News & Events

China Requires ID for Mobile Phone Numbers

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Windell Oskay

By Michael Wines | New York Times | September 1, 2010

BEIJING — China’s government began on Wednesday to require cellphone users to furnish identification when buying SIM cards, a move officials cast as an attempt to rein in burgeoning cellphone spam, pornography and fraud schemes.

The requirement, which has been in the works for years, is not unlike rules in many developed nations that force users to present credit card data or other proof of identification to buy cellphone numbers. The government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that about 40 percent of China’s 800 million cellphone users currently are unidentified. Those users will be ordered to furnish an ID by 2013 or lose their service, the Communist Party’s English-language newspaper, Global Times, reported.

A government center that deals with cellphone complaints reported that an average Chinese phone user receives a dozen spam messages a week, and that three in four users received messages that involved fraud, the state-run English-language newspaper, China Daily, reported on Wednesday.

Some analysts, however, questioned whether the new requirement would substantially reduce illicit messages. Instead, they warned that it could give the government new tools to locate and punish individuals who send cellphone messages that censors deem unacceptable. China’s central government has steadily tightened its censorship of the Internet and wireless communications since 2008, blocking increasing numbers of Internet Web sites, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and, most recently, shutting down microblogs that it regards as subversive.

The new regulation will be implemented largely by the three government-controlled companies — China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom — that provide all cellular service.

“Is China prepared for this?” David Bandurski, an author and media analyst at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, said in a telephone interview. “Does it have the legal framework and the institutions in place to guarantee they can do this and still protect the privacy of consumers?

“People are basically providing their phone numbers and ID numbers” to the mobile carriers, he said. “Those are the two most important pieces of information that most people have.”

In an article posted Wednesday on the China Media Project’s Web site, a legal researcher at the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhou Hanhua, expressed doubts that requiring users to register their names with the companies would control spam.

Initially, he wrote, the rules likely will first create a black market in legally registered SIM cards that can be used for spam, and then spur hackers to find ways to circumvent the registration requirement.

“Technology innovation will soon trump the government’s control,” he wrote.

Others were less concerned. A professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Zeng Jianqiu, said that real-name registration was essential if services now common in other nations, such as payment by cellphone, are to become established in China.

Privacy “is a problem that needs to be considered seriously,” he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “The regulators and mobile operators also need to find ways to protect personal information. But I think some, like China Mobile and Telecom, are already doing this.”

Under the new policy, convenience store and street vendors who have been selling anonymous SIM cards were to suspend sales on Wednesday until they are trained to register their customers. Foreigners will also be required to furnish a passport or other identification when establishing cellphone service.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

The Read and the Black

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Kathy Hurley

Why are Latin American democracies suddenly attacking the free press?

By Mac Margolis | Newsweek | August 31, 2010

Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home?

Incidents in just the last few weeks range from the grave (the Argentine government’s order to shut down the main Internet provider in retaliation to criticism from its owner) to the ridiculous (a Brazilian law banning parents from spanking kids). But the breadth of official incursions into citizen’s lives has sent out distress signals from Patagonia to the Antilles. In early August, after a shower of lawsuits filed by indignant politicians, the Brazilian Electoral Court ruled that television and radio comedians may not make fun of candidates in the coming national elections. The Argentine government declared war on its two largest independent media groups, Clarin and La Nación, which have been acid critics of president Cristina Fernandéz de Kirchner’s strong-armed rule. In Venezuela, where the homicide rate is soaring, the government reacted by getting a court to ban news media from publishing “violent, bloody, and grotesque images.” Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua have passed new media laws—all of them aimed at clipping the wings of privately owned news sources—and the call for “social control of media” is viral among lefty groups. (It was unanimously endorsed, for instance, by participants at an August confab in Argentina of regional leftist parties—which now govern 11 Latin American countries—called the São Paulo Forum.) “The threat to freedom is all around,” says Amaury de Souza, a Brazilian political scientist. “And it’s growing.”

The clampdown has the pundits and pols buzzing. To some, this is a relic of authoritarian culture dating from the time of military dictatorships, which between 1960 and 1990 kept many Latin nations in check with a boot and a gag. To others the habit dates to colonial times, when paternalistic monarchs ruled. No political party or ideology has a monopoly on the new authoritarianism; rank self-interest united Brazil’s politicians—from left, right, and center parties—in their effort to outlaw sendups by satirists that could make them look bad before millions of voters. And in Mexico, where drug lords are spreading terror and have killed 56 reporters since 2000, the latest threat is “narco-censorship,” in which drug cartels kill nosy reporters.

