certain “offending” phrases including “campus upheaval,” “Reporters Without Borders,” and “Anti-Japan” in text chat.

A bill that would require government agents to obtain a judicial warrant in order to request user data from email and mobile telecommunications service providers was introduced in the US Congress. The Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act would reform the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which has been outpaced by technology and is difficult for courts, law enforcement and companies to interpret.

National Policy

In the US state of California, a federal judge ruled against the use of gag orders on requests for information issued by federal law enforcement authorities. She wrote that by forcing recipients of these requests (known as National Security Letters) to remain silent when asked for sensitive information, the government “significantly infringe[s] on speech regarding controversial government powers.” Filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet rights group, the case in question involved a telecommunications company that received a National security Letter seeking information about one or multiple customers. The company challenged the underlying authority of the letter and the gag order that came with it.

Copyright

Internet rights advocates continue to worry that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement may affect intellectual property online. As TPP negotiations have been carried out in secret, it is difficult to be certain of this. The Office of the US Trade Representative plans to complete TPP negotiations by fall 2014.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected Pirate Bay defendants Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi's appeal of a Swedish court ruling against their operation of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site in Sweden. While the ECHR upheld the site's right to host copyrighted material, citing the right to free expression as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, it found that the Swedish courts had balanced the interests of freed expression and copyright protections in its ruling.

Cybersecurity

Deutsche Telekom announced the launch of its new online portal, which maps the origins of cyber attacks as they happen in real time. Drawing on data from 97 sensors known as “honeypots” to tempt attackers, the website has reported up to 450,000 attacks per day on its system alone, with Russia ranking as the top source of attacks over the past month. The project was developed in partnership with Germany's Alliance for Cybersecurity [de].

Cool Things

The Graduate School of University of Tsukuba in Japan is conducting a research project called VPN Gate, which aims to develop a network of Virtual Private Network servers that will offer stronger protections for users than a typical, stand along VPN. In addition obscuring a user's IP address from easy monitoring online, VPN Gate offers strong resistance to firewalls.

Associated Press Korea Bureau Chief Jean Lee gave SXSW attendees a glimpse of North Korea’s version of Facebook, which is used largely to post birthday messages.

Publications and Studies

• Internet Use and Political Engagement: The Role of E-Campaigning as a Pathway to Online Political Participation – Center for the Study of Democracy

• Challenged in China – Committee to Protect Journalists

• You Only Click Twice: FinFisher’s Global Proliferation – University of Toronto

• Access and Openness: Myanmar 2012 – Open Technology Fund

• Iranian Internet Infrastructure and Policy Report – Small Media

• Special Report on Internet Surveillance – Reporters Without Borders

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.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (1)
Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper