Yahoo! Fellow Evgeny Morozov On Authoritarian Governments and the Internet

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Take a look at video of this fascinating panel discussion about authoritarian regimes and technology. Our Yahoo! Georgetown Fellow for 2010, Evgeny Morozov, is one of the panelists. He is joined by Rebecca MacKinnon, who is a journalist, blogger and scholar as well as a member of the GNI.  The other panelists are Alec Ross, of the Office of the Secretary of State, and Tim Wu of Slate Magazine and Columbia Law School, and the panel is moderated by James Fallows of Atlantic Monthly.

http://newamerica.net/events/2010/authority_meet_technology

Herdict launches Russian and Persian interfaces

By BHRP

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society announces the launch of Persian (herdict.org/Persian) and Russian (nardict.ru) interfaces for Herdict Web, a project that aims to provide a clear picture of Web site accessibility around the world by utilizing crowdsourcing. Herdict tracks government and workplace filtering, server outages, and other types of inaccessibility.

Herdict gathers user-generated reports about Web site accessibility from around the world to draw a real-time image of which websites are inaccessible, in which countries and for how long. Users can participate in the initiative by either going directly to the site www.herdict.org or by downloading a browser add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Herdict Web launched in February 2009 to great accolades and has since received visitors from over 150 countries and over 100,000 reports.

Arabic and Chinese versions of the site are also available.

2009 Unprecedented Year For Online Repression

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Zensursala

by Clothilde le Coz, Reporters Without Borders

2009 was an unprecedented year for online repression.

For the first time since the Internet emerged as a tool for public use, there are currently 100 bloggers and cyber-dissidents imprisoned worldwide as a result of posting their opinions online in 2009, according to Reporters Without Borders. This figure is indicative of the severity of the crackdowns being carried out in roughly 10 countries around the world. (In one example, Burma handed out long prison sentences to online dissidents.)

The number of countries pursuing online censorship doubled in the past year — a disturbing trend that suggests governments seek to increase their control over new media. In total, 151 bloggers and cyber-dissidents were arrested in 2009, and 61 were physically assaulted.

The crackdown on bloggers and ordinary citizens who express themselves online comes at the same time that social networking and interactive websites have become extremely popular, not to mention powerful vehicles for free expression.

China Still Leads in Online Censorship

China was once again the leading Internet censor in 2009. Countries such as Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan also blocked websites and blogs, and engaged in surveillance of online expression. In Turkmenistan, for example, the Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer is still in jail, while the famous Burmese comedian Zarganar still has 34 years left on his prison sentence. These are but a few examples.

The list of approximately 120 victims of Internet censorship in 2009 also includes leading figures in the defense of online free speech, such as China’s Hu Jia and Liu Xiaobo, and Vietnam’s Nguyen Trung and Dieu Cay.

People are usually targeted because they speak out on political matters, but the global financial crisis is also on the list of subjects likely to provoke online censorship. In South Korea, a blogger was wrongfully detained for commenting on the country’s disastrous economic situation. Roughly six people in Thailand were arrested or harassed just for making a connection between the king’s health and a fall in the Bangkok stock exchange. Censorship was slapped on media in Dubai when it came time for them to report on the country’s debt repayment problems.

Overall, wars and elections constituted the chief threats to journalists and bloggers in 2009. It is becoming more risky to cover wars because journalists themselves are being targeted for murder and kidnappings. It’s also just as dangerous for reporters in some countries to do their job at election time. Journalists have ended up in prison or in a hospital thanks to their election reporting. Violence before and after elections was particularly prevalent in 2009 inside countries with poor democratic credentials.

Iran Election Crackdown

Iran saw the most violence, censorship and arrests due to an election. Its elections this past summer saw more than 100 arrests, and many prison sentences handed down. The country, which is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “Enemies of the Internet,” has also deployed a sophisticated system of Internet filtering and monitoring, especially in recent months. The country’s main ISPs depend on the Telecommunication Company of Iran, which recently came under control of the Revolutionary Guard, and does not hesitate to flout international treaties or to restrict the free flow of information.