But it’s no surprise that the worst offenses have emerged in the most volatile flank of the region—in the Andean nations of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia—where the push by charismatic leaders like Hugo Chávez to reinvent their societies through “21st-century socialism” has produced economic dysfunction, hardship, and political strife. And where neo-despots are against a wall, they strike back in time-honored fashion—doctoring numbers, manufacturing applause, and crushing dissent. Populist Bolivian President Evo Morales has proposed a media law that calls for punishing news organizations that criticize candidates during an election year. The last time the Venezuelan government announced crime statistics was in 2004.

Meanwhile, the trouble in Argentina started in 2008, when Kirchner, looking to top up government coffers, slapped a 35 percent surtax on grain and food exports, which infuriated the country’s growers. The media took up the farmers’ cause and drew a swift response from the president, whose popularity is now wavering—just as she ramps up the dynastic plan to elect her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner, to succeed her in 2011 (just as she succeeded him in 2007). Ever since, she has spared no effort in trying to break up Clarin and its rival La Nación. This month, the row came to a boil when Kirchner ordered Argentina’s largest Internet service provider, Fibertel, to shut down on the claim that the parent company, Clarin, was violating its user license and building an illegal monopoly. Meanwhile, a million Internet users received notice they will have to find a new server. Then, on Aug. 27, in a clear move to muzzle dissent, she demanded that congress nationalize the country’s leading newsprint company, Papel Prensa, which is jointly owned by Clarin, La Nación, and a third paper.

That was not the first effort to spin the news in Buenos Aires. In 2007, with the economy faltering, Kirchner took control of the country’s statistics bureau, Indec, replacing its director and firing top staff. The move was seen as a thinly veiled attempt to cook the books and has since thrown a pall over Indec’s numbers. Officially, prices are rising in Argentina at the pace of 7 percent per year, while independent estimates put the number at twice that, with inflation heading to 20 to 30 percent over the next two years.

The spin is even more aggressive in Venezuela, where recession, spiraling prices, and the worst murder rate in the hemisphere (75 per 100,000 residents—three times the Brazilian homicide rate and nearly twice that of Colombia, a country still under siege by guerrilla insurgents) have pushed President Chávez’s approval ratings off a cliff. With congressional elections scheduled for late next month, the Venezuelan strongman has lashed out. Deploying the courts, the cops, and even loyalist mobs, he has muscled one independent media channel after another off the air. Those he cannot bully into silence, he buys. After hounding Guillermo Zuloaga, the director of the scrappy news channel Globovisión, into exile—“Why has he not been arrested!” the president publicly demanded—Chávez’s handlers picked a new manager and are now proceeding to purchase controlling shares in Globovisión in the name of the Bolivarian revolution.

Not all Latin Americans have been cowed into silence. Chile, Colombia, and Peru—all nations that have lived through brutal episodes of terrorism and censorship—are increasingly demanding transparency and democratic freedoms. On Monday, Argentina’s lower house denounced Kirchner’s move to shutter Fibertel as an assault on “democracy and the rule of law.” And even where authoritarian reflexes linger, the most vibrant democracies are fighting back—and winning. Last week, after a flood of writs and a jocular street protest by cranky Brazilian comedians, a supreme court judge suspended the gag order on campaign humor. The ruling: constitutional rights are no joke.

Jordan amends cyber crimes law after media outcry

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | ccarlstead

AFP | August 29, 2010

AMMAN — Jordan on Sunday approved a temporary law on cyber crimes after amending it to appease the fury of journalists who said the legislation was a means to control local news websites.

The law had initially allowed the authorities to raid and search offices from which websites are published and to access computers without prior approval from public prosecutors.

But under the new amendments approved by the government, searching such offices requires court permission and enough evidence that these places are used to commit cyber crimes, Information Minister Ali Ayed said.

Journalists have complained that one of the articles of the law banned sending or posting data on the Internet or any information system that involves defamation or contempt or slander, without defining such crimes.

“That article was removed because these crimes have been already tackled in other laws,” said a statement posted on local news websites, adding that “the amendments came in line with King Abdullah II’s directives.”

“Other changes removed all parts that could be used to affect press freedom and freedom of expression.”

The statement quoted Ayed as telling a group of journalists that the law “never targeted local news websites and that the amendments came to clarify things, remove any misunderstanding and make sure the law is implemented the right way.”

“The government has consulted several experts, including the National Centre for Human Rights and the Jordan Bar Association, before amending the law.”

