Global Voices Advocacy » News

Netizen Report: Which Way Ahead?

Rebecca MacKinnon — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:15:14 +0000

Image courtesy of broodcast, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nielssienaert/4253272271/.

Most of this report was researched and written by Weiping Li and Mera Szendro Bok, and edited by Sarah Myers.

In the past few weeks, we have witnessed how Internet companies - the sovereigns of cyberspace - struggle with the conflict between market demands for global expansion and the demands of their users for freedom of expression online. A mark of its rise in global prominence, Twitter announced a decision to block tweets in certain countries to comply with local laws, and Google’s Blogger said that the service is going to restrict content in some countries by redirecting readers to country-specific domains.

Although both companies defended their decisions by pointing out that the transparency of the new policies actually promote free speech and all for continued flow of information in countries where the Internet is controlled, they have triggered fury among netizens who organized protests online. Among the protesters is Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who said he would stop tweeting if Twitter begins censoring. An article in techdirt lamented the possible end of global Internet if other Internet companies follow Blogger and Twitter’s steps to censor content country-by-country.

However, Twitter’s move did receive praise not only from the countries which restrict content, but also from activists who defend free speech. Unsurprisingly, Thailand and China welcomed the decision. Standing on the other side of the spectrum of free speech, Jillian York and Mike Masnick also acknowledged the companies’ efforts to be transparent and to provide users in restrictive online environments ways to skirt the blocks.

Twitter and Blogger are not the first and will not be the last Internet companies practicing geolocational content blockades. As netizens concerned about the fate of Internet freedom, we will keep watching the trend closely and make sure they still stick to the baseline, just as Eva Galperin has suggested.

Below are other trends and stories for the fortnight that you may want to dig into:

Censorship

As mentioned previously, there has been an increased trend in Internet companies complying with the demands and laws of governments in certain countries. The latest example is Facebook's and Google's removal of content deemed “offensive” to comply with an Indian court’s order. At a recent Media Access Project event, Google's Bob Boorstin pointed to India, Korea and Brazil as critical countries in the battle over internet freedom.

In an Index on Censorship interview, Moez Chakchouk, the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) chief, discussed how the agency’s role has been transformed from a censorship instrument to a unit which maintains “network neutrality”. The chief also talked about how they are handling censorship machinery passed on from the past regime, and their relationships with the foreign companies whose equipment facilitated the former regime’s censorship.

Faced with criticism for censoring the word “Palestine” in a late-night music show, BBC maintains that it was the right decision, and has insisted that it was improper to express a one-sided political viewpoint during a music show.

Over the past two weeks, several Tibetan blogs have been shut down during fierce protests by the Tibetan people against Chinese rule. Meanwhile, according to a Guardian report, the Chinese government has cut off Internet and phone connections in areas of unrest in Sichuan province.

Also in China, the microblog real-name registration system has resulted in protests over the freedom of speech: several famous Chinese intellectuals who are renowned for their outspoken criticism of the Chinese government closed their Sina microblog accounts because of the tightened controls.

A piece from On the Media reveals the redactions made to Wikileaks documents by the US government in a comparison between the published versions and those recently obtained by the ACLU in a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request.

Surveillance

U.S. congressman Edward Markey proposed a bill to tackle the issue of mobile phone surveillance. According to the draft of the bill, mobile companies should inform consumers that the devices they provide are installed with software like CarrierIQ, which tracks users’ activities on smartphones, and should obtain consumers’ consent before they start monitoring.

A piece by Malicia Rogue on the Global Voices Advocacy blog traces out FBI indicators for terrorism online. According to FBI documents, “attempts to shield the screen from view of others”, or “use of anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address”, show evidence of terrorist activity that should arouse suspicion among FBI officials.

Hawaii’s House of Representatives introduced a bill to require Internet service providers to keep record of customers’ information and Internet destination history information, such as IP addresses and domain names for two years. Not surprisingly, the bill has attracted plenty of criticism and some lawmakers have already decided to back away from the legislation.

Thuggery

Park Jeonggeun, a South Korean activist, was charged with “helping the enemy” and violating South Korea’s National Security Law. The charges were issues for re-tweeting the message “long live Kim Jong-il” from North Korea’s official Twitter account, with the intent to ridicule North Korean leaders.

What are the plights that the journalists face in Iran? Who are the journalists detained in jail? A new Iranian website is dedicated to covering these issues. Though most of the articles are written in Farsi, some of them have been translated into English and are a good insight into issues from the Iranian perspective.

