There’s constant debate over whether young people today care less about privacy. Certainly, they live more public lives, thanks to growing up on the Internet where starting a Facebook account is the equivalent of hitting digital puberty. Being out in the world in new ways increases the types of privacy violations that can occur for these “digital natives.” Last week, I mentioned briefly a poll from MTV and the Associated Press that found that a third of young people aged 14-24 reported that someone had logged into their Facebook, Twitter, or email account to impersonate them or spy on them. That may be shocking in and of itself, but what’s more surprising to me is that a good number of them said this didn’t upset them…

The poll, conducted in August, included 1,355 young’uns, three quarter of whom say they log onto the Internet several times a day. (Shockingly, three percent of those polled said they “never” use the Internet.) Approximately 285 of the kiddies said that they had been spied on by someone who logged into their email, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or “other” account.

The pollsters then asked how upset this made them. Approximately 43 of them said they “weren’t upset at all.” Another 100 said it made them “a little upset.” Less than half of these surveilled social networkers said they were very upset or extremely upset over someone logging into their account without their permission to spy on them. That seems like more proof for people like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who say that “young people today don’t care about privacy.” Well, at least half of young people.

Most of those who reported that their accounts had been hacked knew the person who did it very well, or casually, while 16% reported not knowing who the spy was.

I’m friends with a few whippersnappers on Facebook through family circles and a stint as a mentor in an urban journalism program for high school students. I realize I’m getting old when I’m shocked by what they post regarding their “extracurricular” activities. C’mon, kids, Facebook is like your permanent record! But according to the poll, despite extensive media coverage and parent haranguing, lots of young folks simply aren’t thinking about the repercussions of social networking.

Flickr Creative Commons| kelly_chu28|

By Cheryl Hall | Dallas Morning News|Sept 7, 2011|

Millions of Americans are blithely bounding into social network sites.

They think that by setting strict parameters for who can be their friends and see their postings on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, they’ve shielded their personal stuff from unwanted eyes.

Those are naïve and dangerous assumptions, says Peter Vogel, an Internet legal specialist. Your privacy rights are tossed out as soon as you click “yes” to join a social site.

“Because social media users almost never read the terms of service and privacy policies, they have no idea that they are licensing the sites to free, unfettered use of photographs, email addresses, names and contact information that they intended for personal friends, children and neighbors,” says Vogel, a partner with Gardere Wynne Sewell LLPand a professor of Internet law at Southern Methodist University.

Think twice before sharing any personal information online, no matter how tight-knit you think your Web community is, he says. “People should assume everything disclosed on social media will fall in the hands of bad players.”

Social networking, once the realm of teens and under-30 adults, is rapidly becoming part of the daily routine of Gen-Xers and boomers. And a third of online users who are 60-plus drop in for an occasional virtual visit.

Last week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington released a report showing that slightly more than half of American adults socialize on Internet networking sites. That number soars to 65 percent among online adults 18 and older.

But even the most adept at online schmoozing may be shortsighted when it comes to the rules of engagement, says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who headed the study.

“People tend to set and forget,” she says. “They set up their accounts and privacy settings and they don’t go back to it, maybe ever.”

Terms in flux

The terms of what social sites can take from users are in constant flux, and the sites aren’t always forthcoming about those changes.

“Facebook has gotten the most negative attention for this,” Madden says. “There might just be a pop-up when you log in that says, ‘Hey, we’ve changed a few details of you privacy settings’ or whatever. ‘You might want to check it out.’ But sometimes it’s difficult to tell what the real changes are in how your information is being shared.”

As independent researchers, Madden and her colleagues at Pew remain publicly neutral on the privacy issues. But she says users should consider the tradeoff.

“Social sites give users an array of options to customize their privacy settings, but the default settings for many profiles err on the side of openness,” she says. “This is generally thought to encourage more sharing among users, making the networks more socially and commercially viable.

“But from a user perspective, we encourage people to take note. Everybody can agree that it’s complicated and worth taking seriously.”

A lack of privacy is the key turnoff for many social network holdouts, Madden says. While privacy was not specifically addressed in the latest Pew study, Madden says previous surveys have indicated serious issues with trust among nonusers of social media.

“I was talking with a retired gentleman who used to work in the government and was in charge of security for the computer system at a large hospital. He understands all the vulnerability issues and privacy issues. Before he clicks ‘yes’ on terms of service, he reads every single word. When you do take time to read those terms of service agreements, it’s amazing what you’re signing off on.”

Virtual fine print

There’s not much that you can do about the virtual fine print, Vogel says. You can try to negotiate with a social site, but you’re not likely to win. And Vogel says that so far the courts have held up the sites’ rights to set their own terms.

Vogel uses the term “social media” instead of “social networks” because he includes any online forum with shared information, including Wikipedia, Yelp and Second Life.

GPS units in iPhones, iPads and tablets give social media the means to track our every move and location, Vogel says.

You might think this is an invasion of privacy, but most GPS users allow themselves to be tracked when they agree to those unread terms, he says. “Isn’t it also possible that criminals could capture GPS data from social media sites so that they can be better informed to commit crimes?”

Vogel’s advice: Take extreme care in what you share. It’s not just Big Brother watching you.

Flickr Creative Commons| radiant guy|

By Erica Swallow| BBC |August 17, 2011|

If you’re going to steal a laptop, make sure you know who you’re dealing with — one London teenager accused of stealing a laptop during the recent London riots certainly didn’t do his homework on who he was robbing.

Greg Martin, an IT security specialist and former FBI and NASA employee, came home to his West Kensington apartment last Wednesday to find that his place had been ransacked and his MacBook Pro was stolen.

Martin, who runs a blog called InfoSecurity 2.0, was obviously the wrong person to be stealing a laptop from — he had previously installed an open source tracking software called Prey on his computer. The free software “lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen,” the product’s website states.

A self-described hacker, Martin wrote on his blog:

“Almost two weary days had gone by [since the robbery], and I’m at dinner on a business trip in Luxembourg, and I received an email which nearly knocked me out of my chair with excitement.”

