Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Summit, May 4!

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

On Tuesday, May 4, Yahoo! will be hosting our second annual Business & Human Rights Summit! The Summit will feature experts from the business, academic, journalist, human rights and advocacy communities – each with a unique perspective but united in a common desire to address the complex threats to free expression and user privacy.

Panels include a discussion about Governments, Technology and Human Rights, in which panelists including Sarah Labowitz of the U.S. State Department and Christine Bader, Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Business & Human Rights, and Kum Hong Siew, former member of parliament, Singapore will discuss various approaches to addressing free expression and privacy rights in the Internet, Technology and Communications (ICT) sector.

Another panel, entitled Technological Solutions to Free Expression and Privacy Issues, will address innovative solutions targeted at evading government restrictions on free expression and privacy.   Panelists include Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo!’s 2010 Georgetown Fellow and contributing editor to Foreign Policy; Andrew Lewman of the Tor Project; Kathleen Reen of Internews and Alan Huang of UltraFree Internet.

We will also feature a panel about the intersection between social media and social change, in which journalists, bloggers, social entrepreneurs and film-makers will hold a discussion about the role of media and technology as a platform for free expression and social change, and shared innovative methods of amplifying voices from around the world.  Panelists include Abbas Gassem, Founder and Editor, Inside Somalia;  Sameer Padania, Hub Manager, Witness.org; Nadia Trinidad, Yahoo! Stanford Fellow and senior correspondent, ABS-CBN Broadcasting Company, Manila, Philippines, Elia Serra, co-founder and director of Maneno, and Omid Memarian, UC Berkeley Rotary Peace Fellow and Iranian journalist and blogger.

Finally, we will also have a fascinating discussion about Unconventional Threats to Online Privacy and Free Expression, during which we will learn about how issues like account deactivation and terms of service violations can have unintended chilling effects on privacy and free expression. Panelists for that discussion include Dr. Mehdi Yahyanejad, founder and editor of Balatarin.com, Kim Pham of AccessNow, and Danny O’Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

For more information about the Summit, please see here. For those of you can’t make it to Sunnyvale to join us, we will be posting video shortly after the event, so please stay tuned!

Yahoo! Celebrates World Press Freedom Day

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

On Monday, May 3, Yahoo! will celebrate World Press Freedom Day. Go to yahoo.com on May 3, click on the icon on the Yahoo! logo at the top of the page, and you’ll be linked to a site with information about the history of World Press Freedom Day, profiles of journalists from around the world, and information about a few organizations that are working to keep access to information free and open around the world. You can also learn about events like Yahoo!’s second annual Business & Human Rights Summit on May 4, and about Global Voices Online’s Summit in Chile, on May 6-7.

Mark your calendar, and check it out on Monday!

Abbas Gassem of Inside Somalia on Social Media and Social Change

By BHRP

[Guest blogger Abbas Gassem, of Inside Somalia, (and Yahoo! employee) talks about his work, and the role of the Internet in supporting communication and information sharing across cultures.]

In June 2007, I founded insidesomalia.org, a news and social networking website focused on Somalia.

My motivations to start the website were due to the limited knowledge and a view of insignificance outsiders have about the Horn of Africa.

When people mention Somalia to me, they use such words as: pirates, failed state, Black Hawk Down, refugees, Extremist Islamists, poor, and clan politics. Whilst these words on the surface are true, it requires deeper analysis to fully understand the crisis taking place in the past 20 years.

Traditional media has limited space and time to highlight the problems of Somalia in depth, causing the lack of understanding about the region.

The Internet carries an immense power in shaping a nation’s agenda. The old gatekeepers of media; television, newspapers and radio, have a lesser role in the dispersal of information. Insidesomalia.org aims to take advantage of the new media to educate the global community by bringing together an extensive resource of information.

We are living interesting times; never has it been easier, faster or cheaper to create and publish content.

It is important that people are able express their views and feel a sense of control of their destiny.

To what extent do these technologies contribute to conflict resolution?

All media have vital roles to play; the Internet in particular will play a pivotal part in bringing peace and addressing key issues of the reconstruction of Somalia.

