Freedom and the fourth estate

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

 

The recent AFP raids in Australia highlighted that challenges to media freedom are not limited to authoritarian countries. 

It has been reported that since 9/11, Australia has seen the introduction or amendment of more than 75 sets of legislation, many of which may impinge on press freedom. Simultaneously, the debate about journalist and whistleblower protection laws has gained momentum.

But where does the security issue fit into this? While a successful democracy is characterised by a free press, it remains true that there are often good reasons for secrecy and confidentiality. How can we reconcile the conflicting perspectives of press freedom and security?

As part of the Integrity 20 conference, Index chief executive and 2019 Freedom of Expression Award winner Mimi Mefo join a panel of experts to discuss challenges to media freedom worldwide.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

When: Friday 25 October, 12.15pm
Where: Conservatorium Theatre, South Bank Brisbane
Tickets: AUS $153

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Autumn magazine launch: Facial recogniton presents perils for privacy

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

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]

Big Brother at the border

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley argues in the autumn 2019 issue of Index on Censorship magazine that travel restrictions and snooping into your social media at the frontier are new ways of suppressing ideas” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_column_text]

Border Forces cover

Border Forces – how barriers to free thought got tough

Travelling to the USA this summer, journalist James Dyer, who writes for Empire magazine, says he was not allowed in until he had been questioned by an immigration official about whether he wrote for those “fake news” outlets.

Also this year, David Mack, deputy director of breaking news at Buzzfeed News, was challenged about the way his organisation covered a story at the US border by an official.

He later received an official apology from the Customs and Border Protection service for being questioned on this subject, which is not on the official list of queries that officers are expected to use.

As we go to press, the UK Foreign Office updated its advice for travellers going between Hong Kong and China warning that their electronic devices could be searched.

This happened a day after a Sky journalist had his belongings, including photos, searched at Beijing airport. US citizen Hugo Castro told Index how he was held for five hours at the USA-Mexico border while his mobile phone, photos and social media were searched.

This kind of behaviour is becoming more widespread globally as nations look to surveil what thoughts we have and what we might be writing or saying before allowing us to pass.

This ends with many people being so worried about the consequences of putting pen to paper that they don’t. They fret so much about being prevented from travelling to see a loved one or a friend, or going on a work trip, that they stop themselves from writing or expressing dissent.

If the world spins further in this direction we will end up with a global climate of fear where we second-guess our desire to write, tweet, speak or protest, by worrying ourselves down a timeline of what might happen next.

So what is the situation today? Border officials in some countries already seek to find out about your sexual orientation via an excursion into your social media presence as part of their decision on whether to allow you in.

Travel advisors who offer LGBT travel advice suggest not giving up your passcodes or passwords to social media accounts. One says that, before travelling, people can look at hiding their social media posts from people they might stay within the destination country. Digital security expert Ela Stapley suggests going further and having an entirely separate “clean” phone for travelling.

These actions at borders have not gone unnoticed by technology providers. The big dating apps are aware that information to be found in their spaces might also prove of interest to immigration officials in some countries.

This summer, Tinder rolled out a feature called Traveller Alert – as Mark Frary reports on – which hides people’s profiles if they are travelling to countries where homosexuality is illegal. Borders are getting bigger, harder and tougher. 

It is not just about people travelling, it’s also about knowledge and ideas being stopped. As security services and governments get more tech-savvy, they see more and more ways to keep track of the words that we share. Surely there’s no one left out there who doesn’t realise the messages in their Gmail account are constantly being scanned and collected by Google as the quid pro quo for giving you a free account?

Google is collecting as much information as it can to help it compile a personal profile of everyone who uses it. There’s no doubt that if companies are doing this, governments are thinking about how they can do it too – if they are not already. 

And the more they know, the more they can work out what they want to stop.

[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” size=”xl” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”Border officials in some countries already seek to find out about your sexual orientation via an excursion into your social media presence as part of their decision on whether to allow you in” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]

In democracies such as the UK, police are already experimenting with facial recognition software. Recently, anti-surveillance organisation Big Brother Watch discovered that private shopping centres had quietly started to use facial recognition software without the public being aware. 

It feels as though everywhere we look, everyone is capturing more and more information about who we are, and we need to worry about how this is being used.

One way that this information can be used is by border officials, who would like to know everything about you as they consider your arrival. What we’ve learned in putting this special issue together is that we need to be smart, too. Keep an eye on the laws of the country you are travelling to, in case legislation relating to media, communication or even visas change.

Also, have a plan about what you might do if you are stopped at a border. One of the big themes of this magazine over the years is that what happens in one country doesn’t stay in one country. What has become increasingly obvious is that nation copies nations, and leader after leader spots what is going on across the way and thinks: “I could use that too.”

We saw troll factories start in Mexico with attempts to discredit journalists’ reputations five years ago, and now they are widespread. The idea of a national leader speaking directly to the public rather than giving a press conference, and skipping the “need” to answer questions, was popular in Latin America with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, of Argentina, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

A few years later, national leaders around the world have grabbed the idea and run with it. It’s so we don’t have to filter it through the media, say the politicians. While there’s nothing wrong, of course, with having town hall chats with the public, one has a sneaking suspicion that another motivation might be dodging any difficult questions, especially if press conferences then get put on hold. Again, Latin America saw it first.

Given this trend, we can expect that when one nation starts asking for access to your social media accounts before they give you a visa, others are sure to follow. The border issue is broader than this, of course. Migration and immigration are issues all over the world right now, topping most political agendas, along with security and the economy. Therefore, governments are seeking to reduce immigration and restrict who can enter their countries – using a variety of methods.

