Lebanese Bloggers Seek Freedom in Virtual World

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Don Toye

Al Arabiya | December 15, 2010

DUBAI — The political and sectarian unrest from which Lebanon has been suffering for a long time initiated an atmosphere of media bias where most TV channels and newspapers promote the ideologies of one group or another.

In came bloggers to break this pattern and establish a free medium of their own.

Within a short time, the number of Lebanese bloggers reached 400, all enjoying the freedom of expression offered by the internet. Despite the relative freedom of expression for which Lebanese media is generally known, several bloggers noted that owners of TV channels tend to restrict speakers in their shows in accordance with their political or religious affiliations.  While expressing their opinions freely, Lebanese bloggers exercise some kind of self-censorship to avoid becoming victims of clampdowns that targeted several of their fellow writers, especially that they usually write about sensitive political issues.

Four bloggers were arrested and briefly detained after launching a Facebook page that criticizes Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. This incident led many bloggers to be cautious over the content of their blogs of fear they might be tracked down and interrogated or arrested.

Lebanese blogger Engy Nassar views objectivity as the best way to strike a balance between freedom of expression and self-censorship.

“In my blog, I try to be objective while always emphasizing that any political entity in Lebanon is liable to criticism,” she said. “I also refuse to promote the ideologies of a certain religion or party or to criticize for the sake of criticism.”

Lebanese blogs reflect political divisions and their content is usually determined by the political scene and the latest events.  More than 900,000, one quarter the population in Lebanon, have accounts on the social networking website on Facebook and as inhabitants of the virtual world increase by the minute, the emergence of more blogs is expected in the coming years.

Europe Takes Up Debate on Universal Internet Access

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sébastien Bertrand

By Kevin J. O’Brien | New York Times | November 7, 2010

BERLIN — The global debate over how access to the Internet should be determined and paid for has attracted free speech advocates, telephone network operators and big online businesses like Google and Facebook.

This week, arguments over so-called network neutrality move to Brussels, where the European Commission and Parliament are holding a daylong meeting that is expected to draw speakers from industry, government and academia.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission attempted this year to bar operators — telecommunications and cable companies that offer connections to the Internet — from selectively managing the data flowing over their networks to assure that all customers got adequate service.

The commission tried to prohibit their extracting payment from big traffic generators like Google, but the proposal is bogged down in legal challenges. In Europe, the debate is not as far along, but the outcome is equally clouded.

Important signals about the Continent’s approach may come Thursday from Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for telecommunications, who is scheduled to speak at the meeting and must report to the Parliament on the status of net neutrality by the end of the year.

In the absence of new regulation, Europe appears to be on track to give mobile network operators a relatively free hand in managing the data flowing over their networks. That could include the imposition of additional charges on rivals, like the voice-over-Internet service Skype.

Ms. Kroes, in public statements this year, has warned operators not to bar rival services from their mobile networks but has not indicated that she intends to push for tighter regulation that would limit the way operators can manage their data traffic.

Jean-Jacques Sahel, the European director of regulatory affairs at Skype, said Ms. Kroes needed to make sure that the 27 E.U. national regulators — who must establish rules by May 1 defining “reasonable” traffic management practices — take an aggressive approach to ensure that operators do not discriminate against rivals.

In most European markets, Mr. Sahel said, operators are still charging an extra fee, usually €10 to €15 a month, or $14 to $21, for customers wishing to use voice-over-Internet services. “This is a form of economic discrimination,” Mr. Sahel said. “The question is: Where will this stop?”

Ms. Kroes declined to comment through a spokesman, Jonathan Todd.

Network operators say that charging mobile consumers for rival services like Skype is widely accepted and that there has been no evidence of widespread censorship or discrimination that would warrant more regulation.

A Sept. 30 report by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, the European Union’s telecommunications advisory group, seemed to confirm the industry position, concluding that there was no new need for regulation at this point.

The group, which is made up of the bloc’s national telecommunications regulators, said operators in more than a dozen countries — Austria, Croatia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, France, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Britain — had either blocked or throttled services like Skype or file-sharing Web sites. In general, using Skype allows callers to avoid paying the operators for local and long-distance calling; file-sharing sites put steep demands on mobile networks.

But most blocking stopped, the report said, after being reported to local media or regulators.

“To date, the survey carried out by Berec shows that incidents remain few and most of them have been solved voluntarily,” the regulators concluded. “These findings imply that there is currently little reason to undertake any new regulatory measures.”

