Yahoo! Celebrates World Press Freedom Day

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

On Monday, May 3, Yahoo! will celebrate World Press Freedom Day. Go to yahoo.com on May 3, click on the icon on the Yahoo! logo at the top of the page, and you’ll be linked to a site with information about the history of World Press Freedom Day, profiles of journalists from around the world, and information about a few organizations that are working to keep access to information free and open around the world. You can also learn about events like Yahoo!’s second annual Business & Human Rights Summit on May 4, and about Global Voices Online’s Summit in Chile, on May 6-7.

Mark your calendar, and check it out on Monday!

Mr. Yang goes to Washington

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

On April 26th, Jerry Yang was a featured speaker at President Obama’s Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. To read his speech, and see video of his remarks, check out the blog post at Yodel Anecdotal.

Jerry Yang Speaks at Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship

By BHRP

AP Photo | J. Scott Applewhite)

By David Alexander | Reuters | April 26, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama launched a new effort on Monday to build business and social ties to the Muslim world, but analysts said the need for progress on big issues like Middle East peace would overshadow the initiative.

Obama hosted a two-day Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that brought together about 250 successful entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries, most with large Muslim populations, fulfilling a pledge he made in his Cairo speech to the Islamic world last June.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke opened the gathering by challenging the entrepreneurs to take “the tremendous success that all of you have had individually and expand it throughout the Islamic world.”

Obama will address the summit at the end of the first day to underscore his commitment to “deepening our engagement around the world with Muslim-majority communities,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said.

While the summit was widely viewed as a positive step that demonstrated follow-through on the Cairo speech, analysts said Obama ultimately would be judged on his handling of key issues in the Muslim world — the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iran’s nuclear program and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“In some ways Cairo is not going to be fulfilled until you get grander solutions to some of the big geopolitical problems,” said Juan Zarate, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an ex-deputy national security adviser to former President George W. Bush.

“The president is going to be judged by his ability to move those big issues much more so than whether or not he hosts a conference at the White House,” he said.

Obama has struggled to advance many of those issues. His effort to revive the Middle East peace process has been hampered by Israeli settlement activity, and his attempts to engage Iran over its nuclear program have been rebuffed.

SENIOR OFFICIALS, PRIVATE EXPERTS

In addition to Locke, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other senior U.S. officials were participating in sessions alongside private sector experts like Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus and Arif Naqvi, head of Abraaj Capital, the largest private equity firm in the Middle East.

The aim was to bring together successful entrepreneurs from different countries, venture capitalists, development bankers and other business experts to discuss ideas and share experiences with a view toward creating support networks that would help promote development in the region.

Yang, in a luncheon address, said entrepreneurs needed an entire ecosystem to flourish, including education, capital and research and development. He said he saw increasing signs of a willingness in the Middle East to support entrepreneurs, noting Yahoo’s recent acquisition of the Arabic-language email service Maktoob.

The White House has urged groups outside the government to take advantage of the summit by organizing related events. That has spawned more than 30 other sessions by groups such as the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce, the Arab Empowerment Initiative and the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

Observers and participants said the success of the event ultimately depended on whether it produced concrete results — financial and otherwise — after it ended.

“What kind of networks does it establish? What kinds of funds will come out of it? What kind of … concrete recommendations for legal reforms that need to take place in certain countries?” said Ehaab Abdou of the Middle East Youth Initiative, which is participating in an event on using entrepreneurial techniques to address social challenges.

Obama planned to announce some new financing to support entrepreneurship, but administration officials made clear the government wants to be seen not as a funder but as a catalyst bringing together entrepreneurs with potential investors.

Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, announced 13 partnerships aimed at supporting entrepreneurs in the Muslim world with education and programs to encourage market opportunities and financing.

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz, Editing by Paul Simao and Cynthia Osterman)

Censorship Cases Revive Net Freedom Bill

By BHRP

By Tom Risen | National Journal | April 2, 2010

In the wake of high-profile Internet censorship cases overseas, some in Congress are renewing their calls for U.S. regulation. But some companies are continuing to call for self-regulation, fearing possible restrictions on doing business in the future.

