Global Network Initiative Announces New Executive Director

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Tomeppy

March 9, 2010 – The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Susan Morgan as its first Executive Director.

As Executive Director, Ms. Morgan will be responsible for continuing to make GNI a leading voice in defending and promoting freedom of expression and privacy in the information and communications technology industry worldwide. Ms. Morgan comes to GNI at a pivotal time and will be focused on advancing GNI’s goals, including increasing membership, encouraging collective action, overseeing the learning and accountability framework, and acting as a public advocate and spokesperson for GNI.

“Technology has the potential to dramatically increase access to information and protect personal privacy. However, increasing demands from governments to limit content, restrict freedom of expression and monitor users represent a worrying threat to human rights,” said Ms. Morgan.

“GNI can lead the way in helping companies make thoughtful and responsible decisions that protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Internet and communications technology users around the world,” Ms. Morgan said. “I am delighted to join GNI and look forward to building its global leadership role as we encourage more companies and their stakeholders to join us in this multi-stakeholder effort to protect freedom of expression and privacy worldwide.”

Ms. Morgan expects to begin her role at GNI in May of this year, joining from British Telecommunications (BT), where she was head of corporate responsibility (CR) strategy, policy and business planning.  She played a key role in BT’s approach to external reporting and corporate accountability.  She also led work on assessing corporate responsibility risk and opportunity.  Ms. Morgan has more than fifteen years of experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors.

Today, GNI also announces the formation of its Board of Directors. The GNI Board of Directors consists of eight representatives from companies, four from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), two from the academic community, two from investment firms, and an independent Chair.  All the NGO, academic and investor seats on the Board are filled, and five company seats remain open for companies that join GNI.

Finally, GNI has published on its website a Governance Charter that establishes a formal decision-making and accountability structure for GNI.  The Charter describes how GNI will be governed in order to ensure integrity, accountability and effectiveness.

The Global Network Initiative is a multi-stakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics dedicated to protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.  To learn more, visit our website at http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org

For media inquiries, please contact GNI at press@globalnetworkinitiative.org
About Susan Morgan: http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/staff/index.php
GNI Board of Directors: http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/board/index.php
GNI Governance Charter: http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/charter/index.php

Sen. Durbin blasts local non-participants in GNI; promises IT human rights legislation

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | DW212

by Bonnie Boglioli-Randall | Examiner.com | March 3, 2010

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law convened for part II of its “Global Internet Freedom and Rule of Law” hearing. Among those testifying was Google’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Nicole Wong. More conspicuously absent, however, were the many Silicon Valley tech companies that rejected offers to participate in the hearing.

On the heels of the latest internet privacy and human rights issues including Google in China and internet censorship, Senator Richard (Dick) Durbin (D- IL) chaired the meeting to discuss the role of the Global Network Initiative in human rights.  The Global Network Initiative , founded in 2008, seeks to collaborate with ICT companies, human rights organizations, academics and others to promote the freedoms of expression and privacy online. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are currently the only major participants in the initiative- a subject which the hearing sought to address.

“I’m disappointed that a year and a half after the GNI started and no new companies have joined,” Sen. Durbin candidly told the committee. “Many companies told me that the GNI is not relevant to their companies’ business. The last two years have demonstrated that is simply not true.”

The start of 2010 has seen numerous internet issues come to light, including the recent case in Italy that convicted four Google executives for a video posted by a user on Youtube (and later taken offline). That case, along with the recent cyber attacks emanating out of China, has many wondering what the broader implications will be for Internet companies and privacy rights.

Wong told the Subcommittee that the number of governments engaging in censorship has risen to 40, citing targeted surveillance and malware as just a few tactics most often utilized. More than 25 governments have blocked Google services, including the blockage of Youtube in countries such as Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, Morocco and others. “This growing problem was underscored by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her recent speech on Internet freedom,” Wong said. “It is imperative for governments, companies, and individuals to do more to ensure that the Internet continues to be a powerful medium for expressing political opinions, religious views and other core speech without restriction.”

Today, Google urged the Obama Administration to take China’s Internet censorship all the way to the WTO, with some suggesting a new Cold War era for the Internet while others are quick to point out the profound relevance of public diplomacy in the Internet Age. The need for common principles governing the Internet seems to be coming to a head, making some like Sen. Durbin question the lack of participation within the GNI.

“The explosive growth of social networking services like Twitter and Facebook has helped human rights activists organize and publicize human rights violations in Iran and other places in the world,” Sen. Durbin said in his lead address yesterday. “However, repressive governments can use these same tools to monitor and crack down on advocates.”

