Introducing Tsering Dhongthog, 2010 BHRP Summer Intern!

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

The BHRP is thrilled to have Tsering Dhongthog with us this summer as our 2010 summer intern. Tsering is passionate about human rights, has lived in India, Tibet and China, and has worked for a range of organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Tibet Justice Center. Please see below, to learn more about Tsering in her own words.

My name is Tsering Dhongthog and I am joining the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program as a summer intern. Although I am a native of the Pacific Northwest, I attended a refugee boarding school in India and have always been deeply interested in human rights issues. While a college student at the University of Washington, I had the chance to spend my summers working with human rights organizations like the Tibet Justice Center, Human Rights Watch, and the International Rescue Committee. In 2006, after graduating college, I moved to Beijing and interned for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) where I worked with refugees fleeing violence in their home countries.

After nearly a year in China, I returned to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree in China Studies at Columbia University. Through my courses and interactions with professors and visiting scholars, I became increasingly interested in the impact new social media and the internet in general has on civil society in China, especially in politically sensitive Tibet. The 2008 March protests across the Tibetan plateau was widely publicized in the international community, thanks in large part to social media sites that quickly generated first-hand accounts, photos, and videos of the turbulent scene. This demonstrated for me the growing role that the internet plays in social movements not only in China but all around the world.

I am currently a second-year law student at the University of Michigan. Last summer I interned in Washington D.C. for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) where I researched and wrote on issues like freedom of expression and rule of law. At law school I have taken courses such as Mass Media, International Investment Law, and Foreign Corporate Governance. I have also written papers on these areas of law including Google’s China censorship issue, and on the growing trend of companies incorporating human rights into their corporate governance charters, using Starwood Hotels and Resorts as a case study. So when I learned about the legal internship with the Business & Human Rights Program at Yahoo! I was excited to find an opportunity that combines my interest in human rights and corporate law. I just hope I can contribute as much as I know I will absorb from this amazing opportunity!

Pakistan, Turkey Target Google, Other Sites

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | The Wandering Angel

By Tom Wright, Marc Champion And Amir Efrati | The Wall Street Journal | June 26, 2010 

A move by Pakistan to begin monitoring for anti-Islamic content on major websites—including those run by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.—is the latest sign that censorship looms as a threat to Internet companies in a number of countries.

The Pakistan announcement on Friday came a day after a communications minister in Turkey, which has blocked thousands of sites including Google’s YouTube, said the video site was “waging a battle against the Turkish Republic” and suggested that the situation could change if Google were to register and pay taxes.

Authorities in Pakistan on Friday said they would start monitoring major Internet search engines, including Google and Microsoft Corp.’s Bing.com, as well as the e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. The move follows an action last month against social-networking site Facebook Inc., which Pakistan blocked for several weeks after it hosted a page in which users could post pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. The portrayal of Muhammad is forbidden by Islam, and the ban was lifted when the site removed the page.

A YouTube spokeswoman said it was aware of the actions announced in Pakistan and said it will work to keep its services accessible there. “Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our content policies,” she said.

She added that the company remains “disappointed” about the continuing ban on YouTube in Turkey “against a safe and lawful international service enjoyed by millions of people around the world.”

Regarding Pakistan’s decision, a Microsoft spokeswoman said, “Government decisions to restrict online content should respect the rights of individual users and be adopted through open, transparent and publicly accountable processes.” A spokeswoman for Yahoo said the company “was founded on the principle that access to information can improve people’s lives, and we are disappointed to learn about the monitoring and possible blocking of our sites in Pakistan.” Amazon declined to comment.

Google and other Internet companies have helped some Asian countries, such as India and China, enforce certain standards online by removing material that governments find objectionable or violate local laws. YouTube blocks access to videos in Thailand that might be seen to insult the king—which is against the law in that country—and Nazi imagery that is illegal in some parts of Europe.

Earlier this year Google stopped self-censoring its Internet search results in China after complaining it had been hit with a cyber attack originating from that country. China’s own Internet filters now censor Google’s searches.

A number of countries in the Islamic world, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, have banned Internet content in the past for being sacrilegious. But those countries have authoritarian governments that closely monitor the Internet and the media. In Pakistan, where Islamists have vied with secular-minded politicians since the country’s creation in 1947, the implementation of such bans is fraught with difficulties.

