Political Repression 2.0

By Nicole

Flickr Creative Commons |Dantessina.Sara|

By Evgeny Morozov| New York Times |Sept 1, 2011|

AGENTS of the East German Stasi could only have dreamed of the sophisticated electronic equipment that powered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s extensive spying apparatus, which the Libyan transitional government uncovered earlier this week. The monitoring of text messages, e-mails and online chats — no communications seemed beyond the reach of the eccentric colonel.

What is even more surprising is where Colonel Qaddafi got his spying gear: software and technology companies from France, South Africa and other countries. Narus, an American company owned by Boeing, met with Colonel Qaddafi’s people just as the protests were getting under way, but shied away from striking a deal. As Narus had previously supplied similar technology to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it was probably a matter of public relations, not business ethics.

Amid the cheerleading over recent events in the Middle East, it’s easy to forget the more repressive uses of technology. In addition to the rosy narrative celebrating how Facebook and Twitter have enabled freedom movements around the world, we need to confront a more sinister tale: how greedy companies, fostered by Western governments for domestic surveillance needs, have helped suppress them.

Libya is only the latest place where Western surveillance technology has turned up. Human rights activists arrested and later released in Bahrain report being presented with transcripts of their own text messages — a capacity their government acquired through equipment from Siemens, the German industrial giant, and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks, based in Finland, and Trovicor, another German company.

Earlier this year, after storming the secret police headquarters, Egyptian activists discovered that the Mubarak government had been using a trial version of a tool — developed by Britain’s Gamma International — that allowed them to eavesdrop on Skype conversations, widely believed to be safe from wiretapping.

And it’s not just off-the-shelf technology; some Western companies supply dictators with customized solutions to block offensive Web sites. A March report by OpenNet Initiative, an academic group that monitors Internet censorship, revealed that Netsweeper, based in Canada, together with the American companies Websense and McAfee (now owned by Intel), have developed programs to meet most of the censorship needs of governments in the Middle East and North Africa — in Websense’s case, despite promises not to supply its technology to repressive governments.

Unfortunately, the American government, the world’s most vociferous defender of “Internet freedom,” has little to say about such complicity. Though Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton often speaks publicly on the subject, she has yet to address how companies from her country undermine her stated goal. To add insult to injury, in December the State Department gave Cisco — which supplied parts for China’s so-called Great Firewall — an award in recognition of its “good corporate citizenship.”

Such reticence may not be entirely accidental, since many of these tools were first developed for Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Western policy makers are therefore in a delicate spot. On the one hand, it is hard to rein in the very companies they have nurtured; it is also hard to resist the argument from repressive regimes that they need such technologies to monitor extremists. On the other hand, it’s getting harder to ignore the fact that extremists aren’t the only ones under surveillance.

The obvious response is to ban the export of such technologies to repressive governments. But as long as Western states continue using monitoring technologies themselves, sanctions won’t completely eliminate the problem — the supply will always find a way to meet the demand. Moreover, dictators who are keen on fighting extremism are still welcome in Washington: it’s a good bet that much of the electronic spying done in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt was done with the tacit support of his American allies.

What we need is a recognition that our reliance on surveillance technology domestically — even if it is checked by the legal system — is inadvertently undermining freedom in places where the legal system provides little if any protection. That recognition should, in turn, fuel tighter restrictions on the domestic surveillance-technology sector, including a reconsideration of the extent to which it actually needs such technology in our increasingly privacy-free world. 

As countries like Belarus, Iran and Myanmar digest the lessons of the Arab Spring, their demand for monitoring technology will grow. Left uncontrolled, Western surveillance tools could undermine the “Internet freedom” agenda in the same way arms exports undermine Western-led peace initiatives. How many activists, finding themselves confronted with information collected using Western technology, would trust the pronouncements of Western governments again?