Pierre Louette, the secretary general for the French carriers division of France Télécom, said extra charges to mobile users wishing to use voice-over-Internet services like Skype were accepted by regulators.

“These charges are considered standard industry practice,” Mr. Louette said during an interview. “We basically have to have the ability to generate revenue from our networks or we won’t be able to create the networks of the future.”

Another issue could present access issues, the regulators warned in their report — the shift away from flat-rate broadband packages to tiered service plans that tie greater speed and access to higher monthly fees. That transition is already under way.

In Spain this year, Vodafone has been testing a series of tiered pricing packages. Richard Feasey, the regulatory policy director at Vodafone, said consumers had reacted positively.

“From what we have seen in the blogs, our customers in Spain appear to be totally comfortable with paying more for greater levels of service,” Mr. Feasey said, comparing graduated Internet service with an airline’s economy, business and first-class ticket prices.

With the debate in flux on both sides of the Atlantic, U.S. operators are weighing in in Europe.

Mick Corkerry, the European executive director for AT&T, is scheduled to speak at the Brussels hearing Thursday. AT&T is a sponsor of a Brussels policy group called the Center for European Policy Studies, which opposes new net neutrality rules on operators.

Andrea Renda, the center’s head of regulatory affairs and a professor of antitrust law at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, said more network management regulations would “open a Pandora’s Box of new rules that would inevitably spread to search, apps and cloud computing.”

In the absence of new rules from Brussels, individual European countries will define their own versions of “reasonable” network traffic management, in most cases leaving great discretion to network operators, said Chris Marsden, a senior lecturer on Internet law at the University of Essex in Britain.

So far, only the French regulator, Arcep, has released a set of 10 principles it believes should guide operators’ behavior. In general, it recommended that Internet users be guaranteed the right to send and receive information of their choice and to use the applications and services they want, as long as they do not harm the network. Operators could suppress damaging Internet behavior, Arcep said, as long as the actions taken adhered to principles of relevance, proportionality, nondiscrimination, efficiency and transparency.

“But even Arcep is not proposing to go a step further and set deadlines for compliance and penalties,” Mr. Marsden said.

Even the French approach raises the potential for selective, arbitrary traffic management by network operators, said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a member of the European Parliament from Hanover, Germany, who will also be speaking at the event Thursday.

“The danger is there, because there are no rules on how the priorities should be set from the providers,” he said.

The outcome of the debate also has ramifications for Internet businesses like Google and Facebook, whose popular video-streaming services are generating much of the increased data load being handled by European mobile operators. In the United States, online businesses like Google sought to prohibit operators from charging online businesses to carry its services.

On Sept. 9 in Paris, Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, met privately with a group of about a dozen mid- and top-level executives from several European mobile operators, who pressed him on whether Google was ready to help pay for the traffic it was creating.

“He was extremely complimentary to the operators who were there, but basically he ducked the question,” said one executive who attended the event. “The message seemed to be: you build the networks and we’ll make the profit.”

Lebanon Cracks Down on Internet Freedom

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sean Hobson

By Josh Wood | New York Times | November 3, 2010

BEIRUT — Two officers from the Mukhabarat military intelligence came for the blogger Khodor Salameh one midnight in March, soon after he had written articles critical of the president and the army. He was to report for questioning in the morning — and it was not a request.

Such a scene is familiar in Syria — and much of the Middle East. But Mr. Salameh was in Lebanon, a country widely seen as the freest in the region.

Over the past year, the country’s reputation as a bastion of free speech has been tarnished by a rash of arrests, detentions and intimidation of Lebanese citizens for their online activities.

The level of Internet freedom “is better than in any other Arab country, but it is not good,” said Mr. Salameh. The 24-year-old blogger and journalist said he was held in detention for more than eight hours and threatened with prosecution unless he stuck to writing poetry rather than politics.

In June and July, four people were arrested for comments posted on the social-networking site Facebook about Michel Suleiman, the president of Lebanon.

In the 2010 press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders — which takes restrictions on Internet freedom into account — Lebanon ranked above every country in the Arab world, in addition to Israel and Iran. Still, its ranking dropped 17 places from 2009.

Red lines have emerged: The most dangerous topics to speak out against online are the army and the president.

