There’s constant debate over whether young people today care less about privacy. Certainly, they live more public lives, thanks to growing up on the Internet where starting a Facebook account is the equivalent of hitting digital puberty. Being out in the world in new ways increases the types of privacy violations that can occur for these “digital natives.” Last week, I mentioned briefly a poll from MTV and the Associated Press that found that a third of young people aged 14-24 reported that someone had logged into their Facebook, Twitter, or email account to impersonate them or spy on them. That may be shocking in and of itself, but what’s more surprising to me is that a good number of them said this didn’t upset them…

The poll, conducted in August, included 1,355 young’uns, three quarter of whom say they log onto the Internet several times a day. (Shockingly, three percent of those polled said they “never” use the Internet.) Approximately 285 of the kiddies said that they had been spied on by someone who logged into their email, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or “other” account.

The pollsters then asked how upset this made them. Approximately 43 of them said they “weren’t upset at all.” Another 100 said it made them “a little upset.” Less than half of these surveilled social networkers said they were very upset or extremely upset over someone logging into their account without their permission to spy on them. That seems like more proof for people like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who say that “young people today don’t care about privacy.” Well, at least half of young people.

Most of those who reported that their accounts had been hacked knew the person who did it very well, or casually, while 16% reported not knowing who the spy was.

I’m friends with a few whippersnappers on Facebook through family circles and a stint as a mentor in an urban journalism program for high school students. I realize I’m getting old when I’m shocked by what they post regarding their “extracurricular” activities. C’mon, kids, Facebook is like your permanent record! But according to the poll, despite extensive media coverage and parent haranguing, lots of young folks simply aren’t thinking about the repercussions of social networking.

Flickr Creative Commons| kelly_chu28|

By Cheryl Hall | Dallas Morning News|Sept 7, 2011|

Millions of Americans are blithely bounding into social network sites.

They think that by setting strict parameters for who can be their friends and see their postings on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, they’ve shielded their personal stuff from unwanted eyes.

Those are naïve and dangerous assumptions, says Peter Vogel, an Internet legal specialist. Your privacy rights are tossed out as soon as you click “yes” to join a social site.

“Because social media users almost never read the terms of service and privacy policies, they have no idea that they are licensing the sites to free, unfettered use of photographs, email addresses, names and contact information that they intended for personal friends, children and neighbors,” says Vogel, a partner with Gardere Wynne Sewell LLPand a professor of Internet law at Southern Methodist University.

Think twice before sharing any personal information online, no matter how tight-knit you think your Web community is, he says. “People should assume everything disclosed on social media will fall in the hands of bad players.”

Social networking, once the realm of teens and under-30 adults, is rapidly becoming part of the daily routine of Gen-Xers and boomers. And a third of online users who are 60-plus drop in for an occasional virtual visit.

Last week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington released a report showing that slightly more than half of American adults socialize on Internet networking sites. That number soars to 65 percent among online adults 18 and older.

But even the most adept at online schmoozing may be shortsighted when it comes to the rules of engagement, says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who headed the study.

“People tend to set and forget,” she says. “They set up their accounts and privacy settings and they don’t go back to it, maybe ever.”

Terms in flux

The terms of what social sites can take from users are in constant flux, and the sites aren’t always forthcoming about those changes.

“Facebook has gotten the most negative attention for this,” Madden says. “There might just be a pop-up when you log in that says, ‘Hey, we’ve changed a few details of you privacy settings’ or whatever. ‘You might want to check it out.’ But sometimes it’s difficult to tell what the real changes are in how your information is being shared.”

As independent researchers, Madden and her colleagues at Pew remain publicly neutral on the privacy issues. But she says users should consider the tradeoff.

“Social sites give users an array of options to customize their privacy settings, but the default settings for many profiles err on the side of openness,” she says. “This is generally thought to encourage more sharing among users, making the networks more socially and commercially viable.

“But from a user perspective, we encourage people to take note. Everybody can agree that it’s complicated and worth taking seriously.”

A lack of privacy is the key turnoff for many social network holdouts, Madden says. While privacy was not specifically addressed in the latest Pew study, Madden says previous surveys have indicated serious issues with trust among nonusers of social media.