On Friday it remained unclear how the state-run Pakistan Telecommunication Authority would be able to monitor millions of links on the Internet to ensure blasphemous material wasn’t appearing on sites like Google and Yahoo.

In Turkey, Google has been the most prominent victim of a 2007 law that has resulted in the closure of thousands of websites, putting the government under pressure in recent weeks as newspapers and opposition parties have begun to cry foul over the restrictions being placed on ordinary web users.

In May 2008, a Turkish court shut down access to Google’s YouTube due to material posted on the site that was found to be insulting to the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Related

U.S. Presses Syria on Web Freedoms

Earlier this year Turkey’s communications ministry extended the ban to other Google sites, a move that appeared to be triggered by a separate tax battle with the U.S. giant. As a result, Turks suddenly lost direct access to GoogleMaps and other sites, as well as to YouTube. However, many ordinary users have been able to circumvent the closures.

The opposition People’s Republican Party, usually a fierce defender of Ataturk’s honor, on Thursday attacked the government in parliament for creating what one parliament member called a “culture of censorship” in the country, including Internet censorship.

Some of Turkey’s top leaders have sought to distance themselves from the Internet closures. President Abdullah Gul earlier this month sent out a public message through his account on micro-blogging site Twitter.com, saying he “cannot approve of Turkey being in the category of countries that bans YouTube [and] prevents access to Google.”
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com, Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com and Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Reporters Without Borders unveils first-ever “Anti-Censorship Shelter”

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Mirry

Reporters Sans Frontieres | June 25, 2010

Reporters Without Borders today launched the world’s first “Anti-Censorship Shelter” in Paris for use by foreign journalists, bloggers and dissidents who are refugees or just passing through as a place where they can learn how to circumvent Internet censorship, protect their electronic communications and maintain their anonymity online.

“At a time when online filtering and surveillance is becoming more and more widespread, we are making an active commitment to an Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all by providing the victims of censorship with the means of protecting their online information,” Reporters Without Borders said.

“Never before have there been so many netizens in prison in countries such as China, Vietnam and Iran for expressing their views freely online,” the press freedom organisation added. “Anonymity is becoming more and more important for those who handle sensitive data.”

Reporters Without Borders and the communications security firm XeroBank have formed a partnership in order to make high-speed anonymity services, including encrypted email and web access, available free of charge to those who user the Shelter.

By connecting to XeroBank through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), their traffic is routed across its gigabit backbone network and passes from country to country mixed with tens of thousands of other users, creating a virtually untraceable high-speed anonymity network.

This network will be available not only to users of the Shelter in Paris but also to their contacts anywhere in the world and to all those – above all journalists, bloggers and human rights activists – who have been identified by Reporters Without Borders. They will be able to connect with the XeroBank service by means of access codes and secured, ready-to-use USB flash drives that can be provided on request.

XeroBank is a communications security firm that has cornered the market on one of the rarest commodities in the world: online privacy. It specializes in communication solutions that protect its clients from all eavesdroppers.

The best-known free encryption and censorship circumvention software is also available to users of the Shelter, along with manuals and Wiki entries on these issues. A multimedia space is planned for journalists and Internet users who want to film and send videos.

The Shelter will eventually also have a dedicated website for hosting banned content. Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk’s reports on the pollution of Egypt’s lakes, which are banned in his country, and articles that are banned in Italy by its new phone-tap law will all have a place in what is intended to be a refuge for those who still being censored.

The Shelter is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. Anyone wanting to use it should make a reservation by sending an email to shelter@rsf.org.

The Shelter could not have been created without the support of the Paris city hall.

Reporters Without Borders points out that around 60 countries are currently subject to some form of online censorship and that Internet filtering is in effect in around 40 of them. About 120 netizens (bloggers, Internet users, and citizen journalists) are currently in prison worldwide.

Read the latest “Enemies of the Internet” report and its introduction “Web 2.0 v. Control 2.” – link

China Expands Internet Controls

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Simon Hua

Radio Free Asia | June 25, 2010

New controls on cybercafes reach Sichuan as Beijing publishes an Internet policy paper.

HONG KONG—Tough new regulations aimed at monitoring Internet usage are being rolled out across China, with Internet cafes in the southwestern province of Sichuan now requiring a swipe of smart ID cards before allowing people online.