Web becomes valued forum for free speech

By Nicole

Flickr Creative Commons | Vladimir Frolov

By Leyla Boulton | Financial Times | June 16, 2011 |

When state television showed a dynamic Vladimir Putin at the wheel of a yellow Lada touring the provinces after devastating forest fires, a fuller picture was to be found on the internet.Video shot by laughing onlookers and uploaded to the net showed that the prime minister was in fact followed by a motorcade of at least two dozen vehicles, including three spare yellow Ladas in case of a mechanical breakdown.

There are few sectors that better reflect Russia’s lopsided development than the internet. The web has grown strongly as a business, drawing on the nation’s strengths in maths and science to produce a domestic search engine, Yandex, that describes itself as “better than Google”.

Yet the government’s efforts to foster a Russian Silicon Valley outside Moscow show how a poor investment climate is letting down that human potential. Politically, the return to an authoritarian system, in which the government controls television but not newspapers or radio, has turned the internet into a valuable – though incomplete – forum for free speech and discussion.

Like jokes in the Soviet era, the internet takes the sting out of Russian life in the 21st century.

Unfettered news and comment about everything that television will not touch includes descriptions of high-level shenanigans and mockery of the ruling tandem of Mr Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the president.

Mr Medvedev’s online nickname of “Captain Obvious” refers to his tendency to say the right thing with little to show for it. A few days after he declared that the release from prison of Mikhail Khodorkovsky would pose “absolutely no danger” to society, the former tycoon was sentenced to a second term in prison in what was widely seen as a politically motivated trial.

“You can go on the internet to vent your frustration and that makes you feel like you’ve done something, although of course you haven’t really changed anything,” says Sergey Alexashenko, a 21-year-old student at Georgetown University in the US. He is struck by the idealism of his US peers, compared with the cynicism back home.

Exceptions to such apathy include the Duma intern who was fired after he published details of expense-fiddling and time-wasting by parliamentarians on his blog.

Although internet penetration in Russia is expected to increase from 40 to 70 per cent over the next four years, according to Public Opinion Foundation, a Moscow-based polling agency, online debate is confined to a relatively small proportion of the population.

At one end of the range is the slick website of Snob magazine. Blogs by subscribers including oligarchs sit alongside interviews with the likes of Bill Browder, a foreign investor banned from Russia, whose lawyer died in custody while trying to protect his client’s assets from a scam involving officials.

At the other extreme, rightwing groups used the internet to organise demonstrations against immigration and corruption in December, and more chillingly, to target specific individuals. Oleg Kashin, a reporter, was savagely beaten in November (and filmed for all to see) after his picture appeared on a farright website labelled “to be punished”.

Given widespread apathy, Maria Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, argues that an Arabstyle revolt driven by social media is not on the cards. “I see the mood but not the movement,” she says. “People are increasingly angry, but this does not change the overall assumption – that ‘there is nothing we can change’. ” The authorities, for their part, are taking no chances.

In an embarrassing episode before its IPO in New York last month, Yandex was forced by the FSB security agency to hand over details of contributors to an anti-corruption website run by Alexei Navalny, a popular blogger and whistleblower. The details found their way to Nashi, a nationalist youth group prone to violent harassing of government critics.

And was the Kremlin involved in a cyber-attack on LiveJournal, a blogging site used by Mr Medvedev, Mr Navalny and the Duma intern? “Yes and no,” says Ilya Ponomarev, head of the Duma’s subcommittee for high-tech development, who advises the president on the internet.

He believes the attack was the “initiative of people sponsored by the administration to generate pro-government content in the blogosphere … but I don’t think they were directly ordered to [attack].

“As this community becomes larger, they invent activities for themselves to prove they are important. The same applies to our nationalist groups. It’s a Catch-22. The authorities give them money to gain leverage; they ask for more and go out of control.”

But in the absence of “open” politics, says Mr Ponomarev – speaking in a still largely empty mansion housing the president’s Institute for Contemporary Development – high-tech remains Russia’s most likely engine of progress.