The robber had finally logged on to the laptop — Martin went back to his hotel to stake out and gather evidence against the thief.

After two hours of watching the laptop thief surf the Internet, Martin was able to collect information on the man’s name, school, address, IP address, Internet service provider, wireless access point and Facebook ID number.

The thief’s Facebook information was the deciding piece of information for Martin — he sent the information on to the London Metro police and went to bed.

After details about the thief — identified as Soheil Khalilfar, 18 — were released to the police, the man’s apartment was raided and the laptop was recovered and returned to Martin.

Modern day thieves are at a much higher risk of being caught with the pervasiveness of technology.

In June, another MacBook thief was nabbed after the laptop’s owner tracked the thief using Hidden app and a Tumblr account.

Flickr Creative Commons| MichelleMcCormack |

By Linton Weeks | NPR | July11, 2011 |

Andy Affleck is debating whether to allow his 11-year-old son, Jack, to have a Facebook account. Director of engineering at a small tech company near Providence, R.I., Affleck says he feels very strongly “that children need to be socialized in the online world just as much as they do in the real world.”

So Affleck the elder, who ponders these things on his Webcrumbs blog, is thinking about creating a Facebook page for Affleck the younger.

It all began last fall when young Affleck was playing FreeRealms, an online fantasy game, and wanted to be able to chat with his fellow gamers. He also was annoyed by the limits to interaction on the designed-for-kids Webkinz site. And he got interested in videoconferencing with friends on Skype. Then he told his dad he wanted a Facebook account.

If Andy Affleck does sign Jack up for Facebook, he won’t be alone. Despite ominous reports of cyberbullying and “Facebook depression” among young people, the number of parents who are cool with their children — between the ages of 10 and 12 — having a social media account has doubled in a year.

It is legally verboten — by the Children’s Online Protection Act of 1998 — for a website to collect personal information or track the cybertrail of anyone younger than 13, without parental consent. Rather than create software to prevent digital tracking, most sites insist that users be of age. Many general-interest, multigenerational social media websites — like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter — solve the problem by requiring that all users be at least 13 years old.

Still, kids will be kids. And recently it has come to light that millions of young people are flouting the rules to create accounts on the social networking sites. According to the New York Times, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project reported that 38 percent of 12-year-olds in the United States participate in social networks. And in June 2011, Consumer Reports estimated that about 7.5 million people who use Facebook are younger than 13.

Facebook — the mother of all social networks with some 500 million users — makes it clear when you sign up for the service: “If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register for Facebook or provide any personal information about yourself to us.”

In some homes, parents set up accounts in their kids’ names and, perhaps using shared passwords, monitor the activity of their children. In others, young folks are so techno savvy, they easily slip around the rules, lie about their ages and set up their own accounts under false pretenses.

This can open up a world of possibilities — and perils.

Online Hobnobbing

The many dangers of social media for young people are well publicized:

• Predators are on the prowl for vulnerable and innocent users. In one extreme example, police arrested a 25-year-old West Virginia man in February who was using Facebook to set up a meeting with a 10-year-old for sex. According to the Charleston Daily Mail, the girl was pretending to be older — 14 or 15 — and police said her mother knew of and monitored her account.
• Phishing scams, camouflaged as emails or messages from someone trustworthy, can illicitly solicit a child’s personal or financial information — which can lead to identity theft and invasion of privacy.
• Cyberbullying — a broad term encompassing the sending of mean messages, the exclusion of someone from a group and the duping of someone into revealing personal information and other insidious behavior — abounds on many social media sites.

A report in April — released by the American Academy of Pediatrics — titled The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Families even warns of “Facebook depression,” a condition caused by obsessing over the social network.

But the academy also says social media can be beneficial to younger users. When the report was published, co-author Gwenn O’Keeffe said, “For some teens and tweens, social media is the primary way they interact socially, rather than at the mall or a friend’s house. … A large part of this generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and on cellphones. Parents need to understand these technologies so they can relate to their children’s online world — and comfortably parent in that world.”

Children using social media should be educated about the possible pitfalls of interaction with strangers, according to the report, and they should be monitored by parents. But the findings also lay out the positive effects of virtual interaction: “Engagement in social media and online communities can enhance communication, facilitate social interaction and help develop technical skills.”

Online hobnobbing can enable youngsters to discover opportunities for community service and volunteering “and can help youth shape their sense of identity,” the report states. “These tools also can be useful adjuncts to — and in some cases are replacing — traditional learning methods in the classroom.”

Use of social media has become so widespread among young people, according to the report, many pediatricians have added this question to their patient forms: “Are you on Facebook?

That’s a question that Facebook would like everyone, of all ages, to answer with a “yes.”

‘A Really, Really Young Age’

Speaking at an education entrepreneurs’ gathering recently, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said social networking websites can be helpful and educational tools for children under 13.

“My philosophy is that for education, you need to start at a really, really young age,” Zuckerberg said. He said he would like for young kids to be on Facebook, but for now the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act makes it unfeasible.

Facebook has no plans to create a social network space for people younger than 13, says the company’s online safety specialist Nicky Jackson Colaco.

“Facebook is currently designed for two age groups — 13- to 18-year-olds and 18 and up — and we provide extensive safety and privacy controls based on the age provided,” Colaco says. “However, recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don’t circumvent a system or lie about their age.”

“There appears to be some belief that the age of 13 is magical — that children with no other socialization will magically be able to handle the online world and, by the same token, kids younger cannot. What is missing from all of this is parental judgment.”- Andy Affleck

Educating users, Colaco says, “is critical to ensuring that people of all ages use the Internet safely and responsibly. We agree with safety experts that communication between parents or guardians and kids about their use of the Internet is vital. We believe that services such as Facebook have a role to play in encouraging this.”

She points to recent announcements by Facebook about social reporting and its Family Safety Center as testimony “to our ongoing efforts to ensure we are giving detailed and helpful advice to help support these conversations.”

After all, Colaco says, Facebook is based on a real-name culture, where people’s actions are associated with their true names and identities. Users are encouraged to report abuses. And, according to Facebook’s terms of service: “If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us.”