Singling out numerous Silicon Valley ICT companies unwilling to participate in congressional hearings and the GNI, Durbin named Twitter, Facebook, HP and Apple among others who declined his invitation to appear before the Senate subcommittee. “With a few notable exceptions, the technology industry seems unwilling to regulate itself and unwilling even to engage in a dialogue with Congress about the serious human rights challenges the industry faces,” Durbin said.

In a letter addressed to Senator Durbin in response to the invitation, Facebook’s Director of Public Policy Timothy Sparapani cited Facebook’s lack of involvement in China as its key factor for not involving itself in the Global Internet Freedom Hearing and contributed the following:

(At the same time), we recognize that social norms around information sharing, connection, openness, and privacy vary form country to country and culture to culture. As our business grows internationally, we work hard to offer tools and services that empower users while recognizing the importance of respecting local conditions, traditons and legal requirements… We are carefully watching the experience of similarly situated, but longer tenured companies, and trying to learn from their experience.

-       (Senator Durbin’s Website features this letter and others, dated February 19, 2010)

Ebay and others also noted their decline to participate (in letters addressed to Sen. Durbin on his website) based upon its lack of impact during the Chinese cyber attacks on Google and others earlier this year.

For its part in the Hearing, the Global Network Initiative stated that a “shared, public, credible committment by all companies is essential to protecting the rights of freedom of expression and privacy.” Its delivered statement also read, “We invite all ICT companies to participate in the GNI and draw upon the guidance and insights provided by the GNI’s principles and guidelines in creating a responsible approach to business decisions.”

To ensure American companies are not complicit in violating human rights, Sen. Durbin announced at the hearing that he will introduce legislation to require Internet companies to protect human rights or possibly face civil and criminal consequences.

The complete audio file for Senator Durbin’s remarks and the hearing are available on his U.S. Senate website.

Google Ruling Could Limit Web Information, U.S. Officials Say

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Uros Velickovic

By Jeff Bliss | Bloomberg | March 2, 2010

An Italian judge’s conviction last month of two managers and a former executive of Google Inc. for privacy violations may set a precedent that could restrict the flow of Internet information, U.S. officials said today.

“We are clearly concerned about the ramifications of” the court’s decision “if it were to spread out across the globe,” said Michael Posner, assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor at the Department of State.

Milan judge Oscar Magi ruled on Feb. 24 that the two managers and the former executive shared responsibility for a clip uploaded to Google Video in 2006 by a group of Turin school students, who filmed themselves bullying an autistic classmate.

David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development, Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel, and George Reyes, a former chief financial officer, were sentenced to six- month terms, which were suspended.

The defendants denied any wrongdoing.

David Weitzner, an associate administrator at the Commerce Department, said requiring Internet companies to police content would slow the Web’s growth.

“The Internet really would grind to a halt,” he said.

Weitzner and Posner testified today before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Internet censorship. While siding with Mountain View, California-based Google against the Italian court’s decision, senators said Internet companies, in general, need to do more to ensure they’re not carrying out a country’s censorship agenda.

Durbin Measure

Senator Richard Durbin, the subcommittee’s chairman, said he would introduce legislation requiring Web companies to “take reasonable steps” to protect human rights under threat of civil or criminal penalties.

“With a few notable exceptions, the technology industry seems unwilling to regulate itself and unwilling even to engage in a dialogue with Congress about the serious human rights challenges that the industry faces,” he said.

Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said more companies need to join the Global Network Initiative, or GNI, a voluntary set of standards for ensuring Internet users’ human rights. He said few companies have followed the lead of Google, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to be involved with GNI.

Congress has a “responsibility to ensure that American companies are not complicit in violating freedom of expression,” he said.

That’s Right: Yahoo! in Berlin

By Jen Swallow | Legal Director EMEA | Product Compliance

As the final touches were being put to Hillary Clinton’s speech on Internet freedoms, a rich discussion on human rights was hotting up in Berlin.  National and international representatives of industry, commerce, politics, civil society and academia had come together at the ‘That’s Right’ conference to exchange views and ideas on the topic of corporate responsibility for human rights.  Yahoo!’s BHRP was thrilled to contribute.

Hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the event was led by Professor John Ruggie, the UN Special Representative for human rights and trans-national corporations, who held a lively ‘town hall’ meeting in the morning, giving participants an opportunity to engage in direct dialogue on the practical implementation of his policy framework: Protect, Respect, Remedy.  Later in the day, the Special Representative praised the Global Network Initiative, which Yahoo! co-founded, and called for European ICT companies to sign up as members.

Yahoo!’s BHRP participated alongside Microsoft and Google in a panel session in the afternoon on the topic of “which approaches can be taken when national legislation is incompatible with internationally recognised human rights”.  After keynotes from the highly respected speakers Lene Wendland, Officer of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Center and Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China, the companies shared their experiences and approach to addressing the challenges of incompatibility between national laws and human rights.