Netizen activism

The online community Reddit played an important role in the anti-SOPA/PIPA protest. Now the community is exploring the possibility of creating a bill together to fight against any future interference with Internet freedom.

Equipped with the power of social media, Africa’s oldest community radio station not only connects more closely with its audience, but also gains the wide support to show the financial backers the reasons to keep the station running.

Once again social media has brought together people around the world to protest against the massacres in Syria. Activists are spreading news through Twitter and Facebook, asking people to protest outside of the Syrian embassies. Many Syrian people answered the call and expressed their anger outside the embassies in Kuwait, London, Berlin and Washington D.C.

National Policy

According to the Akamai State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2011, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are ahead of other countries in broadband adoption, while China and India lag behind.

UK media reported that North Korea has prohibited its people from using mobile phones during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il for fear of spurring discontent toward the government.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Facebook’s filing for an IPO hit the headlines on February 1st. The IPO is not only a big event for the global market, but also has important implications for human rights and privacy issues on the global social network. Elisa Massimino, the CEO of Human Rights First, explains the importance of Facebook's mega-IPO from the human rights viewpoint . An article in Ars Technica also pointed out that Facebook going public means that cases of inquiry and investigations of Facebook led by the FTC and attorney general, which in the past would be kept private, will now be public.

Google’s new privacy policy consolidating users’ personal information across its services goes live on March 1st, and has instigated serious concerns over customers’ privacy. For users, this means that Google may make predictions about your age and preferences, which they provide to ad companies.

For the past two weeks, Google has been busy clarifying “myths” about its new privacy policy. It also responded to Congress’ question in a 13 page letter and guaranteed “the new privacy policy will not change how Google archives or deletes user data”.

Meg Roggensack, Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights at Human Rights First examined the responsibility of private telecom companies in an authoritarian regime.

Google has proposed a number of Internet standards changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is the transport layer protocol used by applications that require guaranteed delivery of data.

Copyright

After 22 European countries signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), anti-ACTA protests prevailed in Europe. In the last weekend of January, protestors in the Czech Republic, Belgium, Ireland, UK and France took to the streets to protest against the agreement. Hackers battled on the Internet to express their discontent - however a piece by Timothy B. Lee in ars technica overviews accurate and inaccurate claims made about the treaty on both sides.

The protests online have proven successful in Europe: the European Parliament's rapporteur for ACTA resigned and criticized the negotiation process, and the Polish parliamentarians wore Guy Fawkes masks to show their opposition. The Slovenian ambassador apologized publicly for signing the agreement and Prime Minister of Poland has also suspended the ratification on the agreement. Most recently, the Czech government suspended its ratification of the treaty.

A note from European Parliament member Marietje Schaake outlines actions that citizens can take in opposition to the treaty.

Rashmi Rangnath wrote a piece on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which would also have implications for free speech online, available at Public Knowledge.

According to news reports, the data saved at Megaupload may be deleted. The file-hosting service was charged with illegal file-sharing and its assets have been seized by the U.S. government for investigation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter to the Eastern Virginia office and to lawyers for Megaupload, asking them to retain the data for innocent users. In Europe, the Pirate Party of Catalonia is also planning to sue the U.S. FBI in a Spanish court for legitimate users.

Being concerned about the personal security of the officials, prosecutors, and their family members, the U.S. government decided not to reveal the names who are investigating the Megaupload case in the press release and public statement. The government officials said that there is a great possibility that hackers will retaliate against the agencies involved in the case.

In a recent interview, Yochai Benkler also discussed the targeting of Megaupload by the U.S. Department of Justice, just days after netizens showed “effective political force” against SOPA. Benkler says seizing the assets and people working on Megaupload without a trial is a “fairly aggressive and expansive” move.

In UK, a judge’s rule on photo copyright infringement may further blur the idea/expression distinction in copyright law and restrain creativity.

Cybersecurity

A group of hackers who support Syrian president Bashar al-Assad attacked and posted pro-Assad messages on Al Jazeera English’s “Syria Live Blog”. The blog has been devoted to covering the unrest in Syria.

According to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risks for 2012 report, cyber-attacks against governments and the private sector is ranked as number 4 among global risks which may become real. The report also calls for “correcting information asymmetries’ over cyber risks to improve global Internet security.