‘Back Alleys Of The Web’

Tony Bradley, writing in PCWorld, suggests that Facebook should accommodate younger users by developing additional protections. “Implementing a privacy-by-default model would be a great start,” Bradley writes. “But, Facebook should also provide controls so that only parents can change privacy settings or accept friend requests on accounts for minors, or something to that effect.”

In the end, Bradley writes, “Facebook is far less shady than a lot of other online destinations that kids can get to just fine without parental consent. As far as I’m concerned, I would rather have my kid safely entrenched in Facebook than out wandering the ‘back alleys’ of the Web.”

That is pretty much the conclusion that Andy Affleck has reached. He has also decided that 13 — though set by Congress — is a fairly arbitrary age limit. “There appears to be some belief that the age of 13 is magical,” he says, “that children with no other socialization will magically be able to handle the online world and, by the same token, kids younger cannot. What is missing from all of this is parental judgment.”

Affleck says, “My son is intellectually ready to handle what is out there — at least the walled-garden portions of it such as Facebook and the like. What I believe all of these sites should have is the ability for parents to sign off on their children’s membership, possibly with an agreement that below a certain age they will take an active interest in what they are doing and provide guidance.”

There are other social networks besides Facebook. Some are even designed for the under-13 crowd.

But, says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who specializes in Internet privacy issues, “unless we find alternatives to Facebook for preteens, we will continue to have kids lying about their age, or their parents allowing them to lie, to join Facebook and other full-sized social networks. Also, no one knows who a ‘parent’ is. How would we prove that anyone is the parent — or legally authorized parent — of a preteen?”

Aftab is the author of A Parent’s Guide to the Internet and founder of the online children’s safety organizations WiredSafety and StopCyberbullying. She has advised many social network sites, including Facebook.

Striking the right balance between fun and safety on a social network site for kids can be a Goldilocks-type challenge, Aftab says. “Sites err on too hot or too cold; few do it just right. Several interesting social networks for preteens were created, only to be out of business 10 months later.”

And, to boot, kids don’t necessarily want to hang out with younger kids. They want to be around older kids. “It’s time that we understand that like it or not, preteens want social networking,” she adds. “And until or unless Facebook creates special family accounts or a special Facebook for preteens, there is a need and a market.”

Flickr Creative Commons | PerformImpact

By Rosebell Kagumire  | Christian Science Monitor | June 14, 2011 |

African leaders could allow freedom of expression, or they could mimic the Chinese model of building a ‘Great Firewall of China’ to shut down Internet systems that allow critical thinking. Last week the UN declared Internet access a basic human right. To many in African countries, which are still grappling with challenges ranging from health, infrastructure, unemployment, etc., this declaration may be difficult to relate to.

I am taking part in the Internet Freedom Fellows program funded by the US Department of State and managed by the US Mission in Geneva. The fellowship follows up on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge to find innovative ways to promote the use of the Internet in support of human rights. While in Geneva earlier this week, I took part in an event where Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US Representative to the Human Rights Council,reiterated Mrs. Clinton’s statement that the Internet is “the public space of the 21st century.”

Many in Africa are yet to see the Internet as a basic right. Yet Ben Scott, Clinton’s policy adviser on innovation whom I had a chat with called the Internet “the first truly 21st Century human rights issue.”

We were looking at Internet freedom and before I had asked how this basic right would be realized for many in Africa. Mr. Scott said that just like mobile banking (MPesa, Mobile money) is doing tremendously well in Africa, Internet access will continue to be tied to mobile telephone penetration in Africa. He indicated that Africa’s mobile phone penetration has surpassed Europe’s yet it’s still at 40 percent. This makes the Internet and mobile phone market pose both an economic and political opportunity.

In most discussions it was clear that we have two types of freedoms related to the Internet; freedom to access Internet and freedom of expression on the Internet. World leading economies have thrived on information systems and making them accessible to all citizens, therefore increasing their participation in the economy. A connected society is going to be more prosperous and stable.

Many governments in Africa are moving to invest heavily in the laying down of Internet infrastructure. As more people on the continent are connected to the Internet, they will also seek a different kind of governance because of the access to information. This is what Scott called, a dictator’s dilemma.

“Everyone recognizes that future of economy is largely based on information infrastructure. So governments want populations connected but at the same time they want to control speech on these networks and it’s a dilemma,” Scott said. “Internet tends to shift power from centralized institutions to many leaders representing different communities. Governments who want to censor are fighting a battle against the nature of the technology,” Scott said.

So the dilemma faced by that despotic leader, whom we have in plenty on the continent, is political speech versus economic prosperity. Scott said: “You can’t have one and leave the other and that’s the exact dictator’s dilemma.”

This was well manifested in the recent protests in Uganda, when the government instructed the Internet service providers to shut down social media like Facebook and Twitter.

First, the telecom industry is one of the leaders in tax revenues in Uganda and provides a lot of jobs for the Ugandan youth in a country where the number of unemployed graduates has become worrying. In the face of such a directive companies had a lot at stake, most telecoms provide Internet and they feared a backlash. This directive was leaked to the press by people in the telecoms who were concerned that they would be the first victims of the backlash. So in the end the government didn’t achieve its mission. President Yoweri Museveni cannot choose to get the taxes from the telecoms, which help him run the country and at the same time easily pass directives to control information.

Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University graduate program on Interactive Telecommunications said no other invention has ever threatened the Westphalian nation-state like the Internet has done. The states in the past were able to effectively control radio, newspapers, and TV, but the Internet is a challenge.“This is a cultural and political choice,” Shirky said. “Protecting freedom of speech is a governance challenge. Westphalia, where government controls everything, survived the 20th Century media innovations, we are going to see if they can survive the internet.”

Hindering access

Only 10 percent of Ugandans access the Internet, yet about 10 million of the 33 million Ugandans have mobile phones. The use of Internet is partly hampered by illiteracy levels as well as cost, but Uganda has a youthful population which will take up new information systems even with just post primary education.