“I was talking with a retired gentleman who used to work in the government and was in charge of security for the computer system at a large hospital. He understands all the vulnerability issues and privacy issues. Before he clicks ‘yes’ on terms of service, he reads every single word. When you do take time to read those terms of service agreements, it’s amazing what you’re signing off on.”

Virtual fine print

There’s not much that you can do about the virtual fine print, Vogel says. You can try to negotiate with a social site, but you’re not likely to win. And Vogel says that so far the courts have held up the sites’ rights to set their own terms.

Vogel uses the term “social media” instead of “social networks” because he includes any online forum with shared information, including Wikipedia, Yelp and Second Life.

GPS units in iPhones, iPads and tablets give social media the means to track our every move and location, Vogel says.

You might think this is an invasion of privacy, but most GPS users allow themselves to be tracked when they agree to those unread terms, he says. “Isn’t it also possible that criminals could capture GPS data from social media sites so that they can be better informed to commit crimes?”

Vogel’s advice: Take extreme care in what you share. It’s not just Big Brother watching you.

Flickr Creative Commons | mujer (ensimismada)

By Neil Macfarquhar | New York Times | June 16, 2011 |

AL KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia — When Manal al-Sharif posted a video of herself breaking the law by driving her own black S.U.V. around this hot, flat city and called for a collective protest on Friday, the government responded harshly: she was jailed for nine days.

But unlike in the past, government censure did not quash debate. Instead, the Internet buzzed to life in Ms. Sharif’s defense, building on the surge of social media here after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Twitter and Facebook overflowed with comments denouncing both Saudi Arabia’s ruling princes and the clerics who called for her to be flogged as Neanderthals completely detached from the realities of life for women here.

More than 30,000 comments about Ms. Sharif’s arrest showed up within days on Twitter, the vast majority from supporters, said Abdulaziz al-Shalan, who tracks Saudi-related Twitter messages.

”Are you accusing a woman of being a sinner because she went to jail for driving? What kind of religion would come up with that?” wrote a woman in Jidda, on the Red Sea coast.

Social media, which helped drive protests across the Arab world, seems tailor-made for Saudi Arabia, where public gatherings are illegal, women are strictly forbidden to mix with unrelated men and people seldom mingle outside their family.

Virtually any issue that contradicts official Saudi policy now pops up online, including the status of prisoners being held without trial or a call to boycott municipal elections this September.

Louai A. Koufiah, a Twitter enthusiast, quipped: ”Saudis cannot go out to demonstrate, so they retweet!”

Essam M. al-Zamel, who helped start the municipal election boycott campaign, boasts that he cannot gather 30 people in a room, but that he can reach more than 22,000 instantly on Twitter.

But wherever the public goes, the government follows.

After Saudis thronged Twitter, activists noted a rash of new users without pictures who described themselves in patriotic terms and attacked government critics. Since the default picture on Twitter is an egg, they earned the nickname #saudieggs.

”My purpose in life is to be a watchdog to protect my religion, my state,” read part of one such user’s information.

Abdulaziz AlGasim, a lawyer and activist in the capital, Riyadh, is convinced that such users work for the government because in attacking him they used information unknown to the general public. ”Oh, this is a famous egg!” he said laughing as he flipped through his account, pointing out how they try to provoke factional or sectarian fights.

Previously, government critics were nervous about seeking out allies, never sure whom to approach. But the combination of bold opinions online and monitoring whom the ”eggs” attack has expanded contacts between activists nationwide.

Seeking to highlight the plight of prisoners held for years without trial, activists recently put a video on YouTube called ”Absent Saudis.” It featured the distraught relatives of some of the 16 men imprisoned in 2007 for what Bassem Alim, a defense attorney, said was taking rudimentary steps toward creating a political party and what the government said were links to terrorism. They were only formally charged last August.

The video response was called ”Saudis Are Present,” featuring an interview with the father of a Saudi girl killed in an attack by Al Qaeda and mixed in with pictures of famous Saudi dissidents.

”Keep them locked up!” screams the zipper running across the bottom of the screen. ”Side with the country against them and distribute this video.”

Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denied any government role in such counterattacks. Its main online effort was seeking out Qaeda ideology, he said. ”It is not our way to challenge individuals or social networks on the Internet. That is nonsense,” he said.