“You have to have a second-generation ID card now,” an employee who answered the phone at one Internet cafe in the provincial capital, Chengdu, said. “And it has to belong to you.”

Local media reports said a new clampdown would get under way in Sichuan from June to September this year, following a similar police campaign in the central city of Wuhan, in which people using their relatives’ ID cards were taken into administrative detention.

Government regulations are calling for Internet cafes in the province to hook up their surveillance cameras to a central viewing channel monitored by the provincial government by the end of the year, with punishments and fines for businesses that do not comply.

Li Yonglong, an official of Internet management at the general office of the Sichuan provincial government, confirmed the crackdown is part of government policy.

“That’s correct,” he said, when asked to confirm news reports. However, he declined to give further details. “I can’t give interviews,” Li said. “There are rules here.”

Sichuan-based writer Ran Yunfei said that while the government claims that the new regulations are in place to protect underage netizens from inappropriate and pornographic content, they are also used by the ruling Communist Party to limit content that Chinese netizens can view online.

“This won’t affect me too much because I rarely use Internet cafes, but not everyone’s like me. Our rights should be protected,” Ran said.

He said that hidden behind the government’s management of Internet cafes is an attempt to limit the explosion of public opinion that has occurred on Chinese Web sites in recent years.

And Beijing-based author Yu Jie said the scheme infringes upon the rights of ordinary people to privacy.

The ’safe flow of information’

The move to control and monitor access to the Internet through public cybercafes was initiated last year, as the government made it harder for Internet cafes to start up in business and announced a series of franchises for nationwide chains.

Last September, government-backed Internet Cafe Associations in 30 major Chinese cities and provinces issued a statement titled Self-regulating Declaration on Cleaning Up the Internet Cafe Industry, vowing to abide by China’s laws and regulations concerning the Internet.

In a policy paper on the Internet issued earlier this month, the Chinese government said it attaches “great importance” to the “safe” flow of information online, and seeks to “actively guide” people to manage Web sites “in a wholesome and correct way.”

It lists as forbidden any content that “endangers state security,” “divulges state secrets,” or “subverts state power”—all  charges that have been levied against prominent dissidents and human rights activists in recent years in Chinese courts, often resulting in lengthy prison sentences.

Any content that  jeopardizes “ethnic unity,” interferes with government religious policies, propagates “heretical or superstitious ideas,” or “disrupts social stability” is also banned, according to the regulations governing China’s Internet.

Such charges have been brought against Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other ethnic minorities who voice open disagreement with or protest against Beijing’s policies in their homelands, or who call peacefully for independence or greater autonomy from Chinese rule.

According to Rebecca MacKinnon, visiting fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the White Paper shows that Beijing is consciously developing its control of the Internet as part of its authoritarian rule, and intends also to wield influence over how it develops internationally.

“The Chinese government is not running scared from the Internet,” MacKinnon wrote in a June 15 blog post titled China’s Internet White Paper: Networked Authoritarianism in Action.

“It is embracing the Internet head-on, intends to be a leader in its global evolution, and intends to assert its influence on how the global Internet is governed and regulated.”

Original reporting in Mandarin by Xin Yu. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated from the Chinese and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Rwanda ‘assassins’ kill reporter Jean Leonard Rugambage

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sinistra Ecologia Libertà

BBC News | June 25, 2010

A journalist working for a private newspaper has been shot dead in front of his house in the Rwandan capital.

Witnesses say Jean Leonard Rugambage, the acting editor of Umuvugizi newspaper, was fired on by two men who then fled in a car.

The authorities had recently suspended the paper, prompting it to start publishing online instead.

Police say they do not know who was behind the attack – the paper’s exiled chief editor has blamed the government.

‘South Africa shooting link’

Editor Jean Bosco Gasasira, who fled to Uganda in April after his paper was suspended, said Kigali had master-minded the assassination of Mr Rugambage who died in hospital after the shooting.

“I’m 100% sure it was the office of the national security services which shot him dead,” he told US state-funded radio Voice of America.

Mr Gasasira said it was because of an article published on the Umuvugizi website relating to the attempted killing last weekend of former army chief Lt Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa.