Governments, terrorists, and crime organizations have been more and more sophisticated in using Internet skills to surveil their targets — and many of the targets are journalists. However, many journalists haven’t equipped themselves with cyber-security technical skills. An article from the Columbia Journalism Review blog examines cyber-security education in the U.S. journalism school.

Iran: Innovations in Cyber Dictatorship

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

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

Skype interrogation

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

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

Iranian blogger Tahriyeh Khamoush writes [fa]:

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

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

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

Attacking a Facebook group

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

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

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

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

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

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

A long history

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

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

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

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

Iran: Blogger was sentenced to 14 years in prison

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

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

Kuwait: Ahmad Mansoor, a UAE blogger denied entry

Mona Kareem — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:57:38 +0000

Blogger and activist Ahmad Mansoor after his release last November

Ahmad Mansoor, UAE's most famous blogger who was detained last year for several months with four other activists for signing an online petition calling for reforms in his country, was denied entry to Kuwait few days ago. The UAE5 including Mansoor were released with a pardon on the 28th of November. Recently, Human Right Watch press conference in Dubai which was planned to release the organization's report on the decline of freedom of expression in the Gulf wealthy state was raided by state security police called off.

Through his twitter account, Mansoor was the one who reported the details of this raid on HRW's press conference. More than a week after, Mansoor went to Kuwait and was denied entry, which makes him the second human rights defender to be denied entry in Kuwait in a very short time period after Kassab Al-Otaibi (@Dr_Kassab ) a Saudi opposition activist based in the UK. Mansoor reported what happened to him in the airport through twitter, as Kuwait was having its vote for parliamentary elections; one of the reasons why there wasn't much attention paid for the incident the UAE blogger had to go through.

Mansoor tweeted:

I'm Kuwait airport now. Prevented from entering. Too bad that this happens in Kuwait; the only democracy in #gcc !!

— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012

#gcc: after an interrogation for about an hour, I was told that I can not enter by the State Security officers.#kuwait #uae

— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012

#gcc #kuwait #uae further told that if I can not find a ticket back, I would be detained until then.

— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012

#gcc #kuwait #uae: off course, preventing me from entering kuwait was based on instruction from UAE authorities.

— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012

Not sure though why authorities in UAE first let me leave Sharjah airport to start with and put Kuwait in this situation. #gcc #kuwait #uae

— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012

Iran: Blogger under pressure to give TV confession

Fred Petrossian — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:36:27 +0000

Iranian blogger Hossein Ronaghi Malki is under pressure to give TV confession according to his mother. He is serving a 15 year prison sentence in Tehran.

Netizen Report: Uprising Edition

Rebecca MacKinnon — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:01:35 +0000

Photo by Yogesh Mhatre

Most of this report was researched and written by Weiping Li, Mera Szendro Bok, and edited by Sarah Myers.

Netizens around the world took collective action with a mass Internet blackout on January 18 to protest the United States' Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act, which, in its effort to enforce copyright online, would have compelled Internet service providers and platforms to monitor and censor their users or risk being blocked or penalized in the United States, and would have weakened the Internet's domain name system, among other things. Global Voices and Global Voices Advocacy participated in the protest along with over 7,000 websites, including Mozilla, Wikipedia, Reddit, Flickr, TwitPic, Boing Boing. Advocacy groups including Public Knowledge and Free Press blacked out their sites and posted information about how to get involved in the fight against these bills.

Many protest websites tracked the bill's Congressional Representatives' supporters, ultimately pressuring many representatives to withdraw their support. In the end, Congressman Lamar Smith, SOPA's sponsor, pulled the bill and said it would not go to a vote until “issues are addressed”. Inspired by the American protests, netizens took action around the world on digital rights, including Chinese activists. An article in Ars Technica neatly summed up the impact of the legislation on the rest of the world.

After SOPA and PIPA’s Death

Now it seems that SOPA and PIPA are dead. But concerns about illegal file-sharing persist, and commentators warn that similar bills may be reincarnated. Ben Huh, The CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?, states that we still have more work to do in order to defend Internet freedom and sustain the engine of netizen mobilization. His opinions echo an article by Alex Howard on O’Reilly Radar, which argues that citizens need to band together to work out alternatives to SOPA. Internet and Politics guru Micah Sifry discusses the broader political environment that produced the bills, and the need for Internet companies and netizens to work for political reform. Internet law Professor Yochai Benkler offers seven lessons and four proposals on where we go from here.