While social media was once almost solely the playing field of the liberal elite, Saudi activists say it has become more democratic this year, with more varied voices.

The religious conservatives are catching up. Gone are the days when they issued one fatwa reported by the newspaper Al-Watan that commanded women to avoid writing ”LOL,” or laughing out loud, because the very idea of a woman laughing might arouse male strangers.

Two Saudi conservatives started a special YouTube channel, CH905, to highlight the work of the most prominent clerics in the Sahwa or Wahhabi traditionalist movement in the country. (The telephone number for directory assistance is 905.) One cleric called for the Saudi government to tear down the mosque around the Kaaba, the sacred shrine in Mecca toward which Muslims turn when they pray, and put up a new, stacked structure so that men and women circulate on different floors. Others have attacked proposals for co-education in early elementary school.

Saudis who follow social media closely say that the crosscurrents, particularly on Twitter, have had a moderating affect. The more extremist religious figures and the hard-core social liberals have adopted flexible attitudes on some issues — seen as an attempt to increase followers and an indication that the different camps no longer talk solely among themselves, they said.

The women’s driving campaign shows what online organizing can accomplish — and what it cannot. Ms. Sharif, a 32-year-old information technology specialist working for Aramco, the state oil company, announced her campaign in April, and Saudi activists said they expected women at least in the hundreds to drive on Friday. But her open challenge to the government in posting the videos alienated countless supporters who thought she should have simply waited until the announced date.

Supporters believe the nine-day jail sentence was a deliberate attempt by the monarchy to eradicate any kind of online movement inspired by Tunisia and Egypt. It most likely had the desired effect of scaring off many women.

But it has not squelched the robust online debate. Some men suggested that Ms. Sharif, a single mother, was simply looking for a husband. Supporters, even Abdel Aziz Khoja, the minister of information and an avid Twitter user, weighed in, saying, ”My personal opinion is that a woman has the right to drive as long as she respects public etiquette and Islamic behavior.”

Younger women are particularly defiant, with a group of five 20- to 30-year-olds detained in Riyadh last Thursday for taking driving lessons. One brazenly kept posting to Twitter even when thrown into a holding tank by the morals police: ”We are waiting in a tiny, dirty, dusty room!”

One weakness in online movements is that their organizers often stay hidden to avoid government wrath.

In March, nobody knew exactly who was calling for street demonstrations. The day was suddenly named after Hunain, a famous battle in Islamic history that Shiite Muslims revere more than Sunnis. Numerous activists think the government planted the name online to try to turn the protests into a sectarian issue.

Saudi activists said they recognized that social media alone would not bring changes, although it exposes issues and links organizers.

”If you can reach the public, it will put pressure on royal family to modernize,” said Mr. AlGasim, the Riyadh lawyer, who found that even his 72-year-old mother had signed a democracy petition online. ”Change will come from demonstrations, not from talking.”

Flickr Creative Commons | PerformImpact

By Rosebell Kagumire  | Christian Science Monitor | June 14, 2011 |

African leaders could allow freedom of expression, or they could mimic the Chinese model of building a ‘Great Firewall of China’ to shut down Internet systems that allow critical thinking. Last week the UN declared Internet access a basic human right. To many in African countries, which are still grappling with challenges ranging from health, infrastructure, unemployment, etc., this declaration may be difficult to relate to.

I am taking part in the Internet Freedom Fellows program funded by the US Department of State and managed by the US Mission in Geneva. The fellowship follows up on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge to find innovative ways to promote the use of the Internet in support of human rights. While in Geneva earlier this week, I took part in an event where Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US Representative to the Human Rights Council,reiterated Mrs. Clinton’s statement that the Internet is “the public space of the 21st century.”

Many in Africa are yet to see the Internet as a basic right. Yet Ben Scott, Clinton’s policy adviser on innovation whom I had a chat with called the Internet “the first truly 21st Century human rights issue.”

We were looking at Internet freedom and before I had asked how this basic right would be realized for many in Africa. Mr. Scott said that just like mobile banking (MPesa, Mobile money) is doing tremendously well in Africa, Internet access will continue to be tied to mobile telephone penetration in Africa. He indicated that Africa’s mobile phone penetration has surpassed Europe’s yet it’s still at 40 percent. This makes the Internet and mobile phone market pose both an economic and political opportunity.

