Pakistan, Turkey Target Google, Other Sites

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | The Wandering Angel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related

U.S. Presses Syria on Web Freedoms

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

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

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

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

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

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Mirry

Reporters Sans Frontieres | June 25, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China Expands Internet Controls

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Simon Hua

Radio Free Asia | June 25, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ’safe flow of information’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rwanda ‘assassins’ kill reporter Jean Leonard Rugambage

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sinistra Ecologia Libertà

BBC News | June 25, 2010

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

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

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

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

‘South Africa shooting link’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amnesty International Campaign

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

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

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

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

***
Dr. Morton Winston
Address Redacted

Dear Dr. Winston;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Turkletom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Africa’s Gay Activists Use Internet to Advance Homosexual Rights

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Les Chatfield

By Nico Colombant | Voice of America | June 15, 2010

African gay activists in Africa and in the diaspora are increasingly using the Internet to have their voices heard, while still trying to figure out how to advance homosexual rights on the continent.

One of the most popular blogs advocating gay rights in Africa is called Gay Uganda. Its author chooses to remain anonymous.

“I am somebody in the heart of Africa who has been lonely without the rest of the Internet, without the rest of the global sphere, talking about what I would like to talk about, with that kind of freedom,” he said from Kampala.”I cannot do it elsewhere.”

While harsher laws are being proposed against homosexuality across the continent, including in Uganda, the author of Gay Uganda says what he is doing helps Africa’s homosexual community.

“It started off as a way of venting, but then later I realized that it was a way of putting across to the rest of the world what our lives were more or less,” he said. “The things that have been happening around Kampala, in Uganda, and all over the continent – it is strengthening to me personally, that is why I do it.”

He says that in Kampala, very few people know he is gay. But online, he has a community of followers who support him. He adds that the types of articles he writes would never be allowed in traditional media.

“Society is more or less homophobic and the reporters come from the society. But also you have to consider that in a place like Uganda, you cannot write a positive story about gay people. That is a matter of fact,” he added.

Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo said recently that the government is concerned about what he called the “mushrooming” number of gays and lesbians in the country. He said he wants a law enacted that would criminalize confessing to being a homosexual.

Even in African countries like Ghana, which are seen as being relatively tolerant, anti-homosexual activities, such as marches denouncing gays, are becoming more frequent.

Media and influential politicians and religious leaders often denounce homosexuality as Western contamination. And they say homosexuality is contrary to traditional family values.

More than three dozen countries in Africa, including Senegal, have laws criminalizing homosexuality. Selly Thiam, who lives in the United States, is a native of Senegal. She is the founder of the None on Record website, which records testimonies of gays, lesbians and transgender people from Africa, most of them anonymously.

Thiam says she hopes the website will be used to help change policies toward homosexuals.

“None on the Record is just at the beginning of understanding or even becoming conscious of how we fit into the larger movement,” said Thiam. “I think we will have more opportunities in the future to see how we can really impact and support the organizing that is going on in the continent and around the world in other LGBT communities as well.”

LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

Thiam says that although it is important for her to build contacts through the Internet, face-to-face interaction is also important, even if most pro-gay groups in Africa work underground.

“That is why I have to keep going back to work in concert with people who are organizing. It is an issue of safety, and something that I have to think about all the time. But I have to also continue to do my work,” Thiam added.

A columnist from the United States, Reverend Irene Monroe, says her own work and Internet outreach have put her in contact with many gays and lesbians in Africa like a woman from Kenya who recently wrote her an email.

“She says here, ‘I need encouragement. Here homosexuality is punishable by 14 years imprisonment and 28 strokes of the cane. “The church is also extremely hostile. Some suspected lesbians from my church were once beaten and burnt,’” Monroe said.

Gay activists in Africa say it is a very difficult process to advance homosexual rights, especially in difficult economic times, when scapegoats are used by politicians and religious leaders to divert attention.

Irene Monroe links discrimination to a lack of democracy and government policies toward HIV and AIDS.