Uganda Threatens to Shut Down More Media Outlets

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Maisha Elonai

By Nicholas Bariyo | The Wall Street Journal | April 19, 2011

KAMPALA, Uganda—Uganda’s state communications regulator warned Tuesday that it is likely to close down more media outlets deemed to be inciting people protesting escalating food and fuel prices.

This followed the arrest Monday of Uganda’s main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, who was charged with riotous behavior and inciting violence after he was arrested while leading protests over prices.

Last week’s order to Internet-service providers to block the use of Facebook and Twitter was just a “caution,” according to Godfrey Mutabazi, the executive director of Uganda Communications Commission.

“We shall not hesitate to close others if they incite people,” he said, adding that the regulator has already asked media organizations to be cautious of the danger of inciting protesters.

Tensions are mounting across the country, triggered by rocketing food and fuel prices. The government blames the food shortage on a drought late last year, which hurt yields of crops like corn, grains and cereals across the country.

The drought also affected major cash crops like coffee, tea and cocoa. Last week, Uganda’s state coffee body revised the 2010-11 coffee production forecast downwards by at least 13% because of the drought.

The commission has already directed Uganda’s local television and radio stations to stop covering the protests live, blaming the coverage for the escalation of protests in recent days.

Last week Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni warned that the government would step up a crackdown on protesters. At least four people have been killed in the crackdown, which has also left dozens injured, according to the Red Cross.

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights urged the government Monday to stop using excessive force during protests and to guarantee people’s right to freedom of assembly and expression, Uganda’s state media reported Tuesday.

On Monday, the main opposition leader, Mr. Besigye, was charged with riotous behavior and inciting violence after he was arrested earlier Monday while leading protests over rising food and fuel prices.

The state prosecutor tried to block Mr. Besigye from receiving bail, but the magistrate ruled in the opposition leader’s favor, granting him a court bail of 10 million Ugandan shillings ($4,348), according to David Mpanga, attorney to the opposition’s Forum For Democratic Change.

The charges were the second round against Mr. Besigye in less than two weeks after he started protesting against the escalating food and fuel prices.

In the Kampala suburb of Kasangati, law-enforcement teams fired teargas to disperse Besigye supporters demonstrating against his arrest.

At least one person died of suffocation after police accidentally fired teargas at a hospital, according to the Red Cross. Judith Nabakoba, Uganda’s police spokeswoman, said the police suspect that the patient died of natural causes. Witnesses said patients were seen scampering in the hospital’s yard after police fired tear gas at the building.

The opposition has rallied supporters to protest against rising food and fuel prices in the country by walking from their homes to their workplaces at least twice a week until the government addresses the situation.

Uganda suffered months of drought at the end of 2010 and earlier this year, which hurt agricultural yields and led to food shortages.

The national statistics agency said last month that average food prices rose 29% in March from a month earlier.

Mr. Besigye was President Museveni’s main challenger in disputed Feb. 18 polls.

Iceland Seeks to Become Sanctuary for Free Speech

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Niklas Sjöblom

By Henry Chu | Los Angeles Times | April 02, 2011

Lawmakers here have given the go-ahead to an ambitious plan to turn this unassuming island in the North Atlantic into an international sanctuary for free speech, putting Iceland at the leading edge of media openness but also pushing it into uncharted territory.

The goal, supporters say, is to promote transparency not only in Iceland but across an increasingly interconnected world.

Bahrain Arrests Leading Internet Activist

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | infinitewhite

Voice of America News | March 30, 2011

Family members and human rights officials say Bahraini authorities have arrested the country’s most prominent Internet activist as part of a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

They say officials took Mahmoud al-Youssef into custody on Wednesday.  Al-Youssef has been a vocal critic of the government for its limits on freedom of expression. He has been referred to as the “godfather” of blogging in the Gulf nation.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch says Bahraini authorities are harassing demonstrators and bystanders who were wounded in anti-government protests.