In most discussions it was clear that we have two types of freedoms related to the Internet; freedom to access Internet and freedom of expression on the Internet. World leading economies have thrived on information systems and making them accessible to all citizens, therefore increasing their participation in the economy. A connected society is going to be more prosperous and stable.

Many governments in Africa are moving to invest heavily in the laying down of Internet infrastructure. As more people on the continent are connected to the Internet, they will also seek a different kind of governance because of the access to information. This is what Scott called, a dictator’s dilemma.

“Everyone recognizes that future of economy is largely based on information infrastructure. So governments want populations connected but at the same time they want to control speech on these networks and it’s a dilemma,” Scott said. “Internet tends to shift power from centralized institutions to many leaders representing different communities. Governments who want to censor are fighting a battle against the nature of the technology,” Scott said.

So the dilemma faced by that despotic leader, whom we have in plenty on the continent, is political speech versus economic prosperity. Scott said: “You can’t have one and leave the other and that’s the exact dictator’s dilemma.”

This was well manifested in the recent protests in Uganda, when the government instructed the Internet service providers to shut down social media like Facebook and Twitter.

First, the telecom industry is one of the leaders in tax revenues in Uganda and provides a lot of jobs for the Ugandan youth in a country where the number of unemployed graduates has become worrying. In the face of such a directive companies had a lot at stake, most telecoms provide Internet and they feared a backlash. This directive was leaked to the press by people in the telecoms who were concerned that they would be the first victims of the backlash. So in the end the government didn’t achieve its mission. President Yoweri Museveni cannot choose to get the taxes from the telecoms, which help him run the country and at the same time easily pass directives to control information.

Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University graduate program on Interactive Telecommunications said no other invention has ever threatened the Westphalian nation-state like the Internet has done. The states in the past were able to effectively control radio, newspapers, and TV, but the Internet is a challenge.“This is a cultural and political choice,” Shirky said. “Protecting freedom of speech is a governance challenge. Westphalia, where government controls everything, survived the 20th Century media innovations, we are going to see if they can survive the internet.”

Hindering access

Only 10 percent of Ugandans access the Internet, yet about 10 million of the 33 million Ugandans have mobile phones. The use of Internet is partly hampered by illiteracy levels as well as cost, but Uganda has a youthful population which will take up new information systems even with just post primary education.

There are real infrastructure problems hindering access to Internet in Africa but we are seeing more investment. According to ComputerWorld, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi have linked forces together on a $400 million investment in terrestrial fiber optic cables. The new network is expected to run close to 16,000 kilometers from southern Sudan to Tanzania’s border with Zambia. The terrestrial network called the East Africa Backhaul System will connect to the submarine fiber-optic cables on the East Africa coast.

However some governments have already moved to suppress freedom on the Internet. According to recent report from Freedom House, Ethiopia’s Internet is one of the least free in the world. Internet access has been denied and controlled through monopolizing the communications industry to curtail freedom of expression. In Ethiopia the few people that access the Internet that is government controlled cannot freely express themselves.

This kind of control is what my friend Ssozi described to me when we spoke about the Internet as a basic right declaration. He said as long as access to information is not a right, Internet as a basic human right will not benefit most.

The China way

Even with infrastructure in place, many worry that some governments in Africa may decide to go the way of China, which has put up what’s now famously called the “Great firewall of China.” It’s a deceptive path for African governments who may be considering following suit and having economic prosperity and also stifling freedoms of expression and speech.

China spends a lot of money to build firewalls that prevent free speech, but Scott believes this cannot easily be replicated. He says even with its economic might to maintain it alone will continue to cost China to block people from accessing information. The costs of bypassing the firewalls are significantly cheaper than putting one up, say observers.

In Africa, governments still have a hold on public broadcasting, which many people rely on in the absence of cheap, accessible Internet. So for Internet access as a basic right to be realized, or even for it to make a difference in the way citizens in Africa can hold their governments accountable, development budgets and strategies for both by governments and international development organizations must take this into consideration.

There also have to be efforts to ensure protection in the face of growing desire by governments to curtail freedom on the Internet in the wake of North Africa uprisings. We have seen the Internet play a key role in protests in Swaziland, Gabon, and Uganda to some extent.