Within hours of the announcement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad’s election “victory,” journalists were being arrested by the intelligence ministry, Revolutionary Guard, and other security services. Most were taken to Tehran’s Evin prison. At least 100 journalists and bloggers have been arrested since June, and 27 are still being held. Today, Iran is one of the world’s five biggest imprisoners of journalists.

Since the election, national and international media in Iran have been subject to massive and systematic censorship that is without precedent. For the first time since the 1979 revolution, the security services are vetting the content of newspapers before they’re published.

The Iranian regime’s offensive against online free expression took a new direction in December after Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi announced he was going to prosecute two conservative websites for “insulting” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, several Internet service providers cut access to prevent political opponents from disseminating information during opposition demonstrations on December 27. After the demonstrations, the intelligence ministry and Revolutionary Guard began rounding up government opponents and journalists, arresting an estimated 20 people in the latest wave. Those targeted included a dozen or so journalists and cyber-dissidents. Alireza Behshtipour Shirazi, the editor of Kaleme.org (opposition leader Mirhossein Moussavi’s official website), was arrested at his Tehran home and taken to an unknown place of detention.

Trouble in Democratic Countries

Democratic countries have also enacted online censorship. Several European nations are working on new steps to control the Internet in what they say is a campaign against child porn and illegal downloads. Australia is also planning to set up a compulsory filtering system that poses a threat to freedom of expression.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced in December that, after a year of testing in partnership with Australian Internet service providers, the government will introduce legislation imposing mandatory filtering of websites with pornographic, pedophilic or particularly violent content.

Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, raised concerns, saying, “Moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.” In a Fairfax Media poll of 20,000 Australians, 96 percent strongly opposed a mandatory Internet filtering system.

Yet that proposal — as well as many others around the world — continues to move ahead. Hopefully, 2010 will be a better year for free speech online.

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/

Iranian Journalists Flee, Fearing Retribution for Covering Protests

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Faramarz

by Nazila Fathi

TORONTO — For two months Ehsan Maleki traveled around Iran with a backpack containing his cameras, a few pieces of clothing and his laptop computer, taking pictures of the reformist candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi during the presidential campaign. He did not know that his backpack and his cameras would soon become his only possessions, or that he would be forced to crawl out of the country hiding in a herd of sheep.

Mr. Maleki, 29, is one of dozens of reporters, photographers and bloggers who have either fled Iran or are trying to flee in the aftermath of the disputed June presidential election. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organization that promotes press freedom and monitors the safety of journalists, said the number of journalists leaving Iran was the largest since the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The wave of departures reflects the journalists’ anxiety over the retribution many of them have faced for reporting on the government’s violent suppression of the post-election protests. As bloody clashes unfolded in the streets of Tehran, the government went to great lengths to restrict the flow of information to the outside world. Foreign journalists were banned, and local reporters and photographers were warned to stay at home.

A number of Iranian journalists defied those orders, disseminating information in phone interviews, on Internet sites and through pictures sent to photo agencies. Now, they say, they are paying the price.

Many journalists in Tehran, including a Newsweek reporter, Maziar Bahari, who is also an independent filmmaker, were among the hundreds of Iranians arrested and jailed. Some are defendants in the mass trials the government is conducting. The wife of one journalist, Ahmad Zeidabadi, said he had been tortured while in prison.

The editors of some opposition blogs, which reported the killings and the mass burial of protesters, have gone into hiding, and their whereabouts are not clear. The homes of some journalists, like Mr. Maleki, have been ransacked.

Mahmoud Shamsolvaezin, a veteran journalist and media expert in Tehran, estimated that 2,000 Iranian journalists had lost their jobs recently. He said about 400 of them had approached him for reference letters so they could get work abroad. “Journalists are leaving more than other groups because the government has closed newspapers and it has intimidated and terrorized them,” he said in an interview.

The government, which has closed at least six newspapers in the past three months, has accused the media of lying about the protests. Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the media a major weapon, “worse than nuclear weapons,” in the hands of Western countries, according to the Fars news agency. Almost all news agencies in Iran are affiliated with the government and rely on it for financing. The state news agencies IRNA and Fars are run by arms of the government.