There are real infrastructure problems hindering access to Internet in Africa but we are seeing more investment. According to ComputerWorld, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi have linked forces together on a $400 million investment in terrestrial fiber optic cables. The new network is expected to run close to 16,000 kilometers from southern Sudan to Tanzania’s border with Zambia. The terrestrial network called the East Africa Backhaul System will connect to the submarine fiber-optic cables on the East Africa coast.

However some governments have already moved to suppress freedom on the Internet. According to recent report from Freedom House, Ethiopia’s Internet is one of the least free in the world. Internet access has been denied and controlled through monopolizing the communications industry to curtail freedom of expression. In Ethiopia the few people that access the Internet that is government controlled cannot freely express themselves.

This kind of control is what my friend Ssozi described to me when we spoke about the Internet as a basic right declaration. He said as long as access to information is not a right, Internet as a basic human right will not benefit most.

The China way

Even with infrastructure in place, many worry that some governments in Africa may decide to go the way of China, which has put up what’s now famously called the “Great firewall of China.” It’s a deceptive path for African governments who may be considering following suit and having economic prosperity and also stifling freedoms of expression and speech.

China spends a lot of money to build firewalls that prevent free speech, but Scott believes this cannot easily be replicated. He says even with its economic might to maintain it alone will continue to cost China to block people from accessing information. The costs of bypassing the firewalls are significantly cheaper than putting one up, say observers.

In Africa, governments still have a hold on public broadcasting, which many people rely on in the absence of cheap, accessible Internet. So for Internet access as a basic right to be realized, or even for it to make a difference in the way citizens in Africa can hold their governments accountable, development budgets and strategies for both by governments and international development organizations must take this into consideration.

There also have to be efforts to ensure protection in the face of growing desire by governments to curtail freedom on the Internet in the wake of North Africa uprisings. We have seen the Internet play a key role in protests in Swaziland, Gabon, and Uganda to some extent.

At a recent meeting of bloggers organized by Google Africa and Global Voices, there was a general concern that many African governments are employing tactics of threatening Internet users directly instead of cutting off the Internet or attacking their sites, which could bring about immediate condemnation. In Uganda, journalist Timothy Kalyegira is the first person to be arrested and charged for an online article written in Uganda Record.

Scott said that in the Internet age there has to be a “move from government-to-government diplomacy to a people-to-people diplomacy.” When questioned on the recent Wikileaks case, Scott argued that there’s a need to balance state security and Internet freedom. Yet it’s in the same name of security that authoritarian government crackdown on their citizens.

Shirky says the debate on whether there can be Internet freedom is still very much open. “No country recognizes a universal right to speak. The negotiation around this kind of freedom is going dominate the next ten years.”

Flickr Creative Commons | Mario Werder

By Verne G. Kopytoff | New York Times | March 6, 2011 

SAN FRANCISCO — When Google, Yahoo and Microsoft signed a code of conduct intended to protect online free speech and privacy in restrictive countries, the debate over censorship by China was raging, and Internet companies operating there were under fire for putting profit ahead of principle. 

It seemed the perfect rallying moment for a core cause, and the companies hoped that other technology firms would follow their lead. 

But three years later, the effort known as the Global Network Initiative has failed to attract any corporate members beyond the original three, limiting its impact and raising questions about its potential as a viable force for change. 

At the same time, the recent Middle East uprisings have highlighted the crucial role technology can play in the world’s most closed societies, which leaders of the initiative say makes their efforts even more important. 

“Recent events really show that the issues of freedom of expression and privacy are relevant to companies across the board in the technology sector,” said Susan Morgan, executive director of the initiative. “Things really seem to be accelerating.” 

But the global initiative is not. All of the participating companies are American. Also,Facebook and Twitter are notably absent despite their large audience and wide use by activists, in the Middle East and elsewhere. 

Bennett Freeman, senior vice president of the mutual fund company Calvert Investments and a G.N.I. board member, pointed out that the three current members were among the biggest Internet companies, but acknowledged that “we are going to have to add some new companies soon to be truly influential.” 

The biggest test yet for the initiative comes later this year, when member companies are judged on whether they have adequate policies in place to address privacy and free speech issues. Independent auditors will issue a report after examining whether the companies narrowly interpret government demands for user information and whether they store users’ data in countries where free speech is protected, for example. 

Next year, the companies are to undergo a more thorough review of whether they lived up to code of conduct’s principles. 

The initiative was created in 2008 after human rights groups and politicians condemned the top Internet companies for complying with China’s restrictive laws rather than jeopardizing their business interests by challenging them. 

Yahoo had turned over data that led to the imprisonment of several Chinese activists. Microsoft had shut down a blog by a Chinese journalist who worked for The New York Times. Meanwhile, Google had introduced a censored search engine in China (although the company has since shut down that site). 

The initiative is modeled on previous voluntary efforts aimed at eradicating sweatshops in the apparel industry and stopping corruption in the oil, natural gas and mining industries. As with those efforts at self-regulation, this one came at a time when Internet companies were seeking to polish their image and potentially ward off legislation. 

The code of conduct says that companies must try “to avoid or minimize the impact of government restrictions on freedom of expression” and protect user privacy when demands by government “compromise privacy in a manner inconsistent with internationally recognized laws and standards.” 

In practice, however, the code offers flexibility. Companies that go along with a country’s censorship requirements can remain in compliance as long as they disclose it, as Microsoft does with its censored search results in China. 

A number of participants, which also include human rights groups, academics and firms specializing in socially responsible investing, agree that the initiative started slowly. Much of the focus since its founding has been on getting organized and hiring. 

Originally, the membership was supposed to include the entire spectrum of software, hardware and telecommunications firms along with Internet companies. The idea was that a bigger roster would mean greater influence and credibility. 

But recruiting efforts have been fruitless. Some companies have cited the auditing process as being too onerous, according to Global Network Initiative participants who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to discourage companies from joining in the future. Other companies do not see any financial benefit or think they can do it alone. 

Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for Facebook, declined to address why Facebook had not joined. But he said that his company took seriously the issue of user trust and was in regular contact with governments and human rights groups. 

“As Facebook grows, we’ll continue to expand our outreach and participation, but it’s important to remember that our global operations are still small, with offices in only a handful of countries,” Mr. Noyes said. 

