22 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
In many parts of the world, the BBC is a voice of reason, providing real information to even out the state propaganda elsewhere on the radio dial. Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi recently said the BBC World Service gave her a lifeline while she was under house arrest.
Read Index’s Jo Glanville’s brilliant essay about the service’s future in London Review of Books “Auntie Mabel doesn’t give a toss about Serbia”
If it is considered an important part of the World Service’s mission to impart information to audiences in countries where the media are restricted, then shortwave surely wins out as the more reliable means of communication. It can be jammed, but it cannot be wholly disabled – as the internet and mobile phone networks were in Egypt earlier this year. Shortwave’s adherents are concerned that the World Service is turning away from the people who need it in favour of an audience of ‘opinion-formers’. Its managers claim the contrary, pointing to the maintenance of shortwave in Burma as an example, but a poorer, rural audience is being left behind, and when a country’s dictator takes control of radio broadcasts, the World Service will no longer be available there in any form.
If the BBC decides that it can no longer afford to maintain the infrastructure for shortwave, and begins to close down its transmitter sites around the world as other international broadcasters have done, there will be consequences for its participation in a new form of digital radio called Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM). It is the digital version of shortwave and medium wave, providing high-quality radio with the advantage that it can be transmitted, free from political interference, over great distances. DRM is still in its early stages and receivers are not yet widely available, but India and Russia have both committed to it, and Brazil is thinking about it. The World Service is involved – one of its executives chairs the DRM consortium – but its role might be jeopardised if it pulls out of shortwave since DRM uses the same facilities and frequencies.
16 Aug 11 | News and features
Last Thursday evening, the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority in San Francisco — better known as BART — was worried about the consequences (and likely public relations mess) of a protest planned inside its subway system to denounce a fatal police shooting earlier this summer by BART police officers. As a preventive measure, BART deployed a tactic many commentators have since likened to Hosni Mubarak’s playbook: It shut down cell signal in four stations for several hours to prevent protesters from organising.
As it turns out, inviting comparisons to deposed Egyptian dictators — and at the historic epicenter of the US free-speech movement — posed a much bigger PR disaster than anything that would have come from a nonviolent police protest. More protests were then planned. Anonymous hacked BART’s website. The Federal Communications Commission is now looking into the incident. Several California politicians have expressed shock. And free speech advocates across the country are furious about a US precedent for exactly the type of social-media policy officials in the UK have been weighing since last week’s riots.
Making matters worse, BART officials have dug in to defend the decision rather than distance themselves from it, arguing that riders’ constitutional right to safety trumps protesters’ constitutional right to free speech. The agency has not promised it won’t deploy the same tactic again in the future.
“Inside the fare gates,” a BART spokesperson told a local TV channel, “is a non-public forum, and by law, by the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, there is no right to free speech there.”
Eva Galperin with the Electronic Frontier Foundation was having none of this logic on EFF’s blog:
“Cell phone service has not always been available in BART stations. The advent of reliable service inside of stations is relatively recent. But once BART made the service available, cutting it off in order to prevent the organisation of a protest constitutes prior restrain on the free speech rights of every person in the station, whether they’re a protestor or a commuter. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Censorship is not okay in Tahrir Square or Trafalgar Square, and it’s still not okay in Powell Street Station.”
The ACLU on Monday sent a letter to both BART and the Federal Communications Commission saying:
“BART’s actions must be seen in the context of today’s events. All over the world, people are using mobile devices to protest oppressive regimes, and governments are shutting down cell phone towers and the Internet to silence them. BART has never disrupted wireless service before, and chose to take this unprecendented measure for the first time last week in response to a protest of BART police. BART’s decision was in effect an effort by a government entity to silence its critics.”
Rex Huppke, a commentator with the Chicago Tribune, downplayed all the drama, underscoring that many people view electronic communication — and the right to freely text, email, or associate online — as some less legitimate version of free expression.
“We have more than enough ways to communicate in this day and age. Briefly losing access to a score update or a Facebook note about sushi or a message from work isn’t an assault on freedom.”
A year ago, BART might have gotten away with the move with less public outcry. But in the wake of the Arab Spring, any police action in the West that conjures up images of censorship in the Middle East will inevitably alarm Americans. Along with reaction to the riots in the UK, the BART incident has awoken many people to the reality that technology creates complex new means of censorship anywhere in the world.