International and local rights organisations had added their voices to journalists and opposition parties, including the Islamist movement, in harshly criticising the new law before its amendment.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had urged King Abdullah II to veto the law, saying it gave authorities “sweeping powers to restrict the flow of information and limit public debate.”

It’s not the Kremlin

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Josh Berglund

By A.S. | The Economist | August 25, 2010 

A.S. appears courtesy of Global Voices Online, an international community of bloggers

THIS summer Russians faced several state attempts to “filter” (selectively block) websites. And as in many other things, Russia has gone its own way with a slightly more complicated technique: regional filtering.

There are two ways to control the internet. You can influence the companies and bloggers who use the web, or you can muck with the architecture of the web itself to block or monitor traffic. China does both. Russia, so far, has leaned on websites and telecoms operators using its criminal code, and encouraged groups of like-minded citizens to nudge the online conversation in directions the Kremlin finds pleasing. Until now, few websites have been blocked altogether in Russia.

But this year three such cases were identified. In each, the site was blocked only within a certain region. On July 16th, the city court of Komsomolsk-on-Amur obliged Rosnet, a local internet provider, to ban YouTube and the Internet Archive, among other sites. The court was worried about far-right extremist material that can be found on the sites; it is the country’s first YouTube ban. The decision has not been enforced. For similar reasons in late July, a regional court in Ingushetia forced a local provider to block LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging site. And in August in the Tula region, the state-controlled local telecoms operator temporarily blocked the website of Tulksiye Priyanki, an independent regional news portal.

In each case, the region used internet-protocol or “IP” blocking, a straightforward way of preventing anyone within a certain network — in this case those of the regional providers — from viewing content at specific address. This could be described as an inefficient method, since it can be sidestepped with a proxy server, which mimics a location outside of the network.

But regional filtering is in many ways more efficient than national filtering. First of all, it attracts less media attention and is easier to hide. Even if the filtering is exposed it’s easy to say the site was inaccessible due to technical reasons. Second, regional blocking affects the target group only.

In Ingushetia and Khabarovsk the prosecutor’s office requested the filter. In Khabarovsk, the provider exposed the court’s decision and appealed it. It is likely that the higher court will overrule the lower court’s decision. In Ingushetia, the block on LiveJournal lasted for 17 days; it was removed as soon as several influential online media outlets wrote about it. In Tula it was allegedly the governor of the region, irritated by the website’s criticism, who ordered the block; Tulksiye Prinanki had already mirrored its site at blogger.com.

This news is both discouraging and encouraging. It proves that there’s room for internet censorship wherever a political power is aligned with a network. At a national level, Russia prefers internet monitoring to internet filtering; at a local level, Russia’s regions may begin to better understand how to manipulate their own networks. But all three attempts were technically crude and quickly detected, and none survived much contact with sunlight. That’s something to be thankful for.

Google and Yahoo Win Appeal in Argentine Case

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Diegosaurius Rex

By Vinod Sreeharsha | New York Times | August 19, 2010

BUENOS AIRES — In a rare victory for Google and Yahoo Argentina, an appeals court has cleared the companies of defamation for including sex-related Web sites in their search results for an Argentine entertainer.

The appeals court overturned a lower-court ruling that had found the companies liable for defaming the entertainer, Virginia Da Cunha.

The lower-court decision last year had also ordered the companies to pay damages and remove all sites containing sexual, erotic and pornographic content that contained the name or image of Ms. Da Cunha from its results.

The 2-to-1 appeals court ruling, issued last week, said the firms could be held liable for defamation only if they were made aware of clearly illegal content and were negligent in removing it.

The Da Cunha case was the furthest along in the courts of at least 130 similar cases, dating back to 2006. Each one demands content removal. Plaintiffs have included a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Yesica Toscanini, and the soccer legend Diego Maradona, but are mostly entertainers and models.

Latin America is growing in importance to United States technology companies, particularly those dealing with user-generated content. Despite the victory, Google and Yahoo Argentina’s legal battles are not over. Argentine judges are not required to abide by the latest decision and one of Ms. Da Cunha’s lawyers, Gustavo Tanus, said he intended to appeal to the Argentine Supreme Court.

Most injunctions have been upheld on appeal and take effect until liability is decided. But more than four years later, just two cases have been decided, in what Argentine lawyer Pablo Crescimbeni calls an “abuse of the system.” The Maradona case was reversed.