New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act last month to support companies like Google as they face censorship pressure in foreign markets. He first introduced the bill in 2006.

Since then, Google’s defiance against Chinese censorship and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Internet freedom platform have built momentum on the issue and helped lawmakers reach consensus, according to Jeff Sagnip, Smith’s press secretary.

Smith’s bill would establish an Office of Global Internet Freedom in the State Department to identify repressive countries, and it would make U.S. companies answerable to the attorney general if they collaborate with requests to take part in censorship or divulge personally identifying information.

“By creating an independent office in the State Department that focuses on Internet freedoms, it would simplify the question ‘who do I call?’” Sagnip said. “There’s a lot of momentum on it this year, as opposed to 2006, when there weren’t as many cases of censorship. The bill’s goal is not to inhibit companies seeking work overseas but to give them a legal foundation.”

The degree of violations that could merit punishment under the bill include the allegations made against Cisco Systems of modifying equipment to be used for Chinese censorship. Sagnip said this bill or another may be amended to deal with European-based Nokia Siemens Networks, which has been accused of supplying Iran with equipment also meant for censorship.

When Smith first introduced the bill four years ago, companies like Yahoo were monitoring abuse independent of the government. Yahoo and other Internet heavyweights co-founded the Global Network Initiative in 2008 along with other corporations, nonprofits and universities. Today, the company is wary of potential restrictions on what countries it could or couldn’t do business with, and to what extent.

“While the goals set forth by the sponsors of GOFA are noble, the bill’s scope could ultimately mean that companies will have to cease providing information services in some countries,” said Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman. “Yahoo will continue working with Congress on this legislation, to ensure that its goals can be achieved and that companies can continue to bring transformative technology to people in all parts of the world.”

Sagnip said China’s hack of Google and Iran’s suppression of protesters last summer were signs that self-regulation is not enough.

“Everyone was resistant to intervening with legislative effort,” Sagnip said. “Unfortunately, we walked away from 2009 thinking, ‘OK, it’s even worse now.’ Hence, they might need teeth — or that could be the wrong word. Rather ‘legs,’ or ‘standing.’”

Smith recently partnered with Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., to form the Global Internet Freedom Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who will advocate for Internet freedom laws. The Senate followed about two weeks later, creating a similar bipartisan group led by Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Ted Kaufman, D-Del.

“What I see is that both sides of the aisle are looking for an avenue, and that could be a path for some congressional action,” Sagnip said.

Some Yahoo email accounts hacked in China, Taiwan

By BHRP

By Lucy Hornby and Alexei Oreskovic| Reuters | April 1, 2010

BEIJING/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Yahoo email accounts of some journalists and activists whose work relates to China were compromised in an attack discovered this week, according to rights groups and foreign correspondents, days after Google said it would move its Chinese-language search services out of China because of censorship concerns.

Several journalists in China and Taiwan found they were unable to access their accounts beginning March 25, among them Kathleen McLaughlin, a freelance journalist in Beijing. Her access was restored on Wednesday, she told Reuters.

The compromised accounts included those of the World Uyghur Congress, an exile group that China accuses of inciting separatism by ethnic Uighurs in the frontier region of Xinjiang.

“I suspect a lot of information in my Yahoo account was downloaded,” the group’s spokesman, Dilxat Raxit, told Reuters on Wednesday. He said the email account, set up in Sweden, has been inaccessible for a month.

“A lot of people I used to contact in Lanzhou, Xi’an and elsewhere have not been reachable by phone for the past few weeks,” he said, adding that he had used the Yahoo email account to contact them in the past.

Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times in Beijing said on Wednesday that his Yahoo Plus account had been set, without his knowledge, to forward to another, unknown, account.

In late 2009 and early this year, several human rights activists and journalists whose work related to China had discovered that their Gmail accounts had been set, without their knowledge, to forward to unfamiliar addresses.