At a recent meeting of bloggers organized by Google Africa and Global Voices, there was a general concern that many African governments are employing tactics of threatening Internet users directly instead of cutting off the Internet or attacking their sites, which could bring about immediate condemnation. In Uganda, journalist Timothy Kalyegira is the first person to be arrested and charged for an online article written in Uganda Record.

Scott said that in the Internet age there has to be a “move from government-to-government diplomacy to a people-to-people diplomacy.” When questioned on the recent Wikileaks case, Scott argued that there’s a need to balance state security and Internet freedom. Yet it’s in the same name of security that authoritarian government crackdown on their citizens.

Shirky says the debate on whether there can be Internet freedom is still very much open. “No country recognizes a universal right to speak. The negotiation around this kind of freedom is going dominate the next ten years.”

Flickr Creative Commons | Mario Werder

By Verne G. Kopytoff | New York Times | March 6, 2011 

SAN FRANCISCO — When Google, Yahoo and Microsoft signed a code of conduct intended to protect online free speech and privacy in restrictive countries, the debate over censorship by China was raging, and Internet companies operating there were under fire for putting profit ahead of principle. 

It seemed the perfect rallying moment for a core cause, and the companies hoped that other technology firms would follow their lead. 

But three years later, the effort known as the Global Network Initiative has failed to attract any corporate members beyond the original three, limiting its impact and raising questions about its potential as a viable force for change. 

At the same time, the recent Middle East uprisings have highlighted the crucial role technology can play in the world’s most closed societies, which leaders of the initiative say makes their efforts even more important. 

“Recent events really show that the issues of freedom of expression and privacy are relevant to companies across the board in the technology sector,” said Susan Morgan, executive director of the initiative. “Things really seem to be accelerating.” 

But the global initiative is not. All of the participating companies are American. Also,Facebook and Twitter are notably absent despite their large audience and wide use by activists, in the Middle East and elsewhere. 

Bennett Freeman, senior vice president of the mutual fund company Calvert Investments and a G.N.I. board member, pointed out that the three current members were among the biggest Internet companies, but acknowledged that “we are going to have to add some new companies soon to be truly influential.” 

The biggest test yet for the initiative comes later this year, when member companies are judged on whether they have adequate policies in place to address privacy and free speech issues. Independent auditors will issue a report after examining whether the companies narrowly interpret government demands for user information and whether they store users’ data in countries where free speech is protected, for example. 

Next year, the companies are to undergo a more thorough review of whether they lived up to code of conduct’s principles. 

The initiative was created in 2008 after human rights groups and politicians condemned the top Internet companies for complying with China’s restrictive laws rather than jeopardizing their business interests by challenging them. 

Yahoo had turned over data that led to the imprisonment of several Chinese activists. Microsoft had shut down a blog by a Chinese journalist who worked for The New York Times. Meanwhile, Google had introduced a censored search engine in China (although the company has since shut down that site). 

The initiative is modeled on previous voluntary efforts aimed at eradicating sweatshops in the apparel industry and stopping corruption in the oil, natural gas and mining industries. As with those efforts at self-regulation, this one came at a time when Internet companies were seeking to polish their image and potentially ward off legislation. 

The code of conduct says that companies must try “to avoid or minimize the impact of government restrictions on freedom of expression” and protect user privacy when demands by government “compromise privacy in a manner inconsistent with internationally recognized laws and standards.” 

In practice, however, the code offers flexibility. Companies that go along with a country’s censorship requirements can remain in compliance as long as they disclose it, as Microsoft does with its censored search results in China. 

A number of participants, which also include human rights groups, academics and firms specializing in socially responsible investing, agree that the initiative started slowly. Much of the focus since its founding has been on getting organized and hiring. 

Originally, the membership was supposed to include the entire spectrum of software, hardware and telecommunications firms along with Internet companies. The idea was that a bigger roster would mean greater influence and credibility. 

But recruiting efforts have been fruitless. Some companies have cited the auditing process as being too onerous, according to Global Network Initiative participants who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to discourage companies from joining in the future. Other companies do not see any financial benefit or think they can do it alone. 

Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for Facebook, declined to address why Facebook had not joined. But he said that his company took seriously the issue of user trust and was in regular contact with governments and human rights groups. 

