15 Apr 2013 | Uncategorized
Digital rights activists from around the UK met in Manchester for Open Rights Group’s first ever ORGCon North on Saturday.
John Buckman, chair of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), delivered the keynote speech: “Britain, under the thumb of…”
He filled in the blank with references to the copyright industry, the new Royal Charter on press regulation, overreaching child protection restrictions, the EU, the US, and private web companies, all of which pose significant challenges to digital freedom of expression in the UK.
The rest of the day was split between four panel sessions and eight impromptu “unconference” sessions for which participants pitched ideas and convened small groups to discuss them.
I spoke on a panel about the right to offend, alongside ORG’s Peter Bradwell and The Next Web’s Martin Bryant. Overly broad and outdated legislation, most notably Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act and Section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act, are regularly used to criminalise freedom of expression both online and offline in the UK. Despite a successful campaign to drop “insulting” words from the grounds on which someone can be prosecuted for offence under Section 5, the fact that neither of these provisions address the speaker’s (or tweeter’s) intentions continues to chill freedom of expression in the UK.
Also troubling is the fact that other states, India and the UAE for example, point to these and other British laws as justification to prosecute offensive expression in their own jurisdictions. I argued that protecting everyone’s fundamental right to freedom of expression is more important than protecting the feelings of a few people who might take offense to satirical, blasphemous or otherwise unsavoury views. For freedom of expression to be preserved in society, potentially offensive expression requires the utmost protection.
Another panel addressed the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation, which intends to strengthen existing privacy principles set out in 1995 and harmonise individual member states’ laws on data protection. Provisions in the proposal around consent, data portability and the “right to be forgotten” aim to give users greater control of their personal data and hold companies more accountable for their use of it. Many companies that rely on user data oppose the regulation and have been lobbying hard against it with the UK government on their side whereas some privacy advocates argue it does not go far enough.
There were also discussions on the open rights implications of copyright legislation and the UK’s Draft Communications Data bill (AKA Snooper’s Charter), which looks set to make a comeback in the Queen’s speech on May 8.
The “unconference” sessions addressed specific causes for concern around digital rights in the UK and abroad. I participated in a session on strategies for obtaining government data in the UK and another on the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008. This Act, along with the Protect America Act of 2007 legalised warrantless wiretapping of foreign intelligence targets. Digital rights activists took notice of the laws because the rise of cloud computing means even internal UK and EU data is potentially susceptible to US surveillance mechanisms.
Other “unconference” sessions focused on anonymity, password security, companies’ terms of service, activism and medical confidentiality.
The full OrgCon North agenda is available here. ORG’s national conference will take place on 8 June and will feature EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow who wrote the much circulated and cited “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996.
Brian Pellot is Digital Policy Adviser for Index on Censorship. Follow him @brianpellot
20 Feb 2013 | Americas, Digital Freedom
In this Index on Censorship magazine interview from 2011, the celebrated Cuban blogger talks to Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson
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27 Dec 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
The Gulf monarchies have, in recent years, invested considerable resources and efforts in finding ways to censor interactions between their citizens, and between their citizens and other parties. As such, each new communications technology that has become available in the region has either been sponsored by the state, for example, the state-backed newspapers, radio stations, and television stations; or it has been blocked, such as unpalatable foreign newspapers, unwanted foreign radio and television signals, satellite broadcasts and foreign books.
A case can even be made that the internet itself — predicted by many to lead to sweeping changes in such tightly controlled societies — was also successfully co-opted by the Gulf monarchies, at least in the early days. The blocking of offensive websites, including blogs critical of the regimes, has occurred, while many other basic internet communications methods such as email or messenger software can either be blocked or — more usefully — monitored by the state so as to provide information and details on opponents and opposition movements.
Moreover, some Gulf monarchies have actively exploited internet communications, arguably having done so much better than most governments in developed states, with an array of e-government web services having been launched, most of which allow citizens to feel more closely connected to government departments and helping to echo the earlier era of direct, personal relations between the rulers and ruled.
Meanwhile, the rulers themselves have often established presences online, and their self-glorifying websites usually also feature discussion forums to facilitate interaction between themselves (or rather their employees) and the general public. Many other lesser ruling family members, ministers, police chiefs, and other establishment figures in the region have also set up interactive Twitter feeds and Facebook fan sites for the same purposes, and some of these are now ‘followed’ by thousands of citizens and other well-wishers.
Unsurprisingly, all six Gulf states have slipped further down Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index. In 2012, the highest ranked Gulf monarchy was Kuwait — in 78th position — with the UAE, Qatar, and Oman ranked firmly below dozens of African dictatorships, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain ranking among the very worst countries in the world. Although superficially successful in the short term in limiting opposition voices, the various censorship strategies employed have been leading to heightened fears and widespread criticism and condemnation of the regimes responsible, not only from the international community, but also from resident national and expatriate populations, and most especially in the wake of the region’s “Arab Spring” revolutions.
Nevertheless, the seemingly unstoppable wave of new, participatory and user-centred Web 2.0 internet technologies — from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to video-sharing site YouTube — seem to be finally having the expected impact on the region’s population and its political consciousness. While these and other Web 2.0 applications can still be blocked in their entirety by cautious regimes, this is now unlikely to happen in the Gulf monarchies, as the inevitable outcry from the large numbers of users would be difficult or perhaps impossible to appease.
Inevitably these applications are being increasingly used to host discussions, videos, pictures, cartoons, and newsfeeds that criticise ruling families, highlight corruption in governments, and emphasise the need for significant political reform and increasingly even revolution in the Gulf. Leading opposition figures are now attracting as many followers on these applications as members of ruling families. While there have been some attempts by regimes to counter-attack against this cyber opposition, often by deploying fake social media profiles so as to threaten genuine users, or by establishing so-called “honey pot” websites to lure in activists and help reveal their identity, for the most part the applications are effectively bypassing censorship controls and the mechanisms used to control earlier modernising forces.
As such they are facilitating an unprecedented set of horizontal connections forming between Gulf nationals and between Gulf nationals and outside parties — connections which are crucially now beyond the jurisdiction or interference of the ruling families and their security services.
Christopher Davidson is the author of Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success