Mr. Maleki was covering a demonstration on June 20 when he and dozens of protesters were chased by members of the Basij paramilitary force. They fled to an apartment building, where Mr. Maleki had enough time to hide his camera inside a chimney before members of the militia arrested them. He was jailed with hundreds of others for a day. Without his camera, authorities could not identify him as a photographer, but they recorded his national identity number.

Mr. Maleki never went home. A few days later a neighbor told him that his house had been ransacked and that his computer and personal documents, including his passport, had been taken. “They found out that I was sending pictures to Sipa,” he said, referring to an international photo agency.

He said he slept in a different place every night and continued to take photos of the protests, but finally decided it was too risky to stay. He paid $150 to a smuggler who drove him to Kheneryeh, near the border with Turkey and Iraq. Accompanied by a Kurdish guide, he crawled among a large herd of sheep for half an hour until they crossed the Iranian border and reached a steep cliff.

“It took us seven hours to climb down and reach a road in northern Iraq,” he said in a telephone interview from Iraq. He would not disclose which city he was in for security reasons.

The journalists leaving Iran come from a range of news organizations, not just those sympathetic to the opposition. A Web site supportive of Mr. Ahmadinejad, Parcham.ir, reported last week that two journalists for state-run television had defected to Italy and Britain. At least two photographers who worked for Fars have also left. Among the journalists who have left is this reporter, who covered the election and subsequent protests before leaving Iran in early July because she felt her safety was threatened.

The exact number of journalists who have left is not clear. Some worry that their families could be harassed if the government learns they are gone. Others are reluctant to reveal their locations in neighboring countries like Turkey and Iraq, fearing that government agents might find them and return them to Iran. Reza Moghimi, a photographer who worked for Fars, acknowledged that he became emotionally invested in the protests.

“The protesters were young, just like me,” Mr. Moghimi, 24, said in a telephone interview from Turkey. “It was impossible to be indifferent. I felt it was my duty to take pictures and reflect their voices abroad.”

With the camera given to him by Fars he began taking pictures every day. He said one of his pictures appeared on the cover of Time magazine anonymously, but he never told anyone he had taken it.

Mr. Moghimi said his fear increased after he saw a former colleague, Majid Saeedi, who was jailed for a month. Mr. Moghimi said he looked terrorized.

A few days later the director of Fars delivered a stern warning. “We have learned two of our photographers have been taking pictures secretly and sending them to foreign media,” he said. “We are just waiting for more information and will confront them soon.”

Mr. Moghimi got on the first plane to Turkey the next day and has applied for asylum.

Iran Stories

By Michael Samway | VP & Deputy General Counsel

UPDATE: ZDNet has retracted its story.

Yahoo! is committed to protecting the free expression and privacy rights of our users, so we are concerned by the misleading and incorrect statements in an article posted on ZDNet.com regarding Yahoo! and Iran.

The allegations in the story are false. Neither Yahoo! nor any Yahoo! representative has met with or communicated with Iranian officials regarding the matters referenced in the article, and Yahoo! has not disclosed user data to the Iranian government. The ZDnet article makes other inaccurate assertions. We don’t have a Yahoo! Iran website, as the article suggests. We don’t have employees in Iran either. And while we have a website targeted at users in Malaysia, we don’t have operations or officials there, also wrongly asserted in the article.

The power of the Internet means that information travels quickly, including claims that are false. We’re disappointed in this case that we weren’t given a chance to comment on the allegations before the story went live. We are, however, pleased that ZDnet’s editor has now said the report on which the article was based is considered unreliable. We intend to continue to demonstrate, through our actions, our deep commitment to protecting our users’ rights to free expression and privacy. Yahoo! was founded on the principle that access to information and to communications tools can improve people’s lives, and Yahoo! is committed to protecting and promoting freedom of expression and privacy around the globe, including in Iran.

To learn more about our human rights efforts, please visit our website, at http://humanrights.yahoo.com.

by Michael Samway, VP & Deputy General Counsel