Berkman Center for Internet & Society

While the Internet's affinity for pornography is an established meme of the blogosphere, Omsk resident Anton Ilyushchenko, known on LiveJournal as snaf-omsk [ru], is learning that Russian law enforcement isn't always willing to embrace the Web's seedy underbelly.

In April 2013, browsing the social networking page of a local nightclub called Everest, Ilyushchenko discovered photo albums of heavily inebriated and half-naked patrons engaged in what appeared to be amateur striptease contests and public sex acts. Writing on his LiveJournal, Ilyushchenko posted 20 of the pictures from a particularly tawdry, bacchanalian evening at Everest, which he described as “one of the seediest places in our city.” The post went viral, generating thousands of comments, hundreds of shares, and as many reposts across various social media platforms. The post even crossed over into English-speaking media, appearing on Reddit and in translated English [NSFW] on russiaSlam, a site that specializes in popular stories from the RuNet.

While the post generated massive publicity for Ilyushchenko's blog, it also attracted the attention of the local Omsk authorities. As Ilyushchenko explained [ru] on April 10.

Вчера вечером поступил звонок от представителей полиции с просьбой явиться в ленинское отделение г. Омска. Предлогом послужило распространение наркотических веществ в сети Интернет от моего имени. Естественно ничем подобным я никогда не занимался. Когда я явился на допрос, дознаватель задавала вопросы только про нашумевшую историю об “Эвересте”. Про тему с наркотиками они впервые слышат и развели руками.

Last night I got a call from the police with a request to present myself at Omsk's Lenin Police Station. The pretext was the distribution of narcotic substances online. Naturally I've never done anything like this. When I appeared at their request, the investigator only asked me questions about the tumultuous story of “Everest.” As for the drug issue, this was the first they'd heard of it and they simply shrugged.

Five days later, on April 15, Ilyushchenko again posted [ru] about the investigation, explaining himself and asking for his readers’ support.

В определениях слова порнография, которые приводятся в авторитетных источниках, говорится об извращенно-похотливых желаниях. Лично у меня, при просмотре подобных фотографий, таких желаний не возникает. И уж тем более я не хотел вызвать таких желаний у своих читателей. Я вижу здесь только грязь и быдлоту.…

Я разместил в своем блоге ссылки на уже имеющиеся фотографии в интернете. Почему наши правоохранительные органы не хотят заняться поиском автора этих фотографий и организаторов мероприятия? А хотят обвинить человека, который показал пальцем на беспредел, творящийся в течение двух лет у них под носом.

Я считаю, что это абсолютно неприкрытый произвол и провокация со стороны властей.

In definitions of the word “pornography,” which exist in authoritative sources, they talk about the arousal of lustful desires. Personally, while viewing these sort of photos, I experience no such desires. And I didn't want to cause such desires in my readers. I see in these only filth and trashiness.

I posted on my blog only links to photos that already exist online. Why don't our authorities want to bother looking for the author of these photographs or the organizers of these events? Rather they want to accuse the person who pointed a finger at the lawlessness taking place over two years right under their noses.

I think this is absolutely judicial arbitrariness and a provocation on the part of the authorities.

Ilyushchenko went on to delete the orginal post (though copies of it and its controversial pictures abound elsewhere online), explaining that the investigation was ongoing. Though Ilyushchenko didn't draw attention to the fact, other bloggers and commenters were quick to point out that the owner of the Everest cafe is a former police officer.

Following Ilyushchenko's deletion of the post, the furor surrounding it died down. On July 23 however, the Omsk branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a press release [ru] announcing a criminal case against Ilyushchenko under Article 242 of the Russian criminal code—for “Illegal distribution [and] public demonstration of pornographic materials made with the use of information-communicational Internet sites.” The MVD explained that the pictures had been sent to an expert in Yekaterinburg:

Согласно заключению эксперта, все изображения полуодетых и обнаженных молодых людей мужского и женского пола являются вульгарными и сверхвульгарными. Три фотографии признаны порнографической продукцией.

According to the conclusion of an expert, all representations of half-clothed and naked young people of male and female genders are vulgar and highly vulgar. Three photos were declared a pornographic production.

There is no exact definition of pornography in the Russian criminal code, and in this case it appears the Ministry's expert went with US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stuart's famous definition. The charges against Ilyushchenko threaten a prison term of 2-6 years. Many netizens rushed to Ilyushchenko's defense, such as fellow Omsk blogger Vasiliy Neverov, who argued [ru] that it is unjust to single out Ilyushchenko for what happened at Everest.

Интересно, специалисты МВД понимают, что такие Эвересты есть в каждом городе? Думаю, да. Но, как правило, нужно найти виноватого. Одного человека. Хотя в собственных пресс-релизах УВД указано: снимки сделаны участниками вечиринки три года назад на мобильные телефоны и фотоаппараты. Причем тут Антон Илющенко? В чем его обвиняют? Он распространял… Ну конечно! В 21 веке есть кнопочка “репоста”… Есть свободно открытые открытые группы ВКонтакте, где лежат разные фотки и видео.

Do the specialists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs understand that there are “Everests” in every city? I think yes. But, as a rule, you need to find a guilty party. A single individual. Yet even in their own press releases, the police say that the pictures were taken by participants at a party three years ago on mobile telephones and cameras. So why Anton Ilyushchenko? What's his crime? He distributed… Well of course he did! In the 21st century, there's a “repost” button… There are freely open groups on [the popular Russian social network] VKontakte, where there are various [highly explicit] photos and videos.

Support wasn't isolated to Omsk's netizens. St. Petersburg-based blogger Corpuscula [ru] complained that the authorities were railroading Ilyushchenko for uncovering a nasty truth about life in the city.

Что по идее должна была сделать администрация? По обычной логике, притон к черту закрыть, в городе открыть какие-нибудь молодежные центры… а жж-юзеру сказать спасибо за то, что обратил внимание на проблему…

Но Россия – страна победившей социопатии… Юзера Снафа стали таскать в милицию под разными предлогами. Снимки “проверяют на порнографию”, чтобы выяснить, не распространял ли её Снаф. Пресса винит его в том, что он “выставил Омск в дурном свете”

What should the authorities have done? According to normal logic: close the den of inequity, open new youth centres… and thank the blogger for drawing attention to this problem…

But Russia is a country of rampant psychopathy… The user Snaf [Ilyushchenko] was dragged off to the police on various pretexts. The pictures were “checked for pornography” to see if Snaf had distributed any. The press blames him for “putting Omsk in a bad light.”

Though RuNet support for Ilyushchenko appears to be the norm, there are of course some Internet users who have little sympathy for him. One commenter on the omskinform [ru] newsportal accused Ilyushchenko of attempting to reinvent himself as a “truth-teller,” when the actual motive for the original post was a cynical effort to increase his own blog's traffic.

Никакого отношения к “борьбе с быдлотой” это не имеет. Паренёк лукавит и это он теперь выработал такую позицию. А изначально это было просто выпендрёжное желание нагнать трафик в своём ЖЖ любыми путями… Распространение – оно и есть распространение. Думать надо было головой сначала хоть немножко-то. Органы настроены решительно, солидным людям уже порядком поднадоела вся эта идиотская вакханалия в омском интернете.

This isn't any sort of “fight against trashiness.” The lad is being disingenuous and now trying to take this position. But this started as a simple attention-seeking wish to attract traffic to his blog by any means… Distribution is still distribution. He should have used his brain a bit at the start. The authorities are inclined to act decisively as decent people are already sick of all this idiotic bacchanalia on Omsk's Internet.

Ilyushechnko's legal difficulties show the problems that arise when laws developed for the pre-Internet age are applied to the online world. Arresting and prosecuting everyone who reposted or linked to Ilyushchenko's pictures (or finding the original photographer) would be nearly impossible, leading to arbitrary accusations against only the most prominent offenders. Unfortunately for Ilyushchenko, the courts are unlikely to show him much sympathy, given the Russian legal system's growing hostility for upstart netizen activity [GV]. Ilyushchenko is currently visiting Kazakhstan, where he might remain, if it becomes his only way to stay out of prison.

Written by Daniel Alan Kennedy · Translated by Global Voices · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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In this installment of Digital Diversity, brothers David and Christopher Mikkelsen tell the story of how their organisation, Refugees United, was born, using mobile technology and the world’s largest database to help reconnect separated refugee families.

We built the organisation into what it is today – a technology non-profit which helps thousands of refugees in their quest to find missing loved ones."

It grew from a deeply personal experience with a young Afghan man named Mansour who we met in 2005. Not only did he lose his past to the Taliban, but also all contact with his parents and five siblings during their escape.

... In partnership with Ericsson, a provider of telecommunications equipment and services, we built an innovative mobile platform that allows refugees to take the search for missing loved ones into their own hands.

Refugees United’s systems provide access to a simple SMS that can be a lifeline connecting a disconnected person with the rest of the world, and with their missing family. Millions of pieces of data – such as tribes and clans, places last seen and personal traits – are securely analysed and paired to create matches for more than 190,000 refugees who are already registered in our database.

Read full article.

Apparently, 43% of smartphones users have experienced thumb pain in the last five years and over half complain that their thumb gets tired when they use their smartphones.

Rather than release faster internet speeds on an unprepared public, O2 partnered with BMI Healthcare, the UK’s largest independent private healthcare provider, to find a thumb-pain solution.

This is it. Ridiculous.

[via TIME]

More than eight per cent of UK adults have admitted taking pictures of strangers they find attractive on public transport and in the doctor's surgery, a poll has found, reports The Telegraph.

The survey of 2,076 also found that almost five million people are worried that embarrassing pictures could inadvertently end up on their Facebook page, according to Nokia who conducted the research.

Almost seven million people in the UK have admitted to taking an intimate picture of themselves and storing it on their phone, leaving themselves vulnerable to social media mishaps, researchers said.

More than 90 per cent of heartbroken people erase all photographs of their exes from their mobile phones. The need to "achieve closure" was cited as the reason why Britons delete their digital albums following the end of a relationship.

