26 Sep 19 | Event Reports, News and features, Volume 48.02 Summer 2019 Extras, Volume 48.03 Autumn 2019
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Tech journalist Geoff White (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
“Put your hand up if you’re concerned at the moment about facial recognition”, Geoff White, investigative technology journalist, told the audience at the launch of the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine. “Keep your hands up if you own a smartphone”, was White’s next instruction to the majority of the audience. “Good news. You’re already using facial recognition!”
The autumn issue of the magazine, on the theme of borders, investigates how border forces around the world are increasingly clamping down on the free movement of ideas. The worrying and growing trend of travellers’ social media accounts being checked as they enter a country was a particular focus of the magazine. Contributors questioned whether people would begin to self-censor their online presence for fear of their views being held against them at airport security. This could pose particular dangers to LGBT travellers travelling through countries with repressive laws.
The launch was part of the Science Museum’s September’s late event, which takes place monthly. The theme of the night was Top Secret, and Index on Censorship shared the venue with talks about cracking codes and personal security. White was joined on stage by Jacob Wilkin, a penetration tester. Their talk was introduced by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine.
White highlighted the issues around the increasingly widespread use of facial recognition technology: the data that can be attached to the image of a face. Different stashes of data, bank and tax records for example, each have a unique number attached to them. He said: “But to really have power in this new world of data you need to get all the stashes together.” This requires one number that unites them all. “And guess what, we’ve had it along. It’s literally written on your face.” Facial recognition technology reduces an image of a face to a set of numbers and letters.
This comes into play at the world’s borders. International airports, including LAX and Gatwick Airport are employing facial recognition technology. The Transport Security Administration in the US have scanned 19,000,000 people to detect imposters. They detected 100. Is it worth collecting the data of so many to catch so few?
White said: “Think about the number of stashes of data that your face connects to. Your Facebook profile, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter profile, your driver’s license, your passport, and increasingly every cctv camera you walk past.” Britain is second only to China for proliferation of CCTV cameras.
Network penetration specialist Jacob Wilkin (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Wilkin demonstrated how easily computer programmes can find these social media accounts with minimal information. Wilkin describes himself as “a hacker for the good guys”, testing for flaws in the security of corporations and banks. He has created a facial recognition programme called Social Mapper.
Social Mapper correlates people’s social media profiles based on an image and a name that is fed into it. Days before the launch, Jodie Ginsburg, CEO of Index on Censorship, volunteered a photo of herself to Wilkin to run through his programme. Her Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook profiles promptly appeared on the wall behind Wilkin. “This took two minutes” he said. “If you run this over multiple days with multiple machines, you can collect all the Linkedin data for a whole organisation.”
“What are the border implications of this?” Wilkin asked. He has spoken at an event for US Department of Homeland Security, who are looking at “scraping social media profiles as people come into the country. They want to find links to drugs, smuggling, terrorism.”
Catching people who pose a threat to the safety of others is doubtless a good thing. But should it come at the price of the violation of the privacy of the general public? Social media provides platforms where people are free to air political views, and exhibit aspects of their lives, including sexual orientation. When crossing borders into countries where freedom of expression is limited and dissenters are punished, will knowing that this information is being instantaneously collected impact on how people use their right to freedom of expression online? [/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1569514532933-51b65a69-4c09-0″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
29 Aug 19 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”108826″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]We’re launching our latest Index on Censorship magazine at the Science Museum, as part of their Top Secret Lates on Wednesday 25 September. This is a chance for an adults only, after-hours visit to the museum, exploring all things secret, from codebreaking to secret communications.
We’ll be running interactive sessions Stop: Border Forces At Work with tech journalist Geoff White and security researcher Jacob Wilkin throughout the evening, looking at why surveillance at international borders is rising, what you might get stopped for and how this threatens the flow of global information, and ideas.