“As Facebook grows, we’ll continue to expand our outreach and participation, but it’s important to remember that our global operations are still small, with offices in only a handful of countries,” Mr. Noyes said. 

Twitter declined to comment. 

Where the initiative has been most effective so far is in creating a forum for companies to easily get advice and share ideas. For instance, as the initiative’s participants were creating the code of conduct, human rights groups contacted Google after it removed videos in 2007 from YouTube showing police abuse in Egypt because of guidelines prohibiting violence. Google ultimately decided to restore the videos and adjust its policy to allow such clips. 

Some human rights groups said the initiative’s code of conduct was weaker than they would have liked. Getting companies to sign on would have been impossible otherwise, they acknowledged, describing the code’s final version as the best that could be hoped for at the time. 

Even with the code of conduct to help guide them, companies will inevitably come across issues that have no easy answers, said Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who specializes in online privacy and is a participant in the initiative. 

“Most of these issues aren’t black and white,” Ms. MacKinnon said. “The idea is to help them do the right thing rather than play ‘gotcha’ after they mess up.”

Flickr Creative Commons | Gitgat

By Keith B. Richburg | Washington Post Foreign Service | February 25, 2011

BEIJING – Chinese authorities continued to tighten controls on Internet use Friday in the face of murky calls for “jasmine rallies” to emulate the anti-government protests convulsing the Middle East and North Africa.

The professional networking site LinkedIn was blocked in China, joining sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that already were inaccessible due to government controls. LinkedIn was apparently blocked after a user began a discussion group called “Jasmine Voice.” The user asked followers to comment on the possibility of a “jasmine revolution” in China.

“I think it’s pretty clearly connected to the number of postings about the jasmine stuff,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of a popular Chinese media blog and an expert on the Internet here.

Also Friday, the Chinese name of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. joined the list of terms blocked from searches on popular Chinese micro-blogging sites, along with previously banned words including “Tunisia,” “Egypt” and “jasmine.” A search for Huntsman’s Chinese name on the sites turned up only the notice that the results could not be returned due to “relevant regulations and policy.”

Huntsman drew the ire of Chinese nationalists here after briefly appearing last Sunday in Wangfujing, a commercial pedestrian area of central Beijing. Organizers of the jasmine rallies, whose identities are unknown but who seem to be affiliated with an overseas organization, had asked Chinese to silently pass through the area as a peaceful form of protest against government authoritarianism. Few protesters actually appeared to show up, however, mainly due to a massive police presence in the area.

Huntsman, in sunglasses and a leather jacket, was out of his car talking to an unidentified passerby when he was caught on camera by a person who appeared to be a plainclothes policeman. That person confronted the ambassador, asking, “Do you want to see chaos in China?” Huntsman quickly left the area.

The U.S. embassy said Huntsman’s appearance at the site was “purely coincidental” because he was in the area with his family on a Sunday outing.

“We are aware that some Chinese domestic Internet sites are restricting searches of Ambassador Huntsman’s Chinese name,” said U.S. embassy spokesman Richard L. Buangan. “We urge China to respect internationally recognized fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, and the human rights of all Chinese citizens.”

This week in Wangfujing, workers erected a large blue construction fence in front of a McDonalds restaurant where the rally organizers had asked protesters to silently pass.

Merchants in the area said the fence went up two days ago, ostensibly because of needed sidewalk repairs – but Friday there was no sign of any construction activity. The fence, however, takes up much of the pedestrian mall area and significantly narrows the space where people can pass.

Since the popular uprising began in Tunisia in January, nervous Chinese authorities have been on guard against any attempt to replicate the protests here.

Friday’s edition of Global Times – a tabloid newspaper owned by the Communist Party’s official organ, People’s Daily – ran a lead editorial titled: “Turmoil in China is wishful thinking.”

The editorial blames “a few Western media outlets” for trying to promote unrest in China, and opines, “Anyone knowing about the Chinese society would never predict a Chinese-style ‘Jasmine Revolution.’ This society is now generally stable.”

In another sign of the unease, several Western media bureau chiefs were called into the main office of the Beijing police on Friday and warned to be mindful of the State Council’s rules governing foreign reporters conducting interviews in China.

Washington Post researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.

Flickr Creative Commons | West McGowan

By Damian Grammaticas | BBC News | November 18, 2010

A woman in China has been sentenced to a year in a labour camp after posting a message on the social networking website Twitter.