With the rise of smartphone cameras and improved picture quality, more than a third believe they are now more likely to take an intimate photo and a quarter of those asked refuse to let their partners see the pictures they have on their smartphone.

The research also revealed the country's narcissistic tendencies as 40 per cent of adults admitted taking pictures on their mobile phone just to show off on social media about their holidays, food, possessions and nights out.

Read full article.

On computer and cellphone screens in workplaces across the country, many young employees keep up daylong conversations with their parents, sharing what the weather is like, what they ate for lunch or what the boss just said about their work. The Wall Street Journal reports.

The running chatter with Mom or Dad is possible for young adults in their 20s and early 30s because they are the first generation to hit the workforce with tech-savvy parents. Most baby boomers are using the same smartphones, tablets and laptops as their children, making daily communication with Mom easier and more open-ended than ever.

Chatting, or texting, is a subtler way to stay in touch from a cubicle than a phone call. As long as the computer's sound effects are on mute, chatting is silent.

Regular chats, whether on the phone, by text or online, can bring parents and adult children closer, bridging long distances and keeping both sides up to speed. Too much, though, can get in the way of work, relationships and independent decision-making on both ends.

Family therapists say it's important to establish boundaries. She says the frequency and intensity of texts and chatting with parents is a common issue among 20-somethings and their families.

Read more.

Yesterday the Kaiser Family Foundation released a new data browser that visualizes the potential impact of the Affordable Care Act on Medicaid and uninsured populations across the country. With the recent launch of the new healthcare.gov in preparation for the new Health Insurance Marketplace in October, this tool helps communities learn more about the upcoming changes.

Check out the site to explore the data and the potential change in your community.

Full view of the tool showing potential changes in Washington, DC.

Behind the browser

Similarly to how we've built light data browsers in the past, we've built this site with ease of use and high performance in mind. All maps were designed in TileMill and integrated to the user interface with MapBox.js and MapBox hosting. We've made use of d3.js to power the chart comparisons at state and local levels and provide the additional contextual and comparisons needed to explore the data further.

To allow users to quickly search based on city, zip code, or address, we added search functionality with MapQuest's Nominatim Search API. Nominatim is powered by OpenStreetMap data and leverages reverse geocoding. The data comes from the Urban Institute’s American Community Survey-based Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model.

Check out the map and explore the data for yourself.

[Links are to Spanish-language pages except where noted.]

With the aim of keeping Peruvian children safe, Congressman Omar Chehade has proposed a bill to protect minors from Internet pornography. But according to some experts, if the bill becomes law, it could end up restricting freedom of expression for all Internet users.

Legislators from the governing Peruvian Nationalist Party presented the bill last July 22. Its preamble states that it is the duty of the state to protect children and adolescents, and that they face potential risks in the use of new technologies that “threaten their sexual freedom.” (p.1) They note that given Internet use by minors for recreational purposes is on the rise, “it is necessary to establish a framework to protect them from cyberspace.” (p.7)

The most worrisome aspect is that the proposed law would create a Commission to Protect Minors from Pornographic Internet Content (COPROME), which would be charged with “choosing, in an impartial, transparent and reasonable manner, the content that would be blocked by Internet service providers.” (p.18) The commission would “permanently monitor the content circulating on the Internet in order to identify those sites or services that should not be propagated in cyberspace.” (p.19)

The bill explains that COPROME “would be able to filter content by Internet service providers in order to restrict minors’ access to pornographic content.”

For lawyer Erick Iriarte Ahón, the bill is clearly aimed at controlling content. On his blog he comments on the use of filters:

[El proyecto] se creara una Comisión que tendrá que colocar filtros que monitorearan contenidos previamente. Y aquí empiezan las preguntas: ¿Cómo estos filtros determinarán quién es un menor de edad? ¿Cómo se limitará que el contenido filtrado solo sea el de contenido pornográfico frente a un menor de edad, y no contenido que cualquiera desee acceder en cualquier momento? ¿Dónde esta el límite de pasar de control de contenidos pornográficos a control de contenidos políticos, religiosos, sindicales u otros?. Crear un “comité de decencia” como se ha intentado en otros países es un camino a crear un “Ministerio de la Verdad” a lo 1984.

[The proposed law] would create a commission that would have to set up preventative filters to monitor content. And so the questions begin: How will these filters determine who is a minor? How will filtering prevent only pornographic content from reaching minors and not content that any user might want to access at any given time? Where does one draw the line between controlling pornographic content and controlling political, religious, labour union or other kinds of content? To create a “decency committee,” as has been tried in other countries, is going down the road to a 1984-style “Ministry of Truth.”

What's more, Iriarte finds it odd that the bill is being put forward against the backdrop of “accusations that the National Intelligence Directorate (#DINI) is monitoring the Web” and “the comments by Congressman Eguren that one should not govern listening to Twitter users.” He adds that:

Es un error tratar de hacer una regulación de este tipo….hay que mirar…el intento de USA de crear el Child Online Protection Act (COPA) donde la American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) fue quien logró que esta ley fuera declarada inconstitucional, un proyecto cuestionado por entidades de sociedad civil que encontraban vulneraban el derecho del acceso a la información y además de libertad de expresión y daban instrumento de control de contenidos al gobierno.

It is a mistake to try and regulate this way…one has to look…at the attempt by the USA to create the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) where the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) were the ones who managed to get the law declared unconstitutional, a law questioned by civil society advocates who found that it weakened access to information and freedom of expression and that it was an instrument by which government could control Internet content.

Lawyer Miguel Morachimo also believes that the proposed law—as currently drafted—threatens freedom of expression and questions whether, by restricting minors’ access to adult content, it is necessary to set up mandatory preventative filters on all Internet content. After pointing out certain false premises contained in the bill, he posits a few inherent problems:

Imagínense a un grupo de siete funcionarios estatales mirando todos los días cantidades alucinantes de pornografía y decidiendo qué contenidos serán prohibidos. Probablemente durante las primeras horas terminaría por censurar páginas como Tumblr, Twitter o Flickr. Esas tres páginas albergan contenidos para adultos y, sin embargo, también son herramientas de comunicación y libre expresión usadas con otros fines. ¿Qué haría en esos casos nuestro Comité Censor de Internet?

Imagine a group of seven public servants watching astounding amounts of pornography daily and deciding what content to prohibit. Within the first few hours they would probably end up censoring pages like Tumblr, Twitter or Flickr. These three sites host content for adults and, nevertheless, also function as communication and free speech tools for other purposes. What would our Censorship Committee do in those cases?

Morachimo goes on to suggest other possible alternatives to a content blocking system:

[E]l Estado [podría] invitar a los proveedores de servicios de Internet a buscar mejores formas de vender y promocionar sus filtros parentales….Los operadores podrían ofrecer planes móviles especiales para menores de edad, de la misma manera en que se ofrecen en otros países. Existen muchas formas de atacar este problema que no pasan por restringir las libertades del grueso de los usuarios.

[T]he State [could] invite Internet service providers to look for better ways of promoting and selling parental controls…Operators could offer special wireless plans for minors, in the same way as they do in other countries. There are many ways of attacking the problem that do not involve infringing on the rights of the majority of users.

Given the recent date of the bill, which almost coincides with the end of the legislative term, there has been little debate on the matter, though on Twitter as on Facebook a few comments can already be found under the hashtag #leychehade. However, it remains to be seen whether, when Congress reconvenes, digital rights activists undertake activities to inform citizens and pressure members of Congress not to pass the bill.

Written by Juan Arellano · Translated by Victoria Robertson · View original post [es] · comments (1)
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Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Hae-in Lim, Yuqi Chen, Alex Laverty, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we begin in the US, where military officer and whistleblower Bradley Manning has been convicted of multiple charges of espionage. We then move to the MENA region, where bloggers in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are facing new threats from government.

Freedom of Information

A US military court convicted military officer Bradley Manning of 20 out of 22 charges filed against him, including multiple charges under the Espionage Act of 1917. Prosecuted by the US government for leaking over 700,000 classified documents and other media to transparency platform WikiLeaks, Manning has been imprisoned and held in solitary confinement since his arrest in 2010. Manning was found not guilty of “aiding the enemy,” the most controversial charge brought against him, but could still face a lifetime in prison. A sentencing hearing for Manning begins today.

In The Guardian, Dan Gillmor and Yochai Benkler commented on what the verdict means for national security journalism in the United. Benkler described the decision as setting a “chilling precedent” for future cases.

The Bradley Manning Support Network is publishing frequent updates on court proceedings and reactions to the news.

Thuggery

Blogger and Global Voices contributor Mohamed Hassan was arrested in Bahrain today in an early morning raid on his home. On Twitter, individuals reported police seized Hassan's computer and cell phone. Hassan, known in the blogosphere as Safy, stopped blogging in April of 2013. Supporters are communicating about his arrest using the hashtag #FreeSafy.

A Saudi court convicted activist and Free Saudi Liberals website founder Raif Badawi of violating the country's anti-cybercrime law. Badawi, who was found guilty of “insulting Islam”, was sentenced to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.

Syrian security forces arrested and jailed 62 year-old Syrian artist Youssef Abdelke last week after he signed a declaration demanding the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and a UN-supervised transition to an interim government. His wife, a prominent filmmaker, launched a Facebook campaign calling for his release. Over 700 writers, artists, academics, and journalists from the region have signed the petition, including prominent artists Serwan Baran and Ayman Baalbaki.

In better news, Kuwait's Emir issued a pardon to dozens of individuals who had been arrested and prosecuted for insulting him on Twitter.

Free Expression

Numerous reports held that bulk SMS messages were being blocked in Zimbabwe ahead of general elections in the country, which take place today, July 31. Inquiries to Econet, a major mobile service provider in the country, revealed that the country's Posts and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority requested that providers block bulk messages coming from outside the country “for political reasons.”