“Countries that tend to be more open around addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS and have a lot more financial solvency and really do run more in terms of employing a democratic model, you will find in those small pockets throughout Africa and other parts of the world people are more tolerant in the different ways in which people express love,” she said. “And we see it here when we see rabid forms of conservatism here we find in most groups of people who are less tolerant of LGBT folks, it operates similarly believe it or not in Africa too. Culturally, it looks different. But the seed around what gives rise to the kind of homophobia that blossoms in the way it does, it is planted in the same soil.”

Gay activists say they hope those advocating homosexual rights eventually will succeed – one blog entry and appeal for understanding at a time.

Beaten to Death for Using the Internet

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

By Reagan Kuhn | Human Rights First Blog | June 11, 2010

Activists and supporters of Internet freedom in Egypt have described to Human Rights First different measures the Egyptian authorities take to control the activities of people accessing the Internet, but as of last week, it seems they have reached a whole new level. A young man was dragged out of an Internet café and beaten to death after refusing to show his ID card to police.

Patrons of Internet cafés are often required to provide identification details before logging on, and then their searches and activities online can be monitored. Police officers carry out random raids on Internet cafés and gather identification information from those present, even though there is no justification in Egyptian law for this kind of demand.

On the evening of June 7, 2010 what appeared to be one of these random raids escalated into the horrific brutalization of a young man by two policemen. Reports now reveal that the man may have been targeted for exposing police corruption. He posted a video on the internet depicting officers sharing the profits of a drug bust.

One thing that distinguishes this incident from other incidents of government intimidation of bloggers and activists is that it was carried out in plain view, and other citizens were able to capture and transmit images of police brutality before they could be confiscated. As human rights defenders in Egypt have told us, the government’s usual approach is to brutalize activists/netizens after detaining them and to hold them in custody until the bruises have disappeared. Gamal Eid, lawyer and Executive Director for Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, has said that with respect to bloggers and Internet activists, the government will find reasons to “kidnap them, torture them, take their passport and send them to prison until the hurts on their body become normal so for us there is no evidence of what happened.”

Here are the facts of this tragic case: Khaled Mohamed Saeed, 28, was at an Internet café that he frequented in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria when two officers from the local police station entered the café and demanded to see everyone’s ID cards, claiming that they were authorized to do this under the Emergency Law, a law that has been condemned by international human rights organizations and Egyptian activists as allowing security forces to commit abuses with near impunity.

Khaled objected to what he saw as a violation of his rights. There are various reports of what happened next. One press report mentions that the police bound Khaled’s hands and started to beat him, others just describe the beating. Police officers knelt over him beating his head against the marble floor tiles of the café. Khaled was then dragged outside the Internet café, covered in blood, and the beating continued in full view of many witnesses, some of whom pleaded with police to stop. Two doctors even tried to help. Eyewitnesses said his head was banged against an iron door, steps and walls of an adjacent building. He was thrown into a police vehicle, and fifteen minutes later, his gruesomely disfigured dead body was deposited in the street.

Police cordoned off the area, barring patrons from the Internet café, and then passed through the crowd reportedly confiscating cellphones on which people had been taking photographs and shooting video of the beating. Some of these images have appeared online.

Khaled’s family filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Alexandria. Hundreds of protestors have taken to the streets calling for a prosecution in this case. Security forces have responded with further brutality and arrests and in some cases attempted to ban media and journalists from the scene.

Human Rights First is joining with Egyptian human rights activists and bloggers and calling for a prompt, thorough investigation into the brutal killing of Khaled Mohamed Saeed. Those responsible need to be brought to justice.

Human Rights First also calls upon the United States government to defend citizen access to the Internet by expressing strong concern regarding this incident to the Egyptian government.

Egyptians should be able to access the Internet in cybercafés free from harassment and intimidation—when an online post or a random ID check turns into a murder, it is an entirely different problem, and just can’t stand.