The rights group said Wednesday the country’s security and military forces have sought out and threatened injured activists who were taken to Bahrain’s largest medical facility earlier this month.

On Monday, the Reuters news agency said Bahrain’s opposition party claimed 250 people had been detained and 44 others were missing in a government crackdown on protesters.

Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency on March 15 after troops from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states came to help the Sunni monarchy quell Shi’ite-led protests.

On Wednesday, Bahraini opposition leader Ali Salman demanded the withdrawal of the Saudi-led forces.  Iran has also condemned the deployment but Salman warned Iran against interfering in Bahrain’s internal affairs.  

Bahrain’s parliament accepted the resignations of key political Shi’ite opposition members on Tuesday, signaling a further divide in the sectarian crisis gripping the island nation.

Bahrain’s parliament is the nation’s only elected body but holds limited powers. The government is mostly run by the Sunni monarch.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters

RIM Calls India’s Email Demands ‘Astonishing’

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | tuxthepenguin84

By Amol Sharma | The Wall Street Journal | March 14, 2011

NEW DELHI—A top executive of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Indian security agencies are making “rather astonishing” demands for increased powers to monitor email and other data traffic, raising serious privacy issues that threaten to harm the country’s reputation with foreign investors.

Robert Crow, vice president of industry and government relations for RIM, said India’s Home Ministry, which oversees domestic security, wants the ability to intercept in real time any communication on any Indian network—including BlackBerry’s highly secure corporate-email service—and get it in readable, plain-text format.

Such a broad requirement raises the question of whether the government believes any communications are legally off-limits, he said, including email conversations of foreign ambassadors and financial records that get transmitted over secure telecommunications networks to Indian outsourcing companies.

“You connect those dots and you’re saying, ‘Holy smokes,’ ” Mr. Crow said during an interview. “This claim is made in an environment where we don’t really have any privacy- or data-protection laws—and where we have a pretty poor administrative record of keeping similar things like wiretaps secret.”

A spokesman for India’s Home Ministry declined to comment. Government officials in India have previously said they want to ensure suspected terrorists and criminals can’t elude government surveillance by using newfangled communications technologies. Under current Indian law, the home secretary—the top bureaucrat in the Home Ministry—authorizes all telecom surveillance by central-government agencies for 60 days at a time.

For several months, RIM has faced demands from India to give security agencies a way to access encrypted messages on BlackBerry’s corporate-email service. BlackBerry has repeatedly said its system is designed so that it doesn’t have the “keys” to unlock users’ messages—and it has refused to change its technology architecture in any one of the 175 countries where it offers service.

Mr. Crow said he is heartened, at least, that India no longer appears to be singling out RIM. India has realized, he said, that other advanced services—such as virtual private networks, or VPNs, and peer-to-peer messaging services, are outside its surveillance reach.

It isn’t clear whether the Indian government has set any firm deadline for when it should gain access to BlackBerry corporate-email and other services and whether it would take the drastic measure of shutting down services that aren’t compliant. Indian media reports have said the government has told Indian telecom operators to submit plans by March 31 showing how they would accommodate security agencies’ demands. But the government has made no announcement to that effect.

Mr. Crow said he is optimistic that India’s telecom ministry, which is beginning to assert more authority on the matter, will have a better understanding of the technological constraints RIM faces and will find a solution to the issue that doesn’t require BlackBerry to compromise user privacy. A telecom-ministry spokesman declined to comment.

But Mr. Crow said he expects talks with India to drag on, given the inherent delays in the country’s democracy and the lack of well-defined regulations on data protection and privacy.

“I think this may well go on and on in India, and frankly it will be one of those factors that people talk about in the Indian business environment—not one that will be seen in India’s favor in international comparison,” Mr. Crow said.