Google cited the Gmail attacks in January, when it announced a hacking attack on it and more than 20 other companies. It cited those attacks and censorship concerns in its decision to move its Chinese-language search services last week to Hong Kong.

A source at the time told Reuters that Yahoo knew it had been a target of attacks and discussed them with Google before Google went public.

It was not immediately clear whether those incidents were related to the latest security breaches sustained by users of Yahoo mail.

Yahoo did not comment on the nature of the attacks on its accounts, or whether they were coordinated or isolated incidents.

“Yahoo! condemns all cyber attacks regardless of origin or purpose,” spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said in an email response to a Reuters query.

“We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach.”

CHINA PARTNERS

Yahoo’s direct involvement in China has been limited since 2005, when it transferred control of its online operations to the Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company in which Yahoo owns a 39 percent stake.

Yahoo maintains a research and development facility in Beijing, but the company does not have any role in the day-to-day operations of the Yahoo China website, or maintain email servers in China. Email accounts tied to China’s .cn domain are managed by Alibaba, which has servers in mainland China, a Yahoo spokeswoman said.

Despite Yahoo’s limited direct involvement in China, analysts consider the company’s China assets to be among its most valuable.

Clayton Moran, an analyst with The Benchmark Company, said he saw limited risk to Yahoo’s Chinese assets from censorship and privacy issues, with the bigger risk relating to investor enthusiasm for the Chinese Internet market in general.

“If you see a pullback in the Chinese economy, the Chinese Internet, or if multiples contract because investors get less excited about the China opportunity, then Yahoo’s valuation will have a significant impact,” Moran said.

China’s regulatory and political environments have been sources of consternation for Yahoo in the past.

Yahoo was criticized by the U.S. Congress when it released to Chinese authorities information relating to the email account of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who was arrested in 2004, before Alibaba took over Yahoo’s China operations. Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in jail for revealing state secrets.

After Google’s January announcement about cyber attacks originating in China, Yahoo said it was “aligned” with Google’s position, a statement that its Chinese partner, Alibaba Group, called “reckless”

Google’s announcement of the hacking attacks drew unprecedented outside attention to cyber-security and China’s Internet controls, used to limit discussion of topics deemed sensitive or threatening to “social stability.”

China’s control of the Internet and media has intensified under the current leadership and reflects a lack of understanding of the Chinese public, said Hao Xiaoming, a China media expert at Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Singapore.

“China is going back rather than going forward in terms of information and control. That reflects the lack of confidence in the (current) Chinese leaders,” Hao said.

“China’s Internet has become a controlled Internet, an internal Internet rather than linked internationally. It defeats the whole purpose.”

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee in Shanghai; Editing by Ron Popeski and Sugita Katyal)

Google and Yahoo raise doubts over planned net filters

By BHRP

BBC News | February 16, 2010

Google and Yahoo have joined two Australian organizations calling for a “rethink” of the country’s controversial internet filter plans.

Flickr Creative Commons | Digital Reflections

The Australian government has announced proposals to introduce a mandatory filter which would block all RC (Refused Classification) content.

The groups argue that the subjects covered by RC material are too wide-ranging for a blanket ban.

They also warn that the filter will not “effectively protect children”.

Introducing Evgeny Morozov, Our Newest Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

I’m thrilled to introduce Evgeny Morozov, our 2009-2010 Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University.

Evgeny is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine’s influential and widely-quoted “Net Effect” blog about the Internet’s impact on global politics.  Prior to his Yahoo! Fellowship, he was a fellow at George Soros’s Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program (one of the leading and most experimental funders for technology projects that have an impact on open society and human rights). Before moving to the US, Evgeny was based in Berlin and Prague, where he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online, a media development NGO active in 29 countries of the former Soviet bloc. Evgeny’s work has appeared in The Economist, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, Slate, Le Monde, The San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, Dissent and many other publications. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, SkyNews, CBC, Al Jazeera International, France 24, Reuters TV, NPR, BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service.