For more information, see:

• Video depicting security officers aggressively confronting protestors following the death of Khaled Saeed.
• Egyptian Democratic Academy campaign video depicting Khaled Saeed as a martyr following his death.
• “The brutal killing of Khaled: **Viewer discretion is advised**, June 10, 2010″ blog summarizes accounts including the Facebook post of opposition leader, Ayman Nour and an article in al-shorouk newspaper that describe how Khaled Saeed was brutally beaten by police at an Internet café for refusing to comply with an inspection under the national emergency law and noting that police are trying to avoid liability for the death.
• A news article reporting on the death of Khaled Saeed at the hands of police for failing to comply with their request for identification at an Internet café and noting that police are saying Saeed was using narcotics.

Rebecca MacKinnon explains China’s Internet White Paper

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Tomislavmedak

Here’s an illuminating post from RConversation, Rebecca MacKinnon’s blog on China’s recently released “White Paper on the Internet in China“.

China’s Internet White Paper: networked authoritarianism in action

The release of the Chinese government’s first-ever White Paper on the Internet in China provoked some head-scratching here in the Western world. Part Three of the six-part document is titled “Guaranteeing Citizens’ Freedom of Speech on the Internet.” I’ve heard from several journalists and policy analysts (not people based in China, for whom such cognitive dissonance is normal) who at first glance thought they were reading The Onion or some kind of parody site. How, people asked me, can a government that so blatantly censors the Internet claim with a straight face to be protecting and upholding freedom of speech on the Internet? The answer of course is that China’s netizens are free to do everything… except for the things they’re not free to do.  The list of the latter, outlined in the next section titled Protecting Internet Security is long, vague, and subject to considerable interpretation:

…The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safe flow of Internet information, actively guides people to manage websites in accordance with the law and use the Internet in a wholesome and correct way. The Decision of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on Guarding Internet Security, Regulations on Telecommunications of the People’s Republic of China and Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services stipulate that no organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following contents: being against the cardinal principles set forth in the Constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor and interests; instigating ethnic hatred or discrimination and jeopardizing ethnic unity; jeopardizing state religious policy, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas; spreading rumors, disrupting social order and stability; disseminating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, brutality and terror or abetting crime; humiliating or slandering others, trespassing on the lawful rights and interests of others; and other contents forbidden by laws and administrative regulations.

Other than that, people are totally free. What’s more, the use of the Internet by the people to “supervise” public officials is praised. As long as – in the process of said supervision – state power is not subverted, “state honor” is not jeopardized, nobody is humiliated or slandered, and no “rumors” are spread. The rise of Twitter-like microblogging services is even praised. (Twitter itself is blocked by the “great firewall,” though tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users are believed to access it anyway through third-party clients and circumvention tools).

As I’ve frequently pointed out in the past (see here, here and here for starters), blocking of foreign websites like Twitter is just the top layer of Chinese Internet censorship. Beneath the “great firewall of China” is a sophisticated system by which censorship is delegated to the private sector. The first company to set up a Chinese Twitter-clone was a startup called Fanfou. Last June they got shut down because they failed to police the service adequately: users apparently shared too much content that violated the above no-no list. Other micro-blog services have since emerged. One run by the People’s Daily and another by the popular web portal Sina.com. They seem to have learned from Fanfou’s troubles and have put aggressive censorship systems in place. As Chen Tong, Sina’s head editor, recently commented at a 3G Wireless Industry Summit: “controlling content in Sina microblogs is a problem which is a very big headache.” (The Shanghaiist blog reports that the Sina.com news article reporting Chen’s comments has itself been censored, but not before getting quoted and reported around the Internet.) According to the Sina.com account of his remarks, Chen went on to describe Sina’s microblog-censorship strategy in some detail: 24-7 policing; constant coordination between the editorial department and the “monitoring department” (all social networking companies in China must have one of those in order to stay in compliance with government expectations);  daily meetings; and systems through which both editors and users are constantly reporting problematic content.

Even so, Chen Tong says in his speech that microblogging has been tremendously empowering in China. He says that micro-blogs have become “people’s personal web portals” and that a lot of recent incidents that have generated widespread public concern first emerged on microblogs.