Google has maintained that it is unable to comply with broad injunctions. Yahoo has taken a different approach, saying the only way to follow the order is to block all sites referencing each plaintiff. So a Yahoo Argentina user searching for Yesica Toscanini gets a nearly blank page citing the judicial order.

The issue of liability over third-party Internet content has long been debated in the United States and Europe. Congress has largely shielded content carriers in the United States over what third-party sites put up. Internet filtering takes place in at least 40 countries, according to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.

Yet the Argentine cases are unusual, Internet legal experts say. “This is a unique situation in Argentina. I know of no other examples in which the search of an individual is completely blocked,” said Rob Faris of the center. He said China was the only other country requiring search engines to decide what was acceptable.

Ms. Da Cunha’s lawyers, Martin Leguizamon and Mr. Tanus, contend the two companies, by allowing third-party sex sites to mention their client’s name, are violating her privacy and producing “moral harm,” which they say is prohibited by Argentina’s constitution. They also argue that the search engines are violating the country’s copyright laws by allowing sites to display their client’s images without consent.

In a recent interview, Mr. Tanus said, “We are not these crazy Argentines who are against technology.”

Maria Baudino, Google’s Latin America counsel, said that most of the judicial orders against the company were “overly broad and would censor all content regarding an individual.” She argued that Google was a neutral platform and should not be held responsible for third-party content.

Bill Carvalho, Yahoo’s general counsel for Latin America, said that “it is not illegal in Argentina to have a person’s name next to a sexually related Web site or have any association with the Web site. That would be requiring search engines to decide what is defamatory.”

Two Iranians file lawsuit in US against Nokia Siemens

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | seier+seier

By Cyrus Farivar | Deutsche Welle | August 20, 2010

The joint Finnish-German venture Nokia Siemens said surveillance equipment it sold Iran was legal and dismissed a lawsuit filed against it. The company also questioned the court’s jurisdiction and the suit’s premise.

In a lawsuit filed in an American federal court earlier this week, two Iranians alleged that the sale of Nokia Siemens Networks mobile phone surveillance technology led to the arrest and torture of one of them in Iran over a year ago.

In late June 2009, in an election widely viewed as fraudulent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected as president of Iran. In the election’s aftermath, as protests raged in Iran, the Iranian government cracked down on communications technologies, shutting down mobile phone access and limiting Internet access.

In the weeks that followed, it was revealed that Nokia Siemens Networks had sold mobile phone surveillance equipment to Iran. Many Iranian dissidents blamed the company for aiding a regime that they believed was oppressive.

“These intercepting devices were used in crackdowns of the dissent,” said Ali Herischi in an interview with Deutsche Welle. Herischi is an attorney with the law firm Moawad & Herischi LLP, which is representing the two Iranians.

“And it’s exactly what happened to my client,” he added. ”He was in northern Iran in hiding when he used his cell phone, and as soon as he used his cell phone he was located and arrested.”

Isa Saharkhiz, an Iranian reformist journalist and former government official was arrested in June 2009 and has yet to be charged with a crime.

His son, Mehdi Saharkhiz, now lives in New Jersey in the United States. The two of them have sued Nokia Siemens under the Alien Tort Statute.

The law allows foreign nationals to sue in American courts for offenses that happened abroad provided that there are violations of American treaty law – in this case, the filing alleges the elder Saharkhiz was tortured as a result of Nokia Siemens’ actions.

Wrong court, wrong party, wrong premise

Nokia Siemens Networks is a joint venture founded in 2006 between the Finnish telecom giant Nokia and the German corporation Siemens. Since the company first came under fire over a year ago, it has argued that it was following the law at the time, and that it is no longer involved in the sale of surveillance equipment to Iran.

Testifying before a European Parliament committee on human rights over two months ago, Nokia executive Barry French said his company had sold “roughly one third of the deployed capacity” for mobile and data service to two major Iranian mobile operators, MCI and Irancell.

As part of these networks, Nokia Siemens provided a “lawful interception capability to both operators” and “a related monitoring center to MCI.”

But Herischi, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, alleged that Nokia Siemens either knew or should have known that lawful interception in Iran does not conform to international standards.

“Lawful interception is required for every network,” he said. “And that’s what we’re asking. The one that Iran used was unlawful interception with the same device, and they knew that it was going to be used unlawfully.”

Nokia Siemens on Friday expanded on their previous statements concerning the US lawsuit, saying that it was “brought in the wrong place, against the wrong party, and on the wrong premise.”