The UK government has mandated that all Internet Service Providers install filters that will target adult pornographic content for users who do not deliberately “opt out” of this service by January 1, 2014. UK NGO Open Rights Group has warned that these will “reach far beyond pornography,” leading to the de facto censorship of age-appropriate content.

British PM David Cameron is concurrently pursuing more aggressive methods for stopping the circulation of child pornography online. Observers have noted that Internet and online service providers already take great pains to eliminate child pornography, which is illegal in nearly every country in the world, from their networks.

The Chinese government is working to defend youth from “spiritual pollution” with a new anti-pornography campaign. Porn websites, online games, advertisements, blogs, and social networks can now be shut down for hosting pornographic content. Critics claim that targeted content will “run the gamut from porn to wayward politics.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists has urged Barack Obama to discuss on press and online freedom issues during his upcoming visit to Vietnam. The Vietnamese government has introduced various restrictive Internet policies in recent years; thirty-six bloggers are currently imprisoned in Vietnam.

Surveillance

Digital rights advocacy groups Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy International, and Access Now launched a set of principles for human rights-protective communications surveillance practices for governments worldwide. 118 NGOs have endorsed the principles, which are currently available in multiple languages including Spanish, Polish, and Russian.

Members of the US Congress voted on an amendment that would end Congressional funding for certain controversial surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency (NSA). A group of Internet activists set up the site DefundtheNSA.com in an effort to influence the vote. The measure was narrowly defeated 205 to 217.

A team of researchers at University of Toronto have developed IXmaps, an interactive tool (and video) that maps the path of data packets as they traverse the Internet. The map shows how nearly all of the United States’ Internet traffic passes through one or more of 18 US cities and explains that the NSA can perform comprehensive surveillance of American Internet users by setting up splitters at these exchange points.

Cybersecurity

New reports confirmed that intelligence and defense service providers in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand have banned the use of Lenovo computers on “secret” or “top secret” networks since the mid-2000s. Government security agents feared that “malicious circuits” and insecure firmware in Lenovo computer chips could generate security threats. Lenovo, a Chinese company that is the world's largest manufacturer of personal computers, said it was unaware of the ban. The company continues to supply computers to Western governments for unclassified networks.

Cool Things

Data-visualisation designer Ruslan Enikeev has created an Internet map that contains 350,0000 different website planets Internet users across the globe that received the most clicks. The size and color of the “planet” is tied to traffic and country of origin, while all “planets” were mapped according to the relationships to others. Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Yahoo! are among the biggest planets on the map.

Publications and Studies

• Throttling Dissent: China’s New Leaders Refine Internet Control – Freedom House

• Opening the Lines: A Call for Transparency from Governments and Telecommunications Companies – Global Network Initiative

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

 

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Bahraini blogger Mohamed Hassan was arrested from his home in an early morning raid today, July 31. According to reports, police raided his Sitra home and arrested him, confiscating his telephone and computer in the process. Reports also claim they had an arrest warrant.

The arrest of Mohammed, known as Safy, and who is a Global Voices Online author who has covered Bahrain, drew criticism from netizens. UAE commentator Sultan Al Qassemi tweets:

Sorry to hear that Bahraini blogger @safybh has been arrested. I met him in December, he hasn't written or tweeted in months.

— שחררו את פלסטין (@SultanAlQassemi) July 31, 2013

In a follow up comment, he says the arrest of bloggers was a sign of the times in the region:

@alaashehabi @JustAmira @Redbelt I tweeted in the 2011 that we were entering a dark decade in the Gulf. I'm sorry to say I was right.

— שחררו את פלסטין (@SultanAlQassemi) July 31, 2013

And activist Alaa Al Shehabi replies:

@SultanAlQassemi @justamira @redbelt Just the Gulf? Feels like the dark ages. I am very worried about him. We all r probably next.

— آلاء الشهابي (@alaashehabi) July 31, 2013

This sentiment of an impending crackdown on netizens is a recurring theme this morning. Mohammed Al Maskati, who was previously arrested at the beginning of protests in Bahrain in March 2011, asks:

Shall we pack our bags? Who is next? #FreeSafy

— Mohammed AlMaskati (@emoodz) July 31, 2013

Like many, Maskati does not believe there needs to be a reason for people to be arrested in restive Bahrain:

.@safybh is unlikely arrested for his online activities, he didn't tweet nor update his blog in over 3 months.. Then again this is #Bahrain

— Mohammed AlMaskati (@emoodz) July 31, 2013

Jalal Al Jazeeri salutes Safy for his stance:

To take a stand knowing that in all likelihoods you'll be persecuted, penalized, and punished for it,.. that's incredibly bold. #FreeSafy

— Jalal Aljazeeri (@j_theislander) July 31, 2013

Mohammed Al Daaysi says:

This is the kind of sham security they boast about #FreeSafy

— Mohammed Al Daaysi (@MDaaysi) July 31, 2013

And Salma can't find a reason why a blogger like Safy would be arrested:

I don’t get it. He’s a pacifist, a writer. What possible security risk can he pose? except to the security of the ignorant mind.. #FreeSafy

— salma (@salmasays) July 31, 2013

In April, Safy announced the closure of his blog:

All good things come to an end.

Though my message might have not ended I think my points were delivered, I think it is time now to put a period, close this notebook and start a new one.

He has also stopped tweeting since then. Thousands of people have been arrested since protests calling for political and economic reforms started in Bahrain on February 14, 2011. The witch hunt continues.

Written by Amira Al Hussaini · Translated by Global Voices · View original post [en] · comments (3)
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For those used to paying little-to-nothing for games on their phone, that price of "XCOM: Enemy Unknown" on iOS which launched in June at $ 19.99 seems more than a little steep. But for gamers used to buying mobile games for Nintendo and Sony handhelds, buying a top-tier console title for $20 seems like a bargain. Business Insider reports.

With the success of "XCOM" and older "Grand Theft Auto" titles on iOS and Apple integrating game controller support into the upcoming iOS 7, it seems increasingly likely that game developers will take a serious look at Apple devices when deciding which platforms to launch their titles on.

"XCOM," which originally came out on the PC and for consoles at $49 and up, costs $19.99 when purchased on Apple's App Store. It joined the top 10 highest grossing apps its first week.

Read more.

Employers in the US and in many European countries must obtain the consent of workers to monitor texts and other electronic information. Typically that means “some notice posted somewhere, (possibly in a manual or before an employee uses the computer,” said David Jacobs, consumer protection counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Once the employee agrees, almost anything is fair game.” Quartz reports.

A majority of employers already monitor mobile phones and text messages, Jacobs estimates, and other research shows that two-thirds or more of employers use some type of electronic monitoring. A patchwork of state and federal laws provide some privacy protections, but most workers sign those away when they fill out hiring documents or when new policies take effect.

... In 2010, the US Supreme Court said employers could monitor worker text messages, as long as there was a “legitimate work-related purpose.”

“The likelihood of employers obtaining communications that employees’ consider private has risen substantially as technology has advanced,” University of Louisville professor Ariana R. Levinson wrote in a research paper on employees’ electronic monitoring.

Read full article.

I think this framework first came up in a conversation with John Maeda. The original observation was that artist and scientists tend to work well together, and designers and engineers work well together, but that scientists and engineers don't work as well together, and likewise, neither do artists and designers. Engineers and designers tend to focus on utility and understand the world through observation and gathering the constraints of a problem to come up with a solution. Artists and scientists, on the other hand are inspired by nature or math, and they create through pure inner creativity and pursue expression that is more connected to things like truth or beauty than something so imperfect as mere utility. Which is to say, there are many more ways to divide the brain than into left and right hemispheres.

However, I think a lot of the most interesting and impactful creative works tend to require all the use of all four quadrants. Many of the faculty at the Media Lab work in the dead center of this grid--or as I like to call it, this compass--or perhaps they lean in one direction, but they're able to channel skills from all four quadrants. Neri Oxman, one of our faculty members who recently created The Silk Pavilion, told me that she is both an artists and a designer but switches between the modes as she works on an idea. And to look at The Silk Pavilion, it's clear she could easily qualify as either a scientist or engineer, too.

I think that there are a variety of practices and ways of thinking we can use to get to the center of this compass. The key is to pull these quadrants as close together as possible. An interdisciplinary group would have a scientist, an artist, a designer, and an engineer working with each other. But this only reinforces the distinctions between these disciplines. And it's much less effective than having people who use all four quadrants, as the project or problem requires.

The tyranny of traditional disciplines and functionally segregated organizations fail to produce the type of people who can work with this creativity compass, but I believe that in a world where the rate of change increases exponentially, where disruption has become a norm instead of an anomaly, the challenge will be to think this way if we want to effectively solve the problems we face today, much less tomorrow.

Update: A good book on this topic. Gold, Rich. The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007. Rich calls the quadrants the "four hats of creativity".

Originally posted on LinkedIn.

Analyst firm Portio Research dismisses reports of declining SMS revenue as 'wrong'; insists annual revenue will exceed 2010 levels until 2017. Total Telecom reports.

Global SMS revenues will reach US$133.8 billion in 2013, according to Portio Research; it did not disclose how that compares with previous years. SMS revenue has grown year-on-year since the early 1990s and will remain at above 2010 levels until 2017, the company predicts.

... It is worth noting though that three months ago Ovum claimed OTT messaging apps will cost operators $32.6 billion in lost SMS revenue in 2013, rising to $86 billion in 2020.

At the same time Informa Telecoms & Media noted that daily global OTT messaging volumes exceeded SMS and predicted that by the end of the year the number of OTT messages sent per day will number 41 billion, more than double the 19.5 billion SMS messages.

Read full article.

Digital rights advocates in the Philippines are gearing up for what could be a transformative period for national-level Internet policy. Within a week of the start of this congressional term, lawmakers had proposed several Internet-related measures that would create strong protections for user rights. This is a welcome development for those who have been working to scrap the country's controversial Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and promote human rights online.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago became a leader of the effort when she filed Senate Bill No. 53 or the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom. The bill will repeal Republic Act 10175, the anti-cybercrime law whose libel provisions were described by Santiago as being vague and overly broad. Santiago emphasized the need to promote constitutional rights in drafting laws that relate to the Internet:

While it is important to crackdown on criminal activities on the internet, protecting constitutional rights like free expression, privacy, and due process should hold a higher place in crafting laws.