Censorship

Major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen have enforced a registration system that requires users to register their real name on Weibo, the prominent Chinese microblog. Although the new regulation has been widely criticized by Chinese netizens, including Pony Ma (Ma Hauteng), the founder of Chinese Internet service company Tencent, the Chinese authority still plans to implement the rule in other parts of the country.

In contrast, South Korea, which adopted online real-name registration in 2007, has taken steps to abandon the practice. Having faced criticisms of infringing freedom of expression and concerns over hacking, some Internet companies have decided to stop asking customers’ resident numbers, and the Korea Communications Commission is also planning to abandon the real-name registration requirement.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has jumped on the bandwagon of using social media for his presidential election campaign, but he has also been reported to have censored comments left on his website: only those comments which support his election are allowed to stay on the site.

An Indian journalist sued Google, Facebook and other companies for not taking down offensive content from their websites. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the journalist claimed that messages which contained objectionable content about Hinduism, Islam and Christianity could cause commotion across India. He said action was meant to remind Internet companies to act in socially responsible ways.

Surveillance

The Argentinean government is launching a program to build a national biometric service named “the Federal System of Biometric Identification (SIBIOS)“. This system combines Argentinean citizens’ biometric information with other databases and be used by law enforcement. According to Katitza Rodriguez’s report for Global Voices Advocacy, the information gathered through the SIBIOS system would include not only biometric identifiers but also “an individual's digital image, civil status, blood type, and key background information”. The program has raised serious concerns over the government’s unrestrained power to surveil its people.

Sprint has promised to remove CarrierIQ tracking software from the cell phones using its network, making good on its word to improve security for its users.

To fight against the government’s intrusion into netizens’ personal Internet information, EFF and ACLU filed an appeal to challenge the U.S. district court’s decision to refuse disclosure of all orders in the Twitter/Wikileaks case.

A hacked document revealing that RIM, Nokia, and Apple provided the Indian government backdoor access to users’ communications may be fake. The three companies and security company Symantec have argued this document was full of incorrect information, and is not from the Indian directorate general of military intelligence.

Thuggery

Iran’s government has relentlessly pursued the Internet activists Parastoo Dokouhaki, Marzieh Rasouli, and Sahamoddin Bourghani, who were recently arrested. They were accused of “propaganda against the system” or “acting against national security”. The Iranian Supreme Court also confirmed the death penalty of a web programmer whose web program was misused by others to upload pornography.

After being detained for 10 months, Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil, who was convicted of “insulting the military” by an Egyptian military court, was released.

Chinese activist Li Tie was sentenced to 10 years in prison for writing articles advocating democratic reform; poet Zhu Yufu was also charged with subversion for poems published online.

Several Ethiopian journalists and bloggers were convicted of terrorism and may face the death penalty.

The Myanmar government released several journalists and bloggers and at least 600 dissidents from prison under the government’s amnesty program.

Netizen activism

A recent study found that in Colombia, the Internet is changing the media landscape. The research pointed out that online journalism emphasizes local perspectives and incorporates more interaction with readers.

According to the Statistical Report on Internet Development published by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of Chinese Internet users hit 513 million in 2011, which is almost equivalent to the number of Twitter users. Half of the the 513 million netizens are microblog users.

Is citizen journalism rising in China? Maybe. With the prevalence of digital cameras, videos, and social media, more and more Chinese citizens shoot newsworthy events and are uploading the clips to websites. Media scholars expect this trend may promote societal progress.

Want to know more about hacktivists who often hit the Internet activism headlines? This documentary may provide the audience with insight into hacktivist group Anomymous.

National Policy

The European Union delineated more details on its ban on exports of surveillance technology to Syria. The banned items include equipment which can probe email content or intercepts text messages.

The Indian government plans to build an “m-Government” framework by which people can access public services more easily via their mobile phones.

The Canadian government has historically prohibited the revelation of election results to areas where the votes have not been closed. Last year, Twitter users breached the law in an election by tweeting the results. The Canadian government announced (via Twitter) on January 17 it plans to lift the ban.

Swedish government agencies let different Swedes demonstrate their ways of life in the nation’s official Twitter account, hoping to let more people around the world understand and be interested in Sweden.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Twitter has announced that it now has the capability to restrict content from appearing in certain countries. The company says this will allow it to comply with local laws in different countries without having to remove content globally. When content is restricted in this way, the action will be reported to users through the Chilling Effects website.

Twitter also acquired a start-up company which has developed a service to summarize social media content and solve the information-overload problem.

