11 Oct 11 | Digital Freedom, Magazine, News and features, United Kingdom
David Cameron has announced plans to block access to pornography online, with providers offering the choice to turn on a filter.
In a 2009 edition of Index on Censorship magazine Seth Finkelstein examines how indiscriminate blocking systems can be a source of censorship
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07 Oct 11 | Uncategorized
Will the arrival of elected police commissioners politicise how officers respond to popular concerns about unpopular issues? If artistic expression sparks controversy how will newly accountable police chiefs manage the already fraught competing demands of keeping the electorate sweet, and meeting the requirements of human rights legislation?.
With the arts — some like them, some don’t. Some walk away from things they don’t like, others exercise their right to protest. The threat to public order, potential or actual, is a core policing issue.
Thus Birmingham police prevented the screening of Penny Woolcock’s film One Day about local gangs; Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti, dealing with tensions within the Sikh community, was cancelled after protests turned violent and police could not guarantee the safety of theatre staff; police upheld concerns by some members of the Somali community that music is un-Islamic and banned a musical performance in Bristol.
These and many other similar cases in recent years illustrate the police’s an unprecedented role as arbiters of freedom of expression in the arts. A proposed “heavyweight” independent review of policing inEnglandandWalesled by former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens should address this.
Elected commissioners must manage the tension between the popular expectations that put them in post and the unpopular causes that police are sometimes expected, even required, to defend.
Yet currently there’s no clear practice. When the Belgrade Theatre Coventry premiered Bhatti’s follow-up play Behud – Beyond Belief, an imaginative response to the cancellation of Behzti, the theatre was initially asked to pay £10,000 in policing costs, the local force applying rules designed for commercial sports events, to public art.
This is problematic political, legal and cultural territory. Beyond fulfilling their core duties — to maintain law and order, to prevent and detect crime — the Human Rights Act imposes on the police a qualified obligation not to interfere with the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and protest — and a positive obligation to take appropriate steps to protect those rights.
Case law advises: “In determining whether or not a positive obligation exists, regard must be had to the fair balance that has to be struck between the general interest of the community and the interests of the individual, the search for which balance is inherent throughout the Convention.”
When “taking those appropriate steps” means the police supporting an unpopular, minority interest — enabling a play to go ahead rather than sending officers out detecting crime, protecting property — it is a tough call as things stand.
With elected commissioners in place, especially when resources are limited, supporting an individual artist’s right to freedom of expression could look like a real vote loser.
After the riots in August David Cameron made the case for elected police commissioners as part of the solution “to mend[ing] our broken society…they will provide that direct accountability so you can finally get what you want when it comes to policing.”
Following up later that week in the Sunday Express newspaper, under the headline “Rights in my Sights”, Cameron talked of “scoring a clear line between right and wrong through every neighbourhood and backing it up with the full force of the law”.
By challenging the rights agenda in the name of a moral crusade, Cameron set alarm bells ringing for free expression. The right to freedom of expression is about the rights of the minority, and artists are always the minority.
Cameron’s claim that “our reforms mean that the police are going to answer directly to the people” runs the risk of setting up misleading expectations and empowering those who can put the power of numbers behind their sense of cultural offence.
It is important that any “contract” between an elected commissioner and his or her electorate includes the understanding that the police will do things that the majority may not like, in the interests of democracy and in the interests of a vibrant and provocative culture.
This means more freedom of expression, not less, reinforced by better information about our rights and responsibilities. We need artists to be free to discuss even the most uncomfortable truths and now more than ever to speak truth to power, to call authority to account.
13 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Robin Tudge
The Facebook page of a touring musical comedy show, an “epic tale of violence, greed, and cheap sofas” about middle-class rioting in an IKEA store in 2005, has fallen victim to the kind of blanket censorship that David Cameron is planning for any further urban tumult.
The page, titled “Riot in Edinburgh”, which since mid-July had given information about the Edinburgh Fringe showing of ‘Riot’, was taken down by Facebook on Wednesday, August 10. ‘We received no warning’ about the removal, said Helena Middleton, part of The Wardrobe Ensemble company behind the show, which was first shown at the Bristol Old Vic in June. As of yet, the page, which included an IKEA catalogue image of a plate with meatballs and a knife, has not been put back up, said Middleton.
The censoring appears to be Facebook’s own work, as the Ensemble was sent the following message: “The event “RIOT in Edinburgh” has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, events that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not allowed…Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled”.
The one-hour show retells the riot of 10 February 10, 2005, when over 6,000 customers overwhelmed the midnight opening of a new IKEA store in Edmonton, that promised massive discounts. Customers punched and kicked their way to £45 sofas, others were crushed, five shoppers were hospitalised and one man was stabbed with an IKEA knife.
The show has been blessed with remarkable timing. As debate swirls about whether the recent English riots were a violent underclass taking their extreme materialist cue from corrupt MPs and bankers, the play shows how cheap MDF shelves can lure the middle-class into mindless mob violence. And in 2005 the police were overwhelmed. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said at the time: “It was something that the Met Police were as taken by surprise by as the IKEA management.”
The Facebook page disabling also shows the potential mindlessness and indiscriminate criminalisation of the potential wholesale shutdown of social media platforms, amid any further unrest or legitimate protests, that the UK government suggested last Thursday.
Riot is on daily at 1.15pm until August 29 at the ZOO Roxy, 2 Roxborough Place Edinburgh. www.bit.ly/riotplay
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?”