Our latest magazine has a special report called Border Forces: How Barriers To Free Thought Got Tough with articles from South Korea, Mexico, USA, Turkey and many more. Don’t miss advice on how to prepare for a border from our digital security expert.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”108828″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”109066″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”108829″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]
When: 25 September 2019, 18:45 and last entry is 21:15
Where: Science Museum, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD
Tickets: Free via Science Museum. VIP tickets available.
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02 Aug 19 | About Index
Summer is here! As Index gets its tent ready for another festival this weekend, I wanted to share some highlights from the past few months and give you a sneak peek of what we have in store for the autumn.
Above right, Jemima Foxtrot performs at Latitude Festival.
This Friday, we’ll be gathering festival goers around the campfire for a series ofuncensored folk tales at the Cambridge Folk Festival, where we are this year’s talks partner. Cambridge comes hot on the heels of our story-telling sessions at Latitude where writers including Scarlett Curtis, Max Porter and Jemima Foxtrot entertained crowds with wild stories.
Speech of a different kind was in focus at a talk earlier in July when UN rapporteur David Kaye discussed the thorny question of who polices speech online. Our magazine launch and summer party at the Goethe Institut, with German crime writer Regula Venske, was also a chance to reflect on the ways censorship creeps up to become authoritarianism.
Other events included two special talks in London and at the Hay Festival to mark the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings. Speakers included authors Xinran and Karoline Kan, journalist Tania Branigan and academic Jeff Wasserstrom.
China will be in focus again in October when we have an exclusive screening of the film China’s Artful Dissident, which features the work of leading political dissident cartoonist Badiucao. Badiucao, who revealed his identity earlier this year after years of anonymity and who is flying from Australia to attend, will be in conversation with cartoonist Martin Rowson after the film. This is an invitation only event. Please email [email protected] if you would like to attend.
At the end of September, Index celebrates the freedom to read. Watch out for Banned Books Week events at the British Library and Foyles bookshop as well as at independent bookshops and libraries around the UK where midnight openings will celebrate the launch of Margaret Atwood’s new book ‘The Testaments’.
Press freedom in focus
In advocacy, we were delighted at news that the investigation into Northern Irish reporters Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey was dropped in May. Index – alongside colleagues English PEN – intervened in the judicial review of their case and we are grateful for the support of Phoenix Law in Belfast and Doughty Street Chambers in London. Birney and McCaffrey had their homes and office raided last year following their documentary investigating police collusion in the murders of six men.
From left: Freedom of Expression Awards Journalism Fellows Zaina Erhaim (2016), Zaheena Rasheed (2017) and Wendy Funes (2018) in the Index booth at the Defend Media Freedom conference in July.
Media freedom is the focus of a major campaign spearheaded by the UK and Canada this year. I spoke on the issue at the UK’s launch of its annual human rights report and Index played an active role in a global conference hosted in London in July to launch the campaign. We were excited to see so many Index fellows there, including journalism fellows Zaina Erhaim, Zaheena Rasheed and Mimi Mefo, who all spoke on panels at the event, as well as Wendy Funes, NetBlocks and CRNI. We’ve also published reports looking at the wave of physical threats that journalists are facing in Russia, Turkey and Ukraine — drawn from our latest media monitoring project.
Current arts fellow Zehra Dogan had an exhibition at the Tate in May and was also one ofthe designers of flags developed to mark the 70th anniversary of the UN declaration on human rights.
Also in arts, Index continued to raise questions about the UK’s policing of drill music and spoke at the launch of a new single by two artists who are subject to controversial new orders that are forcing musicians to censor their work.
Knowledge sharing
Our expertise is in high demand. In May, Index launched a new advisory service for arts organisations facing censorship, offering consultancy services, workshops and training. We also continue to provide expertise through the media, and have featured widely in international and national press and broadcast. Head of advocacy Joy Hyvarinen has been active in raising Index’s concerns about the UK’s strategy for online safety. We also gave evidence to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights about harassment ofMPs – on and offline.