On the conflict resolutions the Internet can:

Bring forth the voices of moderates, “the silent majority”;

Hold the Somali government & International community accountable to the people;

Be a platform to discuss & exchange views to building peaceful & prosperous society;

Looking beyond the current state of conflict, the Internet will serve all sectors of society, namely:

To ensure that the government is transparent and open to the people;

To help lift people out of poverty by giving low cost access to educational and healthcare.

To connect businesses and consumers to the global marketplace.

It will be a long journey, mistakes will probably be made, but through the Internet and the networking of billions of people, an unprecedented force for the good can be achieved.

-Abbas Gassem, Founder and Editor, Inside Somalia and Senior Manager, APG and Business Optimisation, Yahoo! UK

China defines trade secrets

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | BabaSteve

Reuters | ABC Australia | April 28, 2010

A month after the conviction of Australian citizen Stern Hu for taking kickbacks and stealing trade secrets, China has issued definitions of what constitutes commercial secrets.

The definitions, drawn up for China’s hundreds of state-owned firms, are in line with a draft law that requires telecommunications and internet operators to give authorities access to information sent through their networks.

The draft is part of an effort to codify what is a secret in China after the trial of four Rio Tinto employees drew international attention to the country’s vague secrets laws.

Those laws have long concerned human rights advocates.

Regulations on commercial secrets issued by the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) were dated March 25, the day after the trial of Rio Tinto’s Shanghai-based iron ore managers.

They were published late on Monday.

China’s lack of clarification of state or commercial secrets, highlighted by the Rio employees’ trials, has alarmed both Chinese and foreign investors.

The issue is of particular concern to businesses because state-owned enterprises, which dominate many industrial sectors, are both competitive-listed entities and an integral part of the state-directed economic model China imported from the Soviet Union.

Negotiations with those firms, therefore, can easily touch on matters the Chinese state deems of national interest.

Commercial secrets for state-owned firms, according to a notice posted on SASAC’s website, include information relating to strategic plans, management, mergers, equity trades and stock market listings.

It also includes information related to reserves, production, procurement and sales strategies, financing, negotiations, joint-venture investments and technology transfers.

The regulations prevent information from being secret forever by requiring the company to define the period for which information is classified as either a “core commercial secret” or a “standard commercial secret”.

The regulatory publications comes after China’s third legislatory amendment to the law on guarding state secrets was updated to include communications through modern networks.

But legal and rights advocates contend the ruling Communist Party uses secrets laws to prosecute critics and people who reveal information embarrassing to the party or powerful individuals.

Mr. Yang goes to Washington

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

On April 26th, Jerry Yang was a featured speaker at President Obama’s Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. To read his speech, and see video of his remarks, check out the blog post at Yodel Anecdotal.

Jerry Yang Speaks at Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship

By BHRP

AP Photo | J. Scott Applewhite)

By David Alexander | Reuters | April 26, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama launched a new effort on Monday to build business and social ties to the Muslim world, but analysts said the need for progress on big issues like Middle East peace would overshadow the initiative.

Obama hosted a two-day Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that brought together about 250 successful entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries, most with large Muslim populations, fulfilling a pledge he made in his Cairo speech to the Islamic world last June.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke opened the gathering by challenging the entrepreneurs to take “the tremendous success that all of you have had individually and expand it throughout the Islamic world.”

Obama will address the summit at the end of the first day to underscore his commitment to “deepening our engagement around the world with Muslim-majority communities,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said.

While the summit was widely viewed as a positive step that demonstrated follow-through on the Cairo speech, analysts said Obama ultimately would be judged on his handling of key issues in the Muslim world — the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iran’s nuclear program and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“In some ways Cairo is not going to be fulfilled until you get grander solutions to some of the big geopolitical problems,” said Juan Zarate, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an ex-deputy national security adviser to former President George W. Bush.

“The president is going to be judged by his ability to move those big issues much more so than whether or not he hosts a conference at the White House,” he said.

