04 Apr 11 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
Al Jazeera reporter Lotfi Al Masoudi has been released after being detained by Libyan forces. He was one of four journalists who were arrested on 19 March. They were released on the 31 March, then rearrested later the same day. The Libyan officials offered no explanation as to why they were detained and would not reveal where they were held. Al Masoudi has now returned to his native Tunisia, and has said that they were not mistreated.
01 Apr 11 | Uncategorized
Hillary Clinton offered a glowing narrative of the US role in Middle Eastern Internet freedom in a speech back in February that championed American values while chastising regimes that trample free expression.
“Our commitment to Internet freedom is a commitment to the rights of people, and we are matching that with our actions,” she declared. “Monitoring and responding to threats to Internet freedom has become part of the daily work of our diplomats and development experts. They are working to advance Internet freedom on the ground at our embassies and missions around the world. The United States continues to help people in oppressive internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online.”
All of this action certainly sounded good (and the image of America as benevolent global Internet expression cop surely flattered many Americans listening). But Clinton left out of her speech one messier topic – the role of US companies in facilitating those filters, sometimes even in supporting the Internet blockades State Department money then pays to help locals circumnavigate.
That element of the story out of the Middle East over the last few months has been largely obscured from public debate in the US over global Internet freedom. Some Internet advocates lamented that Clinton’s speech didn’t tackle the topic, or propose serious measures the US could take to halt the export of homegrown technology used (often with the knowledge of US companies) in censorship abroad.
Lately, though, this uncomfortable complication has been getting real attention.
“Ethical Quandary for Social Sites,” blared a New York Times headline on Monday. The story recounted the case of Flickr, the photo-sharing site (owned by Yahoo), which removed photos uploaded by an Egyptian blogger of images swiped by activists from the State Security Police headquarters. Flickr insisted the photos violated its policy that users may post only their own, original work. But activists jeered what appeared to be selective application of a policy some of Flickr’s own employees don’t follow themselves.
Facebook, meanwhile, was caught this week in a similar awkward spot over a fan page devoted to promoting a Third Palestinian Intifada. Israeli officials demanded Facebook remove the page, which had already amassed more than 200,000 friends. Facebook originally refused, arguing that content that is upsetting to some “alone is not a reason to remove the discussion.” But Wednesday, the social networking site reversed course and yanked the page (now with more than 350,000 followers), on the grounds that its peaceful discourse had dissolved into out-right calls for violence that violated Facebook policy.
That flip-flop has compounded claims that Facebook hinders protesters around the world just as much as it helps them, particularly given the company policy that porhibits activists from signing up for accounts without exposing their true identities.
In the media, stories questioning the role of less visible US technology companies have also proliferated.
“US Products Help Block Mideast Web,” warned the Wall Street Journal this week.
“Censorship: Made in the USA,” read the Huffington Post headline above a story written by Free Press campaign director Tim Karr.
Both pieces relied on revelations unearthed in a new report from the OpenNet Initiative by Jillian C York (a contributor to the new Index magazine) and Helmi Noman. The two found that American and Canadian-made software had been used to block socially and politically objectionable online content for more than 20 million web users in nine North African and Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, the AUE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan and Tunisia.
“This is not simply a case of a general purpose, neutral tool being used for an end not contemplated by its maker,” reads the forward to the report. “The filtering products of today engage in regular communications with their makers, updating lists of millions of websites to block across dozens of content categories, including political opposition and human rights. When McAfee Smartfilter or Websense do their utmost to maintain lists of non-profit and advocacy groups their efforts directly affect what citizens in some authoritarian regimes can and cannot access online.”
The discovery is about as embarrassing as those images of Made-in-the-USA tear gas canisters that turned up in Tahrir Square, and US politicians have begun to take notice, too. Earlier this month, Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate human rights subcommittee, wrote an op-ed for the popular Washington-based political site Politico under the banner “Tyrants can use Facebook, too.”
He finally said what Hillary Clinton did not.
“US technology companies allow millions around the world to express themselves more fully and freely,” the senator wrote. “But the industry has a moral obligation to ensure that its products and services do not help repressive governments. If U.S. companies are unwilling to take reasonable steps to protect human rights, Congress must step in.”
28 Mar 11 | Uncategorized
The three Twitter subscribers whose personal information has been subpoenaed by the US government in connection with its investigation into WikiLeaks have appealed the court order that declared their account details unprotected by rights to privacy and free speech.
A district judge in Virginia ruled 11 March that Twitter must turn over the account information of Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, Dutch businessman Rop Gonggrijp and U.S. activist Jacob Appelbaum. The judge, Theresa Buchanan, further rejected a motion by lawyers for the three to publicly disclose which other Internet companies had been secretly subpoenaed by the government for personal user information in the case.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation appealed the decision on Friday on behalf of the three users, asking a US district judge to overturn the earlier ruling. The lawyers argue that the public has a significant interest in obtaining access to documents in the case that remain sealed (which could reveal that companies such as Google have been put in a similarly compromising position as Twitter).
The government is seeking access to all of the users’ information — including IP addresses — across an extended period of time, regardless of whether that “Twitter-related speech” had anything to do with WikiLeaks.
“The Twitter order’s breadth is especially significant because the Parties use Twitter extensively and/or have thousands of ‘followers’ who follow what they post,” the appeal states, “and each publishes many Twitter messages wholly unrelated to WikiLeaks, including Tweets discussing Tibet and Tunisia, the Icelandic Volcano, the Transportation Security Administration, obscenity and gay marriage laws.”
The lawyers argue that because of this broad net, the subpoena does not satisfy standards under the Stored Communications Act that the government must provide “specific and articulable facts” suggesting the information is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.
Buchanan reasoned that the three users had already made their Twitter posts and associations public through the networking site. But the EFF and ACLU counter that the subpoena seeks significant information that is currently private — including the geographic location of the users when they posted messages, and the identity and location of every user with whom they exchanged private messages.
“It is all private,” the appeal states of the information requested by the government. “The Twitter Order thus has a chilling effect not only on the Parties’ speech and association rights, but on the rights of Twitter users in general, including the Parties’ followers, who will now fear that the government may secretly track their activities, seize their account information, and even map their movements and associations based on what they say about matters of public concern or with whom they communicate regarding political issues. As the Supreme Court has cautioned ‘[t]hese freedoms are delicate and vulnerable, as well as supremely precious in our society.'”