Rwanda has denied accusations it was behind the shooting of Lt Gen Nyamwasa.

He went into exile in South Africa earlier this year after falling out with President Paul Kagame, who he accused of corruption.

Mr Kagame denies these charges and his government accuses Lt Gen Nyamwasa of being behind grenade attacks in Rwanda earlier this year.

In April, Mr Kagame reshuffled the military leadership and two high-ranking officers were also suspended and put under house arrest.

Earlier in the month, Umuvugizi was suspended for six months by the press council for inciting opposition to the government.

Its website, launched in May, is not currently accessible through Rwandan internet providers; the authorities deny involvement in blocking it.

Mr Rugambage, who is survived by his wife and a child, was acquitted of genocide crimes by a local “gacaca” court in 2006.

The BBC’s Geoffrey Mutagoma in Kigali says his death has shocked many journalists in the country.

Presidential elections are due in Rwanda in August – the second such vote since the 1994 genocide.

Human rights groups have accused the Rwandan government of repressing independent media in the country, which Kigali denies.

Mr Kagame’s government argues that it must take care to control the media and politicians to avoid a repeat of the genocide, in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.

Earlier this week, UN chief Ban Ki-moon appointed Mr Kagame to co-chair a committee of “superheroes to defeat poverty” – to push for progress in achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

He has been praised for trying to modernise Rwanda’s economy since coming to power at the end of the genocide.

Tech companies seeking business in Syria

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Jan Smith

By John Poirier | Reuters | June 24, 2010

WASHINGTON(Reuters) – The United States is urging Syria to open up its markets to U.S. companies’ computers and software, but fears over piracy and Internet access restrictions are holding back American technology companies from investing there.

Senior executives of five big U.S. technology companies including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Dell Inc (DELL.O) expressed their concerns to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a five-day trip last week, two members of the delegation told Reuters.

The trade mission was led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top technology adviser, Alec Ross, and Jared Cohen, a member of her Policy Planning Staff.

U.S. tech companies expect Syria’s population to double in the next seven years and they want to tap into the youth to promote U.S. businesses and Washington’s human rights agenda.

The talks last week represent a new stage in U.S. diplomatic efforts in which the issue of Internet censorship is increasingly placed on the agenda during direct talks with other governments.

U.S. tech companies are carefully watching moves by the State Department, especially after Google Inc (GOOG.O) in March announced that it was going to move its China servers to Hong Kong following the high profile diplomatic spat with Beijing over censorship.

Senior executives from Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), VeriSign Inc (VRSN.O) and Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) also traveled with the delegation in a trip that included meetings with academics, students and small- and medium-size businesses.

One delegation member said that during the trip they tried to clear up a misperception in Syria that U.S. companies can’t invest there because of U.S. sanctions against trade and investment.

They told officials in Damascus that exemptions for some technology granted in 2004 under former President George W. Bush allow for companies to sell their products to Syria as long as those tools are not used against the Syrian people, the delegation member said.

“You can sell Dell computers, you can sell Microsoft Office, you can sell Cisco routers, but despite that waiver that is not happening,” the delegation member told Reuters on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.

The companies told Syrian officials that they are worried about the lack of enforcement to combat piracy and intellectual property theft, and widespread corruption, another member said.

They also sought assurances by the government that the technology will not be used against Syria’s general population, they said, adding that Syrian officials pledged to adopt some laws aimed at improving the environment for tech investments this year.

Sheldon Himelfarb, an expert on technology and diplomacy at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said U.S. officials need to become smarter about relationships between sanctions and the impact on citizen activists in closed societies.

“We need more trips like this,” Himelfarb said.

The mission to Syria was unique because it was a high-level engagement during a strained relationship between the two countries. Their ties, however, have improved since U.S. President Barack Obama took office.

Syria has emerged from a five-year diplomatic isolation, with the United States and European Union seeking closer ties with Damascus and pushing for a resumption of peace talks between Syria and Israel.

The trip also follows an issue of waivers by Washington in March to allow U.S. technology companies to export chat and social media software to Iran, Sudan and Cuba, with the hope the move will help their citizens communicate with the outside world.

The Internet was an important communication channel for Iranian protesters disputing election results last year.

“If the next generation of Syrians are able to get access to these tools of technology, then they’re going to have connections to the outside world,” another delegation member said.

(Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Amnesty International Campaign

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Yahoo! has become aware of a campaign launched by Amnesty International, calling on Yahoo! for the release of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. We are deeply concerned about their continued imprisonment and have and will continue to use those diplomatic forums available to us to advocate for the release of dissidents imprisoned for sharing their views on-line.

At Yahoo!, we strongly believe that the complex global issues of privacy and free expression are best addressed with a collective approach, which is why we are co-founding members of the Global Network Initiative (GNI). As such, we welcome engagement and constructive solutions from all of our stakeholders, including NGOs such as Amnesty.

Transparency is also important, so we would like to make sure that our users are aware of our efforts and have the opportunity to communicate with us directly. We are reaching out to Amnesty directly (as we have done in the past) and are sending letters to those users who took the time to write us and share their concerns. In the interest of transparency, we are also sharing our response to Amnesty with you. Please see below for our letter, with details of the steps that we have taken. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments, or via e-mail. We look forward to the dialogue, and to continuing to work with all of our stakeholders to protect and promote privacy and free expression in the ICT sector.

***
Dr. Morton Winston
Address Redacted

Dear Dr. Winston;

Thank you for your interest in learning more about Yahoo!’s commitment to human rights around the world.

Yahoo! was founded on the principle that promoting access to information can improve people’s lives and enhance their relationship with the world around them. The continued imprisonment of Shi Tao is of great concern, particularly given our deep commitment to human rights and desire to be a leader among technology companies in this area.

Yahoo! continues to actively push for the release of Shi Tao, Wang Xioaning and other Chinese dissidents. We have asked the U.S. government to use its leverage to create a global environment where Internet freedom is a priority and where people are no longer imprisoned for expressing their views online. Our former CEO Jerry Yang has met personally with senior State Department officials, and in 2008 wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging the State Department to redouble its efforts to secure the release of imprisoned Chinese dissidents. Secretary Rice subsequently raised this issue with senior Chinese officials, and since then we have seen Members of Congress echo this call for U.S. diplomatic leadership. We also wrote a letter in December of 2009 to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton and spoke with Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner in May of 2010, urging the State Department to continue to advocate for the release of Shi Tao, Wang Xioaning and other Chinese dissidents. We hope these continuing efforts will both intensify and bear fruit.

Yahoo! has not owned or had operational control over Yahoo! China since 2005. However, through our minority stake as well as our membership on the board of Alibaba (which owns and operates Yahoo! China) we have been able to successfully encourage some concrete changes so that Chinese citizens can have a greater understanding of the risks and benefits of going online in China. For example, Yahoo! China search pages contain a notice announcing that certain search results may be limited as a result of Chinese law and the Yahoo! China Mail registration page notes to users that the service is subject to Chinese law.

Yahoo! is committed to protecting human rights and freedom of expression around the world, including in China. As a result, we have partnered with noted dissident and human rights activist Harry Wu and the Laogai Research Foundation to establish the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund. This fund provides humanitarian and legal support to political dissidents who have been imprisoned for expressing their views online, as well as assistance for their families. We also provide financial, humanitarian and legal support to the families of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning.

As you are aware, in order to incorporate lessons learned into future business practices, we created Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Program in 2008 (http://ycorpblog.com/2008/05/07/business-and-human-rights/). This first of its kind initiative represents a fundamental corporate commitment to human rights. Among other concrete actions, the BHRP conducts a formal assessment of the potential human rights impact of business decisions. Yahoo! then designs and implements mitigation strategies that limit potential risks to free expression and privacy. To further raise awareness about these critical issues and to contribute to the development of concrete solutions, Yahoo! has established international fellowships at Stanford University and Georgetown University to advance the work of journalists and scholars exploring the complex issues at the intersection of technology, free expression, privacy and global values. In 2009, we also launched the Business & Human Rights Summit, an annual stakeholder engagement and shared learning event. You can learn more about Yahoo!’s individual and collective efforts at Yahoo! at http://humanrights.yahoo.com.