Twitter declined to comment. 

Where the initiative has been most effective so far is in creating a forum for companies to easily get advice and share ideas. For instance, as the initiative’s participants were creating the code of conduct, human rights groups contacted Google after it removed videos in 2007 from YouTube showing police abuse in Egypt because of guidelines prohibiting violence. Google ultimately decided to restore the videos and adjust its policy to allow such clips. 

Some human rights groups said the initiative’s code of conduct was weaker than they would have liked. Getting companies to sign on would have been impossible otherwise, they acknowledged, describing the code’s final version as the best that could be hoped for at the time. 

Even with the code of conduct to help guide them, companies will inevitably come across issues that have no easy answers, said Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who specializes in online privacy and is a participant in the initiative. 

“Most of these issues aren’t black and white,” Ms. MacKinnon said. “The idea is to help them do the right thing rather than play ‘gotcha’ after they mess up.”

Flickr Creative Commons | Gitgat

By Keith B. Richburg | Washington Post Foreign Service | February 25, 2011

BEIJING – Chinese authorities continued to tighten controls on Internet use Friday in the face of murky calls for “jasmine rallies” to emulate the anti-government protests convulsing the Middle East and North Africa.

The professional networking site LinkedIn was blocked in China, joining sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that already were inaccessible due to government controls. LinkedIn was apparently blocked after a user began a discussion group called “Jasmine Voice.” The user asked followers to comment on the possibility of a “jasmine revolution” in China.

“I think it’s pretty clearly connected to the number of postings about the jasmine stuff,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of a popular Chinese media blog and an expert on the Internet here.

Also Friday, the Chinese name of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. joined the list of terms blocked from searches on popular Chinese micro-blogging sites, along with previously banned words including “Tunisia,” “Egypt” and “jasmine.” A search for Huntsman’s Chinese name on the sites turned up only the notice that the results could not be returned due to “relevant regulations and policy.”

Huntsman drew the ire of Chinese nationalists here after briefly appearing last Sunday in Wangfujing, a commercial pedestrian area of central Beijing. Organizers of the jasmine rallies, whose identities are unknown but who seem to be affiliated with an overseas organization, had asked Chinese to silently pass through the area as a peaceful form of protest against government authoritarianism. Few protesters actually appeared to show up, however, mainly due to a massive police presence in the area.

Huntsman, in sunglasses and a leather jacket, was out of his car talking to an unidentified passerby when he was caught on camera by a person who appeared to be a plainclothes policeman. That person confronted the ambassador, asking, “Do you want to see chaos in China?” Huntsman quickly left the area.

The U.S. embassy said Huntsman’s appearance at the site was “purely coincidental” because he was in the area with his family on a Sunday outing.

“We are aware that some Chinese domestic Internet sites are restricting searches of Ambassador Huntsman’s Chinese name,” said U.S. embassy spokesman Richard L. Buangan. “We urge China to respect internationally recognized fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, and the human rights of all Chinese citizens.”

This week in Wangfujing, workers erected a large blue construction fence in front of a McDonalds restaurant where the rally organizers had asked protesters to silently pass.

Merchants in the area said the fence went up two days ago, ostensibly because of needed sidewalk repairs – but Friday there was no sign of any construction activity. The fence, however, takes up much of the pedestrian mall area and significantly narrows the space where people can pass.

Since the popular uprising began in Tunisia in January, nervous Chinese authorities have been on guard against any attempt to replicate the protests here.

Friday’s edition of Global Times – a tabloid newspaper owned by the Communist Party’s official organ, People’s Daily – ran a lead editorial titled: “Turmoil in China is wishful thinking.”

The editorial blames “a few Western media outlets” for trying to promote unrest in China, and opines, “Anyone knowing about the Chinese society would never predict a Chinese-style ‘Jasmine Revolution.’ This society is now generally stable.”

In another sign of the unease, several Western media bureau chiefs were called into the main office of the Beijing police on Friday and warned to be mindful of the State Council’s rules governing foreign reporters conducting interviews in China.

Washington Post researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.

Flickr Creative Commons | researchgirl

by Mike Giglio | The Daily Beast | February 24, 2011

As unlikely protests swept across Egypt on January 25, an administrator from the Facebook page that was helping to drive the uprisings emailed a top official of the social network, asking for help.

The popular page had sounded the call for the protests 10 days earlier. It then became an online staging ground for the budding movement, beaming a constant barrage of news and updates to the walls of its 400,000-plus fans, along with impassioned pleas for people to join.
Protests swelled into the night. The We Are All Khaled Said administrator worried that the Mubarak regime, clued in to the page’s importance, might respond with a cyber attack—to bring down the page or, worse, uncover the anonymous people running it.

It was unclear whether Facebook would help.

The page, titled “We Are All Khaled Said” in remembrance of an Alexandria man murdered by police last summer, was founded in June and snowballed into one of Egypt’s most influential activist sites. In November, as parliamentary elections approached, the page prepared to encourage its fans to document what was expected to be a heavily-rigged vote. But, on election day, the page went down. And that was when Facebook became embroiled in what would eventually become Egypt’s revolutionary push.

Email records obtained by Newsweek, conversations with NGO executives who work with Facebook to protect activist pages, and interviews with administrators of the We Are All Khaled Said page reveal the social media juggernaut’s awkward balancing act. They show a company struggling to address the revolutionary responsibilities thrust upon it—and playing a more involved role than it might like to admit.

On the night of January 25, Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of policy for Europe, responded to the worried administrator. “We have put all the key pages into special protection,” he wrote in an email. A team, he said, “is monitoring activity from Egypt now on a 24/7 basis.”

Allan, 45, is member of Britain’s House of Lords and was a Liberal Democrat MP from 1997 until 2005, when he ran the campaign of current deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, before taking a position with tech giant Cisco. During his time at Cisco, he chaired an Internet task force for the U.K. government. Friends at the company jokingly refer to him as “Lord Allan.”