“The army is uncriticizable, especially after Nahr al-Bared,” said Farah Qobeissy, a socialist activist and blogger, referring to the Palestinian refugee camp where the Lebanese armed forces fought a pitched three-month battle with the Islamist extremist organization Fatah al-Islam in 2007. In that engagement, the army “were pictured as kind of a savior to Lebanon,” she noted.

Other taboos include in-depth discussions of the 1975-1990 civil war and subjects that could give religious offense.

Under Lebanon’s penal code, defamation is a criminal offense. This statute has given the authorities the power exercised by the four Facebook arrests and has left some Internet activists self-censoring their work.

Over the summer, too, some members of the government tried to push through a law governing electronic transactions. Critics, however, have pointed to vaguely worded clauses in the draft bill that could be abused. One clause would require licenses for a hazy range of “online services,” which some feared could cover blogs and news Web sites. Other sections gave the authorities access to private information and the right to go through the records of any company or organization dealing with the Internet.

“It reads like it’s a mechanism for warrantless search and seizure,” said Mohamad Najem, the president of Social Media Exchange, a local organization that trains civil society and non-government organizations to use social media technologies.

The group spearheaded efforts to postpone a vote on the proposed law in June. Using Twitter, blogs and Facebook, it spread the word about the dangers of the new law, while also lobbying legislators to explain its concerns. The effort eventually paid off, with a decision to delay the vote.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, violations of Internet freedom are rife. A number of states including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iran are listed as “Internet enemies” by Reporters Without Borders for their imprisonment of Web activists and restrictions placed on Internet access.

In Lebanon, things are not quite as bad, but Nadim Houry, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Beirut office, described the latest infringements on Internet freedom in Lebanon as “a step in the wrong direction.”

The committee that drew up the e-transactions law was headed by Lebanese Parliament members who belonged to Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement. Some critics have suggested that the law was inspired by Internet laws in Saudi Arabia, a country that has close ties to Mr. Hariri.

“We can’t think that Lebanon thinks about these things in isolation — they don’t think about anything else in isolation,” Mr. Najem said.

Mexican drug war crimes go live on the Internet

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | honou

By Henry Orrego  | AFP | October 4, 2010

MEXICO CITY — In the midst of the brutal drug trafficking war encroaching on their lives, thousands of Mexicans every morning check social network websites to see if they will encounter any unpleasant surprises on the way to work or school.

But they are not the only ones.

While average citizens go online to let others know where in their neighborhood a body has been uncovered or if they can expect disruptions from cartels or the Mexican military, the drug gangs themselves also use the tools to manipulate public opinion by making threats and warnings.

The spread of vital information ahead of the daily commute, via social networking technology and sites like Facebook and Twitter, is especially useful in the country’s north, near the US border, which has become ground zero for the country’s drug war.

More than 28,000 people are believed to have been killed in drug cartel-related violence in Mexico in the last four years, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown, making residents increasingly desperate for ways to avoid the bloodshed.

In recent days northern Mexico has been roiled by another spate of violence, with 47 deaths blamed on drug cartels in the border region and a series of grenade attacks in the border city of Monterrey that wounded a dozen people.

With even journalists and other media figures becoming targets for the gangs — at least 10 reporters have been killed this year — outlets have resorted at times to self-censorship in attempts to safeguard their workers, making online portals even more vital.

“Pedestrians in the city report gunfire… anyone else?” wrote a user of an information site in Guadalajara called “BalaceraGDL” (meaning gunfight), that sprung up in Mexico’s second largest city in a bid by residents to spread news of conflict on their streets.

Some official networking sites, including Twitter page and Facebook accounts, have also been created by local authorities.

In Tamaulipas state, a northeastern region that has seen some of the worst violence in recent years due to cartel turf wars, city officials from Reynosa — across the border from the Texas town of McAllen — have sought to counter contradicting information from cartels with their own source.

“The aim is establish a tool of communication to put an end to the rumors that come out of social networking, and inform people what’s really happening, in real time,” the city mayor’s chief of staff Juan Triana told AFP.

“Before driving my son to college, I consult my BB (BlackBerry) to check what is happening in the streets, to avoid any unpleasant surprises,” said Reynosa sales clerk Rosario Leon.

“Military patrol in San Fernando, with unexpected traffic jams… Have a nice day,” read one message on the Reynosa’s Twitter account, referring to the nearby small town where last month the bodies of 72 immigrants were found after a suspected drug gang massacre.