BlackBerry, which touts the highly secure nature of its email service as a key selling point globally, has faced intensifying demands from foreign governments for access to the service in recent months. The stakes in India are especially high, given that the country has more than 770 million wireless subscribers who are just beginning to shift from ordinary phones to smartphones such as BlackBerrys.

Mr. Crow said he has proposed ways for Indian intelligence and security agencies to advance investigations without gaining access to the actual content of encrypted BlackBerry email messages. He said telecom operators can glean so-called meta data about messages, such as the time messages were sent, and the corporate-email server they went through.

“If that pattern of communications were known to the authorities on lawful grounds,” Mr. Crow said, “then the authorities would be in a position to go to the correct corporate entity that owns the server” and pursue their investigation of a suspect.

In January, RIM resolved India’s security concerns with the BlackBerry Messenger chat service, which uses a lower level of encryption than corporate email. The company gave Indian telecom operators a system that lets them key in a suspect’s phone number and get unscrambled versions of Messenger chats, when a legal order has been provided, Mr. Crow said.

Mr. Crow said RIM is “kicking the tires” on potential plans to expand in India, where it already has a data center and where about 11,000 software developers are making programs to run on BlackBerrys. One possibility down the line is for India to manufacture some of the several thousand parts that go into a BlackBerry.

“There’s a heck of a lot of demand [for BlackBerrys] within three to four hours flight of most of the manufacturing places in India, including India itself,” he said.

U.N. Rapporteur Reports Freedom of Expression Severely Curtailed in South Korea

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Ko_An

By Son Jun-hyun | The Hankyoreh | February 17, 2011

A report that is to be submitted to the United Nations this year states that freedom of expression has receded substantially in South Korea under the Lee Myung-bak administration and recommends that the South Korean government initiate improvements. The report, written by U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue following a May 2010 visit and investigation, serves as an important measure of the human rights situation in the country and is expected to draw charges from the international community that South Korea is an underdeveloped human rights nation.

The English-language report titled “Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, and Culture Rights, Including the Right to Development,” a copy of which was acquired Wednesday by the Hankyoreh, states that the scope of freedom of expression has diminished in South Korea since the candlelight vigil demonstrations against the full-scale resumption of U.S. beef imports in 2008.

The report also noted an increasing number of cases where individuals who present opinions that do not agree with the government’s position are prosecuted and punished based on domestic laws and regulations that do not conform to international law.

Over its length of 28 A4-sized pages, the report includes expressions of concern about or recommendations of amendments to the South Korean human rights situation in eight areas, including defamation and freedom of opinion and expression on the Internet, freedoms of opinion and expression during election campaigns, freedom of assembly, restrictions on freedom of opinion and expression for reasons of national security, and rights to free opinion and expression for government employees.

Citing the arrest of television news show producers who reported on U.S. beef, La Rue said that a number of criminal defamation lawsuits are being lodged in cases of expression for the public good and used to punish individuals who criticize the administration. Noting that prohibitions on defamation are also stipulated in civil law, La Rue recommended that the crime of defamation be deleted from the criminal code.

La Rue also made reference to a suit filed by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) claiming damages from Hope Institute Executive Director Park Won-soon for defamation. La Rue said that government officials and public institutions should refrain from filing civil suits on defamation charges in the interest of citizen monitoring of public officials.
La Rue welcomed a December unconstitutionality ruling on the Framework Act on Telecommunications, which has been abused to restrict freedom of opinion on the Internet, as witnessed in the “Minerva” case. With regard to the Internet real name system, he recommended examining other means of identity verification and applying the system only in cases where there are substantial grounds for believing the individual will commit a crime.

La Rue also recommended the abolition of the Korea Communication Standards Commission (KOCSC), expressing concern about the fact that the KOCSC is empowered to review and reject or suspend information whose distribution is prohibited by the Information and Communications Network Act, including information deemed defamatory or a matter of national confidentiality. He expressed concerns that the KOCSC, whose members are appointed by the president, might function as what amounts to a censorship organization deleting online criticisms of the administration, and he remarked on the absence of sufficient safeguards to prevent this.