Despite all the policing and the round-the-clock censorship, Chinese Internet users still feel much more empowered to participate in public discourse and even bring issues to national attention than they ever could have imagined in the past. (See Guobin Yang’s excellent book, The Power of the Internet in China for many examples.) As I described it to one journalist, it’s as if a bird that has lived in a cage all its life (one which has been gradually upgraded, with steadily improving food and which is much cleaner than it used to be) suddenly gets released into a large atrium. The bird is likely to feel excited and empowered for quite some time and may not realize that even broader freedom is possible or even desirable: after all, without the atrium walls might she get lost and starve? Or get eaten by other birds? There are plenty of security arguments in favor of supporting the atrium’s legitimacy and necessity; there are even ethical justifications.

Thus China is pioneering what I call “networked authoritarianism.” Compared to classic authoritarianism, networked authoritarianism permits – or shall we say accepts the Internet’s inevitable consequences and adjusts – a lot more give-and-take between government and citizens than in a pre-Internet authoritarian state. While one party remains in control, a wide range of conversations about the country’s problems rage on websites and social networking services. The government follows online chatter, and sometimes people are even able to use the Internet to call attention to social problems or injustices, and even manage to have an impact on government policies. As a result, the average person with Internet or mobile access has a much greater sense of freedom – and may even feel like they have the ability to speak and be heard – in ways that weren’t possible under classic authoritarianism. It also makes most people a lot less likely to join a movement calling for radical political change. In many ways, the regime actually uses the Internet not only to extend its control but also to enhance its legitimacy.

At the same time, in the networked authoritarian state there is no guarantee of individual rights and freedoms. People go to jail when the powers-that-be decide they are too much of a threat – and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Truly competitive, free and fair elections do not happen. The courts and the legal system are tools of the ruling party.

Connecting every citizen in China to the Internet via multiple devices might sound like something the Chinese Communist Party would want to avoid. Several people who contacted me about China’s Internet White Paper were surprised at the Chinese government’s enthusiasm for connectivity. Such enthusiasm does not jive with most American and European notions of how an authoritarian state would be run by a party that calls itself Communist. What’s important to understand is that Chinese authoritarianism in the Internet age is not the same as the crumbling, centrally-planned authoritarianism of the Eastern Bloc, disconnected from the Western capitalist world.

The CCP leadership recognizes that they can’t control everybody all the time if they’re going to be a technologically advanced global economic powerhouse. What’s more, high Internet penetration is necessary if the Chinese government wants to continue high rates of economic growth, which economists agree requires boosting domestic consumer demand as well as pushing Chinese companies to the cutting edge of technological innovation.  China catapulted itself to become the world’s second largest economy by turning itself into the world’s factory. But Chinese labor has grown expensive compared to some other markets in poorer countries. In order to stay competitive and keep growing, China needs to transition from a manufacturing-fueled economy to an economy fueled by domestic consumption at home, while being an innovator for advanced technologies and services that can compete with American and European companies.

Another component of the Chinese Communist Party’s survival strategy involves influencing the Internet’s technical evolution in ways that are most compatible with censorship and surveillance goals. China already has more Internet users than there are Americans on the planet. As the world’s biggest market for Internet technologies, it is starting to influence how these technologies evolve. The Internet is quickly morphing from something we’ve mainly used through our computers into a new, more mobile phase in which all devices, appliances and vehicles – from our phones to our cars to our refrigerators – will be connected to the network. The Chinese government is embracing this future. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao now gives speeches in which he waxes enthusiastic about the “Internet of things.” Chinese Internet and telecommunications companies receive substantial government support in hopes that they will lead the world in shaping the next generation of Internet technologies.

Beyond China, the fastest-growing markets for mobile Internet technologies are in Asia, the Middle East and Africa: exactly those parts of the world where authoritarian governments are most concentrated. Chinese telecommunications companies like Huawei and ZTE (the “Ciscos of China”) are already dominant in many African and Middle Eastern markets. They are building Internet and mobile networks in countries whose governments would prefer to have their systems built by Chinese engineers rather than by Americans.