Santiago’s bill comprehensively tackles issues of Internet governance, cybercrime protection, digital rights, intellectual property, and access. The counterpart measure in the House of Representatives was filed as House Bill No. 1086 by Rep. Kimi Cojuangco.

Senator Teofisto Guingona III filed Senate Bill No. 73 or the Crowdsourcing Act of 2013 which “seeks to allow wider participation from the public in the legislative process through the use of information and communications technology.” As described in a Senate press release:

…the bill will harness the productive and effective power of social media, as well as allow Filipinos across the country, and even abroad, to participate in the process of law-making.

Crowdsourcing is an expression of the belief that despite our geographical separation, people can still participate in national affairs through the borderless world of the internet.

The bill allows people to comment on pending bills through email and the internet.

Guingona added that “all the comments and all the suggestions (posted online) become official record of the lawmaking process.”

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, the Kabataan (Youth) Partylist put forth an Internet freedom agenda for the coming term. Led by Rep. Terry Ridon, the group filed House Bill No. 1100 or Internet Freedom Bill which seeks to promote and protect the rights of Internet users. Ridon concurrently filed House Bill 1132, which repeals the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 in its entirety. Although the Cybercrime Prevention Act is currently under a temporary (but indefinite) restraining order due to concerns about its constitutionality, a successful repeal could kill the bill altogether, making room for strong, user-protective laws such as the Internet Freedom Bill and the aforementioned Magna Carta.

The Internet Freedom Bill would protect specific rights such as universal access to the Internet, freedom of association on the Internet, quality of connection, users’ rights to benefit from what they create, freedom of expression on the Internet, and privacy. The bill also shields users from unwarranted surveillance. It prohibits the following activities:

Monitoring or analyzing of data by an internet service provider without prior knowledge and consent of the user or subscriber.

Internet surveillance and data collection on users by agencies and instrumentalities of the State without securing a court order.

Identification of internet users and disclosure of their communications data without a court order and for purposes other than criminal investigations and criminal proceedings.

Accessing communications data by persons other than public authorities that are directly involved in criminal investigations and criminal proceedings.

The Kabataan party also proposed a third measure, House Bill 1550, or the Free Public Wi-Fi Act, which seeks to provide free wireless Internet access in government offices and other public places. To promote web access, particularly among the low-income groups, the Free Public Wi-Fi Act sets a mandate for the Department of Science and Technology, requiring the agency to provide free Internet connectivity in buildings of all national government offices including regional and satellite offices, municipal halls and provincial capitols, state universities and colleges, public parks and plazas, public hospitals, and even in public transportation terminals such as airports and bus stations.

These measures all fall within the party's stated Internet agenda for the coming term. The party identified five key goals on the agenda:

1. Junking the Cybercrime Prevention Law of 2012
2. Upholding freedom of expression and association on the Internet
3. Universal access to the Internet
4. Improvement of quality of connection
5. Protection of internet privacy

Congress has three years to tackle these measures which hopefully will convince legislators and the Executive that cybercrime is just one of the many issues affecting citizens online. Rather than choosing between Internet-related laws that chiefly promote the interests of government, Congress can now consider measures that protect the rights of Philippine Internet users.

[Disclosure: The author is former representative of the Kabataan Partylist in the 14th and 15th Congress of the Philippines]

 

Learn more

A Brief Analysis of the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom, Electronic Frontier Foundation, July 8, 2013

Philippines Offers ‘Enhanced’ Cybercrime Prevention Law, Global Voices Advocacy, June 5, 2013

Written by Mong Palatino · comments (0)
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Smart phones have given millions of Indians access to free porn, which some believe is responsible for triggering a recent rape crisis. Global Post reports.

With sub-$100 smart phones hitting the market and savvy entrepreneurs hawking downloaded clips, once-innocent Indians are watching hard-core porn like never before.

That smut flood is sparking a serious debate about the impact on society.

“We're raising up an army of rapists in India by not warring against internet pornography,” Abishek Clifford, who runs a moral awareness program for Indian colleges called Rescue, told GlobalPost.

Since the December gang rape of a Delhi student, who died from internal injuries sustained during the attack, the entire country has been wrestling with what many regard as a spike in sexual violence.

Although possessing or watching porn is permitted in India, distributing it is illegal. And now, the authorities are moving to crack down on web porn — even as in many other areas the country grows more liberal in its attitude toward sex.

Read full article.

According to an article in Radio Liberty, the head of police for Moscow's subway system has said stations will soon be equipped with devices that can read the data on mobile telephones of passengers.

In Monday's edition of "Izvestia," Moscow Metro police chief Andrei Mokhov said the device would be used to help locate stolen mobile phones.

Mokhov said the devices have a range of about 5 meters and can read the SIM card. If the card is on the list of stolen phones, the system automatically sends information to the police. The time and place of the alert can be matched to closed-circuit TV in stations.

Read more.

The Jewish Daily Forward on how Isreal has frozen the Palestinian telecommunications sector in a bygone era technologically.

For the past seven years, Israel has refused to grant the Palestinian Authority electromagnetic spectrum for 3G service that it exclusively controls despite provisions in the 1993 Oslo Accords that appear to obligate Israel to provide this. The restriction has relegated the Palestinians to 2G, even as Israel prepares to launch 4G for its own citizens.

Israel’s Ministry of Communication says it cannot at present grant any spectrum to the Palestinians, because none is available. As soon as such frequencies will be available, “they will be assigned… to the Palestinians,” said Yechiel Shabi, spokesman for the ministry.

But enabling Palestinian 3G seems far from a priority for Israel. In 2011, the ministry granted frequency spectrum to two Israeli companies, Golan Telecom and Hot Mobile, rather than to the Palestinian firms, and a year later, as those two companies launched 3G, the ministry told the Palestinian firms that no frequencies were left; they would have to rent spectrum from Israeli firms. The Israeli veto on Palestinian firms seeking to offer 3G leaves the Palestinian companies far behind even the standards of the region: Algeria and Iraq are the only other two countries in the Middle East to lack 3G. Palestinians see Israel’s policies on the frequencies as reflecting a larger Israeli approach that stunts their economic development.

Read full article.

Ziv Lotan Boyd was born into this world shortly after midnight on Sunday, July 28 after a movie-esque labor (complete with a NYC cabbie running honking like mad and running red lights to prevent me from delivering in the cab). The little ball of cuteness entered this world at a healthy 7 pounds, 13 ounces and we’re both healthy. We’re all doing well as we recover.

As per my maternity note, I have no idea what the days ahead may bring but please understand that I may be non-responsive for a while, especially when it comes to work-related requests. If you need my attention for something work related, please wait a while before approaching me. Thanks!

I’m on vacation for the next two weeks, taking a break from a long stretch of writing and talking about Rewire and related issues. I should be back online around August 10. In the unlikely event you find yourself missing me, here’s the video of a talk and discussion I had about Rewire at Harvard’s Berkman Center last month.

And if you’re in need of more reading material, check out an important new paper from Yochai Benkler, Hal Roberts and other friends at the Berkman Center. The paper uses Media Cloud to analyse the conversation online around SOPA/PIPA and understand agenda-setting, framing and relationships that influenced the debate. My students and I are finishing up a parallel paper at Center for Civic Media using some of the same techniques, and some new techniques, to examine the online debates that helped lead to George Zimmerman’s arrest, which we hope to have out in early fall.

Hope you’re having a great summer.

From June 24th to June 28th, DoSomething.org and the White House teamed up to let young people voice their concerns about student loan debt via text message.

For five days, young people from across the country texted "PREZ" to 38383 to ask President Obama questions about student loan debt and each day one question was selected and answered by the President or Vice President.

A total of 54,503 questions were sent to President Obama (compared to his recent Reddit AMA which had ~10,000 questions).

POTUS-Infographic_Final.pdf

iconDoSomething.org + White House.pdf

[via Mobile Marketing Association]

Donors want to give way more than just pocket change when they make contributions via text message, a recent study concluded. The Huffington Post reports.

After interviewing more than 20,000 mobile donors, the mGive Foundation found that 85 percent of the people surveyed would like to give $25 to $50 to charity just by tapping on their phones. The current limit is set at $10.

Back in 2010, more than $35 million was raised within three weeks of the Haiti Earthquake via mobile giving, according to the mGive Foundation. After Hurricane Sandy hit in October, relief organizations collected more than $7.2 million through PayPal, $900,000 of which was donated via text message, according to Forbes.

Donors who favor the text message option say they appreciate the convenience and lack of hassle and harassment from solicitors, according to the study.

“[It’s] easy as it just adds to my phone bill,” one study participant said, “and the request for my donation comes at a time of need and my heart is softest!

Read full article.

Zip It Tablecloth is one piece from the collection; Dining Together Matters, which aims to encourage the joy of eating and dining - without cell phone interruptions.

[via PSFK]

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Hae-in Lim, Lisa Ferguson, Ellery Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week's report begins in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, where the government has responded to ongoing religious tensions by throttling Internet access, reportedly for the sake of keeping the peace.

National Policy

The Indian government suspended mobile Internet access and reduced broadband speeds in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir as a “precautionary measure” following violent protests. The protests related to reports that Indian border security guards had desecrated a copy of the Quran. This latest restriction on Internet access follows a trend of curfews and censorship in the region, which government officials have claimed are necessary to stem the spread of rumors, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Internet censorship is on the rise in Southeast Asia, where political and economic realities, such as corruption, electoral irregularities, inflation, and widening inequality, have spawned widespread discord and disillusionment. Perpetrators include Vietnam (46 bloggers imprisoned just in 2013), Malaysia (imprisonment, censorship), Laos (activist Sombath Somphone remains missing), Cambodia (ban on Internet cafés within 500 meters of schools), Thailand (lèse majesté prosecutions quadrupled in 2012), and Singapore (restrictive licensing requirements for online news websites).

