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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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Photo by kaoticsnow. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In 2011, two separate lawsuits were filed in U.S. federal courts against Cisco Systems alleging that its technology enabled the government of China to monitor, capture, and kill Chinese citizens for their views and beliefs.

The first case involved practitioners of Falun Gong, a religion that is popularly known for its use of qigong exercises and has an estimated two million or more members in China. The suit was filed on behalf of Charles Lee, Guifu Liu, Ivy He, and several anonymous plaintiffs and accuses Cisco of marketing its technology to construct the Golden Shield, or what is popularly called the Great Firewall of China, while knowing that its products would be used to target dissidents. At least 2,000 members of the Falun Gong have been killed by the government of China, according to The New York Times, and many more have been tortured or harassed.

The second case (the Writers case) involved a group of internet writers and activists who were similarly targeted by censors of the Great Firewall. Du Daobin, Zhou Yuanzhi, Liu Xianbin, and anonymous co-plaintiffs claim to have been harassed, arrested, and tortured because of their online writings.

To what extent are these human rights violations attributable to technology provided by Cisco? The complaint in the Writers case states that Cisco began marketing its products to the Chinese government in 2002 when the Great Firewall was still in its infancy. The available evidence is especially compelling in the Falun Gong case. It includes a leaked Cisco marketing team PowerPoint slide explaining that its systems could be used to “Combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles.” Other documents reveal that Cisco may have customized its products to specifically monitor groups like the Falun Gong, and were so significant that the plaintiffs in the Falun Gong case amended their complaint in March 2012. (For an excellent backgrounder from 2011, read Jillian York's piece for EFF here.)

The plaintiffs in both cases sued under a variety of laws including the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a crucial 200 year-old law that has been successfully used to hold human rights violators accountable in U.S. federal courts.

The ATS was used in several law suits in Nigeria involving a group of writers and activists who were jailed, tortured, or executed by the military regime in the mid-1990s for peacefully protesting the destruction of Niger Delta wetlands by Royal Dutch Shell and other international oil conglomerates. The claimants in these cases sued Shell, arguing that the company had aided and abetted the Nigerian government and violated international law.

When the Supreme Court agreed to revisit the ATS in Kiobel v. Shell—the latest of the string of Nigeria cases utilizing the Alien Tort Statute—both Cisco cases were put on hold in October 2011 because their outcome would be affected by the top court's ruling. Human rights activists feared the worst from the conservative court, and they were right to be afraid. In its decision, the court significantly narrowed the scope of the ATS by citing a principle called the “presumption against extraterritoriality”, a legal term of art that means that laws should be interpreted as only applying within the U.S. unless clearly stated otherwise. (Click here for an in-depth explanation of Kiobel at PEN.org.)

Falun Dafa practitioners. Photo by longtrekhome. (CC BY 2.0)

The Supreme Court judges issued three separate concurring opinions in Kiobel, which do not have the force of law. These suggest that if there is a significant enough American interest, then a federal court could properly hear an ATS case. Cisco is headquartered in the U.S. and was selling its products abroad, so this seems like a significant interest for Americans. The victims, however, were Chinese nationals, although some of them now reside in the US. It is therefore unclear whether the plaintiffs would overcome the burden to show that Cisco's actions affected an American interest.

Even if the two U.S. federal courts in California and Maryland, respectively, hold that the Alien Tort Statute does not apply to the Cisco cases, the plaintiffs in each suit also filed claims alleging violations of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which governs the ability of companies to disclose private user data to government and law enforcement officials. On the surface, these claims are not nearly as strong as an ATS claim before Kiobel. In 2009, a judge in a California federal court held in Zheng v. Yahoo! that the ECPA does not apply abroad, even when information that is disclosed abroad passes through computer servers on American soil.

Before Kiobel, there was no guarantee that human rights victims could win an ATS case on the merits in federal court, and the cases often resulted in settlement. But we have now come to the point when critical human rights cases may not even be argued in U.S. courts at all. This is a terrible loss for human rights, and even a loss for corporations. Litigating the Cisco cases in open court would provide a vital human rights record for the global community about how tech firms operate.