I outlined how Yahoo!’s BHRP is integrating human rights issues into the way we make business decisions across our organisation and gave some examples of how that integration has already paid dividends for the promotion of free expression and privacy, e.g. our human rights impact assessment in Vietnam, which resulted in our decision to manage and operate Yahoo!’s Vietnamese language services out of Singapore so the services would be governed by laws with stronger protections than in Vietnam today.

I also contended that it would be a mistake to focus only on countries with a poor record on human rights, as is illustrated by a recent Belgian court judgment against Yahoo!, and that such cases show the importance of implementing practices, such as those recommended by the GNI, consistently, throughout an organization, not just vis-à-vis certain countries.

The panel took questions ranging from Google’s recent China announcement, to the practical difficulties of respecting local content standards in the context of global products such as YouTube and Flickr, to the question of corporate accountability, which panel member Alexis Krajeski of F&C Management Ltd. explained was an important focus area for the GNI.

It was a privilege to contribute to the debate and to have the opportunity to learn and share ideas.  Yahoo!’s BHRP looks forward to continued efforts on these topics and to a positive outcome of the Special Representative’s mandate.

To share your views, please comment below, or join the debate on the Special Representative’s forum, at http://www.srsgconsultation.org.

by Jen Swallow| Legal Director EMEA | Product Compliance

The Battle for Press Freedom Moves Online

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | James Buck

From Tibet to Tehran, more and more front-line reporting is being carried out by freelancers and published online. But the revolution in newsgathering—brought about by new technology and the downsizing of traditional media outlets—has a down side. For the first time, half of all journalists jailed around the world worked online as bloggers, reporters, or Web editors. Most of them are freelancers with little or no institutional support.

These are the key findings of a report released Dec. 8 by the Committee To Protect Journalists. The annual census of imprisoned journalists was conducted on Dec. 1 and includes every journalist who was in jail on that day. All told, there are 136 journalists on the list, an increase of 11 from the previous year. Sixty-eight of them worked online, the vast majority of them freelancers.

For the 11th year in a row, China is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with 24 behind bars. It is followed closely by Iran, where 23 journalists remain in jail, out of dozens rounded up in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 election. Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma round out the top five.

A closer look at the numbers in China reveals just how dramatically the Internet has transformed both newsgathering and the dissemination of critical commentary in repressive societies.

A decade ago, when China first topped the list, most of those jailed were print reporters for mainstream media outlets who had gone too far in their criticism of government officials. The Chinese media are much more open today, but there are still clear limits, and journalists who displease the authorities face consequences. The difference is that they are more likely to be fired than thrown in jail.

But online journalists can’t be fired, blacklisted, or, in most cases, bought off precisely because most work independently. They don’t have employers who can be pressured. Chinese authorities have few options when it comes to reining in online critics—censor them, intimidate them, or throw them in jail. This explains why 18 of the 24 journalists imprisoned in China worked online.

In Iran, there’s a similar dynamic. The 23 reporters jailed there fall roughly into two camps—those who worked for print media outlets allied with opposition candidates and those who worked independently online. Under the reformist presidency of Mohammed Khatami, 1997-2005, the Tehran intelligentsia famously spent hours in cafes perusing dozens of newspapers and magazines, reformist and conservative. A crackdown on the print media that accelerated under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad closed many newspapers and forced top journalists and commentators online, fueling the rise of the Farsi blogosphere. Today, many of these journalists are in jail or in exile.

Unquestionably, the rise of Web-based reporting provides exciting new opportunities. An adventurous young freelancer can head out to cover the world armed with a laptop and a digital camera. Government critics from Burma to Vietnam are able to circumvent the censors and get their views out to the world.

But the sharp increase in the number of imprisoned online journalists highlights new vulnerabilities. They are utterly alone when authorities knock on the door to take them away. Freelancers face jail without legal assistance or the backing of an employer who can provide support for their families.

Even more alarming is the vulnerability of the Internet itself. The utopian notion that the Internet is impossible to censor or control has given way to a new reality. Even as new formal and informal news organizations emerge on the Web, traditional media—text and broadcast, public and private, partisan and nonpartisan, for-profit and nonprofit—are all converging online. The convergence creates an “information chokepoint” that repressive governments can shut down when a story gets out of control. Whereas governments used to have to close dozens of newspapers and shut down individual radio stations, now they can simply halt the circulation of information by pulling the plug on the Web.