Further south, in the port town of Tampico on the Gulf of Mexico, the local service “infotampico,” asks users: “Anyone else today know about the four (bodies) hanging from the bridge?”

Leonardo Hernandez, a university researcher who is working on a paper about online terrorism, said that sometimes more can be learned about a crime online than in other media nowadays.

“It happens sometimes that the first news about something breaks on the social network sites,” he said, citing the example of a former presidential candidate who was kidnapped in June and whose whereabouts remain unknown.

The alleged kidnappers posted photos of their prisoner on Twitter.

“We learned more about it on the social networks than we did in the media,” he said.

Web Tastes Freedom Inside Syria, and It’s Bitter

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | turkletom

By Robert F. Worth | New York Times | September 29, 2010 

DAMASCUS, Syria — Earlier this month, a graphic video of teachers beating their young students appeared on Facebook. Although Facebook is officially banned here, the video quickly went viral, with Syrian bloggers stoking public anger until the story was picked up by the pan-Arab media. 

Finally, the Education Ministry issued a statement saying the teachers had been reassigned to desk jobs. The episode was a rare example of the way Syrians using Facebook and blogs can win a tenuous measure of freedom within the country’s tightly controlled media scene, where any criticism of the government, however oblique, can lead to years in prison. 

“We have a little bit of freedom,” said Khaled al-Ekhetyar, a 29-year-old journalist for a Web site whose business card shows a face with hands covering up the eyes and mouth. “We can say things that can’t be said in print.” 

But that slim margin is threatened by an ever present fog of fear and intimidation, and some journalists fear that it could soon be snuffed out. A draft law regulating online media would clamp down on Syrian bloggers and other journalists, forcing them to register as syndicate members and submit their writing for review. Other Arab countries regularly jail journalists who express dissident views, but Syria may be the most restrictive of all. 

Most of the Syrian media is still owned by the state. Privately owned media outlets became legal in 2001, as the socialist economy slowly began to liberalize following the accession of President Bashar al-Assad. But much of the sector is owned by members of the Syrian “oligarchy” — relatives of Mr. Assad and other top government officials. All of it is subject to intimidation and heavy-handed control. 

“The first level is censorship,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, the founder of All4Syria.info, the independent Web site where Mr. Ekhetyar works. “The second level is when they send you statements and force you to publish them.” Like many other journalists and dissidents, Mr. Abdel Nour has left the country and now lives abroad. 

The basic “red lines” are well known: no criticism of the president and his family or the security services, no touching delicate issues like Syria’s Kurdish minority or the Alawites, a religious minority to which Mr. Assad belongs. Foreign journalists who violate these rules are regularly banned from the country (a fact that constrains coverage of Syria in this and other newspapers). 

But the exact extent of what is forbidden is left deliberately unclear, and that vagueness encourages fear and self-censorship, many journalists here say. A 19-year-old female high school student and blogger, Tal al-Mallohi, was arrested late last year and remains in prison. Her blog had encouraged the Syrian government to do more for the Palestinians, but it scarcely amounted to real criticism, and the authorities have not given any reason for her detention. A number of bloggers have been arrested for expressing views deemed critical of the Syrian government or even other Arab governments, under longstanding laws that criminalize “weakening national sentiment” and other broadly defined offenses. 

Others have been jailed for jokes. One blogger, Osama Kario, wrote a parody in 2007 of the famous “three Arab No’s” refusing any concession to Israel (no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel). His version: “No electricity, no water, no Internet.” He was jailed for 28 days, and when he emerged he stopped blogging and would not speak to fellow journalists about his experience. 

Television and radio journalists have made some tentative efforts to push the limits in the past few years, with mixed success. D.J.’s like Honey Sayed, who hosts a popular show called “Good Morning Syria” on Madina FM, often explore sensitive social issues like homosexuality and child abuse. Last year Orient TV, a new station owned by an independent Syrian businessman, began broadcasting from Dubai and quickly gained a large audience with its imaginative documentaries. But a few months later the station’s Damascus office was abruptly shut down, with no explanation given. 

One Web site, All4Syria.info, has managed to survive since 2004 with a revolving staff of about half a dozen writers based in Syria. Earlier this year it published an interview with three political dissidents on their release from prison, something no other Syrian outlet dared to do. 

“The Internet in Syria is a bit like the samizdat publications were under the Soviet Union,” said Mohammad Ali Abdallah, whose brother Omar Ali Abdallah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2006 for contributing to an Internet forum that was deemed seditious by the authorities. 