There is another formidable hurdle: the legal team that defended Royal Dutch Shell in Kiobel, led by the former dean of Stanford Law School Kathleen Sullivan, is also defending Cisco.

Human rights are good for business. A 2012 open letter from a group of socially responsible investors representing over $548 billion in investments explicitly stated [PDF] that human rights can and should be protected by businesses. This goal was reinforced by the UN's Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which require companies to actively protect human rights, respect them, and provide remedies to victims of human rights abuses that result from actions by companies. Unfortunately, the facts in Kiobel and Cisco suggest that we are not there yet, and we need the courts to show us the way to go. In this sense, the Supreme Court has provided no real guidance.

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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

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

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According to an April 18 news report, Japan's National Police Agency (NPA) may soon urge website administrators to ‘voluntarily’ block users from accessing their sites via Tor, the anonymous online communication program. The NPA report carrying this announcement has not been formally released; whether NPA will actually put this move into practice remains unknown.

A report published in late January [ja] quotes the chair of the NPA cyber security committee [temporal translation] saying:

例えばＴｏｒについていえば、「捜査」そのものから離れて、Ｔｏｒからのアクセスを制限するというようなことを提言して、国民のコンセンサスを得て、政策として展開していく。本部会では、このような観点から議論していきたいと思っています

As for Tor, for example we would suggest to limit access from Tor. This is something outside of investigation and should proceed as a policy with consensus of the citizens. We would like to discuss from this standpoint.

At Global Voices Online, we have written about Tor which offers a protective measure allowing users to remain anonymous in online environments where freedom of expression is limited and surveillance is prevalent.

The proposed NPA policy would be a voluntary effort to keep criminals from using anonymous networks as a way to issue threats against others. Still, the hacker collective Anonymous had something to say to NPA. ChanologyAgent who claims to be the Anonymous of Japan uploaded a message on Youtube on April 19.

Anonymous emblem. The image has been released into the public domain by its author, Anonymous.

What is regrettable is that Tor is not the dark and dangerous shadow network that you and the mass media would like to paint it as. Tor is merely a tool, and like all tools, it can be used both responsibly and irresponsibly.

The truth is, the Tor network helps people in repressive countries, such as Tibet, bypass censorship and communicate with the outside world. It helps whistleblowers safely expose unethical behavior by powerful people. Tor can and is used every day for noble ends.

At our last count, there were 52 Tor nodes operating in Japan, several of those exit nodes. Each and every one of those nodes contributes to the strength and stability of the network, and the exit nodes in particular help users in less fortunate countries than ours.

By discouraging Tor use in Japan, you weaken the strength of the entire network. You reduce the options for people in repressive regimes. And you rob your own people of a legitimate and perfectly legal tool they can use to protect their privacy in a world that regards it as less and less important with each passing day. We urge you to withdraw this report and renounce your recommendation for ISPs to block the Tor network in Japan.

On social networks and citizen media, users responded to the news, mostly with indignation. On bookmarklet service hatena, users commented in cynicism [ja] that the country's Internet is “turning Chinese”:

umeten:もうインターネットじゃないな

umeten: That's it, there will be no more the “Internet”

Another user, activecute, jokingly writes that communication methods may be very limited in the future.

activecute:今から伝書鳩事業を作っておけば、30年後には…牢屋行きか

activecute: why don't we tame pigeons to be carrier-pigeons…or we may be sent to jail in 30 years later

arajin :「一方で、中東の民主化運動では政府の弾圧から逃れるため民衆が活用。」国内で起きているのは愉快犯。どちらが重大かは自明。

arajin: it says [in the article] ”on the other hand, Tor was used by citizens in oppressive regimes during Arab Spring.” Compare this to what's happening in Japan, which is more like vicious users playing with threatening comments [without real action]. It's obvious the former matters.

Mobile developer Kenji wrote on twitter in reference to the Article 21 of the Constitution that guarantees confidentiality of communications:

@needle:警察がプロバイダに対してTor規制を言い出す。遅かれ早かれ言い出すだろうなと思ったら案の定か。露骨に通信の秘密に抵触しといて何が「理解を求める」だ。

@needle: Now the police start saying that they want to restrict Tor via ISP. I knew they would say that sooner or later, but this could violate the right to communications privacy. What do they mean by ” ask the public for understanding”?