In the USA and the UK, artists, academics, writers and musicians are finding visas harder to come by. As our US contributing editor, Jan Fox, reports, this has led to an opera singer removing posts from Facebook because she worries about her visa application, and academics self-censoring their ideas in case it limits them from studying or working in the USA. Where does this leave free expression? Less free than it should be, certainly. This is not the only attack on freedom of expression. Making it more difficult for outsiders to travel to these countries means stories about life in Yemen, Syria and Iran, for instance, may not be heard.

We don’t hear firsthand what it is like, and our knowledge shrinks. This policy surely reached a limit when Kareem Abeed, the Syrian producer of an Oscar-nominated documentary about Aleppo, was initially refused a visa to at-tend the Oscar ceremony. Meanwhile, UK festival directors are calling for their government to change its attitude and warn that artists are already excluding the UK from their tours.

One person who knew the value of getting information out beyond the borders of the country he lived in was a former editor of this magazine, Andrew Graham-Yooll, and we honour his work in this issue. His recent death gave us a chance to review his writing for us and for others. A consummate journalist, Graham-Yooll continued to write and report until just weeks before his death, and I know he would have had his typing fingers at the ready for a critique of what is happening in the Argentinian election right now.

Graham-Yooll took the job of editor of Index on Censorship in 1989, after being forced to leave his native Argentina because of his reporting. He had been smuggling out reports of the horrifying things that were happening under the dictatorship, where people who were activists, journalists and critics of the government were “disappearing” – a soft word that means they were being murdered. Some pregnant women were taken prisoner until they gave birth. Their babies were taken from them and given to military or government-friendly families to adopt, while the mothers were drugged and then dropped to their death, from airplanes, at sea.

Many of the appalling details of what happened under the authoritarian dictatorship only became clear after it fell, but Graham-Yooll took measures to smuggle out as many details as he could, to this publication and others, until he and his family were in such danger he was forced to leave Argentina and move to the UK.

Throughout history the powerful have always attempted to suppress information they didn’t want to see the light. We are in yet another era where this is on the rise.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Rachael Jolley is editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship magazine. She tweets @londoninsider. This article is part of the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine, with its special report on border forces

Index on Censorship’s autumn 2019 issue is entitled Border forces: how barriers to free thought got tough

Look out for the new edition in bookshops, and don’t miss our Index on Censorship podcast, with special guests, on Soundcloud.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”How barriers to free thought got tough” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2019%2F09%2Fmagazine-border-forces-how-barriers-to-free-thought-got-tough%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The autumn 2019 Index on Censorship magazine looks at borders round the world and how barriers to free thought got tough[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_single_image image=”108826″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2019/09/magazine-border-forces-how-barriers-to-free-thought-got-tough/”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.

Subscription options from £18 or just £1.49 in the App Store for a digital issue.

Every subscriber helps support Index on Censorship’s projects around the world.

SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Council of Europe’s platform for journalism is a model for other countries

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Building trust in the media, achieving media sustainability, and ending impunity for murdered journalists are all issues that will be covered during the upcoming International Parliamentary Seminar on Media Freedom, which takes place in London on 9 – 11 September. The Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists is relevant in this regard, as it seeks to gather and disseminate information on serious media freedom issues.

The platform was launched in 2014 in response to growing hostility toward journalists and media freedom in Europe, so as to swiftly and systematically notify the Council of Europe of pertinent issues and to empower it to take timely and coordinated action when necessary.  Index on Censorship is proud to be one of the platform partners. Since 2015 we have submitted and co-sponsored nearly 300 alerts (notifications) to the platform about threats to media freedom and the safety of journalists. 

Index on Censorship contributes to the platform, including by drawing on its Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project, which monitors threats, limitations and violations related to media freedom in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. In 2018, 17 alerts were submitted to the platform relating to impunity for murdered journalists. Of these, 15 occurred in the countries covered by Index’s media freedom project: Turkey (2), Azerbaijan (2), Ukraine (5), and Russia (6). 

In advance of the International Parliamentary Seminar on Media Freedom session on regional initiatives, which takes place on 10 September, Index on Censorship expresses the belief that the platform provides a model that could be replicated by other regions. Such a mechanism has the capacity to quickly draw on the knowledge and expertise of media freedom organisations and journalists’ networks, in order to promote media freedom and enhance the safety of journalists. 

Index has noted with extreme concern that the number of alerts about serious threats to journalists’ lives has almost doubled on an annual basis since the launch of the Platform in 2015. We believe that stronger political commitment and practical engagement from politicians and governments is needed to support media freedom around the world. In Council of Europe states, this means that parliamentarians must fully engaging with the platform by ensuring that each alert receives a swift and comprehensive response. This is essential in order for the platform to fulfil its potential. 

While Index on Censorship commends the UK’s commitment to press freedom, we note that since the beginning of 2018 seven Council of Europe alerts have concerned the UK: new counter-terrorism legislation; proposed internet regulation; the arrest of two journalists in September 2018; the killing of a journalist in April 2019; the continued impunity for the killing of a journalist who was murdered in 2001; an attack on a journalist in August 2019; and a government-backed arms fair’s (DSEI) refusal to grant two journalists accreditation. Four of these alerts have yet to receive a response.  

Noting the UK’s role as one of the Council of Europe’s founding members, Index urges the UK to continue engaging with the platform and ensure it takes practical and concrete steps to promote the protection of media freedom in the UK. The UK should aim to set an example for other countries by providing prompt and detailed state replies to alerts.  

Contact: Jessica Ní Mhainín, [email protected]   [/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1567768197646-934f3ae2-fe70-1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]