Obama has struggled to advance many of those issues. His effort to revive the Middle East peace process has been hampered by Israeli settlement activity, and his attempts to engage Iran over its nuclear program have been rebuffed.

SENIOR OFFICIALS, PRIVATE EXPERTS

In addition to Locke, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other senior U.S. officials were participating in sessions alongside private sector experts like Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus and Arif Naqvi, head of Abraaj Capital, the largest private equity firm in the Middle East.

The aim was to bring together successful entrepreneurs from different countries, venture capitalists, development bankers and other business experts to discuss ideas and share experiences with a view toward creating support networks that would help promote development in the region.

Yang, in a luncheon address, said entrepreneurs needed an entire ecosystem to flourish, including education, capital and research and development. He said he saw increasing signs of a willingness in the Middle East to support entrepreneurs, noting Yahoo’s recent acquisition of the Arabic-language email service Maktoob.

The White House has urged groups outside the government to take advantage of the summit by organizing related events. That has spawned more than 30 other sessions by groups such as the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce, the Arab Empowerment Initiative and the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

Observers and participants said the success of the event ultimately depended on whether it produced concrete results — financial and otherwise — after it ended.

“What kind of networks does it establish? What kinds of funds will come out of it? What kind of … concrete recommendations for legal reforms that need to take place in certain countries?” said Ehaab Abdou of the Middle East Youth Initiative, which is participating in an event on using entrepreneurial techniques to address social challenges.

Obama planned to announce some new financing to support entrepreneurship, but administration officials made clear the government wants to be seen not as a funder but as a catalyst bringing together entrepreneurs with potential investors.

Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, announced 13 partnerships aimed at supporting entrepreneurs in the Muslim world with education and programs to encourage market opportunities and financing.

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz, Editing by Paul Simao and Cynthia Osterman)

Despite forecasts, freedom takes more than technology

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Hamed Saber

By Jeff Jacoby |Boston Globe | April 25, 2010

IT WAS 21 years ago this spring that hundreds of thousands of students flooded the streets of Beijing, Shanghai, and other Chinese cities to protest communist repression and call for greater freedom and democratic reforms. Those amazing demonstrations generated intense global interest — interest the regime tried to quell by blocking international TV transmissions, ordering Western networks to halt their coverage, and arresting several journalists.

But the government overlooked the then relatively new communication technologies of cellular phones and fax transmissions. As the Newseum’s Sharon Shaheed described it in a retrospective last year, “Reporters got around the ban by reporting by mobile telephone. Students in China’s prodemocracy movement kept the news flowing by fax machines and electronic mail connections. Technology managed to open Chinese repressions to the world, despite government censorship.’’ The same technology enabled the world to respond, buoying the protesters with invaluable moral support.

In the wake of the Chinese uprising and the fall of the Iron Curtain later that year, many voices extolled the power of technology to advance liberty and undermine authoritarian regimes. Two decades later, many are still hailing the ability of information technology to produce greater freedom — only the technical innovations being celebrated now are the Internet, text messaging, and social media applications such as Twitter and Facebook. Tweets by the thousands fueled the “Green Revolution’’ set off by last year’s elections in Iran, and prodemocracy activists from Vietnam to Venezuela are using the Internet to denounce repression, expose government corruption, and champion human rights. “The Internet is God’s present to China,’’ the prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo exulted a year ago. “It is the best tool for the Chinese people in their project to cast off slavery and strive for freedom.’’

If only that were true. If only the miracles of high-tech communication really were a silver bullet against dictatorship and government brutality. But fax machines didn’t prevent China’s rulers from sending in tanks to crush the 1989 democracy movement at Tiananmen Square, and Twitter hasn’t weakened the mullahs’ grip on power in Iran. As for Liu Xiaobo, he was convicted of “subversion’’ this past December and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

For all the wonders it makes possible, information technology is only a tool, and like all tools it can be used to promote the cause of freedom, or to oppose it. That was the sobering theme of a conference on cyber-dissidents organized in Dallas last week by the George W. Bush Institute in conjunction with the human-rights organization Freedom House. The conference brought together online dissidents from an array of unfree or authoritarian countries — China, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, and Iran — as well as experts on Internet strategy, nonviolent resistance, and international relations.