Google announcement of an “upgrade” of its privacy policy and terms of service that integrates user information across its search engine, GMail, YouTube and its 57 other services stirred criticism from privacy groups and some members of Congress. In the weeks before the announcement, Google launched a “Good to Know” campaign to educate the public on how to stay safe online. Meanwhile, Google is also readjusting its China business strategy. Setting its past confrontations with the Chinese government over censorship aside, Google has decided not to miss out on this big market and plans to introduce more services.

Copyright

The anti-SOPA and PIPA action in the U.S. helped spark another round of protests in Europe. Now Polish netizens are fighting against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The provisions in the treaty require Internet companies to monitor their online users. What irritated the Polish netizens was not only the censorship-like regulation, but also the opaque negotiation process around the legislation.

On January 19, one day after the mass protest against SOPA, the FBI seized the file sharing Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy. Seven Europeans now face legal indictments in the United States of “racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.” European officials and digital rights advocates are protesting the legal action because they believe it sets a bad precedent for international intellectual property law.

Research archive JSTOR will soon open more resources to the public for free access.

Pirate Bay has begun shifting from torrents to “magnets” as another way of sharing data that would help the site go further underground.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on January 19th to uphold a law which grants copyright protection to foreign works that had been freely availably in the public domain.

Cybersecurity

Cyberspace has become a new battleground for pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli hackers took down websites and waged distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attack) on each other.

Cool things

There could be easier ways to let the public understand obscure technologies on the horizon. New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative has explored methods such as visual language to explain their mesh wireless network projects to communities.

Internet Rights as Human Rights

Amnesty International has responded in a blog to Vint Cerf’s article on internet rights as human rights, saying “in places from Sub-Saharan Africa to the most impoverished communities here in the US, loss of access could mean an immediate threat to lives and livelihoods.”

In a letter by Joy Liddicoat of APC responding to Vint Cerf's article, APC encourages discussion and increased dialogue between technologists and human rights advocates.

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor gave a keynote address at the State of the Internet conference statingthe U.S government’s view on “Internet freedom as a foundation for the 21st Century human rights agenda” and the role of media in the “Arab Awakening”.

Publications

Reporters Without Borders released its Press Freedom Index for 2011-2012. Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen got their worst-ever rankings.

Freedom House released its 2012 Freedom in the World report. A chilling overall result was that despite the gains won by the Arab Spring, “slightly more countries registered declines than exhibited gains over the course of 2011. This marks the sixth consecutive year in which countries with declines outnumbered those with improvements.”

“Mapping Digital Media,” a new Open Society Paper reports on the impact of digitization on democracy in 60 countries around the world.

China Internet expert Hu Yong reviews trends of China’s Internet in 2011.

The Center for the Study of Free Expression (CELE) at Argentina’s University of Palermo released Towards an Internet free of Censorship: Proposals for Latin America with contributions by leading policy experts from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S.

Vivek Kundra, who served as the White House's first Chief Information Officer until August 2011, writes on Innovation through Open Data and the Network Effect.

According to research conducted by Facebook, social networks can help spread diverse points and novel information. Slate’s technology columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote an article responding to the research.

EVENTS: For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age see the Global Voices events calendar.

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by Email

New Book Proposes Open Internet Policies for Latin America

Ellery Biddle — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:43:14 +0000

Last week, the Center for the Study of Free Expression (CELE) at Argentina’s University of Palermo released Towards an Internet free of Censorship: Proposals for Latin America [Hacía una Internet libre de censura: Propuestas para América Latina] [es]. With contributions by leading policy experts from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S., the book addresses some of the most pressing challenges facing Latin American digital rights advocates today.

Book cover. Design by Patricia Fiuza.

Drawing on current debates in five of the region’s strongest economies—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico—all of which boast high Internet penetration rates for Latin America, contributors provide a sketch of legislation, judicial decisions, and policies that affect free expression and privacy online. Book editor and CELE Executive Director Eduardo Bertoni writes:

El debate global sobre la regulación en Internet ha evolucionado desde aquella pregunta inicial acerca de si es necesaria y deseable alguna regulación en la red. […] Los artículos de esta publicación abordan [estos temas] no con la idea de arribar a soluciones últimas, sino con la intención de plantear algunas de las cuestiones legales involucradas en estos temas y pensar el efecto que pueden tener estas políticas sobre la libertad de expresión.