Emily Badger is Index on Censorship’s US editor
11 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
In the wake of this week’s riots across the country, David Cameron today told parliament that the government is looking into banning people from using social networking sites if they are thought to be organising criminal activity.
Everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.
And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.
Index on Censorship this afternoon released a statement in reaction to Cameron’s address:
David Cameron must not allow legitimate anger over the recent riots and looting in the UK to be used in an attack on free expression and free information. Too often, channels of communication, whether Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry Messenger are seen as the culprits in acts of violence and anti-social behaviour, rather than merely the conduit. While police in investigations should be able to investigate relevant communications, there should be no power to pre-emptively monitor or suspend communications for ordinary social media users.
The Global Network Initiative also responded, saying:
A UK government response to ongoing violence that erodes legal due process or demonstrates a lack of respect for internationally recognized human rights and free speech norms could make it more difficult for Internet and telecommunications companies everywhere to resist surveillance and censorship requests of governments that infringe user rights.
Zeinobia at Egyptian Chronicles shared this sentiment:
Forget about Egypt, think about other countries that can be harmed , now Bashar El Assad and other dictators will boldly block and even shut down the internet to protect the society and its so-called stability.
Technology commentator Jeff Jarvis also outlined why a social media crackdown would be wrong:
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?
This regulatory reflex further exposes the danger of British government thinking it can and should regulate media. Beware, my friends. When anyone’s speech is not free, no one’s speech is free. I refer the honourable gentleman to this Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
Journalist and author Doug Saunders also dubbed the plans “draconian”. A post at The Atlantic Wire ran the omnious headline ”Twitter Braces for Censorship Following the UK Riots.” Meanwhile, internet freedom skeptic Evgeny Morozov seemed confused, tweeting:
I dunno whom to be believe: Gordon Brown said social media would stop next Rwanda and Cameron seems to be saying it would make next Rwanda.
Others pointed out that social media has indeed been utilised for good, having been a key tool in organising the widespread clean-ups that took place following the riots.
John Kennedy at Global Voices Online has translated a handful of Chinese netizens’ comments from the Sina Weibo microblog in response to the news that British police have begun arresting people on suspicion of using social media to organise rioting. One asked, “should we lend them our GFW [Great Firewall] then?” Another mused on what the future will be for China’s domestic microblogs, already used to combat the country’s sophisticated censorship tools: “I just wonder, will Beijing use this as an excuse now to get rid of Weibo, that thorn in their side?”
14 Jul 11 | Digital Freedom, Uncategorized
Michael Posner, the US assistant Secretary of State in charge of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor bluntly called Internet freedom one of the “game-changing human rights issues of our time” Wednesday at a symposium in Washington on the promise and limitations of new technology to spread democracy.
That sentiment will surely earn applause from free speech advocates who’ve watched unfold in the Middle East this year the dual nature of the Internet to facilitate both free expression and sophisticated repression of it. Exactly what the US government should be doing to ensure Internet freedom, however, is a messier question — particularly given that visible State Department support for foreign dissidents can often do more harm than good, and given that US involvement can just as easily play to the hands of the repressive governments dissidents seek to overthrow.
Posner offered Wednesday this blueprint for what he believes the proper role of the U.S. should be:
“We start from the premise that change occurs most effectively within a society. We can’t force it from the outside, but we can be helpful in amplifying the voice of domestic activists trying to raise these issues, we can provide some measure of protection to them and help create an international environment where these issues are discussed in a more intelligent way. But we’re very mindful of the importance of reinforcing domestic voices. This is not about us, it’s about them, and it’s about governments refusing to let their people stand up and speak for what they want.”
He also spoke directly with advice to authoritarian leaders:
“Don’t shoot the instant messanger. Instead address the underlying grievances: corruption, abuse of power, lack of political and economic opportunity, and the daily affronts to dignity by indifferent authorities.”
Authoritarian governments who’ve blamed the Internet — and US backing for it — for local unrest have fundamentally misunderstood their problems, Posner suggests.
“Let’s be honest. Governments that respect the rights of their citizens have no reason to fear a free internet. The Internet didn’t topple the regimes of Tunisia and Egypt. People did.”