We are recruiting for two new roles over the summer. The Head of Communications & Media and Senior Partnerships Manager positions are currently being advertised and we look forward to welcoming new additions to the Index family who will help us spread the free speech message even further.
Andrew Graham-Yooll
Finally, we were sorry last month to learn of the death of a great Index friend and freespeech champion – former editor of Index magazine, Andrew Graham-Yooll, who was a leading figure in the reporting of Argentina’s repressive regime in the 1970s and 1980s. Andrew’s family have kindly asked that people give to Index in Andrew’s memory. If you would like to do this, please visit the justgiving page.
As another former Index colleague, Matthew d’Ancona, wrote in a recent article, the right to free speech is needed not by the few but by everyone – and we are grateful to have had known individuals like Andrew who help us maintain that fight.
19 Jul 19 | Magazine, News and features, Student Reading Lists
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”107971″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Andrew Graham-Yooll served as editor for the Index on Censorship magazine from 1989-1993. He was then, and remained until his death in 2019, committed to free expression and the free press around the world. In honour of his memory, Index is featuring some of the highlights of his writing for the magazine about his home country Argentina. The pieces featured cover a broad range of topics and events primarily related Argentinian art and journalism, and showcase Graham-Yooll’s fierce integrity and characteristic humor. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”94869″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064227308532221″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Letter from Argentina
June 1973, vol. 2 issue: 2
“Censorship in Argentina is not a sin of the State, but a sickness of society”. Thus closes Andrew Graham-Yooll’s scathing indictment of censorship and self-censorship in the Argentinian press, in an environment where press controls are loosely organised but vicious.Graham-Yooll describes the routine torture and corruption in the criminal-justice system that the Argentinian press seems uninterested in, and expresses his opinion that, however damaging state censorship is, it is the fear and self-censorship it engenders in the press that is truly destorying Argentina’s soul.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”94773″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064227508532398″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]The Argentinian press under Peron
March 1975, vol. 4 issue: 1
Andrew Graham-Yooll reflects on the record he kept of all the obstacles to press freedom and independence in Argentina during the early 1970s. He outlines, in broad strokes, the conflict between right- and left-wing branches of Peronism, and what the escalating conflict between the two–and the right wing’s eventual victory–meant for the operation of the Argentinian press. The press had faced restrictions and instability under Alejandro Augustin Lanusse and Hector Jose Campora that exploded into violence and direct government interference with print, radio, and television media under Raul Alberto Lastiri, Juan Peron himself, and his widow, Isabel Martinez de Peron.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”94399″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064227908532905″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Arrests in Argentina
March 1979, vol. 8 issue: 2
Graham-Yooll takes a look into the fate of the nine workers at El Independiente, a left-of-center, nationalist local paper in the poor Argentinian province of La Rioja that “established itself on the wrong side of every provincial administration”. After Juan Peron was restored to power in 1973, the paper faced increasing harassment and frequent suspensions, until by 1976, El Independiente was permanently and forcibly closed, with seven of the nine workers arrested under dubious charges, some of their families in exile or tortured, and the remaining two workers missing. The Argentinian Newspaper Publishers’ Association demanded their release, but at the time of the article’s writing they were all still imprisoned.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”90901″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229508535825″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Coming Home
January 1995, vol. 7 issue: 2
This article is not an obituary, but it deals with the death of a gay Argentianian novelist, Manuel Puig. Puig died of AIDS in Mexico, a fact that Graham-Yooll was surprised to see mentioned in coverage of the artist and his work. Argentina’s social climate tolerates homosexuality to a degree, Graham-Yooll says, but only unobstrusive or plausibly deniable homosexuality. The brutal targeted repression under the military junta of “putos, guerrilleros, y faloperos” (queers, guerillas and drug addicts) is still in living memory for many gay Argentinians, and though the coverage of Puig could be a positive sign, discussion of homosexuality and gay rights was still not part of mainstream news coverage or culture in Argentina at the time of the article’s writing.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”90587″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220408537324″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]News From Patagonia