Nigeria’s Minister of Communication Technology Omobola Johnson inaugurated a Broadband Council that will oversee the implementation of the National Broadband Plan 2013–18, which will expand access to broadband Internet in the country. Its international partners including Google and Microsoft.

Censorship

Bytes for All, a Pakistani human rights organization, has penned an open letter to the Global Network Initiative (GNI), requesting an investigation of Facebook's operations in Pakistan, including collusion—if any—with the government. Facebook joined GNI in May 2013. The director of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority told the High Court of Lahore on July 4 that it had entered into a covert working relationship with Facebook to censor online content in violation of what is being called Pakistan’s PATRIOT Act. Bytes for All contends that several Facebook pages were “blocked or removed…without any legal process or notice to content owners,” and calls on Facebook to publish the details of this alleged secret agreement with Pakistan or otherwise publicly deny it.

Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, CNN, the New York Times, and Yahoo! were inaccessible in Ethiopia for at least ten hours on July 18 and 19. Ethiopia, where the Internet reaches less than one percent of its 85 million citizens, already blocks websites and blogs that criticize the government and imprisons journalists who do so. Government-operated Ethio Telecom is the sole Internet service provider and has been criticized for its poor quality.

Malaysia’s Communication and Multimedia Minister welcomed the Sensible and Ethical Malaysians United Troopers (SEMUT), a vigilante group concerned with propriety and online decorum. So far, SEMUT has reported two Facebook users to the police and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission for posting inappropriate comments about the Prophet Muhammad and Malaysia’s King, Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

In an interview with the BBC, UK Prime Minister David Cameron proposed that search engines should block certain terms in order to fight child pornography.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Google is exploring encryption techniques to better secure user files on Google Drive. Internet companies routinely encrypt sensitive information, but encrypting files stored on the cloud is rare because of the higher cost and technological complexity. A government agency seeking the content of user files will need more than a search warrant. It would have to convince a judge to “grant a wiretap order, forcing Google to intercept and divulge the user's login information the next time the user types it in” — a higher legal bar.

Internet Governance

Jeff Jarvis argues in a TechCrunch article that following the announcement of the PRISM surveillance program, the US government can no longer be seen as a beneficent actor on the Internet, which could have significant downstream effects on Internet governance. Similar claims are made by Internews Senior Policy Advisor Mike Godwin in Forbes, who advocates for a stronger role for civil society in media policy.

Cool Things

A FOIA Machine—“like TurboTax for government records”—engineered by the Center for Investigative Reporting is on Kickstarter. With three weeks left to contribute, it has already surpassed its funding goal.

Publications and Studies

• U.S. Government Foreign Telecommunications Providers Network Security Agreements – public intelligence

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

Written by Netizen Report Team · comments (1)
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The 2010 introduction of the SmartCare system — developed by Zambia's Ministry of Health and the U.S. Center for Disease Control — helps to catch disease outbreaks before they spread too widely. Mashable reports.

Instead of holding patients accountable for paper "exercise books" documenting their medical histories, the details of individuals' diagnoses and treatments can now be stored on a smart card they hold in their wallets, as well as locally at their health clinic and in the larger SmartCare network.

"The SmartCare card came in because we had a challenge," healthcare manager Ignicious Bulongo says. "Patients would go home and didn't care what happened to their exercise books."

The advantages of the digital system expand beyond its portability: Computerizing the communities' medical records helps Bulongo and other clinicians like him to catch disease outbreaks and medical trends earlier than ever before.

"If there's any outbreak, we'll catch it. The system will show if we see six cases of the measles within one day in people coming from the same area," Bulongo says, noting a recent bilharzia outbreak the clinic found with the help of the electronic system.

Read full article.

After five years of explosive growth sales of high-end smartphones have hit a plateau and the $2 trillion industry - telecom carriers, handset makers and content providers - is buckling up for a bumpier ride as growth shifts to emerging markets, primarily in Asia. Jeremy Wagstaff and Lee Chyen Yee report for Reuters.

While carrier subsidies have helped drive sales of high-end devices in mature markets, the next growth chapter will be in emerging markets where cost-conscious users demand cheaper gadgets and cheaper access to cheaper services.

This year, the number of mobile Internet users in the developing world will overtake those in the developed world for the first time - growing 27 times since 2007, compared to the developed world's fourfold growth, according to estimates from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

"The center of gravity in the mobile ecosystem is likely to shift from the United States and Western Europe toward Asia," Mary Ellen Gordon, director at mobile advertiser Flurry Inc, said in an emailed interview.

That shift is a challenge to profit margins at the likes of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics, which together sell half of the world's smartphones. Both companies announce quarterly results this week.

Read more. Image credit.

According to the South Korea government, roughly 1 in 5 students is addicted to smartphone use. This addiction is defined as spending more than seven hours a day using the phone and experiencing symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia and depression when cut off from the device. The Wall Street Journal reports.

Earlier this month, the South Korean government said it plans to provide nationwide counseling programs for youngsters by the end of the year and train teachers on how to deal with students with addiction.

With a mobile-phone penetration rate of more than 100%—meaning some individuals carry more than one handset—and smartphones nearly two-thirds of those devices, the government is setting measures to deal with the problems such heavy exposure has spawned. For comparison, the smartphone penetration rate in the U.S. was 50% as of June, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

Korea has had problems with online-game addiction among teenagers for years thanks to widespread availability of high-speed Internet services. Now that smartphone penetration among teens and children is rising at a faster pace than other groups, the age at which people find it hard to wean themselves.

Read full article.

The title of the clipped article below triggered my response more so than the content. "Not all good advocacy is evidence based".  I have a slightly different perspective on that phrase.

All good advocacy is evidence based. The practice of advocacy itself is built on a historical record that shows advocacy is the necessary requirement for policy change.  Some believe advocacy is more of a dark art than an evidence based approach to creating policy change. Evidence suggests advocacy is required to create any policy change.

This is not really what the riff is about but the discussion of evidence based advocacy is a jumping off point to acknowledge that evidence shows us advocacy is required and necessary. Evidence teaches us how to refine advocacy efforts. Evidence shows us what advocacy works.  If we are committed to creating change based on evidence, then we must commit to effective evidence based advocacy to achieve the desired results.

.
 John Snow presented a map to London Epidemiological Society to advocate for the closing of the Broad Street well.  His contribution was more than research and mapping. Not just a great doctor and scientist. He persuaded others to understand and prioritize his evidence. He persuaded policy makers to act.   John Snow made his mark as an advocate.  Would he have been quite as remarkable if he didn't also secure the change, close the pump and stop the cholera outbreak?  He actually developed a water borne theory on early outbreaks but the Broad Street event stands out because of the advocacy.   

Our goal as professionals is to demonstrate that such a perception of advocacy is disconnected from the world of evidence and science is wrong.   As dedicated and disaplined campaign practioners, our work is more in line with E.O. Wilsons vision of great science, "work like a book keeper, think like a poet". Expereince, evidence and knowledge tell us that policy only changes through inspiring action (not just presenting facts).  

otherwise, I like the riff...

Evidence is not the same thing as Knowledge – Evidence is usually taken to mean “hard” demonstrable, measurable things. Evidence comes from direct observations, surveys, experiments and evaluations and the like. Evidence is crucial to advancing scientific learning as well as on an everyday level to know how things are going such as through programme monitoring. Knowledge (i.e what we know) is internalized learning – in this sense we only know something demonstrated by evidence if we have internalized it- i.e. we “believe it”. Similarly there are things we know (and act on) for which we don’t have strong evidence – often this knowledge comes from learning and direct experience – even if this is not documented and measured. Much important learning is not documented as evidence – that’s why we often ask for someone else’s advice – someone who “knows”, someone who has done it before.

Not all good advocacy is “evidence-based” – Evidence-based advocacy has been interpreted by some to mean advocacy that uses data, charts, includes report citations etc. to show the strength of the evidence on which a particular argument is based. However it’s probably fair to say we all know people who are unimpressed by numbers and so even if the argument is made more concrete by using them for some audiences this will be a poor method of persuasion for others. A weaker definition of evidence based advocacy would be that the argument we are using to persuade is informed by and supported by available evidence, and is not contradicted by it – but that the evidence itself is only used if that is helpful in making the case with the particular audience. I sometimes jokingly refer to this as “evidence-supported” advocacy. It’s also worth mentioning that part of effective advocacy is understanding and taking into account the interests, needs and prejudices of the person you are trying to persuade – issues such as the political situation in country, a person’s background etc. in this case you might well stress certain evidence that appeal to the audience and downplay or even omit others. Possibly your whole appeal might be at an emotional level or about values and ideals rather than evidence at all (e.g. all children ought to have a right to free education – beecause it’s the “right” thing to do). This isn’t evidence-based advocacy – but it might be good advocacy. What I think we should not do is advocate for things which are contradicted by available evidence – or where we don’t have some grounding either in evidence or in principle (e.g. in Human Rights principles).

Evidence does not equal truth – An obvious point, but evidence is based on fixed observations that are often partial, and new evidence emerges all the time often contradicting or muddying the conclusions we arrived at from past evidence. Just because we have evidence for a particular model or theory doesn’t make it true. We also need to be aware of personal biases in interpreting evidence – in particular people tend to interpret evidence in a way that is supportive to their existing way of thinking.

via kmonadollaraday.wordpress.com

 I would add that evidence doesn't equal prioirity.  Assembling evidence on a problem or solution doesn't mean that change will happen. Experience demonstrates that effective change needs to be based on best solutions and best science but experience doesn't demonstrate that development of best solutions and solid science means change will be implemented.  This disconnect is often created because of a clash of priorities. Science, evidence and experience allows us to know guns are the key contributing factor to needless deaths but the advocacy struggle is over priorities to act on that knowledge vs. taking on economy, immigration, debt, etc.  Advocacy helps build intensity, focus attention and elevate priority. Good advocacy is based on a field of evidence about advocacy and campaign work.