The global debate about regulation on the Internet has evolved out of the initial question of whether it is necessary or desirable to regulate the web. […] The articles in this book broach [this issue] not with the goal of finding ultimate solutions, but rather with the intention of posing certain relevant legal questions and contemplating the effect that [regulatory] policies can have on free expression.

The book’s authors urge policymakers to rely on international and regional human rights instruments—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights—as crucial sources of guiding principles in making policy for the digital age.

Underlying much of the analysis and discussion in the text are three fundamental questions:

When Internet users post content, store personal data, and search for information on the web, what are their rights and responsibilities?
How can governments protect citizens’ rights to privacy and free expression while still upholding defamation and copyright law and ensuring that law enforcement officials can carry out legitimate criminal investigations online?
What role do Internet intermediaries—ISPs, search engines, or platforms for user-generated content, such as YouTube or WordPress—have in implementing government policy?

Numerous debates surrounding Internet regulation in Latin America focus on copyright violations and threats to honor or reputation (also known as defamation). Many courts in the region take these infractions seriously (both on and offline), and some legislators argue that they justify implementing tighter regulations on Internet activity.

In Colombia, the proposed (though currently shelved) Lleras Law would allow copyright holders to demand that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) remove infringing content from the web, a process known as “notice-and-takedown.” Under current Colombian law, ISPs can only be required to remove content if they receive an order from a judge. But Ley Lleras would eliminate this requirement, leaving ISPs with the burden of determining whether or not takedown requests were valid.

Art by Tomaz Garzia. CC BY-NC 2.5

Internet search engines also have been held liable for providing access to defamatory content. In Argentina, singer Virginia da Cunha filed a defamation suit against both Google and Yahoo! Argentina, after the companies had denied da Cunha’s request that they filter (remove) search results for her name that led to sexually explicit content. A judge initially ruled in the singer’s favor, but an appellate court later overturned the decision.

Contributing authors Claudio Ruiz [es] and Juan Carlos Lara, of the Chilean NGO Derechos Digitales, warn that under the Lleras Law, ISPs likely would comply with most takedown requests before fully considering their validity, as the alternative could leave them vulnerable to prosecution. The da Cunha case could have led to a similar result, where search engines would agree to filter results upon request, so as not to risk punishment. These examples illustrate the need to protect intermediaries from liability for content created by their users.

Brazilian legal scholar Joana Varon and her co-authors, all researchers at the Centro do Tecnologia e Sociedade, discuss these issues in a chapter on content filtering. Although there is little evidence that Latin American governments (with the exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela) engage in widespread filtering, legislators have considered various filtering mandates that would combat copyright violations and defamation online. But the authors note that there is a problem with this approach:

…técnicas de filtrado no son precisas…es casi imposible bloquear solo un determinado contenido sin afectar otros…[A]demás, muchos de esos mecanismos utilizados para regular y censurar información son cada vez más sofisticados, utilizando…muchas camadas de control que generalmente están escondidas del usuario común, quien probablemente ni se dará cuenta de que la información a la que accede ha sido objeto de filtrado.

…filtering techniques are not precise…it is nearly impossible to block only one type of content without affecting others. Furthermore, many of the mechanisms used to regulate and censor information are becoming more sophisticated every day, employing technical control methods that are generally hidden from the common user, who probably doesn’t even realize that the information she accesses has passed through a filter.

Other contributors include Universidad de los Andes scholar Lorenzo Villegas, who describes the challenges of protecting personal data in the digital age, and Eduardo Bertoni, who discusses the issue of jurisdiction in defamation cases where the poster of the defamatory content is located in one jurisdiction and the offended party is in another. Towards an Internet free of censorship also features articles by George Washington University Professor of Law Dawn Nunziato, Derechos Digitales' Alberto Cerda, and University of Puerto Rico legal scholar Hiram Meléndez Juarbe.

The Center for Democracy & Technology's Cynthia M. Wong, James X. Dempsey, and Ellery Roberts Biddle co-authored the final chapter of the book, which places current policymaking debates in Latin America into broader international context. They note that the issues being debated in Latin America are very similar to those raised elsewhere in the world, a convergence that is not surprising given the global nature of the medium.

However, while policymakers around the world are confronting the issues of free expression, privacy, copyright protection, defamation, and government power, approaches vary substantially from region to region, and country to country. Some have turned towards repression, jeopardizing not only human rights but also economic innovation and human development. As the book shows, Latin American policymakers have looked to both Europe and the U.S. when debating these issues. But they also have the unique advantage of working in a region where country-to-country relations are generally friendly, and legislators often are able to “borrow” policy solutions from one country and apply them in another.