At Yahoo!, we believe that the cause of human rights is more effectively advanced through collective action. As a result, Yahoo! is a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics committed to protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy online. As you know, given Amnesty’s earlier role in the GNI, GNI formally launched in November of 2008. Since then, Yahoo!, along with fellow participating companies, has agreed to incorporate GNI’s Implementation Guidelines and Governance, Accountability and Learning Framework into our business operations. The Implementation Guidelines and Accountability Framework hold us accountable to our commitments through a number of concrete mechanisms, including independent third-party assessments. You can learn more about the GNI, including details about governance and accountability mechanisms, at http://globalnetworkinitiative.org.

At Yahoo! we will continue to explore how to do more to protect freedom of expression in the markets where we operate. As you know, an important component of the GNI process and of Yahoo!’s approach to these issues is continuous engagement with stakeholders, including NGOs like Amnesty International. We encourage Amnesty to join us in the GNI as we create concrete solutions to the privacy and free expression challenges in the ICT sector; we would welcome the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue.

I appreciate your interest in this important issue, and invite you to contact me directly with your recommendations, and to learn more about Yahoo!’s actions and GNI’s progress.

Respectfully,
Ebele Okobi-Harris
Director, Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program

New legislation to provide exemplary protection for freedom of information

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | James Cridland

Reporters Without Borders | June 18, 2010

Iceland’s parliament, the Alpinghi, has unanimously approved a resolution known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) that calls on the government to draft legislation in line with its recommendations for the protection of media, journalists and bloggers.

Reporters Without Borders hails this ambitious and positive initiative, adopted on 15 June, and calls on the government to do its utmost to respect the parliament’s will when it drafts the law.

“This proposal is on the right track,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It regards freedom of expression as a fundamental right and would create optimal conditions for investigative journalism. Even if the precise impact of this proposed law remains to be seen, especially as regard journalists’ legal protection, Iceland has established itself as a pioneer.”

The press freedom organisation added: “We hope this will serve as an example to other governments. It is certainly a promising departure from the general tendency, especially in democratic countries, for press freedom to be eroded and for harassment of journalists and their sources to increase.”

Assembling elements from the best legislation in the world, Iceland wants to become a global safe haven for journalists and new media that are being threatened or harassed and want to take advantage of the best protection available anywhere.

The transparency and independence of news and information are the initiative’s keywords. The declared aims are “to strengthen freedom of expression around world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers” (see the IMMI website). It also aims to secure communications and protect journalists and bloggers from unwarranted defamation suits both in Iceland and abroad.

Iceland wants to be seen as the ideal place for online media and data storage banks to locate their servers in order to shield themselves from the threats of censorship, filtering and closure, and to provide the best protection for the personal data of their users.

The initiative came about partly in response to a press issue that had a lot of impact in Iceland. In August 2009, the RUV television station was prevented at the last moment from broadcasting a story about Kaupthing Bank, which was immersed in a financial crisis.

The story was based on information from Wikileaks, which specialises in getting confidential information from whistleblowers in return for guarantees of anonymity, and which had already published extracts from the bank’s accounts. An injunction obtained by Kaupthing Bank prevented RUV from broadcasting the item, but the station told its viewers what had happened.

Macedonia: Law on Electronic Communications Invades Citizens’ Privacy

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | anjči

By Elena Ignatova | Global Voices | June 17, 2010

On June 16, 2010, the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia adopted changes to the Law of Electronic Communications, which now violates the privacy of the citizens. With these changes, the Ministry of Interior Affairs will have constant and direct access to the electronic communications networks, which is against the fundamental postulates of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia. You can read more on the negative aspects of this law in the “Call for protection of citizens’ privacy in the Republic of Macedonia,” published by Metamorphosis: Foundation for Sustainable ICT Solutions.

BoingBoing published an article titled Macedonia introduces universal, deep telco/Internet wiretapping; hardly any MPs bother to vote, stating this:

A reader writes, “Today the Law of Electronic Communications was amended in the Macedonian parliament with 55 for and 9 votes against (of 120 total, 91 were present, the remainder abstained). In a very Orwellian manner, the law grants the government constant and direct access to electronic communication networks (mainly telcos and internet providers) and obliges the providers of these services to enable the government (Ministry of Interior) to download of traffic data without oversight, through equipment which provides an interface to logs for phone-calls, TCP/UDP/IP traffic and every other means of transferring data to and from machines. The provided link is from an NGO that started to raise awareness for the law, but sadly as the government here doesn’t pay much attention to independent thinking, they ignored the whole initiative.”