On technology news blog techdirt.com, user JarHead posted a comment wondering whether this move has any effect in decreasing online crimes.

JarHead: Say that there's an “effective” ways to block Tor. What's to stop people to just abandon ship and use yet another anonymizer? Tor isn't the only one in the game, there are others. Then they'll be calling to block those as well, and people just pick up yet another one. This will go on and on until everything is blocked including legal channels.

Police were criticized last year for making wrongful arrests of citizens who they identified using IP addresses. On user submitted news site and forum slashdot.jp [ja], many commented, doubting the ability of the police to tackle cyber crimes.

However, hatena bookmark user festerfester writes that measures are needed and that the anonymous online bulletin board is becoming the hotbed for crimes.

festerfester: 警察の情報通信関係の捜査のずさんさには心底憤りを感じるけど、だからといって２ちゃんねるなどの悪質な書き込みを放置していいという話は全く別問題のはず。元管理人とかあまりにも無責任すぎると思う。

festerfester: I do feel furious about the cops for being so terrible at investigating cyber crimes. With that said, it's a different story that vicious posts on 2channel can be remain untouched. I think the former manager of the 2channel is way irresponsible.

Global Voices Advocacy will continue to cover this threat as it takes shape in Japan. If you have information or ideas for our Japan Internet policy coverage, tweet to us @Advox.

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DDoS Attacks from China

Administrators explained that the attack resulted in heavy packet loss caused by a deluge of automated data requests that left the site's servers overloaded. A further explanation from Rackspace to inmediahk.net said the DDoS attacks came mainly from China:

The attack was specifically targeting the domain name www.inmediahk.net. When we changed IP's in DNS, the attack followed. As far as the source IP's, it was a large group of addresses from various different countries, mostly from China, which is typical of a DDOS from a botnet of compromised hosts. The attack switched from a SYN flood to a TCP fragmentation attack after we enabled a measure which provides for SYN flood protection at the expense of site performance.

In order to restore the website, inmediahk.net has begun using Cloud Flare, a DDoS mitigation service, to pre-filter malicious traffic coming from sources such as a botnet zombie [a computer with a DDoS attack program] and web spammers [computer bots that send spam or post spam-like comments] before they reach the site's system. In 24 hours, Cloud Flare recorded 608 unique threats to the site. A threat control report confirmed that while the attacks are coming from different countries, nearly half of the attackers are from China, including Hong Kong.

Baidu Reported as Webspammer

The report also showed a large number of IP addresses (between 180.76.5.0-180.76.5.212) that registered as web spammers. According to Domain Tools’ IP information, this set of IPs comes from Baidu, China's largest search engine, which is listed on the US stock market.

Screen Capture from the threat report

Because inmediahk.net is blocked in China, all visits from China must come through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or a proxy server — visitors’ IP addresses thus appear to come from overseas rather than from mainland China. In fact, Baidu's search engine does not show any results linking to inmediahk.net. When one searches the headline of a recent inmediahk.net article “香港獨立媒體網被中國黑客攻擊” [Hong Kong Independent Media's Website Attacked by Hackers from China], Baidu offers no result leading to inmediahk.net [zh]; an identical search on Google brings up inmediahk.net's article as the top result [zh].

Global Voices Advocacy asked Baidu for comment on the attack, but the company had not yet replied as of publication time.

According to inmediahk.net's report about the hacking incident [zh], the website has been paralyzed by hackers in the past. Despite having shifted to a cloud hosting service in 2010, it has continued to suffer from occasional DDoS attacks around sensitive periods, such as the annual June 4 Candlelight Vigil to commemorate the 1989 protests at Tienanmen Square. These have typically resulted in a rapid increase in computational cycles that slow down the website. But the scale of the recent attack is much greater than previous ones.

Controversial content

Members of inmediahk.net believe the attack was triggered by recent content on the site. Over the past two weeks, the network has been covering an ongoing strike by dock workers for Hong Kong International Terminals (HIT), the company that runs Hong Kong's docks and is owned by local business tycoon Li Ka-Shing. Articles on the site expose how workers have been exploited through HIT's subcontracting system — subcontracted workers currently earn lower wages than they did in 1995. Another polemical series focuses on the construction of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Pier [zh] at Central, the city center of Hong Kong. It accuses the Hong Kong government of violating city planning protocols in the construction of PLA pier and criticizes authorities for converting a large piece of city land from a public recreational space into one for military use.