Here is what Evgeny is working on, in his own words:

“The rapid spread of new communications technologies around the globe promised a new age of politics, where citizens would be able to educate themselves about important political issues of the day, form ad-hoc groups about the most important such issues, and use new media to strategically challenge the power of their governments. This was a very appealing narrative, because it also matched the rapid spread of freedom and democracy across the world, particularly in the 1990s.

Looking at some of these early predictions – about the end of nationalism or the demise of the nation state or the global triumph of Web-powered freedom – one easily detects the naiveté that underlined much of our thinking on these issues. As it turns out, conventional (and often brutal) politics still matters, even in the age of easy mobilization dominated by blogs and social networking.

In my own research – including my one year at Georgetown on a Yahoo fellowship – I’m focusing on how governments – especially those that are not particularly famous for their respect for democracy and human rights – have been adapting to the digital threat posed by this new era and minimizing the democratizing effects of these new technologies. Comparing the approaches in China, Russia, much of the Middle East, I came to see that the governments – and groups and networks affiliated with/ and supportive of what they do – have made a remarkable use of the very same technologies that have become favorite tools of the activists and NGOs. Similarly, many of the new public spheres that formed in digital spaces have also been receptive to numerous nationalist and extremist ideas that were not very conducive to deliberative democracy. How do we still promote activities of the “virtual civil societies” without empowering its enemies, who are sometimes even more dangerous than the authoritarian governments themselves? Were we too quick to assume that promoting democracy and freedom – as well as engaging in public diplomacy – would necessarily become easier and quicker in this new digital age?

These are some of the questions that I’m asking in my research and various events at Georgetown and that I’ll be discussing in my upcoming book about the Internet and democracy (to be published by PublicAffairs in late 2010).”

We are looking forward to bringing Evgeny to Yahoo!’s campus early next year to talk about his work. Congratulations, Evgeny!

Yahoo! at the UN

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Victor Ricco | CEDHA

In October, Yahoo!’s BHRP had the honor of participating in the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ consultation on business and human rights in Geneva.  The consultation was presented by Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises,  John Ruggie, and chaired by the Ambassadors of Norway and Nigeria. More than 300 representatives from UN member states, human rights organizations, civil society, academia and business attended.

The Special Representative has the monumental task of defining the responsibilities companies should have in protecting human rights around the world. He began by creating a policy framework based on three principles:

1. The State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business;
2. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and
3. The need for greater access by victims to effective remedies.

The Special Representative will complete his mandate by translating the policy framework into specific actions that companies and nations should take to protect human rights, and the consultation was an opportunity for people and organizations to give their ideas and views about what the final product should include.

To learn more about the policy framework, go to:  http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/trans_corporations/index.htm

I had the privilege of representing Yahoo! on a panel about the second principle, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. I was asked to discuss the dilemmas companies like Yahoo! face when certain aspects of local laws, or their implementation, may conflict with international human rights norms, and to give recommendations on what the Special Representative should consider when developing specific guidelines for companies.

I talked about the power of technology and how access to the Internet is often even more important in countries that restrict free expression. I talked about the difficult choices companies face and how requiring information and technology companies to refrain from offering products and services in countries that restrict free expression can actually punish the citizens in those countries who rely on technology to communicate and connect with the outside world. I also asked the Special Representative to consider how the framework can show support for solutions like the GNI that draw upon the combined wisdom of companies, non-profits, academics, users and others.

To read the full text of my remarks, see here.

I learned a great deal from my co-panelists, including human rights giants like Jody Kollapen (former Chair of the South Africa Human Rights Commission, who represented Stephen Biko and who helped create the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission), Auret van Heerden (President and CEO of the Fair Labor Association and former exile from the apartheid-era South African government) and Salvador Quishpe, who represented the indigenous Saraguro community of Ecuador. I’m honored to have represented Yahoo!, and the BHRP looks forward to learning more about the progress of the Special Representative’s mandate, and to future conversations with these and other stakeholders.

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

A little more conversation

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

James Emery | Flickr Creative Commons

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

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

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

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

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