Last year, some of Syria’s new, privately owned radio stations joined bloggers in criticizing a proposed revision of Syria’s personal status law that would have made it legal for men to marry girls as young as 13 years old. Under pressure, lawmakers abandoned the proposal. 

But individual successes do not always make for broader progress, because of fear. 

“Even when someone successfully crosses a line, everyone is still afraid, they don’t build on it,” Mr. Ekhetyar said. “They think maybe it was a coincidence.” 

Many online journalists use pseudonyms, he added, a practice that may be safer but erodes their credibility and leaves them in a fearful solitude where they cannot develop professional standards. Facebook has been an important outlet for political and social frustrations, but it, too, is often used with furtive anonymity. 

And it is impossible to tell how many Syrians are paying attention. Asked who his audience was, Mr. Ekhetyar paused and said with a weary smile, “My friends and the secret police.” 

That may be why the Syrian authorities, despite the official ban on Facebook, YouTube, and many other Internet venues, do not seem too frightened of them. Most Syrian government officials, including the president, have their own Facebook pages. Walk into almost any of the many Internet cafes in Damascus, and the manager will show you how to log on to Facebook or other banned sites. Foreign proxy server numbers are traded among young people like baseball cards. 

On a recent evening in the tumultuous Bab Touma section of Damascus’s Old City, 26-year-old Berj Agop was among a crowd of young people at the SpotNet Internet Cafe, many of them casually surfing sites that are officially banned. 

“I saw the video of the teacher beating the student,” he said. “It’s a victory for sure; without Facebook no one would have known about that incident.” 

But nearby, another young man who gave his name only as Taym offered a different view. 

“The Internet is like a baby’s lollipop for the young,” he said. “It entertains him and makes him forget his problems, it’s like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ — I dream of such a world, a better world.” 

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Damascus.

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.

India: From Stone Pelting In Kashmir Streets To Facebook Protests

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Tanvir Kohli

By Rezwan | Global Voices Online | July 18, 2010

The beautiful Kashmir Region is marred with territorial conflicts between India, Pakistan and China since the British colonial rulers left India in 1947. Amidst a few wars all these countries have made claims to different parts of Kashmir, based on historical developments and religious affiliations of the Kashmiri people.

The Jammu and Kashmir region is administered by India but enjoys special autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution of India. It is also the only Indian state that has its own flag. Since the late 1980s a violent uprising backed by Pakistan has caused a prolonged, bloody conflict between militants and the Indian security forces in this region. The Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir has been given special powers via Armed Forces Act, which has been widely criticized.Kashmir is boiling over tension and rage since early June when it was revealed that Indian security forces allegedly killed three innocent boys and claimed they were militants. Violent protests ensued which brought part of the region in standstill and hundreds of Kashmiri youths were arrested. Jason Oberdorf at Global Post explains the recent volatile situation in Jammu and Kashmir:

Late Tuesday (July 6, 2010) night, New Delhi deployed the army to quell protests in Kashmir for the first time since 1990, after police bullets allegedly killed three more civilians, bringing the total for the month to 15. [..]

Facebook and other social networking sites are brimming with outpourings of rage, bordering on hatred for India’s security forces, from Kashmiri youth.

Reading reports about Kashmir may get tricky depending on the source. While a Pakistani media would interpret the stone pelting protests with headlines such as “Kashmir shuts down protesting Indian occupation: Want freedom, Pakistan“, an Indian media would label the stone pelting as provocations by anti-national elements. There are reports that the Indian media may be allegedly fabricating blames.Apart from tackling the stone throwing protesters the Indian military now faces a new form of insurgency. Protesters are increasingly using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Kashmir Friend, which is a social network dedicated to the people of Kashmir. Simantik Dowerah at Live Mint reports that “there are actually groups of Kashmiri stone throwers who have registered themselves on Facebook.” The Kashmir reports with screenshots how the youths are being instigated by sharing Jihadi videos.As the violence escalated, the Jammu and Kashmir Government banned the SMS service across the valley in an attempt to stop the flow of information and rumors. But the Kashmiris could breathe free, stay connected and share information via Facebook as Hindustan Times reported. Many news websites like Kashmir Dispatch and Kashmir are using Facebook to reach netizens.