April 2004, vol. 33 issue: 2
In 2003, shortly before the article was written, Argentina’s Supreme Court struck down a law passed some twenty years earlier under the junta, which had made it illegal to provide broadcasting licences to community radio. The nominal grounds for that practice had been that it was easier to prevent the infiltration by the regime’s ideological enemies of commercial radio. However, before the law was struck down, its true raison d’etre had become the preservation of cronyism and political nepotism. Graham-Yooll uses the Supreme Court’s ruling as a chance to take stock of Argentina’s broadcasting landscape, with particular focus on the florshing of extra-legal, shoestring FM radio stations.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”89187″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220512331339490″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]The Pain and the Memory: The Legacy of Nunca Mas
February 2005, vol. 34 issue: 1
In 1984, Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappearance of Person released a report, Nunca Mas (Never Again), on the human rights abuses under the National Reorganisation Process between 1976 and 1983 that devastated many in the country. In this piece, written in 2012 Graham-Yooll discusses the abuses of the military and the many ways Argentina has attempted to grapple with the report, from the junta trials to a more recent photo exhibition of the atrocities. He shares a few of his own experiences from that time and describes how both dictatorship and report live on in Argentinian memory.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”89185″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220500125985″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Our Father, Who Art in Art
May 2005, vol. 34 issue: 2
In 2004, right after the Argentinian branch of the Catholic Church received praise for opening up politically, Leon Ferrari opened up an exhibition in Buenos Aires reviewing the collusion between the church and some of Latin America’s worst regimes over the centuries. Graham-Yooll describes some of the most important exhibit pieces and the extreme backlash the exhibit received from the church and laymenry–sometimes simultaneously, as in the entertaining story of a Christian vandal whose destruction of a piece was turned into an exhibit piece itself.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”89186″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220500125985″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Cumbia Villera: the Sound of the Slums
August 2005, vol. 34 issue: 3
A new genre of music is becoming popular in Latin America: the “politically incorrect” cumbia villera, a high-energy, hard-hitting new street music with a Carribbean beat. The lyrics to these songs, according to Graham-Yooll, are “vile and often violent”: they are filled with misogynistic abuse, incitement to prison breaks and riots, and enthusiastic encouragement of alcohol and hard drug use. For this reason, the Argentinain government at the time of the article was considering censoring cumbia villera, but in what Graham-Yooll asserts is a reflection of Argentina’s growing class divide, the music is gaining a mass following in the slums that seems unstoppable.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”89110″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422012456134″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]The Past in Hiding
September 2012, vol. 41 issue: 3
Nearly 40 years after the dirty war, Graham-Yooll examines two new books whose dialogue he believes represent hope that the record of atrocities committed by the junta can be known and Argentina can thus “come to terms” with its past. The first book, Final Disposal, is a set of nine interviews journalist Ceferino Reato conducted with members of the erstwhile regime in prison, in which those members display, according to Graham-Yooll, both generosity with information and a cold and brutal view of their own crimes. The second book, From Guilt to Forgiveness, is a personal account written by Norma Morandini, a former journalist and politician, about her personal journey from denial of what happened under the regime to a reckoning.
Read the full article[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”80566″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422015605706″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]From murder to bureaucratic mayhem: After Argentina’s dictatorship, what happened next for the country’s journalists
September 2015, vol. 44 issue: 3
After Argentina emerged from under the rule of the military junta in 1983, press freedom improved considerably. Now, journalists are not murdered by the regime, but silenced through systemic harassment and the entangled web of cronyism. Graham-Yooll explains how the leader of Argentina at the time of the article, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has developed a distinct and effect new “means of controlling the message”: not reactive censorship, but preemptive control of content through control of the ownership and cash flows of the media.
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