Towards an Internet free of censorship aims to take advantage of this cooperative dynamic by initiating new conversations, collaborations, and policy initiatives that will help to protect and strengthen online free expression, freedom of information, and privacy throughout Latin America.

Highlights from the 28th Chaos Communications Congress

Becky Hogge — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:23:54 +0000

'Child's Play' shared by John Flanagan on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, hackers looked at each other and said : “w00t! Only two days to go until 28c3″.

The Chaos Communications Congress is the annual meetup of Germany's Chaos Computer Club, one of the oldest hacker collectives in the world. It takes place in Berlin every year at the height of the holiday season between Christmas and New Year's Eve, a time when only the dedicated European computer obsessive would leave their family and friends to spend four days in a conference centre with like-minded hackers and geeks.

The programme mixes technical talks from the security and free software worlds with talks about online rights and hacktivism, and is well known for breaking new issues that go on to be important in the wider world. Alongside the talks are space for Europe's computer clubs and hackspaces to demonstrate their current projects, as well as break out spaces for workshopping new tools and projects, and labs offering introductions to things like Arduino-based electronics, 3D printing and even lock-picking.

This year was the 28th Chaos Communications Congress (28c3 for short) and my third time going. Here are my highlights.

Roger Dingledine and Jacob Applebaum on TOR

For me, this talk illustrates the central role the hacker community is now playing in world events. The conference opened with a set piece from Evgeny Morozov on the perils of networked, digital surveillance, but it was this talk on Day 2 about the experiences of the TOR community with national network control infrastructures that felt like it united people at 28c3 against surveillance as a concept and a technology, in free societies as well as oppressed ones. The tub-thumping and the casual allusions to the technical vulnerabilities of state censorship technologies were tempered by the pair's obvious expertise and considered ethical attitude. Gold.

Defending mobile phones

Two years ago, at 26c3, Karsten Nohl announced that the GSM encryption protocol had been cracked. This year, he detailed how network operators should be securing their networks while they upgrade the encryption, and asked the community to help him keep track of how the operators perform. He also previewed a new project, CatcherCatcher, which will track the activity of IMSI catchers on behalf of phone users. IMSI catchers are thought to be increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to track people via their mobile phones.

The coming war on general computation

An expertly delivered talk in which Cory Doctorow reminded congress that “information appliances” (like iPads, Kindles and all the rest) are simply fully functional computers with spyware in them out-of-the-box: “All attempts at controlling PCs converge on rootkits and all attempts at controlling the network converge on surveillance”.

Sovereign keys

The EFF's Peter Eckersley proposes a way to fix the broken Certificate Authority system.

Towards a Single Secure European Cyberspace?

A beautifully constructed lecture by Suso Baleato cross-referencing the rhetoric used by European legislators to erode internet freedoms with the character of the new, networked activism which I ruin at the end by asking a stupid question no-one understands.

The hallway track

Random cool stuff I found out about from talking to people in and around the conference: the Open Source Next Generation Multicopter; the Hackerbus and Code Hero.

Will Iran Soon Have Its Own “Clean Internet”?

Fred Petrossian — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:36:53 +0000

The Iranian regime may be losing its battle to filter content on the internet, but meanwhile it is trying news things - from slowing down internet speeds, to developing a so-called “national internet” or “clean internet”. (read Intranet). Iranian members of parliament have also discussed a proposal to place blogs, comments and SMS mobile messages under the same government regulation as the mainstream media.

Creative alternatives to filtering?

Iranian authorities see the internet as a real battleground and consider citizen media and social networking as tools of “soft war”. Over several years they claim to have blocked and filtered millions of websites and blogs. Now several bloggers have reported [fa] that Iran's Corporate Computer Systems [fa] say the goal is for Iran to be entirely cut off from the World Wide Web once the country launches its own national internet network.

Mehdi Jafari via The Green Voice of Freedom

In October, many bloggers were happy to quote a remark by a top official who said, “Filtering is useless.” Mehdi Jafari, described as the technology director for the Student Basij Organization (youth paramilitaries supporting the Islamic regime), claimed that 17 million Iranians are on Facebook even though the site has been filtered in Iran… and that “300,000 Persian language websites are fighting against our religious and national beliefs.”

Jafari did not mention a source for these statistics.

Iranian blogger Ghalbir quoted the Basij leader and says it proves that filtering is a joke.