Amidst all this there are reports that Facebook users are being screened by Police. The Daily Rising Kashmir reports that the authorities have now started scrutinizing Facebook users in South Kashmir’s Anantnag (previously Islamabad) district who they claim are ‘instigating’ people against the state.Sagar From Srinagar writes in protest in his blog “Tragedy Of Errors: My Kashmir”, which sums up the pain of the Kashmiris:

I protest for the incompetency of the people handling my future, I protest for the lack of humanity in our (in)security forces, I Protest for the repeated insults, I protest for media using my pain for their TRPs, I protest for the short sightedness of all our leaders, I protest for none of them coming out submissively and asking for forgiveness, I protest for being ordered to be locked up in my house for no fault of mine, I protest for anyone, but never a Kashmiri, getting his 5 minutes of fame on tv, I protest for the unnecessary and insensitive comments made about my place, I protest for journalists telling the world just one side of the story…

Being Cynical at Desicritics blames the policies and politics as a reason for the protests:

Traditionally Kashmiris feel alienated- thanks to our policies and our politician’s attitude to keep the Kashmir topic alive for their own gain. If you look at the video footage, it is really disturbing to see teenagers barely in their twenties are hurling stones at the security forces. On a micro analysis you would realize that these are the same guys who would have born when Kashmir was at peak of it’s boiling point and their whole life till now has gone through violence, atrocities, negligence, no governance and of course the terrorists. [..]

I am sure the majority of these teenagers who are seen protesting violently might not be knowing for what they are protesting or on whom they are pelting stones.Some analysts are labeling these protests as the ‘new Intifada’. Arjimand Hussain Talib at Dateline Srinagar opines about the protests of Kashmiri youths:

Their movement will not die down because this generation is dynamic – stretches across the globe. It has technology at its hand – Internet, mobiles phones, digital cameras, You Tube, Facebook, etc. They are archiving Kashmir’s current happenings for the next generation. And are disseminating that to the world beyond to catch attention.

There are reports that the local government is trying to control the flow of information by shutting down publications and confiscating newspapers prior to distribution. Journalists are being barred from reporting on demonstrations. The world will rely on Facebook and Twitter users for first hand reports from the region. But after the SMS ban will the Jammu and Kashmir government crack down on Social networks too?

Rwanda: Paul Kagame Supporters Turn to Power of Twitter, Facebook and Blogs

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | David Shankbone

By Ndesanjo Macha | Global Voices Online | July 14, 2010

Supporters of the president Paul Kagame of Rwanda have turned to the power of Facebook, Twitter and blogs to help him win presidential election that will be held on 9 August 2010.

MyKagame is an online fan club for Paul Kagame. This is what the club is all about:

As a career statesman with a rich profile and long list of accomplishments, President Paul Kagame has a large following of admirers who look up to look up to him for guidance as Hero. This is their platform. The Fan Club is managed entirely by the president’s fans as a group with a common cause, purpose and direction.

As a fan of President Kagame, this August campaign is about you. Your voice counts. This is your platform to share thoughts and advise on issues to address during and after the presidential elections. Stand up for what you believe in, make Rwanda proud!

You may get involved in several ways:

Connecting with other supporters through Fan Club blogs.

Joining grassroots efforts to support the President’s campaign

Spreading the word about the Fan Club and our Hero’s agenda for Rwanda especially during the upcoming Presidential campaign.

Boosting morale of people who share our values and love Rwanda.

In addition to its website, the club has a blog. Following are two recent posts on the blogs:

1. Rwanda’s strides to build a regional ICT hub:

Rwanda has positioned itself as a regional hub for information and communication technology (ICT) with a robust ICT industry, including e-commerce, e-services, applications development, and automation. It is believed that ICT will be harnessed to generate wealth and be a key economic driver. As part of its policy goal to progressively transform Rwanda from a predominantly agriculture economy to a predominantly information-rich, knowledge-based economy (PIKE), the Government committed itself to the implementation of the envisaged four rolling NICI/ICT4D Plans over the 20 year life-span of Vision 2020 and the ICT4D Policy.

2. Our hero is cleared by NEC to contest:

As highly expected by the fans, President Paul Kagame was among the four candidates cleared yesterday by the The National Electoral Commission to contest in the August 09 poll.

NEC has accepted Kagame’s application for the race after the RPF returned as its flag bearer to run for the second and final term as provided for by in the constitution.