“The Saharkhizes allege brutal treatment by the government in Iran, but they have not sued that government,” the company wrote on its Web site. “Instead, they are seeking to blame Nokia Siemens Networks for the acts of the Iranian authorities by filing a lawsuit in the US, a country that has absolutely no connection to the issues they are raising.”

Case may settle out of court

While the filing requests a jury trial, cases like this usually settle out of court, according to Adam Kanzer, an attorney with Domini Social Investments in the United States. He added that it could be in the plaintiffs’ interest not to agree to a settlement.

“For a lot of activists the fact that they’re bringing the case and if they can get it to court, and get it to a jury trial, that’s a victory in and of itself,” he told Deutsche Welle. “They’re airing their grievances and bringing a lot of publicity to the situation.”

Kanzer is also a board member of the Global Network Initiative, an organization designed to help companies, human rights activists and others figure out how to stay within the letter and the spirit of the law, make money, and protect human rights concerns.

Currently major tech companies including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft also participate in the organization.

Yahoo in particular, has been in a similar situation, when it handed over data concerning a Chinese journalist to the government of China.

Human rights activists sued Yahoo in 2007, and the case was later settled out of court. Kanzer said that both the Yahoo and now the Nokia Siemens case show how there are small actions companies can take to make sure they’re respecting the rule of law.

“You need to make sure that that’s an official request,” he said. “There are things that you can do to encourage development of rule of law in these countries and to make sure that you’re not flooded with requests to do all sorts of things.”

Malaysians use social media to bypass censorship

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Luca

By Romen Bose | AFP | August 18, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia bumps along the bottom of international rankings for press freedom, but the explosion of social media like Twitter and Facebook is revolutionising how journalists work.

Dissenting views, which for decades were screened out of the government-linked mainstream media, are now everywhere, including the blogosphere and mobile SMS messages, making repression extremely difficult.

One veteran reporter with one of the country’s leading newspapers said that for most of his career it was virtually impossible to write about the opposition or any issues deemed off-limits by authorities.

“But today, government MPs are forced to engage and debate their counterparts across the aisle in social media like Twitter and Facebook, allowing us to report on the opposition and avoid much censorship,” he says.

“Where previously we had to accept at face value a minister’s version of events or policies, today their disgruntled aides and opponents are already tweeting or leaking details on Facebook, giving us uncensored access.”

“Although the restrictions and controls are still in place, it’s become much harder to censor what the opposition or rights groups say in the media,” says the journalist who, due to the sensitivity of the issue, declined to be named.

Malaysia was ranked 131st out of 175 countries in the 2009 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom index, because of its tight controls on print and broadcast media.

The watchdog says Malaysia prevents journalists from properly covering sensitive subjects such as corruption or human rights abuses, using a publishing permit system which allows it to shut down media outlets at will.

After decades of such policies, self-censorship became rife and political leaders hardly even needed to make the much-feared phone call to the news room.

But the seeds of change were sown in 1996 when the government pledged not to censor online content as part of a campaign to promote its information technology sector.

Despite occasional raids, bans and government criticism, the web and online media remain relatively free.

 Today, Facebook fan pages highlighting political rallies and civil society forums, as well as Twitter exchanges with lawmakers, have reshaped the reporting landscape.

“All our reporters have BlackBerrys and use that to follow these tweets. The social media has changed the way journalists work in fundamental ways,” says Premesh Chandran, the founder of pioneer online news portal Malaysiakini.

Chandran says the new immediacy hampers government attempts to “spin” or control a story as journalists get real-time reaction from the opposition and experts and use it to seek an immediate response from officials.

With the advent of Twitter, politicians from both sides of the aisle freely disseminate their views, so much so that legislators have been known to take debates out of the chamber and continue them in the Twitterverse.

Social media also have a knack of eliciting more candid commentary than politicians would usually choose to put in a regular press release.

 That phenomenon was on display this week when Khairy Jamaluddin, influential leader of the ruling party’s youth wing, gave a quick response to a government decision not to drop a ban on students joining political parties.

“Cabinet decision not allowing university students to be involved in political parties is gutless and indicates outdated thinking,” he said in a much-discussed tweet.

 Opposition politician Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, 28, tweets daily on his constituency work, lists all his public events on Facebook and even carries out interviews and dialogues online.

“Social media definitely gives the opposition and alternative voices a space to express our views without censorship,” he says.

“The limitation is that we are restricted to 140 characters on Twitter so we can’t really flesh out many of the arguments and positions but it at least allows people and the media to read and understand our perspective.”