In China, for example, the government shut down the Internet and even the cell phone network when riots broke out in Xinjiang province earlier this year. In Iran, citizen journalists’ reports about the post-election violence were eventually silenced as the mullahs shut down Internet communication and began rounding up critical bloggers. On Saturday, Iranian authorities did it again, shutting down the Internet and the cell system to disrupt planning for student protests held Monday. The shutdown was also intended to limit coverage of the events through the Web and social media sites.

This is why the battle for press freedom around the world has moved online. It’s no longer about keeping the presses running and unblocking the airwaves. Ensuring that people around the world have access to diverse news and information means keeping the Internet free.

In order to defend press freedom in this new environment, press freedom groups like CPJ need to change tactics. Traditional advocacy—protest letters to heads of state, detailed reports chronicling government crackdowns—will continue to be relevant, but there will also be a technological component to our advocacy that involves navigating around firewalls, circumventing censorship, and outflanking government efforts to control the Web. In order to better carry out this kind of advocacy, CPJ is adding a new specialized program dedicated to the defense of online journalists.

But technology has its limits, and the freedom to express ideas and disseminate information through the Internet cannot be taken for granted. Like all freedoms, it must be actively defended. While there are highly effective organizations like the OpenNet Initiative and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, media companies and journalists are just beginning to understand that they have a huge stake in preserving Internet freedom.

Internet and technology companies also need to do more. So far, they have a mixed record. It’s true that people in repressive societies benefit from access to the Internet, but not when companies collaborate in censoring content or exposing government critics, as Yahoo did when it turned over to Chinese authorities information used to arrest journalist Shi Tao in 2004.

Fortunately, these companies are taking steps to address the issue. CPJ is a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, an organization of human rights groups, academics, socially responsible investors, and Internet leaders such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. These companies have agreed to a set of principles that will help them push back against censorship.

Traditional media companies and Internet service providers have complex commercial arrangements that make them partners in some realms and competitors in others. But they should be natural allies as the battle for press freedom enters this new phase. We need to form a united front to push back against government censorship, confront repressive regimes, blend traditional advocacy with technological innovation, and stand up publicly for journalists of all kinds who seek to report the news online.

Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee To Protect Journalists.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2237675/

Happy Birthday GNI!

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | EPerales

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is celebrating the first anniversary of its 2008 launch. In the past year, GNI participants have worked to promote privacy and free expression in a number of ways.

GNI has developed a human rights impact assessment tool (HRIA) to help companies identify when freedom of expression and privacy may be jeopardized or advanced, and to develop appropriate risk mitigation strategies.

GNI has convened shared learning events, on a number of topics including:

• Real and potential restrictions to freedom of expression in multiple locations around the world, including Argentina, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Moldova, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Korea, Zimbabwe and Italy.

• Law enforcement request issues in multiple locations around the world, including Belgium, the USA, China and Argentina.

• The use of Internet and telecommunications services during the elections in Iran.

• The Green Dam/Youth Escort software proposals in China.

GNI has contributed to public dialogue about the intersection of technology and human rights in a number of settings, including:

• The International Seminar on Business and Human Rights in Paris, held to mark the 60th anniversary of the UDHR;
• A briefing to update members of the U.S. Congress on GNI’s progress and multi-stakeholder approach;
• The conference on “Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology & New Media” at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley;
• The Yahoo! Business and Human Rights Summit; and
• The 7th Chinese Internet Research Conference, hosted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

GNI has also  hosted  outreach events and conversations for prospective members in Washington DC, Silicon Valley, Paris and Singapore.

For more details about GNI’s past year, as well as plans for the future, please go to http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/newsletter/index.php.

Yahoo! is proud to be a founding member of the GNI, and we look forward to continuing to work with our fellow participants to address threats to freedom of expression and privacy around the world. We hope to welcome new members to the GNI, and we will continue to engage with all stakeholders who share our goal of protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector around the globe.

A little more conversation

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

James Emery | Flickr Creative Commons

Hello, and welcome to the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program blog! For the past few years, Yahoo! has been focused upon how to address the fact that our business increasingly intersects with human rights issues around the world, specifically user privacy and free expression on the Internet. We know that we have a responsibility, like all companies, to act responsibly in the communities in which we operate, and we have taken action, including funding academic fellowships, creating the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund, engaging with governments, and helping to co-found the Global Network Initiative.

You can read more about our initiatives on our website, at humanrights.yahoo.com.

At Yahoo!, we believe that access to information improves lives and advances human rights around the world. We also know that with almost half a billion users around the word, we have an opportunity to raise awareness about free expression and user privacy.  The issues at the intersection of technology and human rights are complex, and we believe that we can only benefit from transparency and an open exchange of ideas with engaged and informed people around the world.

With this blog, we are hoping to start a conversation. Will you join us?

by Ebele Okobi-Harris |  Director, Business & Human Rights Program