13 Nov 12 | Uncategorized
The whole of the UK is riveted by the race to elect police commissioners.
Actually let me rephrase that. The police commissioner elections are to be held this Thursday, to widespread indifference. But these are potentially important positions, so maybe we should be asking questions of the candidates (including John Prescott, pictured).
Here’s one to try for your local candidate: Do you think arresting young people for posting “offensive” content on Facebook and Twitter is an appropriate use of police time and taxpayers money?
In case you don’t know who your local police commissioner candidates are, you can search for them here www.policeelections.com.
Let us know if you get an answer in the comments below, on our Facebook page, or on twitter @indexcensorship.
UPDATE: We’ve had an answer from Rupert Moss-Eccardt, Lib Dem police commissioner candidate for Cambridgeshire
(Hat tip to Bob Farrell on Facebook for the suggestion)
13 Nov 12 | Azerbaijan News, Digital Freedom, News and features, United Kingdom
A panel discussion in London yesterday did not offer much hope that prosecutors and politicians will defend free speech online. Paul Bernal reports
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01 Nov 12 | Middle East and North Africa, Opinion
Bahrain has a funny definition of free speech.
After jailing human rights activists and social media users critical of the government and even going as far as banning protests, the country’s government still insists that it protects its citizens’ right to freedom of expression.
A child protester at a rally in Bahrain, 12 October 2012 – Demotix
In the most recent case, Bahraini officials reportedly sentenced a social media user to six months in jail for insulting the country’s King Hamad on Twitter. He was one of the four Twitter users arrested last month for “defaming public figures on social media” — which, according to the Ministry of Interior, is a no-no:
The acting Director-General said that the freedom of expression was protected under the Bahraini constitution and the law. However, this freedom did not allow the defamation of others. He stressed the importance of using the social media responsibly and ethically.
So expressing discontent with Bahrain’s government seems to fall outside the bounds of what is responsible and ethical, while the online war Bahrain wages against activists and protesters seems to fall within it.
Earlier this week, Bahrain banned all protests, after “repeated abuses” of free expression. The ban is supposedly being used to diffuse what has become an even more violent and desperate situation. In the past two months, security forces have killed two teenagers. After a roadside bomb took the life of a police officer during clashes in the village of Akar, seven were arrested in connection to the attack.
Rather than merely cracking down on dissent, Bahrain would do better to follow through on its promise to implement the 140 of the 176 recommendations that came from this year Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN. Or even follow through on the seemingly long-forgotten recommendations from the Bahrain Independent Commission for Inquiry (BICI) last year.
But Bahrain’s desperation to silence its unrest — rather than address it — is only contributing to the country’s declining situation, and its disregard for reforms only spells out a bleak picture for its human rights situation. While insisting that it protects freedom of expression, Bahrain has actually declared war on it.
Sara Yasin is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship. She tweets at @missyasin
22 Oct 12 | Uncategorized
You know you’ve made it when you’re on the front page of the Sun. By that measure, the time of the troll has truly come, as Britain’s favourite paper has led with the story of the singer Adele being “targeted” by “sick trolls” “threatening” her and saying the star’s baby “should be killed”. Note the fact I had to put almost every word in scare quotes. The Mail ran the same story with the same tone, as did the Independent.
The story “reveals” that some people made jokes about a celebrity and her baby on Twitter. But what none of the quoted tweets appears to do is to “target” Adele. There is an OfficialAdele account, but it’s unclear whether she actually runs it, and it’s not exactly prolific. In any case, not one of the “sick jokes” made by the “vile trolls”, is actually directed at the account. There are just some rubbish jokes, chucked into the ether, and picked up by a journalist desperate for Monday morning copy. As so often happens with red-top stories, we have a celebrity, and a big current talking point — free speech on the web and cyberbullying — conflated into one big nothing.
Trolling can be defined as posting irrelevant, off topic or inflammatory material in order to get a heightened, perhaps irrational response. No wonder tabloid newspapers are so nervous about it — they’ve been sole practitioners for years, and have only just realised they’ve got rivals.