Malaysians have flocked to the Internet for news and views, a phenomenon credited with the opposition’s stunning performance in 2008 polls when the government lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time.

RSF’s regional correspondent Patrice Victor says the Malaysian experience could be replicated in other countries as they develop a potent combination of repressive governments and reasonable Internet access.

“We are seeing social media free the way journalists report in this region and the trend in Malaysia can also be seen happening in Singapore, Thailand and Burma (Myanmar),” he says.

“Governments here are slowly realising that it is very had to censor and restrict information once people have access to the Net and this trend of using social media to break down censorship looks like it is here to stay.”

North Korea creates Twitter and YouTube presence

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Josh Berglund

By Clark Boyd | The World | August 17, 2010

It is common to use words like “reclusive” and “secretive” when writing about North Korea.

But last Thursday, the North Koreans created a Twitter account – @uriminzok, a shortened version of a Korean word that translates as “our people”.

It already has more than 4,500 followers.

The move to Twitter follows last month’s launch of a North Korean YouTube channel, which now hosts close to 80 videos.

“The North Koreans are technologically literate,” says Hazel Smith, a long-time North Korea researcher at Cranfield University in Britain.

Ms Smith says that the North Koreans have been investing heavily in information technology now for more than 20 years.

“They have a cadre of people who can use modern social networking sites. But the problem for them is the content,” she said.

On the North Korean YouTube channel, that content includes a lot of propaganda laced with bombastic rhetoric; the United States and South Korea are often called “warmongers”.

In a recent Twitter post, the North Koreans said the current administration in South Korea was “a prostitute” of the US.

“As far as content goes, there’s nothing new as far as I can tell,” says Sung-Yoon Lee, professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston.

Mr Lee says that the agency responsible for the videos and the tweets is a major arm of the country’s ruling communist party.

“They’ve been putting out stuff like this for years now,” said Mr Lee.

‘Government’s voice’

The irony is that the vast majority of North Korea’s 23 million people have no Internet access, and therefore cannot follow their own government’s social networking sites.

And even if they could follow, they would not be allowed to use social media to criticize the regime, says Gilles Lordet, chief editor of Reporters without Borders in Paris.

“There is absolutely no press freedom at all in North Korea, no independent media,” Mr Lordet said. “There is only the government, the voice of the regime.”

For now, North Korea’s online offerings are only in Korean.

But Professor Lee thinks that they might soon expand their offerings to include video clips and posts in English.

“The North Koreans already produce propaganda material in English, through the Korean Central News Agency,” he said. “They have the wherewithal to do it.”

He added: “It will just take them a little more time and effort.”

PRI’s The World is a co-production between the BBC World Service, WGBH Boston, and Public Radio International. It is heard on public radio stations across the US and on-line at theworld.org.

Malawi: Missing out on online technology for transparency

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Michiel Van Balen

By Victor Kaonga | Global Voices Online | August 16, 2010

If there is one online tool that has attracted many Malawians, then it is Facebook. It appears to be the “in thing” for many who are increasingly accessing the Internet. Then there are tweets. In the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections, Twitter was heavily used for the first time to share developments in Malawi. The same applies to blogs — at least a hundred and fifty Malawians have personal online diaries. Such new media tools help “net” citizens connect with others throughout the world, enabling online civic engagement. While Malawi seems to be doing well in terms of online social networks, it has yet to make progress in using these tools for transparency and accountability.

The fight against corruption

When Malawi became a multiparty democracy in 1994, words like transparency and accountability became buzzwords in both public and civil society. As a result, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) was born out of a 1995 constitutional provision that emphasized the need to introduce measures to “guarantee accountability, transparency, personal integrity and financial probity and which by virtue of their effectiveness and transparency will strengthen confidence in public institutions.”

Malawi has made strides in the fight against corruption using several approaches. In Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perceived level of public sector corruption, Malawi ranked 89 out of 180 countries and territories. This was step up from previous indices.

Some countries have seen technologies for transparency help them in the fight against corruption, strengthening the credibility of governments and helping with their provision of public services. Having picked a lesson or two and joining the information highway, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Malawi recently upgraded its website, a development that the bureau secretary Tokha Manyungwa described as “a big step in enlisting online support in the fight corruption.”

Asked why the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has taken so long in having a functional website, he said that among other issues, “the main reason was capacity problems in the ACB’s ICT section mainly due to staff turn over in the section.” One can appreciate the challenges with the bureau since this is a government-funded institution where bureaucracy is involved.

