13 Jun 13 | China, Digital Freedom
China has censored an image of Winnie the Pooh strolling with Tigger, after it went viral on popular Chinese microblogging site, Sina Weibo.
The image was circulated after bloggers noticed the similarities between a photo snapped this week of President Barack Obama and Chinese premier Xi Jinping and an illustration of the cartoon characters.
China’s censors are known for their lack of a sense of humour: earlier this month, censors deleted a photoshopped version of a famous picture showing a single protester standing before a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square, where the tanks were replaced with large rubber ducks.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index. She tweets from @missyasin
13 Jun 13 | Digital Freedom, Europe and Central Asia
Pussy Riot – videos of their “Punk Prayer” protest are blocked by Russian authorities
April saw a bizarre variety of sites blocked by the Russian authorities or internet service providers – among them Pussy Riot videos, Wikipedia, the Yandex search engine, Blogger blogs, sites promoting bribery and corruption, sites of land developers and the humorous anti-encyclopaedia Absurdopedia (the Russian version of Uncyclopedia). Even the parody website Gospoisk (gossearch.ru) was blocked. The site is a fake search engine, ostensibly created with government support: when a visitor types a query in the search box, he or she is asked to enter his first and last name, patronymic, passport details, address and the reason for the request. Compiled by Andrei Soldatov
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11 Jun 13 | Digital Freedom
(Photo: Andrei Aliaksandru/Index on Censorship)
Against a backdrop of ongoing revelations around the US Prism programme, mass surveillance dominated the discussion at the Index on Censorship event Caught in the web: How free are we online? Brian Pellot reports
Index on Censorship brought together a panel of experts at King’s Place in London last night. Investigative journalist Heather Brooke, author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow, media lawyer Paul Tweed, Index CEO Kirsty Hughes and chair David Aaronovitch discussed the threats to freedom of expression online.
Brooke, warned that as we increase our online expression, we “create a handy one-stop shop for snooping officials”. She also cautioned that concentrated power in secretive states is a far greater danger to humanity than unbridled free speech.
(Brooke, author of The Revolution will be Digitised, kindly joined the panel at the last minute, replacing Guardian data editor James Ball, who is currently in the US covering the developing Prism scandal)
Doctorow, co-founder of the hugely influential Boing Boing blog, said while he was pessimistic about the “Orwellian control” that digital technologies provide governments, he remains optimistic that such technologies can enable us to cooperate, coordinate and collaborate in unprecedented ways to seek positive social change.
Doctorow questioned the efficacy of overcollection of data, characterised by PRISM, saying that as an intelligence technique is “like pointing at a pixel with a hotdog”.
Belfast-based libel lawyer Tweed said that anonymity online enables speech that constitutes dangerous harassment. He argued that freedom of expression must be protected, but that controls are needed to prevent the undermining of reputation and privacy. He recounted examples from his practice of clients that are harassed and attacked on the web with very little recourse against “internet goliaths”.
“There has to be a button to protect the man on the street”, Tweed said.
Hughes discussed the emerging geopolitics of digital freedom, noting that while EU countries and the US are lobbying for the preservation of a multistakeholder model of internet governance, Russia, China and others are pushing for top-down government control. Some of the greatest threats to online freedom of expression she discussed are censorship in the form of firewalls and filters, laws criminalising offence, the privatisation of censorship and, of course, surveillance.
Aaronovitch fielded questions from audience members who were focused on government surveillance and censorship.
Doctorow claimed that web filters are a blunt and inefficient instrument, giving the example of Denmark’s secret child abuse filters, which leaks showed had blocked a huge amount of material that was not related to sexual imagery of children.
“Everyone knows web filters don’t work, but once used, removing them would be political suicide,” he said.
Brooke acknowledged that current laws are not keeping pace with technology but does not think new laws are the solution. More important is that “our fundamental values be translated into the digital age”, she said.
“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear is an arrogant statement”, Brooke commented on UK foreign secretary William Hague’s response to questions on PRISM on Sunday.
Hughes elaborated on a statement she made earlier in the day essentially saying that mass surveillance is an invasion of our right to privacy and a direct chill on free speech.
Index on Censorship has released a joint statement with English PEN, Privacy International and Open Rights Group condemning the use of national security to justify mass surveillance.
Let us know your thoughts on the Prism scandal by commenting below
Related:
• Pod Academy coverage of this event
24 May 13 | News and features, United Kingdom
Some UK politicians have said the murder of a soldier in Woolwich, London this week demonstrates the need for greater surveillance of communications data. But would a “snooper’s charter” really have made a difference? Index asked Emma Carr of Big Brother Watch and Jamie Bartlett of Demos for their views
Emma Carr, Deputy Director of Big Brother Watch
Emma Carr, Big Brother Watch
John Reid’s and others’ attempt to make a political argument about “essential” legislation just hours after the brutal murder in Woolwich this week was remarkable, given how little was known at the time and the fact the victim’s family had not even been informed of his death.