Allan, who declined to comment for this story, joined Facebook in June 2009. In an August interview with the Financial Times, he listed among his responsibilities dealing with censorship, freedom of speech and privacy, as well as promoting Facebook for public use. “Richard has a great and wonderful passion for both politics and what companies can do in politics,” says a former Facebook official who asked not to be named discussing his old company.

Facebook insists that all users, from Lady Gaga to Burmese dissidents, use their real names, which has obvious drawbacks for people agitating in repressive countries. The network’s terms of service are available in only seven languages (and not in Arabic), which breeds confusion. (The help site, however, is available in more than 20 languages.)

Regimes have used the terms of service against users, bringing down sensitive pages at key moments, such as the early stages of a protest push. A clever cyberthug can discover when a fan page is being run by a pseudonymous account, and send in a well-tailored complaint that forces the hand of Facebook’s automated servers. Emails to the company’s generic appeals address can take weeks to receive a response. “The appeals process is probably not as well defined and staffed as it should be. It may take a couple of weeks to get to a human,” the former official says. “You do catch things that you’d probably rather not catch in that mix, too.”

And in the past, activists complained that when problems arose at sensitive times, they had little idea who to contact. U.S.-based NGOs such as Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists keep in regular touch with tech companies and the on-the-ground activists who use their services, acting as advisers and facilitators.

The structure at Facebook, though, was difficult for outsiders to discern. “It used to be Kremlinology,” says Danny O’Brien, the CPJ’s Internet advocacy director. “You’d sit there and you’d try to work out someone who could talk to someone else who could talk to someone else. … We all have stories of trying to catch Facebook’s eye.”

Last September, Allan traveled to Budapest for a Google conference on freedom of expression on the web, which was crowded with prominent net activists, as well as Egyptian cyberdissidents. There, Allan said that human rights concerns could be directed to him.

While this role is one of many, and remains loosely defined—“Richard doesn’t hold the switch. He has the ability to email the people who hold the switch,” the former Facebook official says—Allan has since developed into a crucial back channel into Facebook’s inner workings, particularly for the developing situation in the Middle East.

People such as Robert Guerra, who heads net advocacy at Freedom House and Danny O’Brien, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Internet advocacy director, have worked to build relationships with Allan in order to fast-track issues that need Facebook’s attention.

The Allan pipeline, activists say, came in the nick of time.

After receiving concerned emails from Guerra, O’Brien and others when the We Are All Khaled Said page went down in November, Allan responded quickly with a diagnosis: the page’s administrator had been outed for using a pseudonym. Refusing to budge on Facebook policy, Allan suggested a creative fix.

“There is no discretion here as the creation of fake accounts threatens the integrity of our whole system,” he wrote. “People must use the profile of a real person to admin the page or risk it being taken down at any time. It is not important to us who that real person is as long as their account appears genuine. So if they can offer a real person as admin then the page can be restored.”
Nadine Wahab, an Egyptian émigré and activist based in Washington, D.C., took on that role, passing her user name and password to Google executive Wael Ghonim, who was later unmasked as the creator of the We Are All Khaled Said page, and the page went on to document widespread fraud. That week it received 11,000 new fans.

The new arrangement served as a security blanket as the page became a key rallying point for the protests—as only Wahab could be uncovered if the page were hacked. So did the relationship with Facebook. Ghonim told Newsweek he had an “open line” of communication with Facebook during the protests. “Whenever anything happened, I called,” he said.

But Wahab—who provided the email conversations to Newsweek— remains frustrated that it took so much prodding to get the company to act. “Facebook helped. But it was almost like they were hesitant to help. They don’t understand, or they didn’t understand, the power of Facebook in all this,” she says. “I think it’s unfortunate that you have to have a title to get Facebook’s attention.”

As for the special security status Facebook gave the page, she says: “That’s their responsibility. They ask us to put our private information on their site. I think it’s their responsibility to keep it out of government hands.”

Ultimately, Egyptians remained in the streets for more than two weeks and ousted President Hosni Mubarak in what many came to call the “Facebook Revolution.” As a pro-democracy upheaval rocks the Middle East, the social media giant has been receiving a steady stream of praise. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered an impassioned speech about Internet freedom that was peppered with glowing references to Facebook.

Facebook officials, however, have shrunk from the spotlight. (“Facebook Officials Keep Quiet on Its Role in Revolts,” read a recent headline in the New York Times.) The company has been particularly tight-lipped about what role, if any, its employees have played in the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. “The trust people place in us is the most important part of what makes Facebook work,” said communications manager Andrew Noyes in an emailed statement. “We take this trust seriously.”

Some analysts say Facebook has yet to come to grips with its new activist role. The ambiguity also has fueled suggestions that business interests in repressive countries—such as Syria, where Facebook recently regained access, or China, where it remains shut out—keep the company from embracing an activist image. “Facebook has seemed deeply ambivalent about this idea that they would become a platform for revolutions,” says Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center on Internet and Society. “And it makes sense that they would be deeply ambivalent.”

The former Facebook official says of the company: “There’s a bit of schizophrenia in trying to think that you’re operating a neutral platform. People at Facebook definitely have pro-freedom views. And there’s also a desire to not get shut off.”

Complaints that Facebook is unprepared—or perhaps unwilling—to take on an activist role has led some prominent human-rights advocates to encourage cyberdissidents to avoid it. “I would recommend that activists find another platform for their activity,” says Jillian York, of Global Voices. Adds Guerra: “It’s not just a college kid’s web site. It’s real activists that are staking their lives for change.”

The still-disjointed chain of command, meanwhile, seems to indicate that Facebook is still in the process of figuring out its role at a sensitive time. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have designated executives to deal with human-rights concerns. “[Tech] companies operate in a very difficult and very complex environment,” says Ebele Okobi-Harris, the human rights director at Yahoo.” I think it’s very critical, in Yahoo at least, to have an organization, and people, and a person who are dedicated to these issues.”

Says Zuckerman: “The fact that it works that way shows the inadequacy of the system … They’re trying to figure out after the fact how to construct a process. And they’re doing it in a moment when things are crazy.”