P.S. I strongly recommend Ghost Map by Steven Johnson on Snow's work.

 

Facebook has noticed something that other companies would do well to heed: The biggest opportunity right now isn’t in smartphones, but “dumbphones”—aka non-smartphones, or in industry parlance, feature phones—that most people in rich countries have now left behind. The Atlantic reports.

We’ve known for some time that Facebook’s strategy for grabbing its “next billion” users is to convince them that Facebook and the web are one and the same by making access to Facebook free on every model of phone. But now Javi Olivan, head of “growth and analytics” at Facebook has dribbled out a handful of other interesting details about Facebook’s strategy.

The service Facebook is working on is called Facebook for Every Phone, and it allows people with data plans on their feature phones to have smartphone-like experiences while using Facebook—meaning they get images, updates, chat, the whole thing. The secret is that most of the processing for Facebook For Every Phone is done on Facebook’s servers, in the cloud, and a minimal stream of data is trickled out to feature phones, which tend to be on slower networks in emerging markets.

Facebook for Every Phone is now on 100 million feature phones, which means almost a tenth of Facebook’s billion-plus users are accessing Facebook through devices on which Facebook isn’t normally accessible.

The second thing about Facebook’s push onto feature phones is that more and more of these devices can access the web.

Read full article.

Facebook has noticed something that other companies would do well to heed: The biggest opportunity right now isn’t in smartphones, but “dumbphones”—aka non-smartphones, or in industry parlance, feature phones—that most people in rich countries have now left behind. The Atlantic reports.

We’ve known for some time that Facebook’s strategy for grabbing its “next billion” users is to convince them that Facebook and the web are one and the same by making access to Facebook free on every model of phone. But now Javi Olivan, head of “growth and analytics” at Facebook has dribbled out a handful of other interesting details about Facebook’s strategy.

The service Facebook is working on is called Facebook for Every Phone, and it allows people with data plans on their feature phones to have smartphone-like experiences while using Facebook—meaning they get images, updates, chat, the whole thing. The secret is that most of the processing for Facebook For Every Phone is done on Facebook’s servers, in the cloud, and a minimal stream of data is trickled out to feature phones, which tend to be on slower networks in emerging markets.

Facebook for Every Phone is now on 100 million feature phones, which means almost a tenth of Facebook’s billion-plus users are accessing Facebook through devices on which Facebook isn’t normally accessible.

The second thing about Facebook’s push onto feature phones is that more and more of these devices can access the web.

Read full article.

Vulnerability in the security key that protects the card could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset's owner, a security researcher warns. News.com reports.

Karsten Nohl, founder of Security Research Labs in Berlin, told The New York Times that he has identified a flaw in SIM encryption technology that could allow an attacker to obtain a SIM card's digital key, the 56-digit sequence that allows modification of the card. The flaw, which may affect as many as 750 million mobile phones, could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset's owner, Nohl warned.

Read more.

Vulnerability in the security key that protects the card could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset's owner, a security researcher warns. News.com reports.

Karsten Nohl, founder of Security Research Labs in Berlin, told The New York Times that he has identified a flaw in SIM encryption technology that could allow an attacker to obtain a SIM card's digital key, the 56-digit sequence that allows modification of the card. The flaw, which may affect as many as 750 million mobile phones, could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset's owner, Nohl warned.

Read more.

Written by Analía Lavin, Association for Progressive Communications.

Until recently, communications laws in many Latin American and Caribbean countries were grounded in an obsolete vision of communications media, and in many cases, they ignored, or addressed only superficially, the technological and social changes that our countries have experienced in the past few years. Against this background, communications law has become an increasing priority on government agendas, and countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia have proposed legislation addressing this situation. Recently, Ecuador added itself to this list; in June, the Assembly passed a new Organic Communications Law, and the President ratified it.

Hours after the bill’s passage, critical voices made themselves heard at the national and international levels. Their concerns center on, among other things, the inclusion of policies such as “media lynching” (which the law defines as the dissemination of information intended to smear the reputation of a person or institution), which imposes limits on corruption investigations and jeopardizes the dissemination of information of public interest; the institutional design that will create two bodies (the Superintendence of Information and Communication and the Council for the Regulation and Development of Information and Communication) chaired by an official from the Executive branch, which fails to provide guarantees for the independent operation of this power; and the classification of public media outlets as “official,” which weakens the possibility of developing a real plan for public, non-governmental media.

However, it bears mentioning that the law also grants citizens certain rights in order to protect them from abuses and the economic interests of media outlets, by providing them equality of opportunity and placing conditions on the access and use of communications media. In turn, the law establishes a complementary media environment that recognizes and intends to strengthen community media. As established by the new law, the management of the wireless spectrum will become tripartite, divided equally among the state, private organizations, and community organizations. Finally, the law seeks to limit the formation of monopolies and oligopolies (that is, the concentration of the means of communications in the hands of a few).

The criticisms of the law have come from the same civil society organizations that celebrated its positive aspects. Many of these organizations, which have campaigned for a democratic communications law in Ecuador for years, view portions of the law with concern, such as the threats to online anonymity. In effect, this section of the law establishes that media companies must collect personal information about users that post comments on their websites, and should they fail to do so, the site owners will have to assume complete responsibility for any opinions expressed on their sites.

As Alexander Amézquita, of the Ecuadorian organization International Center for Advanced Studies in Communications (CIESPAL), argues, comments on news websites constitute a privileged forum for debate. The loss of anonymity in this area, he points out, would affect constructive conversations. Amézquita is in agreement with Richard Stallman, whom Carlos Correa, the Ecuadorian activist, consulted regarding the law: “Without the option of communicating anonymously, many citizens would not dare to express their political opinions. They would fear reprisals from their bosses, their families, or from the government.” Pedro Sánchez, executive secretary of the Latin American Association for Radio Education (ALER), also condemned the new law’s implicit threats to online anonymity and the grave consequences they bear for Ecuadorians’ freedom of expression, and assessed the provision that stipulates these measures as “completely unnecessary.”

At the same time, international human rights organizations have aired their reservations. In an official communication, Frank La Rue, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, indicated his concerns about the new law. La Rue made mention of “mechanisms of censorship” that the law establishes, specifically the creation of the Superintendence of Information and Communication, which he views as “clearly directed at limiting the liberty of reporters to report on current events, public policies, and government officials.” In effect, the law establishes that the Superintendence will be directed by an official appointed by the president, which will prevent it from functioning as an autonomous body that can guarantee objective policies.

La Rue also criticizes the requirement that journalists have a university degree in communications, which prevents “journalism from developing in a form that is truly independent and free” and obstructs the means by which all citizens can express themselves in a communications medium. He also referred to the absence of public input during the process of passing the law, which “contradicts the intentions that the government declared during the previous parliament, which recognized the necessity of getting public input.”

For its part, the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States confirmed that, in the current legal framework, when considering the expressions made through any communication medium as a public service, “the State is assuming enormous powers to regulateeach person’s fundamental right to freely express him- or her- self in the medium that he or she chooses.”

In summary, although the law recognizes a right to communication; ensures the participation of voices that have traditionally been marginalized in communications media; and privileges a public-interest perspective; at the same time, the content regulation that can be inferred from the law, such as the fact that limitations on freedom of expression are assumed to be the rule rather than the exception, is problematic and threatens human rights principles that are recognized by international law. The civil society organizations that have been actively participating in the discussions on this topic since the constitutional reform of 2008 view the development of the implementation of this law as an opportunity to clarify ambiguities and correct problems. It is essential that there be mechanisms for participation and that the details of the implementation of the law be made public, so that different groups can contribute their points of view and advance toward a law that is democratic, consensus-based, and in compliance with the international standards that Ecuador has promised to uphold.

This post originally appeared on Digital Rights: Latin America & the Caribbean, which is a partnership between Fundação Getulio Vargas, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles, the Association for Progressive Communications, and ONG Derechos Digitales.

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As I prepare to go on parental leave, I’ve been forced to contend with countless well-intended people telling me how to “do it right” (or tsk tsking me as though I’m already “doing it wrong”). I’m a lot better at keeping my Bad Attitude Bear self at bay these days, but I’m still stunned by the barrage of conflicting and condescending advice that my bulging tummy elicits. Even after decades of forging my own path and managing to make things work, I apparently cannot be entrusted to find a way to have a child and be a researcher. And yowsers does my “play it by ear” approach raise everyone’s hackles.

I am the first to admit that I have zero clue of how I will feel after I deliver my child. I don’t know how my body will react to childbirth. I don’t know how I will feel about spending all day with a newborn. I don’t know how easy or hard things like nursing or sleep will be. The one thing that I know for certain is that there is tremendous variation among parents and children and that nothing is predictable. Yet, this doesn’t stop people from projecting onto me how I should feel afterwards. As a researcher, I very much appreciate their diverse experiences, pleasures, and challenges and so I try not to bristle at the universalizing that unfolds from that.

Part of what makes hearing everyone’s commentary hard to stomach is that I feel super fortunate to have a level of flexibility that few people I know have. At Microsoft, I have phenomenal benefits that allow me to take many weeks – actually months – of leave. My boss at Microsoft Research is one of the most supportive people that I know. And I’ve worked hard to close out group projects and otherwise eliminate dependencies so that I could take leave without impacting others. I’ve planned for uncertainty and I feel like I have tremendous flexibility. So I feel safe and comfortable waiting to see how things unfold.