It is always inspiring to encounter individuals who jeopardize their safety and freedom to speak truth to power, and the dissidents gathered on the campus of Southern Methodist University were no exception. Ahed al-Hendi, a young antigovernment activist seized by the Syrian mukhabarat — the secret police — as he was blogging in a Damascus Internet café, spent 34 days in a 3-by-5-foot jail cell. The Russian dissident Oleg Kozlovsky (who was grounded in Europe and joined the conference via Skype) has been repeatedly arrested and was even drafted by the Russian army in 2007 in order to thwart his prodemocracy activities. As former President Bush put it in opening the conference, these “are people who refuse to take the lack of freedom for granted.’’

The speakers traded war stories and discussed ways to use cyber-technology to rally supporters and share intelligence. But running through the whole program was the Dickensian sense that today’s dissidents are living in the best of times and the worst of times: The social-media explosion makes it easier for champions of freedom to organize opposition and get information to the outside world, yet the very same online technology arms repressive governments with sophisticated new methods of censorship, surveillance, and disinformation.

Far from ushering in a golden age of democracy, remarked the Bush Institute’s James K. Glassman, a former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, the Internet era has coincided with a “freedom recession.’’ Interactive Web 2.0 applications have facilitated the rise of “Authoritarianism 2.0.’’

The Internet, in short, will not set men and women free. It is, rather, just the latest arena in which those who yearn for liberty must battle for it — and in which the outcome is never guaranteed.

Yahoo! Georgetown Fellow, Evgeny Morozov, leads panel on Digital Power and Its Discontents

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, co-sponsored by Yahoo!’s Georgetown Fellowship, will host a  conference  on April 21st, from 10.30 until 4.30. The one-day conference will be hosted by Yahoo Georgetown Fellow, Evgeny Morozov.

The day will feature thought-provoking discussions about the ways that digital technologies can disrupt the balance of power between and among states, their citizens and the private sector. Speakers will include Ambassador Philip Verveer, John Morris of CDT, and Rebecca MacKinnon.

For more information and to RSVP, please go here.

Downloading a document from the Internet can land you in jail

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Christian Haugen

The Hindu | 5 April 2010

When does downloading a document from the Internet land you in jail? In the strife-torn Jammu and Kashmir, the Official Secrets Act (OSA) can do the trick. Like it did for journalist Iftikhar Gilani back in 2003.

When does calling upon “Dalits, women, minorities, farmers and adivasis to build organisations in order to fight for their rights” (among other things) qualify as sedition? In the police notice to Dr. Rati Rao, vice president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, it does.

Mr. Gilani and Dr. Rao were among the journalists and activists who spoke of State repression at a conference of Media and Law organised by the Human Rights Law Network, here on Sunday.

“When they arrested me they said it was in the national interest. When I was released, they said it was in public interest,” Mr. Gilani told the audience. Jailed for seven months, he said several victims like him were “rotting” in the prisons of J&K. He recalled a man who had spent 12 years in jail under the Public Security Act (PSA) for digging up a cricket pitch.

Maqbool Sahil, writer and Chief Editor of Pukar in Kashmir was subjected to the third degree after being arrested under the PSA and accused of spying for Pakistan. “Journalists are performing a challenging task since the militancy of the 90s. Eleven journalists have died so far in direct and indirect attacks by the government. I was held without trial for 30 months. When I was released in January 2008, I had lost all contacts and sources. I rejected an offer from the Hurriyat to become a separatist leader. Instead, I have returned to my profession.”

In a minefield

Preventive detentions, threats and encounters have become the order of the day in conflict zones. For journalists working in such areas, “it’s like walking in a minefield,” said Irengbam Arun, Editor of IREIBAK, Manipur.

Mr. Arun said “the culture of impunity,” built when the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was in effect, has now spread to the police. Six journalists, one recently, and five others in the 90s have died in various encounters. “When it happens, you don’t know if it’s the army, the police or the militants,” he said.