For this term, President Kagame has pledged to put leadership in the hands of the people. It will strengthen further the integration of the youth, women, vulnerable groups and the civil society. He also promises to fortify the means of disseminating information and consolidate the country’s security and sovereignty

There is a Facebook page called Paul Kagame will win 2010 presidential elections. At the time of writing this post there were 3,408 followeres. Following are a few messages on its wall:

Moses Ndayisenga says:

May God bless Rwanda’s paul kagame in his victory b’se he won 2010 election.VIVA KPAUL. OUR Mzee

Siriba AbdulKarim says:

May God be with you in leading Rwandans to their social welfare. Keep it up!

Sangano Gentle adds:

Yes our beloved PRESIDENt is gonna win 2010 ELECTION.no one like him.

There are two other Facebook pages for Kagame; PaulKagame with 6,327 followers and Paul Kagame with 8,169 followers (at the time of writing this post).

The latest message on PaulKagame page reads:

today co-chaired the meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development held in Geneva, Switzerland.
In his remarks said “… There
is no doubt, that using Broadband to unleash peoples’ full potential is an
economic imperative for attaining an inclusive and prosperous global economic
society…Leaders in governmen…t, business and civil society organizations must be accountable to achieve concrete results.”

A speech by Paul Kagame at the 16th Commemoration of The Genocide is the latest message on Paul Kagame page.

One of the topics on the page is about the administrator/creator of the page. There were fears that the administrator may have passed away without the knowledge of his followers:

Mukiza I have this feeling that the anonymous admin for this page may have silently met his or her creator without our knowledge.
For what explains the fact that this page has gone non-updated since august of 2009.
That is a hell of a long time for a live person to be that un-responsive.

If my worries are founded,then my sincere condolences are guaranteed.

The administrator joined the discussion explaining his silence:

Paul Kagame Still kicking, I’m afraid

I recently moved cities and have been largely without the internet for the past 3 months as well as splitting up with my partner of over a year. I’m sorry for neglecting you, but I still check in whenever I can. Unfortunately even admins are human.

If anyone has any complaints all they have to do is make a topic and I’ll see it.

As for the page, well it seems to take care of itself pretty much, or so it seems to me. But I’ll do some spring cleaning.

But maybe I’ve grabbed the wrong end of the stick here, is this a coup? Would the community like me to step down?

~ The Administrator

Kagame supporters are also on the popular microblogging site, Twitter. There is paulkagame, which is private (196 followers) and PaulKagame with 964 followers.

The latest tweet on PaulKagame reads:

in Eastern Province yesterday, commended success of land distribution and agricultural surplus -pledged more government support

There is also Paul Kagame photostream on Flickr and Paul Kagame podcast and pK blogs on paulkagame.com

We will have to wait and see the overall impact of social media in the 2010 presidential election in Rwanda.

China Renews Google’s License

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Craig Maccubbin

By David Barboza | The New York Times | July 9, 2010

SHANGHAI — The Internet giant Google said Friday that the Beijing government had renewed its license to operate a Web site in mainland China, ending months of tension after the company stopped censoring search results here and moved some operations out of the country.

Google made the announcement early Friday morning in California in a blog posting by its chief legal officer, David Drummond.

“We are very pleased that the government has renewed our I.C.P. license,” Mr. Drummond wrote referring to an Internet content provider license. “And we look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China.”

Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said Friday that the renewal “was the outcome we were hoping for.”

Mr. Schmidt, who told reporters on Thursday that the company expected to obtain the renewal, said that he did not know China’s decision would come so soon and was informed of the decision early Friday. He had expected the decision to come down within 24 to 48 hours.

“We’ll keep doing what we’re doing, and they’ll keep doing what they’re doing,” he said Friday at the Allen & Company media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

If the license had not been renewed, Google would have effectively been forced to shut down its Web site, google.cn, in China. With the renewal, however, Google can continue offering limited services in China and direct users to the company’s uncensored Hong Kong-based Chinese language search engine, google.com.hk. Hong Kong, a former British colony that is now a special administrative region of China, is governed separately from the mainland. Under the current setup in mainland China, users can conduct a Google search and see the results, but often they cannot open the links.

The license renewal is a sign that Google, while uncomfortable with operating in China and censoring its search results on Beijing’s behalf, is determined to keep a foot in China, which now has more Internet users than the United States.