But my refusal to commit to exactly how I will do maternity leave doesn’t stop folks from being opinionated. I may be back on email within a week or two. I may not be. I may be back to working on research puzzles that tickle my brain in short order. I may not be. I happen to love my research and nothing gives me greater joy that having thought provoking conversations and thinking through ideas. But if I suggest that I may engage in any act that someone else calls “work,” I’m condemned for being a workaholic who will be a bad mother. Given my profession, I usually get some crass comment comparing me to Marissa Mayer. Or I get an eyeroll or a condescending chortle followed by a series of remarks about how childbirth will change my priorities, my values, and every aspect of my life. In other words, what I hear over and over again is that my identity as researcher will be wholly incompatible with my identity as mother and I should be prepared to give up the former because the latter is clearly better.

What’s with this incessant judgmentalness? Why does it make people feel better to project their values and anxieties onto others? And what happened to a feminism that was about “choice” rather than about “doing it right”?

I hate that the logic of assessment and evaluation has pervaded our society so extensively than people feel the need to proselytize a rubric for things like childrearing and maternity leave. There’s no single right path, no perfect decision. When we set mothers up for someone’s fantasy of an ideal, everyone loses, including the child.

I wish more new mothers out there had even a fraction of the choices that I have. I wish more companies would work with their employees to help them create a flexible schedule because so much is unknown. I wish more bosses would be so supportive and willing to juggle things to find a way to make things work regardless of what happens. In other words, I wish that we had a remotely sane work culture. I’m lucky enough to be a part of one but that’s so rare.

At the same time, I also wish that those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to make choices wouldn’t have to face such oppressive condescension and critique from those who feel as though, because our system is fundamentally flawed and unjust, anyone with freedom and flexibility should be choosing to completely walk away from work in order to be a “good” mother. I hate that it’s all black-or-white, work or don’t work, mother or employee. This sets everyone up to fail and be miserable in the process. Few people live such a polarized binary life.

Rather than going to extremes around all things parenting, I really wish that we could truly enable people to have choices. Not faux choices where they’re pressured by bosses or colleagues to continue working even though they technically have leave. Nor the kind of situation where they’re pressured by friends or family or society to behave in a prescribed way. But true choice where they can work out what’s right for them and their families and balance what matters. I realize that we’re a long way from this pipe dream, but I can’t help but think that we collectively undermine choice whenever we condemn those who have choice for making choices that differ from our own.

More selfishly, I wish people would just be supportive of me playing things by ear because who knows what the upcoming weeks and months have to offer. I, for one, am looking forward to finding out.

Image from Flickr by Joe Green

Originally posted to LinkedIn. More comments reside there.

Like many other civil liberties advocates, I’ve been annoyed by how the media has spilled more ink talking about Edward Snowden than the issues that he’s trying to raise. I’ve grumbled at the “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” reality show and the way in which TV news glosses over the complexities that investigative journalists have tried to publish as the story unfolded. But then a friend of mine – computer scientist Nadia Heninger – flipped my thinking upside down with a simple argument: Snowden is offering the public a template for how to whistleblow; leaking information is going to be the civil disobedience of our age.

In recent years, increasing numbers of concerned citizens have been coming forward as whistleblowers, pointing out questionable acts by the American government agencies and corporations. The current administration has responded to this practice by prosecuting more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. Most of what leakers share is barely heard by the public. For example, most people don’t know who Mark Klein is even though he publicly shared information that showed that his former employer – AT&T – was working with the NSA to analyze Americans’ phone calls in violation of citizens’ privacy. The news coverage he got in 2006 was significant to advocates, but the public doesn’t know his name or even realize that Verizon wasn’t the first telecom to share extensively with the NSA.

The public is more likely to have heard of Bradley Manning, mostly because Julian Assange has managed to keep himself – and, thus, the issues at hand – in the news. Debates about WikiLeaks meant that the coverage of the diplomatic cable leaks were a story that journalists covered for more than a second. Julian Assange’s questionable morality and arrogance complicated that story, allowing anti-leakers to undermine the credibility and intentions of all who were involved. At the same time, his antics enabled an ongoing media circus which has meant that people are at least aware of the frame of leaking, even if they think poorly of Assange and, by proxy, Manning. Manning may have been silenced but his decisions continue to be discussed, for better and for worse.

Snowden has presented the public with a different case study. Although many anti-leakers have worked hard to portray him as a dropout / misfit / uneducated fool, that hasn’t stuck. At best, people have managed to tar him through his association with Wikileaks and his willingness to go to countries that are perceived as American foes (China, Russia, Venezuela, Ecuador, etc.). Not only does this narrative – as well as the American governmental response – suggest that Cold War attitudes are still ever-present, but it also puts American arrogance on display. Blocking the Bolivian president’s access to airspace and searching his plane didn’t help.

As this drama has played out, Snowden has become a walking diplomatic incident. Even though he has been disciplined and thoughtful in what he has shared, revealing little more than advocacy organizations have suspected or known for a long time and sharing vague documents that don’t fully make sense, every ounce of American political might has been operationalized to go after him as a serious threat, piquing curiosity about what else he knows and what he might do. Most likely, had he just revealed what he revealed and then disappeared, it would’ve been a news story for a week and then been quickly forgotten. But because the focus is on him, aspects of what he’s tried to argue keep dripping through the salacious coverage of his whereabouts.

More importantly though, as Nadia pointed out to me, he’s creating a template for how to share information. He’s clearly learned from previous whistleblowers and is using many of their tactics. But he’s also forged his own path which has had its own follies. Regardless of whether he succeeds or fails in getting asylum somewhere, he’s inspired others to think about how they can serve as a check to power. And this is terrifying for any government.

Ironically, the government’s efforts to deter future whistleblowers by being tough on Snowden is most likely to backfire. This kind of zero-tolerance approach assumes that those who are engaging in whistleblowing are operating under the same logic, priorities, and values as government actors. Sure, plenty of people don’t come forward because they’re too scared; that’s not new. But because of how the government responded to Snowden, those who are willing to take on the big fight now have a model for how to do it, how to iterate based on what they learned watching Snowden. The US government, far from deterring future whistleblowers, has just incentivized a new generation of them by acting like a megalomaniac.

And this is where I think that Nadia’s second point is of serious importance. People growing up with the internet understand that information is power. Those who’ve watched protests in recent years know that traditional physical civil disobedience doesn’t create the iconic narratives and images that it once did. And thus, not surprisingly, what it means to protest is changing. This is further complicated by an increased obsession with secrecy – secret courts, secret laws, secret practices – that make using the rule of law to serve as a check to power ineffective. Thus, questioning authority by leaking information that shows that power is being abused becomes a more valuable and notable form of civil disobedience. As with all forms of civil disobedience, there are significant consequences. But when secrecy is what’s being challenged, the biggest risk is not being beaten by a police officer for staging an event, but being disappeared or silenced by the institutions being challenged or embarrassed. And thus, as much as I hate to accept it, becoming a diplomatic incident is extraordinarily powerful not just for self-protection, but also as a way to make sure that the media doesn’t lose interest in the issues at play.

I want to live in a society that is willing to critically interrogate how power is operationalized and how institutions and the rule of law function as a check to power. To me, this is an essential aspect of democracy. Unchecked power is how dictatorships emerge. If the rule of law is undermined and secrecy becomes the status quo, it becomes necessary for new civil disobedience tactics to emerge. And, more than the content of the leaks, this is what I think that we’re watching unfold.

This post was originally posted on Medium.

Favorite Ken Banks for National Geographic on how text messages and Facebook have helped raise awareness about the dangers of pesticides and informed farmers on how to adopt more environmentally-sustainable agricultural practices

... To make the system sustainable, we knew we needed to find an inexpensive solution,” said UNDP’s Dimitrija Sekovski. “And that’s what we came up with – an innovative way of notifying farmers that cost less than $1,000 to develop: text messages and updates on a Facebook page.”

Walking between the apple trees in his orchard, Mr. Petkovski pulls up the messages on his mobile phone. “Here’s the SMS we received about the codling moth on Friday:

Apple trees in the area of the village of Rajca have been infected by the codling moth. The apple trees should be treated in the next 10 days. For more info, visit the Facebook page or call the Association of Farmers.

Read more.

Favorite Ken Banks for National Geographic on how text messages and Facebook have helped raise awareness about the dangers of pesticides and informed farmers on how to adopt more environmentally-sustainable agricultural practices

... To make the system sustainable, we knew we needed to find an inexpensive solution,” said UNDP’s Dimitrija Sekovski. “And that’s what we came up with – an innovative way of notifying farmers that cost less than $1,000 to develop: text messages and updates on a Facebook page.”

Walking between the apple trees in his orchard, Mr. Petkovski pulls up the messages on his mobile phone. “Here’s the SMS we received about the codling moth on Friday:

Apple trees in the area of the village of Rajca have been infected by the codling moth. The apple trees should be treated in the next 10 days. For more info, visit the Facebook page or call the Association of Farmers.

Read more.

The internal affairs ministry of Uganda has introduced an SMS platform for Ugandans seeking to know the status of their national identity cards. All Africa reports.

"To check for the status of their IDs, nationals are required to type the word 'Uganda', leave a space, type the registration number from the Electoral Commission and then send to 8888," said.

According to the ministry, which is in charge of the ongoing national IDs distribution, the move is aimed at easing the distribution of the national identification cards.

Read more.

The internal affairs ministry of Uganda has introduced an SMS platform for Ugandans seeking to know the status of their national identity cards. All Africa reports.

"To check for the status of their IDs, nationals are required to type the word 'Uganda', leave a space, type the registration number from the Electoral Commission and then send to 8888," said.

According to the ministry, which is in charge of the ongoing national IDs distribution, the move is aimed at easing the distribution of the national identification cards.

Read more.

Casual, easy and non-threatening — the simple beauty of text messaging is upending American dating culture. USA Today reports.

Not since the dawn of the automobile has a technology — the cellphone — so swiftly and radically changed the way people interact, meet and move forward (or not) in a relationship. Texting has created a new brand of mobile etiquette, and for dating, it has given rise to new ways of flirting and even defining exactly what's going on between two people.

A new survey of 1,500 daters provided to USA TODAY reveals how deeply mobile technology has rocked the dating world.