Global Voices Advocacy will continue to cover this story as it unfolds.

GVA note: Oiwan Lam is a volunteer editor for inmediahk.net.

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On April 16, two days after presidential elections in Venezuela, the Interior and Justice Ministry detained Andrés Rondón Sayago, a citizen who allegedly spread photographs of burning ballots. Officials say that the photographs were taken during 2007 elections, not in the present day. Rondón Sayago was detained, accused of sharing the photograph with “destabilizing intentions.” According to Ministry officials, Rondón Sayago works as security employee up a private television station. The Minister for Information tweeted:

Detenido sujeto que difundió imágenes falsas de material electoral de 2010 para desestabilizar aporrea.org/actualidad/n22…

— Ernesto Villegas P. (@VillegasPoljakE) 16 de abril de 2013

A subject who spread fake images of electoral material from 2010 [intending] to destabilize has been detained http://t.co/MCmgveBsux

Soon after, Jorge Galindo, head of public relations for the Interior and Justice Ministry, tweeted a picture that showed Rondón Sayago along with this message:

OJO: Este sujeto confesó que la foto difundida por el en redes sociales sobré material electoral son del proceso 2007 twitter.com/JorgeGalindoMI…

— Jorge galindo(@JorgeGalindoMIJ) 17 de abril de 2013

The subject  confessed that the picture spread by him in social networks about electoral materials is from the 2007 process pic.twitter.com/EMTwoXkpcQ

Galindo later tweeted [es] a link to a video, uploaded to the A Toda Vida Venezuela (“Venezuela Full of Life,” a government program intended to reduce crime) YouTube channel, where Rondón Sayago issues an official statement in which he declares to have published the picture “by mistake” via Facebook, and asks people to “stop publishing this kind of material” and avoid situations of “terrorism”. The video [es] can be seen below.

Several incidents of online censorship have been reported from Venezuela in recent years. In 2010, two Twitter users were detained by police for allegedly “spreading false rumors” about the banking system. Last month, a woman was detained for tweeting a comment about Hugo Chavez's demise. All of them have since been released on parole.

Written by Marianne Diaz · comments (6)
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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.

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After a hacking wave involving the Twitter accounts of the presidential candidate and current interim president Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) [es] and his party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (@PartidoPSUV) [es], the Internet across the country was down for about twenty minutes according to users’ declarations and for “no more than three minutes” according to the authorities.

Users reported they couldn't access the service through CANTV and later said that access to the majority of the pages was reestablished except for news and social networks’ sites. Some users reported having difficulties getting online through other ISPs, including Miguel Laversa (@MigueLaversa) [es]:

Nicolas Maduro's Twitter account, April 2013

@MigueLaversa: La pagina votacion2013.com esta bloqueada para los que navegamos por Inter o Cantv. Se puede acceder sin problemas usando una proxy.

@MigueLaversa: Site votación2013.com is blocked for those who browse with Inter or Cantv. You can access it with no problem using a proxy.

Vice president Jorge Arreaza (@jaarreaza) [es] declared in his Twitter account:

@jaarreaza: Compatriotas no hay problemas con internet. Calma!! Fue una maniobra breve para impedir más hackeos conspiradores del exterior.

@jaarreaza: Fellow countrymen, there is no problem with the internet. Calm down!! It was just a brief maneuver to prevent more conspiracy hackings from abroad.

Later on, Arreaza announced to the press that he blocked Internet access for a few minutes [es] to avoid a hacking attempt on the National Electoral Counsel site. The web page was made inaccessible for users outside the country to prevent more DDoS attacks after it had been under fire since Sunday, according to Arreaza.

Pages like NoticiasVenezuela.org [es], DollarToday.com and Votacion2013.com [es] were still down through CANTV, as well as the National Electoral Counsel [es] at 3:21AM GMT on April 15, the time of this post's original publication (in Spanish).

Written by Marianne Diaz Hernandez · Translated by Elizabeth · View original post [es] · comments (1)
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