Google announced in January that it had suffered China-based cyberattacks on its databases and the e-mail accounts of some users. The company said it would also stop censoring search results, which it had agreed to do when it first began to operate in China several years ago. The Chinese government insists that its citizens’ access to the Internet be stripped of offensive and some politically sensitive material.

In March, Google closed its Internet search service in China and began directing users to the uncensored Hong Kong site.

Many analysts were stunned by the moves and questioned whether Google was acting prudently in risking its spot in the world’s largest Internet market.

Just a few weeks ago, however, Google signaled a softer approach to Beijing by saying that it had stopped automatically sending users in mainland China to its Hong Kong site. The company said it had created a Web page that offered users in mainland China a choice, rather than automatically directing them to its Hong Kong site.

The move, though seemingly insignificant, seemed to comply better with Beijing’s strict regulations.

“This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page,” Mr. Drummond wrote at the time.

Renewal is required annually for Google’s license, which officially expires in 2012.

“This is a reasonable move by the government,” Jake Li, an Internet analyst at Guotai Junan Securities in Shenzhen, told Bloomberg News. “Google has brought itself into compliance with regulations, so there’s no good reason to deny them the license.”

Even before the censorship issue came to the fore, Google was struggling in China to attain the same market dominance it has achieved in many other countries.

The hottest Internet companies in China are those like Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba — fast-growing local companies that are making huge profits.

Google is not the only American giant that has had trouble in China. Yahoo and eBay have failed to gain significant traction here. And Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked by the government.

Lebanese Facebook Users Arrested for Defaming President

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Steven Damron

 By Sarah Hamdi | OpenNet Initiative | July 6, 2010

On June 28th, The Guardian, Menassat, L’Orient Le Jour, and the AFP reported that Lebanon arrested 3 individuals (Naim George Hanna, Antoine Youssef Ramia, Shebel Rajeh Qasab), and Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza issued an arrest warrant for a fourth (Ahmed Ali Shuman). They were all students in their early 20′s, and were placed under arrest for slander and defamation of President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. Currently, the first three have been released on bail of 100,000 L.L. each ($66.65 USD) and are expected to be tried later in Beirut with no news of the fourth suspect, according to NOW Lebanon.

Their posts are no longer available on Facebook (the AFP indicates that they were removed). No notice about who removed them is available – whether it was Facebook, an individual/the authors, or another institution is unknown. However, the Guardian reports that the comments, which were re-posted on President Suleiman’s official Facebook fan page included harmless gems like “You’re worth my foot,” “you’re like a snake; all you do is from under the table,” and “the king of racism and sectarianism.”

In an open letter to the President, blogger pinkfloyed rightfully expressed outrage that the government chose to waste resources on this, considering all the other domestic issues worth of governmental attention and action, such as widespread poverty and Israeli military presence in Lebanon. In protest, a petition has been circulating online, to Protect Free Speech in Lebanon, with up to 139 signatures as of July 6th.

However, this is not the first time that Lebanon has harassed a netizen for defaming the President. Threatened Voices reported that on March 15, Lebanese blogger and journalist Khodor Salameh was interrogated by Lebanese security forces and threatened with arrest “unless he changed his tone” regarding criticizing the president.

It is telling that these events occur in the wake of upcoming parliamentary voting on a Lebanese e-Transaction law. The law, which activists fought and succeeded in postponing voting on, would legitimize the surveillance of Internet users through regulation of ISPs, as well as limit their ability to communicate by preventing the use of VOIP services. Government monitoring of bloggers and other Internet users becomes especially concerning in light of these arrests.

While Lebanon is frequently considered liberal in terms of freedom of speech (see the Global Freedom of Speech Index) and contains no evidence of Internet filtering (ONI Country Report), these incidents are significant because they indicate the lack of transparency about the limits of Lebanese liberalism. There is apparently a ceiling that these individuals hit which is not explicitly legally defined, as The Guardian notes: “Since these insults were made online – where Lebanese law doesn’t yet reach – that ceiling is only as high as the president deems appropriate.” This sentiment was further reinforced by Justice Minister Najjar who defended the decision of the Prosecutor when he stated that “media freedom in Lebanon and any civilized country reaches its limits when the content is pure slander and aims at undermining the head of state.”

If the results of this case prove Najjar’s statement right, it might have dire consequences for Lebanese bloggers and other Internet users’ freedom of speech online. This is particularly true if the Lebanese e-Transaction bill gets voted and signed into law, legitimizing government surveillance of Lebanese internet users.