La Rue recommended remedial measures to address the practice South Korea’s notification system for assemblies, which in effect has operated as a permit system. La Rue also recommended remedial measures to address in addition to the failure to properly guarantee freedoms of political opinion and expression for public school teachers, and he urged the abolition of Item 7 of the National Security Act stipulating punishment for acts of praise and sympathy for anti-state groups.

“The Lee Myung-bak administration, which goes on about ‘advanced Korea’ every time it opens its mouth, suffered a major embarrassment from the international human rights community despite being a U.N. Human Rights Council member nation,” said former National Human Rights Commission of Korea Policy Director Kim Hyung-wan. “The international embarrassment could have been avoided if the NHRCK had just done its job faithfully.”

La Rue submitted the report to the South Korean government on Jan. 31. It was confirmed that around ten government institutions, including the Ministry of Justice, the NHRCK, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), the KCC, and the National Police Agency, have been examining the truth of the report’s claims since Feb. 14.

This is the first report from a U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression issuing recommendations to the government regarding the domestic human rights situation since a report issued 16 years ago in 1995 by Abid Hussain. At the time, Hussain recommended abolition of the National Security Act and the release of those imprisoned for exercise of freedom of expression.

A human rights group official who claimed to have examined the report said that it contained “a relatively accurate picture of the regression of human rights in South Korea.”

“Unlike the reports by international NGOs or individual countries, a U.N. report carries a high level of reliability and influence,” the official said.

The report is scheduled to be officially delivered to the UNHRC in June.

An official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the report was “a draft for which Mr. La Rue requested that the South Korean government verify the accuracy of the content prior to formal submission to the UNHRC.”

“We are still in the stage of gathering opinions from the different offices and ministries, so if a government opinion is issued, I imagine it can be done at the official announcement in June at the UNHRC meeting,” the official added.

After Egypt, Clinton Calls for ‘Serious Conversation’ On Internet Freedom

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | l r

By Sara Yin | PC Magazine | February 15, 2011

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Tuesday called for a “serious conversation” about the principles of Internet freedom, championing the Web’s contribution to the uprising in Egypt, but maintaining her position that WikiLeaks postings are tantamount to theft.

“If people around the world are going come together every day online and have a safe and productive experience, we need a shared vision to guide us,” Clinton said during a speech at George Washington University.

This was Clinton’s second speech about Internet freedom; the first came 13 months ago in the midst of a censorship battle between China and Google. This time, Clinton focused on Egypt and Iran. While citizens in Egypt used the Internet to organize protests and Iranians banded together online after the last election, Clinton acknowledged that the Web is not solely responsible for what happened in those regions.

“What happened in Egypt and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protestors seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the Internet,” she said. “Egypt isn’t inspiring people because they communicated using Twitter. It is inspiring because people came together and persisted in demanding a better future.”

“In both of these countries, the ways that citizens and the authorities used the Internet reflected the power of connection technologies on the one hand as an accelerant of political, social, and economic change, and on the other hand as a means to stifle or extinguish that change,” Clinton continued.

Therein lies the challenge, Clinton said.

“Governments have to choose to live up to the commitment to protect free expression, assembly, and association,” she said. “For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness.”

That is sometimes easier said than done, thanks to several key challenges: achieving liberty and security; protecting free expression while fostering tolerance and civility; and protecting transparency and confidentiality. The Internet can be “a force for unprecedented progress” but also a haven for terrorists, she said. It can also create a forum for hate speech. It’s a delicate balance, and “I’m the first to say that neither I nor the United States Government has all the answers,” Clinton said.

On the transparency and confidentiality aspect, Clinton reiterated her opposition to WikiLeaks, which has been releasing confidential government documents that were reportedly stolen by military personnel and submitted to the whistle-blowing Web site.