The website upgrade means that for the first time, Malawians are able to report any corrupt practices by using the web. However, it is clear that the bureau is far from being online-friendly. Compared to other anti-corruption websites in the sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission and South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit), the site needs further tools if it is to enable people to easily report on and follow corrupt practices. The site can only be used by those who are able to understand and read English and this may discriminate against those who cannot use the language.

Challenges to technology for transparency

The danger with many other transparency initiatives linked to governments is that their sites contain too much raw information, much of which does not make sense to a common citizen. Some of it is irrelevant, inaccessible, irregular and inaccurate. From what I know about people in Malawi, few people can manage to read through large amounts online information. This would therefore not only affect participation of the people in the fight against corruption but also kill the transparency initiative.

According to the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA), Internet penetration is growing by the day through hot-spot services by ISPs and mobile phone operators who have since introduced affordable internet services. Still, the Internet is a new development in Malawi.

Apart from procedural issues regarding technological initiatives, there is also a problem with what I would call “Internet will.” There are still many public servants who have yet to appreciate the role the Internet and new media play for development, let alone transparency. For instance, the Malawian government began its Government Wide Area Network (GWAN) project in 2003, but the project is not yet fully functioning. The GWAN’s main objective is to provide government officers with a computer network that is secure and available at all times in order for the officers to access relevant information in a cost effective manner that will save government hard-earned money. This is supposed to be at the center of the government’s administrative system.

At a broader level, technology for transparency projects will have to deal with Malawi’s current level of e-readiness, which is understandably low. According to a study published by the United Nations (PDF), Malawi’s national leaders need to “be sure about the state of E-readiness for their own country, what needs to be changed, what barriers exist, and often fail to see the benefits of such changes.” Malawi rates low when it comes to the electronic climate on transparency and electronic awareness of leaders.

Civil society and transparency initiatives

Civil society has a key role in developing and using online technologies to promote transparency, accountability and civic engagement. Unfortunately, this is still work in progress. Sometimes some of the civil society initiatives are seen with suspicion by the government.

The Malawi Economic Justice Network, which is implementing the DFID-funded Governance and Transparency Fund, says it is yet to introduce online technologies to assist in achieving transparency. Launched in November 2008, the project aims at “Strengthening Citizen Demand for Good Governance Through Evidence Based Approaches.” It is not clear what aspects will be online and indeed to what extent.

A media expert and keen follower of the digitalization developments in Malawi, Baldwin Chiyamwaka, said that Malawi is still far away from utilizing online technologies to promote transparency and accountability. He pointed out that “most public institutions have no capacity to develop effective ICT infrastructure,” adding that “there is still a strong inclination and preference for traditional means information management.”

Chiyamwaka, who heads the Media Council of Malawi, observed that Malawi’s legal framework is an obstacle its own right to transparency initiatives. “The current legal framework does not allow sharing of information and let alone making it public. Public policy prohibits publicizing public information,” he noted. Chiyamwaka further explained that a common reality in Malawi is that “most public officers are skeptical about online technologies. They feel it is not safe and secure means of sharing information.” Clearly the battles for transparency in Malawi are big.

Hope for online transparency projects

It has to be noted though that there are multiple challenges in Malawi for technology for transparency projects. Poor Internet infrastructure, technophobia, high connection and connectivity costs, the lack of ICT policy in some countries, and inadequate knowledge and ICT personnel all constitute obstacles to the use of technology for transparency.

Malawi has lack of economic and technical resources in addition to a lack of funding and well trained personnel to creatively keep the transparency battle afloat. A visit to several websites run by civil society organizations involved in transparency, civic engagement and election issues reveals frequent lapses in updating the content of the sites, which is linked to inadequate funds and the shortage of personnel.

There is need to promote usage of online technologies in the country, especially among top public servants and professionals in the civil society. One may find it disappointing to see how little or inadequate information about Malawi is available online. Malawians have a free online environment where issues of control and censorship do not really arise as it is in some countries. On this, Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman strongly advised Malawians to speak out using online tools on issues that affect them and are about Malawi. He promised to further amplify such voices using Global Voices Online. “Our project seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplifies the global conversation online, shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We would love to get more stories from and about Malawi whether in English, Chichewa or any local language, and we will share such with the rest of the world. Your stories need to be heard,” said Zuckerman in an interview.

Though Malawi is yet to plug into some local and regional online networks, there is hope that with more “Internet will,” it will reap benefits of technologies on transparency. For instance, it can tap into the Africa I-Parliaments Action Plan, an Africa-wide initiative implemented by the UN/DESA to empower African Parliaments to better fulfill their democratic functions by supporting their efforts to become open, participatory, knowledge-based and learning organizations.