In the backwards areas, the anonymity of remote jungles and the tag of ‘naxalite’ make for a perfect combination for the administration to stage encounters with impunity. “Police atrocities are increasing in Narayanpatna and Naupada in Orissa. Children are kept in jails. People are shot in jungles and termed naxalites,” said journalist and activist Khuturam Sunani, himself charged with sedition.

From Lakhmipur in Uttar Pradesh, journalist Samiuddin Neelu of Amar Ujala recounted his close escape from a possible police encounter.

“They claimed to have recovered a lion’s nail, the skin of a rhino and a sandalwood stick from me,” he said. The National Human Rights Commission later ordered the U.P. government to pay Rs. 5 lakh to him for illegal detention.

Mr. Gilani’s fight opened his eyes to the way the media treats crime stories. While he was still inside his house during a raid, the television reported him to be absconding. And the papers reported that he had admitted to being an ISI agent in court. “If the media did that to me, what about the other people? The reportage built up an atmosphere [of distrust]. Since the police have no proof, they use the media [for such purposes],” he said.

Coalition calls for reform of electronic privacy law

By BHRP

Info Security | 2 April 2010

Tech vendors, interest groups, and academics have formed a coalition advocating for modification of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which they claim is severely out-of-date.

The new coalition, known as Digital Due Process, is calling for what it sees as a long-overdue revamp of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, which was designed to protect the privacy of internet and telephone users. The legislation was passed in 1986, which the coalition calls “light years ago in Internet time.”

The ECPA was originally intended to provide a standard framework under which law enforcement could operate in the digital world without infringing on the Constitution’s privacy protections. However, as Digital Due Process noted, the ECPA was passed at a time before email, global positioning tracking, cloud computing, or social networking. The coalition said that the advancement of technology, along with the inconsistent interpretation of the ECPA by the judicial system, led to its formation, whose members are putting forth recommendations to reform the law.

According to the Digital Due Process website, the organization is not seeking to trash the EPCA entirely. However, it would like to see the law reformed to address a number of electronic privacy aspects that were not even considerations in 1986. The coalition provides “guiding principles of EPCA reform” on its site, further requesting a rework of the law to deal with “access to email and other private communications stored in the cloud, access to location information, and the use of subpoenas to obtain transactional information”.

Google, one of the flagship coalition members, said in its official blog that “technology has moved at a record pace”, adding that, in the meantime, the “EPCA has stayed the same”. The company put forth four principles that it would like to see incorporated in a modernized EPCA, including making warrants a necessary precursor to obtaining personal data stored online and location tracking through cell phones and smartphones, in addition to requirements that government and law enforcement demonstrate a clear need to monitor electronic communications and engage in bulk data requests.

Other organizations that have joined the Digital Due Process coalition, Infosecurity notes, include AOL, eBay, the ACLU, Intel, and Microsoft.

Proving the old “politics makes for strange bedfellows” cliché, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior attorney Kevin Bankston highlighted the fact that his organization is willing to work with other coalition members to reform the EPCA, even though the EFF and other members have not always been on the same page. “When it comes to privacy, EFF has had its disagreements with fellow Digital Due Process members such as Google and AT&T”, noted Bankston. “But this diverse coalition of privacy advocates and Internet companies agree on at least one thing: the current electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated and must be updated to provide clear privacy protections that reflect the always-on, location-enabled, Web 2.0 world of the 21st century.”

“The recommendations of the Digital Due Process coalition are not an exclusive list of the reforms to ECPA that EFF would support, and in some cases EFF would urge even stronger protections than those urged by the group,” added Bankston. “However, EFF strongly agrees with its fellow Digital Due Process members that each of the coalition’s recommended changes would significantly strengthen the law and better protect privacy.”

One senior DC lawmaker was quick to comment on the coalition’s call to action. Senator Patrick Leahy – a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee – said that “while the question of how best to balance privacy and security in the 21st century has no simple answer, what is clear is that our federal electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated.” The senator added that he plans to convene hearings on what can be done to update the EPCA in the near future.