“Fundamentally, the WikiLeaks incident began with an act of theft,” Clinton said. ” Some have suggested that this theft was justified because governments have a responsibility to conduct all of our work out in the open in the full view of our citizens. I respectfully disagree.”

Clinton also denied that the U.S. forced private companies to shut off access to WikiLeaks; “That is not the case,” she said. “Some politicians and pundits publicly called for companies to disassociate from WikiLeaks, while others criticized them for doing so. Public officials are part of our country’s public debates, but there is a line between expressing views and coercing conduct,” she said.

In the wake of WikiLeaks releasing 250,000 State Department cables in late November, companies like Visa, MasterCard, Amazon, and PayPal cut ties with the Web site.

Critics have called Clinton’s speech hypocritical, given its pursuit of WikiLeaks. Clinton’s speech was actually timed hours after civil rights groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation went to a court in Alexandria, Virginia, to protest a government subpoena of the private Twitter accounts of suspected WikiLeaks affiliates.

“There is a jarring disconnect between the administration’s pro-privacy policies abroad and its pro-surveillance policies at home,” Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU Center for Democracy, said in a statement. “Americans deserve the same privacy protections that the State Department is eager to secure for people overseas. We commend the administration for its ambition to expand free speech abroad, but an administration truly committed to democratic freedom should not turn a blind eye to the hypertrophic expansion of government surveillance inside the United States.”

Chloe Albanesius contributed to this report.

Syria Renews Direct Access to Facebook, YouTube

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | keso

Agence France Presse | February 9, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thai Website Director Goes to Trial Over Content

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Colleen Curnutte

The Associated Press | February 4, 2011

BANGKOK – The head of a popular Thai political website went on trial Friday, charged with violating the country’s tough cyber laws in a case seen as a bellwether for freedom of expression in the politically troubled nation. Chiranuch Premchaiporn, manager of the Prachatai website, faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment on 10 separate charges of failing to promptly remove from the website offending comments posted by readers. The 2007 Computer Crime Act addresses hacking and other traditional online offenses, but also bars the circulation of material deemed detrimental to national security or that causes public panic. Several people have been prosecuted under the law, but Chiranuch is the first webmaster to be tried, and her case has garnered the attention of free speech advocates around the world. Thailand’s freedom of speech reputation has taken a battering in recent years, as successive governments have tried to suppress political opposition. Its standing in the Press Freedom Index issued by the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders slid to 153 last year from 65 in 2002, when the ratings were initiated. Prachatai, which was founded by several respected journalists, senators and press freedom activists to serve as an independent, nonprofit, daily Internet newspaper, has often run afoul of the government. Police arrested Chiranuch in March 2009 for an offense that allegedly occurred five months earlier. The controversial comments posted by members of Prachatai’s webboard were said to have defamed the country’s monarchy. She was accused of not deleting the comments for several days. “I’m not sure if Prachatai was targeted specifically,” Chiranuch told The Associated Press earlier this week. “All I can say is, given the circumstances, we were doing our job as we would normally do.” Prachatai was one of scores of websites the government barred access to last year during political unrest in Bangkok that turned violent and left about 90 people dead. The government claimed the sites stirred up unrest among the so-called Red Shirt protesters who were calling on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to hold early elections. Supinya Klangnarong, a media reform activist, said that the Computer Crime Act “has become a political tool of the state to close down websites and arrest people. “The Thai state has been intensely using the act as political punishment, instead of curbing actual computer-related crimes,” she said. Chiranuch late last year was charged with another set of offenses, including lese majeste — defaming the monarchy — another controversial area of law. Thailand’s lese majeste law mandates a jail term of three to 15 years for “whoever defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the regent.” Critics say it is mostly used as a weapon by political opponents to try to punish each other, since almost any critical comment touching on the monarchy can be construed as disloyalty to the institution. As in Friday’s case, Chiranuch denies breaking the law.