Conclusion

Though in many sub-Saharan African countries, it is the NGOs that are pushing for the use of technology in their advocacy for transparency, there is need for other stakeholders — e.g., government, ICT professionals, academicians, etc. — to take the leading role in using the online technologies.

Such challenges impinge on a country’s ability to plug into online technologies that would promote transparency, accountability and civic engagement. It is encouraging, though, that the era of multiparty democracy has ignited people’s desire to start demanding transparency and accountability from those they elected.

The reality is that if an individual or a country is not plugged into the information highway, they only have themselves to blame, as they will belong to the museum of history when it comes to modern communication, aid transparency and accountability.

On Cat Videos and Human Rights

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Shayan

By Christina Gagnier | Huffington Post | August 15, 2010 

With the giggles of children and adults alike in the background, you know what’s coming. Instantly, you hear a recognizable ballad and there appears a captive feline dancing, or for the more technically-inclined in video editing, singing along.

This is the “cat video” we have probably all seen some version of, whether emailed from a bored co-worker or our grandmother. While these videos are ridiculous by their very nature, protection of the vehicle by which these “cat videos” are disseminated is the same protection through which we can preserve something much greater: human rights online.

Hang with me for just a moment.

There is a gaping void in international human rights law concerning the Internet. A lack of treaty law as well as customary international law concerning human rights in the online world leaves those who are denied basic freedoms very little to turn to. While principles protecting free expression are codified in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the concept of Internet freedom is unknown in many countries.

In A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow wrote, “We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.” In 2003, the first World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) convened with 175 countries. While it failed to come to an agreement on a framework for global Internet governance, what it did accomplish was to set out a general statement, a Declaration of Principles, that stated: “We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information Society, and as outline in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”

The United States, throughout its history, has positioned itself as a beacon of democracy, and, particularly, that of free speech and expression. Yet, neither Congress nor the Federal Communications Commission has taken any action to preserve these rights online within our own borders, most notably with the issue we have come to know as network neutrality. Congress has failed to enact legislation that would regulate the behavior of corporations, like Google and Yahoo, abroad when they have taken actions contrary to the civil and political rights of citizens, most notably in China. As the United States has been a leader in “all things democracy,” it is essential for the United States to be a leader in the preservation of human rights online. Human rights online start here.

For those of us who got online in what was relatively early for the Internet in 1994, our experiences were the primitive AOL and chat rooms. Many could not have envisioned an Internet that would enable international awareness of revolution in places like Iran or a place where the virality of content spreads messages across the world within a handful of hours. The Internet we enjoy today was unimaginable to many of us even ten years ago, and to many, the Internet freedom we currently enjoy is unimaginable to our neighbors a few blocks away not to mention millions across the world.

As one of those privileged to live in the United States, one cannot imagine what promise the Internet must hold to someone living under a repressive regime: by opening the eyes of children to an unimaginable wealth of information, by allowing people to learn of rights enjoyed by others abroad or by serving as a cross-section of ideas that may lead to positive economic and social change.

A New York Times article today lauds competition as the answer to our “lack of Internet neutrality” woes. This competition does nothing to ensure that the people who currently lack access to the Internet, all of those on the other side of the digital divide who do not have the luxury of even reading a blog, or the ability of gaining access to the day’s news, something that has become exceedingly difficult due to the shuttering of community newspapers, will be ensured access. These Internet issues do not exist in a vacuum.

In April 2008, while sitting at the Federal Communications Commission hearing on network neutrality at Stanford University, the seats may not have been filled that time with fillers sent by Comcast, but it was apparent that the FCC lacked the wherewithal to take a stand, whatever that may be, on the critical issues underlying content discrimination practices.

Today’s solution proffered, and even accepted by many, is that corporate regulation will do. While we may feel comfort in the shiny veneers of corporate social responsibility measures, self-regulation in many instances has proven itself to be a failed experiment. This piece has no space for the laundry list of failed self-regulatory attempts. With the money that stands to be made from a pay-for-play tiered Internet access scheme, it is doubtful these companies can be relied upon to pave the way for freedom.

Cats have nine lives, but their videos may not. Beyond the silliness of much Internet content, there lies the path for speech and expression, the cornerstones of freedom. You may not want to throw your political confidence in our elected officials and regulatory bodies, but our freedom, as well as basic human rights for those abroad, will not be found in the pocketbooks of Google and Verizon.