In Tunisia, for instance, “Ali,” an anonymous activist who runs a Facebook fan page called SBZ News—named after Sidi Bouzid, the city where that country’s uprising first took hold—had no NGO connections. But he ran, anonymously, the main Facebook page that was providing news of that country’s revolution. Every time his page would grow in its following, it would get knocked down by Facebook. He says this happened five times.

Ali was running the page under a pseudonym with a wary eye to Tunisia’s notorious cyberpolice. Though fan pages such as his and Ghonim’s don’t show the administrator, that information can be found out if the page is hacked. Which is exactly what happened in Tunisia—the government was able to phish passwords of Facebook users. (Facebook responded by quickly rolling out a harder-to-crack https code.)

“When Facebook say that I’ve to use the real profile, what if the page was hacked? And there are some pages that were hacked by the cyberpolice. And some bloggers were arrested,” Ali says. “Just because I haven’t used my real ID, [is the reason] I’m talking now to you.”

With his pages getting spiked, Ali sent an email to the appeals address. Three weeks later, he finally received an emailed reply, asking that he send a scanned copy of his passport, and getting him even more confused. “Are Facebook administrators not supposed to help us?” he asks. “Are they interested in our personal information more than supporting a revolution?”

Facebook has yet to answer the question. Mike Giglio is a reporter at Newsweek.

Flickr Creative Commons | keso

Agence France Presse | February 9, 2011

DAMASCUS (AFP) – For the first time since 2007, Syrians can directly log onto Facebook and YouTube without going through proxy servers abroad, Internet users said on Wednesday.

The authorities issued no statements regarding the development, but Syria’s leading media and technology entrepeneur, Abdulsalam Haykal, told AFP that the request to lift the block “had reached internet service providers.”

The US State Department was quick to welcome Syria’s decision to lift the ban on Facebook and YouTube, but voiced fears that users would run risks without freedom of expression.

“Welcome positive move on Facebook & YouTube in #Syria but concerned that freedom puts users at risk absent freedom of expression&association,” Alec Ross, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said on Twitter.

Al-Watan, a newspaper close to the government, quoted analysts as saying that the removal of firewalls blocking Facebook and YouTube demonstrated “the government’s confidence in its performance and that the state did not fear any threat coming from these two sites nor others.”

But Haykal said some websites remained blocked, including selected blogs, the Arabic version of Wikipedia, and a number of foreign and Arab media.

Last week a call on Facebook for a “day of rage” in Damascus — mirroring mass demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia — amassed more than 12,000 supporters online, but in the end no protesters were seen on the streets.

Flickr Creative Commons | Ricardo Leal

by Yasmine Ryan | Al Jazeera | January 6, 2011

Thousands of Tunisians have taken to the streets in recent weeks to call for extensive economic and social change in their country.

Among the fundamental changes the protesters have been demanding is an end to the government’s repressive online censorship regime and freedom of expression.

That battle is taking place not just on the country’s streets, but in internet forums, blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.

The Tunisian authorities have allegedly carried out targeted “phishing” operations: stealing users passwords to spy on them and eradicate online criticism. Websites on both sides have been hacked.

Anonymous, the loosely-knit group of international web activists that drew world attention for their “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks on the servers of companies that blocked payments and server access to the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks, joined the fray, in solidarity with the Tunisian uprising.

Most international news organisations have no presence in the country (and, some say, a lack of interest in the protests). Media posted online by Tunisian web activists has been some of the only material that has slipped through the blackout, even if their videos and photos haven’t generated quite the same enthusiastic coverage by Western media as the Iranian protest movement did in 2009.

Killing dissent

The attacks against some of the most vocal voices in the Tunisian cyber-community were sharp and swift.

Sofiene Chourabi, a journalist for Al-Tariq al-Jadid magazine and blogger known for his unabashed criticism of the Tunisian authorities, has been unable to recover his email and Facebook accounts after they were hijacked several days ago.

The first attempted hijacking of his Facebook account happened last week.

“My personal account on the Facebook, including around 4200 friends, was exposed to failed hacking attempt last Friday, but I quickly recovered it after an unidentified person had taken control of it,” he told Al Jazeera.

Then, on Monday, Chourabi was locked out of his Facebook and Gmail accounts.

Chourabi says he believes the Tunisian Internet Agency is responsible for hijacking his accounts. The agency has blocked access to his Facebook wall since October 2009, and his blogs are also unreachable from within Tunisia.

Several of his friends have contacted Facebook and Google asking for his accounts to be returned, to no avail. 

“I think it is high time for Facebook and Google to take serious steps to protect Tunisian activists and journalists,” he said in an interview via email, using a new account.

Facebook is working to ensure it can respond to all its users, Stefano Hesse, Facebook’s head of communications for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told Al Jazeera.

“One thing needs to be clear: we, as Facebook, are not censoring any content, and we had not been approached by the local government in order to do anything regarding anyone,” Hesse said via email.

Google did not respond to requests for comment from Al Jazeera.

Lina Ben Mhenni also had her Facebook page and Yahoo email account pirated, although she managed to retain control of her blog.

She told Al Jazeera that, as of Wednesday, web users in Tunisia were unable to change their passwords for Facebook.

Another activist who was caught in the phishing campaign is a Tunis-based man, who goes by the name of Azyz Amamy in the online world.
 
Amamy told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that his Facebook and email accounts had been hijacked on Monday. Amamy was able to recover both accounts within two hours, after Facebook and Gmail responded to his request. The difference is that he had retained control of a separate email account with which he had registered both accounts.

Two hours was enough time for the authorities to get the login information for his four blogs from his email accounts, deleting all the content.

“When they took Lina [Ben Mhenni]‘s account, and Sofiene Chourabi’s, within an hour all the Facebook pages they administrated had disappeared. And then their accounts were deleted,” Amamy explained.

The speed of the phishing operation, hitting several high-profile targets in a single day, demonstrated that it was exceptionally sophisticated, he said.

As well as Chourabi, Amamy and Ben Mhenni, those known to have been targeted include Med Salah M’Barek and Haythem El Mekki. 