GV author Filip Stojanovski, who blogs at Razvigor, in his post “Amendment 1984 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia” [MKD], shares an excerpt from the Constitution:

As a reminder, Article 17 from the Constitution:

(1) The freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and other forms of communication is guaranteed.
(2) Only a court decision may authorize non-application of the principle of the inviolability of the confidentiality of correspondence and other forms of communication, in cases where it is indispensable to a criminal investigation or required in the interests of the defense of the Republic.

He continues, giving his opinion on the Law:

The negative aspects of this step by the government are tremendous: for the people who now can be “legally” eavesdropped on without court order, and without any possibility to prevent potential abuse, but also for Macedonia’s international reputation.

At the end of his post, he calls for action:

It is necessary for the public to see the consequences from this act and to declare its opinion. If you care about your privacy, and the privacy of your loved ones, get them to be active on the subject. Share information, and join the future activities for protection of personal data.

[…]

Is there a way to know which Parliament member voted for and against these changes? It would be great if you write them an email or on their Facebook profiles what your opinions on this act are. And, of course, remind those of them who can read to read the Constitution, at least once. […]

“Withdrawal of the undemocratic changes of the Law on Electronic Communications” [MKD] is a “cause” on Facebook for those who want to support the initiative.

For further discussion on the topic you can follow hashtag #privatnost on Twitter [MKD].

US gives Iran more net freedom – but what about Syria?

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Turkletom

By Jillian C York | The Guardian | June 16, 2010

Iranian web users recently received some good news: following the media frenzy over last year’s elections, the US has chosen to relax export controls related to technology, giving users access to previously unavailable communications tools. The changes will affect not only Iran, but Sudan and Cuba as well, countries where free internet use has long been stifled by US restrictions.

In March the treasury department’s office of foreign assets control (OFAC) announced the amendments to current controls to “ensure that individuals in these countries can exercise their universal right to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible”. The amendments will allow those netizens to download software related to communications, such as instant messaging and chat clients, and tools related to social networking, and also permit the export of the same types of software to Iran and Sudan.

This news comes at a time when dialogue surrounding freedom of expression online is at a fever pitch in the United States. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in her celebrated January speech on internet freedom, stated that American companies need to take a principled stand against censorship, and that it should be part of the country’s “national brand”. In that vein, the amendments to the current export controls are a welcome gesture, both to American companies and to the netizens who benefit from their products.

Iran, of course, is an obvious target for these amendments, with nearly 30 million internet users and significant media attention in recent months. But what about Syria? Although there are no OFAC restrictions placed on Syria, the US department of commerce’s 2004 Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act prohibits the export of most goods containing more than 10% US-manufactured component parts to the country. The act also includes a provision on items deemed imports, including technology or source code controlled on the Commerce Control List, though licences are available for software providers through the bureau of industry and security.

Syrian netizens have long been aware of the effects of export controls on their lives. They are prevented from downloading popular software such as Java and Adobe Acrobat, and browsers such as Google’s Chrome. Microsoft products are available, but in pirated form, or smuggled in illegally. What is surprising to many, however, is when a new ban suddenly emerges; each year, a number of software providers seemingly crack down on Syrian users, often blocking access to entire websites for fear of non-compliance with the act.

For example, in early 2009, Syrian visitors to the professional networking site LinkedIn were surprised to be met with a blockpage. Though the full-on block was quickly removed, to this day users are barred from accessing the site’s proprietary software. Similarly, in January 2010, open-source code repository SourceForge began blocking the IP addresses of users in Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and Syria, much to the dismay of open-source enthusiasts. Though in the end, SourceForge removed the blanket block – placing responsibility on project managers to choose their level of restriction – the fact remains that a large swath of open-source projects are still off limits to users from restricted countries.

But in Syria, just as in Iran, the internet serves as an important communications and organising tool for dissidents and average users alike. And when you consider the fact that the Syrian government filters the internet internally as well (blocking sites such as Facebook and Blogspot, among many others), you realise that users are left with very little wiggle room.

If Hillary Clinton is serious about promoting internet freedom to all, she would be wise to consider the effects of the Syrian accountability act on the average Syrian netizen and what that means for the United States’ “brand” of internet freedom.