Yes, it is right to examine how our security services could have been aided to prevent the horrific scenes we saw in Woolwich this week, but to jump to conclusions and use the politics of fear to promote an agenda before the any detail is available is simply wrong.
Indeed, as the facts have begun to emerge, it seems the answer may look very different to the draft Communications Data bill.
If, as is reported to be the case, these two individuals were known to the security services — as was also the case for several of those involved in the 7/7 attack — then plainly it seems strange to suggest a policy that would collect data on every member of the public, massively increasing the volume of data the security services have to sift through. We should be asking what resources the security services need to expand their knowledge of people ‘on the radar’.
The choice isn’t between a communications data bill or nothing. Far from it. Indeed, as details of this horrific attack become clear, it is looking more likely that the “Snooper’s Charter” would not have prevented. If it is a case of two individuals, working together but not as part of a wider organisation, then internet records may not be a critical factor. Of course, their personal devices — laptops, mobiles and other technology — will have a huge amount of information on them, far more than the bill would have created.
Equally, it’s worth noting the draft Communications Data Bill prohibited the storing or viewing of the content of communications. When someone is considered a significant enough threat for security services to prohibit them leaving the country, frankly I would hope the content of their messages is being read. The powers currently exist to order the retention of data on an individual, but that has a 30 day time limit. This seems unduly restrictive on the police, and should be extended.
Even if other powers were used to intercept messages, British courts still block the use of intercept evidence in court, an handicap not seen in the US or countless other countries.
The nature of terrorism has changed significantly over the past decade. Low-tech equipment and so-called “lone wolf” attackers are clearly now a real threat. The Communications Data Bill was a concept formed in the middle of the last decade, and is rapidly looking both disproportionate and out of date.
As announced in the Queen’s speech, the Government is already working on ensuring that the police can identify who is using a certain internet IP address to enable them to trace threats. It should be possible to do this in a way that supports the police, as well as protecting privacy, and it is right the Government is focusing on this important step.
But to use this tragedy as a springboard for recording the details of every British citizen’s emails, web browsing and social media messages is both a failure to learn the lessons of recent incidents and a continuing failure to recognise that surveillance of an entire population is both an unacceptable intrusion on our freedoms and a chilling effect on free expression for anyone communicating in, or with, the UK. It also risks diverting resources away from the security services at a time when they are more in need of targeted surveillance than ever before.
@EmmaFrancesCarr
Jamie Bartlett, Head, Violence and Extremism programme, Demos
Jamie Bartlett, Demos
I wrote back in April, after Nick Clegg announced on LBC he would be sinking the Communications Data Bill, that it would be back soon. This was because both Committees (there were two, one in secret) that reviewed the Draft Bill last year accepted that changes in the way we communicate makes it harder for the security services, HMRC and the police to get hold of the information they need to do their work effectively. Both agreed that new powers were needed soon. They just didn’t think much of the Home Office’s proposals.
I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon. Even though I’ve been mildly in favour of the Bill, I was disappointed to see Lords Carlile and Reid, eight short hours after someone had been brutally murdered, suggest that this might mean reviving the Bill. To give the Home Office some credit, I’m not sure they’ve been quite so bullish, and neither has the Prime Minister.
Distasteful it may be, but there is one point I agree with: whenever we make legislation relating to security or counter-terrorism, we need to remember that threat from Al-Qaeda inspired — and other — violent groups, is significant. Proportionality is a vital consideration any time we give legal powers of surveillance, and that means knowing what the threat is. At times, the debates on the “Snooper’s Charter” — and I took part in quite a lot of them — felt like it was taking place in a vacuum. So few people from the security side (where were all the terrorism experts that are now omnipresent, for example?) were willing to debate the issue that the argument was lop-sided. It was being widely derided as nothing more than a measure to give more powers of surveillance, rather than an attempt to improve public safety and security in a way that was necessary and proportionate.
I’m sceptical that the Communications Data Bill could have prevented this attack. It required very little coordination, technical know how or planning: almost impossible to spot and stop. But it may have been useful in the aftermath. The first thing on the minds of the police and security services would have been whether this was part of a coordinated series of attacks, and they would have wanted to know, very quickly, who these two had been communicating with and when. Imagining the types of forums they likely visited, it might very well have been the sorts of communications service providers wouldn’t have been able or willing to share rapidly. Communications data may also be important in the week ahead for longer-term investigations and in securing convictions of any collaborators, if there were any. But — and it is a big but — I am speculating. I simply do not know.
Either way, this one attack should not dictate our counter-terrorism laws. A new settlement is needed, not because of this incident, but because of changes in communication, attitudes to privacy, the new possibilities of mass surveillance, and the growing complexity of terrorist and criminal activity. As I’ve argued elsewhere, social media intelligence is of increasing value to the police in particular, but its regulation and use under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act remains unclear. This Act as a whole needs a re-refresh, and communications data is an important part of that. But this week is not the time to do that.
@JamieJBartlett