Amamy suspects the phishing operation was far-reaching and that many more were hit, but are too scared to go public.

Several sources Al Jazeera spoke with said that web activists had been receiving anonymous phone calls, warning them to delete critical posts on their Facebook pages or face the consequences.

‘Phishing’ for dissent

The phishing was carried out by a malware code, several sources told Al Jazeera.

Sami Ben Gharbia, who monitors Tunisia’s web censorship for Global Voices, said that Google and Facebook were in no way complicit in the sophisticated phishing technique.

The initial signs that something was underway came on Saturday, he said, when the secure https protocol became unavailable in Tunisia. This forced web users to use the non-secure http protocol.

The government’s internet team then appears to have gone phishing for individuals’ usernames and passwords on services including Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo and Hotmail.

Web activists and journalists alerted others of the alleged hacking by the government via Twitter, which is not susceptible to the same types of operations.
 
“The goal, amongst others, is to delete the Facebook pages which these people administer,” a Tunisian internet professional, who has also been in contact with Anonymous, told Al Jazeera in an emailed interview.

The same source, who asked to remain unidentified due to the potential consequences for speaking out, said that in communication with the international group, he had come up with a Greasemonkey script for firefox internet browsers that deactivated the government’s malicious code.

The script had been installed 1,669 times at the time of writing.

“It isn’t like China and Gmail several months ago, where China attacked Gmail,” the web professional said in an email, referring to last year’s incident when Chinese hackers allegedly broke in the accounts of Chinese dissidents.

“This is much more intelligent (and I’m proud of this intelligence!). It’s the communication with Gmail [and the other sites] that is intercepted,” he said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says there is clear proof that the phishing campaign was organised and co-ordinated by the Tunisian government, as did other sources that Al Jazeera spoke with.

Unexpected allies

Tunisian web activists found an ally in Anonymous, whose international activists have turned their attention to overthrowing the Tunisian regime of web censorship.

The group’s DDoS attacks, which began on Sunday night, local time, succeeded in taking at least eight websites, including those for the president, prime minister, the ministry of industry, the ministry of foreign affairs, and the stock exchange.

The web site of the government internet agency – known by Tunisian web dissidents ironically as “Ammar 404″, or “Page not found” for its oversight of censorship operations - was also targeted.

In email correspondence with Al Jazeera, one Anonymous activist described the group as a “hive mind,” centred on collective, rather than individual, identity. 

The activists, who prefer to go unnamed, co-ordinate their operations through discussions held in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks, a type of online discussion forum.

Al Jazeera discussed “OpTunisia” with a group of the online activists on Tuesday. The operation began when one Anon spent last weekend “spamming” the forum, drawing support from activists around the world.

The Tunisian government first drew the Anons’ ire, they say, when it extended its pervasive filtering to WikiLeaks.

“The thing that did it for us, was initially their censoring of WikiLeaks, when WikiLeaks reports on .tn came out,” one participant in the forum wrote in response to questions from Al Jazeera, referring the Tunisia-based website that had been set up to host the WikiLeaks memos.

With their collective gaze turned to Tunisia, the Anons came into contact with Tunisian web activists.

“We did initially take an interest in Tunisia because of WikiLeaks, but as more Tunisians have joined they care more about the general internet censorship there, so that’s what it has become,” another Anon said.

It is hard to generalise the Anons’ diverse range of motivations and ever-changing targets, but most appear to share an outrage over the Tunisian government’s censorship and phishing activities, and a sense of solidarity with Tunisian web users.

Attacking government-linked websites is much more dangerous for those living within Tunisia, they noted, who risk arrest if they are identitied by the authorities.

“Although many Tunisians understandably do not feel comfortable participating in this operation out of precaution, I estimate there [were] about 50 Tunisians participating, to whom we provide the means and knowledge to properly secure their online behaviour from exposure to their government,” one Anon activist wrote via email.

Ben Gharbia says he accessed IRC to observe the discussions, and that there were some people chatting in Tunisian dialect.

By Tuesday, the government appeared to have taken steps to protect its websites from attack by making them inaccessible from overseas. The same sites were available within Tunisia.

On Wednesday, Anonfymous informed Al Jazeera that its own site was under DDoS attack. Anonymous was continuing its DDoS attacks on Thursday, and is likely to move on to another target now that momentum has gathered.

“We, as Anonymous, feel we have accomplished our mission with the major media now involved in Tunisia.  We will keep DDoS’ing that DNS server probably until after the [Thursday's] strike,” wrote the source by email.

Government hacking, en masse

This is hardly the first time Tunisian censors have phished for dissidents’ private information, nor is its censorship anything new.

Most popular video-sharing websites have been blocked for years now. Facebook was completely blocked in 2008.

Tunisia no longer blocks the entire Facebook platform, and is one of the main ways people are able to share video.

Individual Facebook pages are quickly censored, however, often within an hour of going online, Ben Gharbia said.

“Once they identify a link that needs to be blocked, they block it instantly,” he said.

In the siege against cyber dissidence, Twitter has been a bastion for activists. Because people can access Twitter via clients rather than going through the website itself, many Tunisians can still communicate online. The web-savvy use proxies to browse the other censored sites.

Yet even if bloggers manage to maintain their blogging, the censorship deprives them of those readers who do not use proxies. The result is what Ben Gharbia described as the “killing” of the Tunisian blogosphere. 

Ben Mhenni said that the government’s biggest censorship of webpages en masse happened in April 2010, when more than 100 blogs were blocked, in addition to other websites.

She said the hijackings that had taken place in the past week, however, marked the biggest government-organised hacking operation. Most of the pages that had been deleted in recent days were already censored.

Amamy said the government’s approach to the internet policy is invasive and all-controlling.

“Here we don’t really have internet, we have a national intranet,” he said.

You can follow Yasmine on Twitter @yasmineryan

Updates:  Azyz Amamy was arrested on Thursday, sources in Tunisia told Al Jazeera. Another web activist, Slim Amamou was also taken by the authorities.

Amamy’s last Tweet prior to his arrest was published on Thursday morning, as was Amamou’s. (6 Jan 2011 21:03 GMT)