Another thing that has puzzled some of the American journalists and analysts who contacted me is the Chinese government’s assertion of its “sovereignty” on the Internet, given that the Internet is a globally inter-connected network and derives much of its value from the fact that borders are collapsed online. Yet at the same time, it’s a physical reality that web sites have to be hosted physically on computers that are located in some jurisdiction or another; they are operated by physical human beings who reside under a government jurisdiction and can thus be physically controlled when necessary; they are operated by businesses that have to be registered in one or more jurisdiction and their physical operations are subject to government regulation; and the Internet runs on networks that physically exist within or pass through nation-states. The White Paper is a clear articulation of the Chinese government’s long-standing position that nation-states should have “sovereignty” over all aspects of the Internet – human or equipment or signal – that reside within or pass through Chinese sovereign territory. Google is challenging this notion as it pushes the U.S. government to take action against China for violating WTO rules by using censorship as a barrier to trade. (For further discussion of China and Internet sovereignty see this Interview with Columbia University’s Tim Wu conducted by The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos.)

The White Paper also re-emphasizes the Chinese government’s long-standing position that the global coordination tasks required to make the Internet function – what Internet policy wonks call “Internet governance” – are best left to governments, not private entities or companies or others.  The White Paper did not condemn ICANN, the private non-profit which coordinates the Internet’s domain name system – in fact it didn’t even mention ICANN or other non-governmental organizations that coordinate the Internet’s functions and anoint preferred global technical standards. Nor did it say anything negative about the “multi-stakeholder” governance approach currently favored by Western democracies, which includes non-governmental “civil society” organizations alongside governments and companies. But the document made clear China’s position that ” the UN should be given full scope in international Internet administration.” As Brendan Kuerbis of the Internet Governance Project puts it, China is not intending to disengage from the existing Internet governance frameworks, but can be expected to exert its influence in shaping these frameworks in its preferred direction.

The White Paper’s message is that the Chinese government is not running scared from the Internet. It is embracing the Internet head-on, intends to be a leader in its global evolution, and intends to assert its influence on how the global Internet is governed and regulated.

Note that China is not the only country seeking to assert its brand of Internet sovereignty. For an analysis of what’s happening in Russia, read this chilling overview by Gregory Aslomov at Global Voices. For more on the Russia situation as well as an alarming global overview, be sure to read “Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace” just published by the Open Net Initiative.

On a more optimistic note, the White Paper does have its domestic critics. Blogger, journalist and journalism professor Hu Yong argues (writing on a domestic blog which has not been censored) that most of the regulations governing the Chinese Internet have no clear basis in Chinese law and are arguably unconstitutional. “At a time when the Internet is raising a lot of questions that we don’t have answers to,” he writes, “the government may not have the best solutions. It’s possible that the Internet could give birth to new forms of regulation that aren’t as coercive, and which place greater trust in the strength of individual freedom and the self-governance of citizens.” While the Internet does need to be regulated, he concludes, the public needs to participate in the creation of those regulations.

But as long as all of China’s Internet companies and the few foreign Internet companies with a local presence in China continue to do whatever the government demands, no matter how little legal or constitutional legitimacy such demands might have, the government will have little incentive to accept the kind of change that Hu Yong envisions. Note that many of the big Chinese companies receive American investment dollars or are publicly traded on U.S. stock exchanges, sending a clear message that whatever U.S. elected officials might say about “Internet freedom,” many American investors are quite happy to profit from China’s status quo.

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Rebecca MacKinnon

Visiting Fellow, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University

Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org

Cell: +1-617-939-3493

E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon@gmail.com

Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack

Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/rebeccamack

Privacy and Free Speech: It’s Good for Business!

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

On Tuesday, June 15, I participated in a panel discussion at the 2010 Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference. The panel was moderated by the ACLU of Northern California, and based upon a primer for business that they produced in 2009 entitled (naturally) “Privacy and Free Speech: It’s Good for Business“. Panelists included perspectives from legal advisors to companies, venture capitalists, and companies. We discussed specific case studies and why it makes good business sense to incorporate privacy and free speech considerations when making business decisions, creating/launching new products and, for new companies, during the start-up phase.

For video of the event, see here.