The fiance of human rights activist Cheng Jianping told the BBC she had been accused of disrupting social order, but her message had been a joke.

She had repeated a Twitter comment urging nationalist protesters to smash Japan’s pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, adding the words “Charge, angry youth”.

Twitter is banned in China.

However, many people use it by circumventing internet controls.

Diplomatic row

The offending online “tweet”, which has landed 46-year-old Cheng Jianping with a year of re-education through labour, was posted in the middle of last month.

At the time, China and Japan were embroiled in their worst diplomatic row in recent years over a group of uninhabited, but disputed, islands in the East China Sea.

Groups of young Chinese had been demonstrating against Japan, publicly smashing Japanese products.

Cheng Jianping’s fiance, Hua Chunhui, told the BBC he first posted the short message on Twitter, ridiculing the demonstrators, saying their actions were nothing new and if they really wanted to make an impact they should smash the Japanese Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

Ms Cheng then “retweeted” the mocking message, he said, forwarding it and adding the words “charge, angry youth”.

Ten days later she was detained by police “for disrupting social order” and has now been sent to the Shibali River women’s labour camp in Zhengzhou city in Henan Province.

Mr Hua said his fiance had started a hunger strike and he was trying to get her released to undergo her re-education at home.

Contacted by the BBC, staff at the camp said they had no information to give.

But Mr Hua said documents from the labour re-education committee made it clear Ms Cheng had been committed because of her single “tweet”.

Another Twitter user has now tweeted that Ms Cheng should apply for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, because the five words she added to the message had cost her a year of freedom.

Dissidents

Her detention is a sign of how closely China’s government scrutinises comment on the internet.

The authorities are fearful of the power of the internet to stir up discontent.

They are also wary of the way nationalist demonstrations like those targeting Japan have the potential to run out of control.

Ms Cheng may also have been targeted because she is a local human rights activist.

Her fiance said she had signed petitions including one calling for the release of China’s jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

And she had been detained by police for five days in August this year after she voiced support for Liu Xianbin, a long-time campaigner for democracy in China, involved in the protests that preceded the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Liu Xianbin had been detained again this year, apparently suspected of inciting subversion of state power for criticising China’s Communist Party.

Flickr Creative Commons | Jeff Turner

By Jill Lawless | Associated Press | November 11, 2010

LONDON (AP) — Two cases in Britain are testing the limits of freedom of speech on the Internet.

A city councilor in England has been arrested after allegedly posting a message on Twitter calling for a journalist to be stoned to death, and a court has upheld the conviction of a man who tweeted about blowing up his local airport.

Police said that Birmingham city councilor Gareth Compton was arrested on suspicion of sending an offensive or indecent message. He has not been charged and was released on bail pending further inquiries.

Media reports say the post on the microblogging site said, “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.”  The post appears to have been removed. On Thursday, Compson tweeted an apology for his “ill-conceived attempt at humor.” 

Alibhai-Brown is a liberal columnist for The Independent newspaper.  The governing Conservative Party said Compton had been suspended indefinitely.

Also Thursday, a court rejected an appeal by Paul Chambers, who was convicted of sending a threatening message after saying on Twitter that he would blow up an airport if his flight was delayed.

Chambers, 26, was arrested in January after he posted the message saying he would blow Robin Hood Airport in northern England “sky high” if his flight, due to leave a week later, was delayed.  Chambers insisted his post was a joke, sent to his 600 Twitter followers in a moment of frustration. But a judge found him guilty of sending an offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message over a public telecommunications network.

On Thursday, Judge Jacqueline Davies at Doncaster Crown Court upheld the conviction, saying Chambers’ message was “obviously menacing.”  He was ordered to pay 2,000 pounds ($3,225) in prosecution costs, in addition to a 385 pound ($620) fine.  Thursday’s verdict caused a wave of outrage on Twitter from supporters of Chambers, including writer and actor Stephen Fry, who tweeted “whatever they fine you, I’ll pay.”

Flickr Creative Commons | Sean Hobson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flickr Creative Commons | honou

By Henry Orrego  | AFP | October 4, 2010

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

But they are not the only ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The alleged kidnappers posted photos of their prisoner on Twitter.

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