At the end of October the semi-official news agency, Mehr, reported on interruptions and extreme slowness of internet around the country. Several bloggers, including Azari quoted from a story that said the majority of Iran's 36.5 million internet users rely on dial-up internet to be connected with 56k speeds… but that it had become even slower or inaccessible with no explanation from the authorities.

Reza Taghipour, the Minister of Information and Communication Technology eventually offered a response, saying the internet slowdown was due to infrastructure changes necessary for developing a “clean internet” [another name for the planned “national internet”].

Introducing the “Clean Internet”

A clean internet for Iran? Image with '102 broom' by Nesster on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In the past months, Iranian bloggers have reacted to several media reports of plans for the “clean internet” or “national internet”. Blogger Uniirani says [fa] The Islamic Republic’s decision is a big leap towards transforming into North Korea. Another blogger, Visionthetruth, said [fa] that after the internet is nationalised, it will be the turn of satellites.

For all the years that a national internet project has been discussed, Iranian media agreed on at least one thing: there is a cloud of ambiguity over project.

Donayeh Eghtesad, an Iran-based newspaper, wrote [fa] in 2010:

The project was an initiative of Ahmadinejad’s government five years ago and it has still four years to go before it becomes operational… there is a curtain of ambiguity on this project. It is not clear what, where, how and who is going to use the national internet… The Minister of Communication and Technology, Reza Taghipour, says the national internet will be a broadband, fast network inside the country to answer the government’s electronic needs… at present, the internet for households is provided by private companies, but the Ministry of Communication is researching the possibility of doing it by itself.

Two years earlier, Hamshari, an Iran-based news website, wrote that a “national internet” is an ambiguous term. They quote a media expert who says that if this project aims for 100 per cent filtering and casting away of the international internet, it is neither useful nor operational.

So whose darling is the national internet? Ahmadinejad’s government, without a doubt. According to Hamshari, the Iranian parliament refused [fa] to give an initial $10 million in funds five years ago, forcing the government to seek other financing.

As if the idea of a “National internet” was not ambiguous enough, the Iranian Minister of Communication, Reza Taghipour, launched another term: “Clean internet”. Taghipour used [fa] used the term as early as December 2010. He said they wished to shield the internet from dirty actions and protect human beings. He said that at first, the internet was created for peaceful purposes, but now there are black spots in it. The Ministry of Communication say [fa] the clean internet won’t contain any immoral content or content encouraging atheism, divisive controversies, nor hopelessness.

Alireza Shirazi, the founder of a leading blogging software provider, says it is not clear what a clean internet is, but that if the idea bears fruit, there will most likely be no Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Myspace… or any of the currently filtered sites on it. He explains the difference between a filtering system and this clean internet idea. For the former, there is a blacklist (filtered sites), but for latter there will be only a white list (limiting the internet to permitted sites).

Now with talk of a clean internet or even a Halal internet, we could also just call it a virtual Frankenstein. Call it whatever you want, but the fact remains that as the regime swings its clenched fist over the Iranian internet, sometimes it hits its targets and other times it misses.

Turkey: No tweets from the courtroom!

Ece Temelkuran — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:19:49 +0000

“Today the judge is more strict” says the tweet, “One undercover police for each row! All monitoring the ones who are tweeting!“

In Istanbul-Turkey, today is the 2nd day of the hearings of 10 arrested journalists. Turkey is the leader country even before China and Iran with the figures of 107 arrested journalists.

Since the national mainstream media is not covering the news properly, colleagues of the detained journalists have no other choice but to tweet from the courtroom. According to Turkish law, the hearings are open unless a court order forbids it. But since yesterday, the judge has been constantly warning, then threatening those who try to give news from the courtroom. Today he said that those tweeting will be subjected to legal procedure. Neither the journalists nor the lawyers tweeting from the courtroom didn't really understand what the “procedure” will be. Alas, they tweet anyway.

The political arrests have become the legal (and lethal) weapon of the Turkish government to silence dissents and journalists. According to AFP figures 1/3 of the terrorists in the world are in Turkey. It is necessary to remind that the 500 detained students, 107 journalist and thousands of Kurdish politicians are considered to be “terrorists” in these political cases. Ironically, yesterday Interior Minister of Turkey said “Terrorism is not only on the mountains but in poetry, in paintings, in the universities, in NGO's. We will monitor those as well“.

To Keep updated, please follow @oemoral, @petite1ze, @etemelkuran for live tweeting from the court.