Among the findings:

-- Approximately one-third of men (31%) and women (33%) agree it's less intimidating to ask for a date via text vs. a phone call.

-- One in four say an hour is the longest acceptable response time to a text to someone you are dating or interested in dating; one in 10 expect a response instantly or within a few minutes.

-- More men (44%) than women (37%) say mobile devices make it easier to flirt and get acquainted.

-- ...

Read more.

Casual, easy and non-threatening — the simple beauty of text messaging is upending American dating culture. USA Today reports.

Not since the dawn of the automobile has a technology — the cellphone — so swiftly and radically changed the way people interact, meet and move forward (or not) in a relationship. Texting has created a new brand of mobile etiquette, and for dating, it has given rise to new ways of flirting and even defining exactly what's going on between two people.

A new survey of 1,500 daters provided to USA TODAY reveals how deeply mobile technology has rocked the dating world.

Among the findings:

-- Approximately one-third of men (31%) and women (33%) agree it's less intimidating to ask for a date via text vs. a phone call.

-- One in four say an hour is the longest acceptable response time to a text to someone you are dating or interested in dating; one in 10 expect a response instantly or within a few minutes.

-- More men (44%) than women (37%) say mobile devices make it easier to flirt and get acquainted.

-- ...

Read more.

Zambian journalist Wilson Pondamali was arrested on July 17 and accused of possessing “restricted information.” According to AFP, police searched Pondamali's home and found documents suggesting that Zambian President Michael Sata is “not fit to govern.” Police also claim to have found evidence linking Pondamali to popular citizen news website the Zambian Watchdog.

Pondamali is the third journalist to be detained by police after media scholar Clayson Hamasaka and Thomas Zgambo, a former Zambia Daily Mail reporter, were picked up last week. Zgambo has since been charged with sedition. Hamasaka has not been formally charged, but is required to report to the police on a regular basis.

On the day of Pondamali's arrest, access to the Zambian Watchdog appeared to be severely restricted for users worldwide. The Watchdog reported that the website was being blocked on all mobile networks in Zambia. The site has undergone a series of technical challenges and indirect threats from government officials in recent months.

Readers outside Zambia could not access the websites on various browsers. One reader, Ku Masangalatoni commented:

Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occurred!

The Zambian Watchdog reported:

 […] [T]he Zambian government on Tuesday blocked the Zambian Watchdog on all [national ISP] networks including MTN that had earlier rejected the suppression of the most popular news website in Zambia.

Earlier this month, users reported that the site appeared to be blocked on all but one of the nation's ISPs, MTN. The Watchdog responded by moving to a new domain. The site has since moved yet again, to http://zwd.cums.in. Site administrators encouraged readers to visit the site at its new domain, or at its Facebook page.

A sympathizer calling himself blacknigga advised:

[…] My advice to ZWD is to stop migrating the site every time red brick [the Intelligence Service, named after the color of the bricks of its headquarters] has a squeeze on you. It is going to be costly that way and that is exactly what the red brick want you to do. You will lose your readers.

I am in Zambia and I can still access the ZWD behind a proxy server. The technology that red brick is using, deep packet inspection, dpi, to block not only ZWD but the other online publications has its own limitations.

It is time that ZWD capitalised on these limitations of dpis and exploit them to your advantage. My advice is for ZWD to invest in educating its readership on how to use free proxy servers. How many of these free online proxy servers is red brick going to close? There are numerous out there.

[...]

Don’t sweat and run. Where there is a will, a way will always be found. Free Online Access will prevail.

Indeed, moving to a new domain each time the site is blocked could lead to a never ending cat-and-mouse game. Yesterday, the site published an article, “How to access Watchdog in Zambia using proxies,” promoting proxy servers and anonymous browsing tools such as the Tor Project. The site has also recommended that readers copy and send Watchdog articles to friends via email. Reporters Without Borders responded to the situation by creating a mirror site for the Watchdog.

On Brutal Journal, blogger Nyalubinge Ngwende wrote about government’s tampering with the Zambian Watchdog:

The online publication has been stoic even to a point of calling President Sata an ailing dictator—a deliberate choice of the words to provoke the Zambian leader who has chosen to become a recluse, hardly seen and heard in public on many issues affecting the nation and showing high levels of intolerance to the opposition.

It is for the first time since Zambia returned to multiparty politics 22 years ago that a publication has faced incessant government attack to the point of complete closure and random detention of all journalists suspected to be associated with it.

Indeed, Michael Sata has sought to “regulate” online news sites from his first days in office in 2011 when he ordered newly appointed Attorney General Mumba Malila to draft a law that would do so. From this, to the Watchdog's persisting problems, to the arrests of Pondamali, Hamasaka, and Zgambo, it appears that the Zambian government is growing increasingly intolerant of independent, critical media in the country.

Written by Gershom Ndhlovu · comments (0)
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In India, an explosion in mobile phone usage has seen former 'untouchables' form successful political parties, and is playing a critical role in the liberation of women. Political Scientist Robin Jeffrey on NBC says the ubiquity of mobile computing has also changed local banking, and reinvigorated the music industry.

In India, the autonomy brought by the cheap mobile phone can blow up long-standing social relationships.

.. The key element of the mobile phone, emphasised by the scholar Manuel Castells: it’s not the mobility, it’s the autonomy. Every owner of a basic 2G mobile has the potential to be a broadcaster and a global networker.

... Cheap mobile phones have made it possible for poor people to politically organise. A striking example occurred in the vast northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2007. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had been created in the 1980s to work for the benefit of 'untouchables', who constituted more than 20 per cent of UP’s population. Though ‘untouchability’ has been illegal in India since 1950, vicious prejudice remains, and Dalits (as ‘ex-untouchables’ are now known) are poor, rural and often illiterate.

To everyone’s surprise, the BSP won a majority in its own right in the 2007 elections. How? The party was based on true-believing workers who for the first time had the ability through their mobile phones to link constantly with each other, with party strategists and with influential voters.

Read more.

In India, an explosion in mobile phone usage has seen former 'untouchables' form successful political parties, and is playing a critical role in the liberation of women. Political Scientist Robin Jeffrey on NBC says the ubiquity of mobile computing has also changed local banking, and reinvigorated the music industry.

In India, the autonomy brought by the cheap mobile phone can blow up long-standing social relationships.

.. The key element of the mobile phone, emphasised by the scholar Manuel Castells: it’s not the mobility, it’s the autonomy. Every owner of a basic 2G mobile has the potential to be a broadcaster and a global networker.

... Cheap mobile phones have made it possible for poor people to politically organise. A striking example occurred in the vast northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2007. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had been created in the 1980s to work for the benefit of 'untouchables', who constituted more than 20 per cent of UP’s population. Though ‘untouchability’ has been illegal in India since 1950, vicious prejudice remains, and Dalits (as ‘ex-untouchables’ are now known) are poor, rural and often illiterate.

To everyone’s surprise, the BSP won a majority in its own right in the 2007 elections. How? The party was based on true-believing workers who for the first time had the ability through their mobile phones to link constantly with each other, with party strategists and with influential voters.

Read more.

Digital Citizen is a monthly review of news, policy, and research on human rights and technology in the Arab World. This is our first edition.

Jordan

In early June, shortly after hosting the World Economic Forum and the International Press Institute’s annual conference, Jordanian authorities initiated a ban on unlicensed news sites that activists had feared would come. According to Jordanian media organization 7iber, amendments made to the Press and Publications Law in September 2012 required Jordanian news websites to register with authorities or face censorship. The amendments also included articles that would “hold online news sites accountable for the comments left by their readers, prohibiting them from publishing comments that are deemed “irrelevant” or “unrelated” to the article,” a change that caused several sites to turn off their comments sections.

Over 300 sites are now blocked as a result of the ban, including several that fall outside of the parameters of the regulation, among them Al Jazeera (based in Qatar) and Penthouse Magazine. On July 1, 7iber found its own website added to the list, and stated on Facebook:

If the Press and Publication Department decided that 7iber.com needs to get licensed – which is against all their public statements about blogs – they were supposed to officially inform us of this decision and give us 90 days before blocking the website, according to their law (Article 49, paragraphs A-1, and A-2).

7iber was blocked today by a simple memo from the Press and Publication Department to the Telecom Regulatory Commission, which in turn gave its directives to ISPs. This happened without any due process or formal notification to 7iber, in yet another demonstration that this law serves as a tool for the government to arbitrarily stifle freedom of expression online.

The Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) has spoken out against the ban:

JOSA calls on the government to reverse its decision, and to review the modified Press and Publications law, and has implored decision makers to preserve the integrity and the inherent openness of the Internet, keeping it free of all forms of censorship and surveillance.

JOSA has also published a helpful infographic detailing the history of Jordanian Internet censorship.

Several Jordanian groups are making a concerted effort to fight back against the new regulations. 7iber has issued a guide to circumventing the blocks. A civil society collective has begun work on the Jordanian Internet Charter, a comprehensive bill of law aimed at protecting human rights online, inspired by Brazil's Marco Civil.

The Telecom Regulatory Commission sent an informal inquiry to ISPs asking them about their technical ability to block the IM application Whatsapp, but later denied any plans to ban its usage.

In other news, the Guardian recently reported that Jordan is among the top five countries surveilled under the United States National Security Agency's Boundless Informant program.

Tunisia

In June, Tunisia hosted the third meeting of the Freedom Online Coalition, a group of governments committed to respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) in the digital realm.

Leading up to the conference, the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI)—which under the Ben Ali regime was the home of the country’s Internet censorship and surveillance apparatus—opened its doors to the public as #404Lab, an innovation and hackerspace. As Jillian York wrote at PBS MediaShift:

The ATI, once Tunisia’s censorship and surveillance apparatus, has aimed to become the country’s neutral Internet exchange point (IXP), pushing back against numerous attempts over the past couple of years to force it to censor. The ATI’s commitment to openness was made concrete in the run-up to the conference when its doors were opened to hackers to create the #404Lab, a space for innovation. Those present were invited to investigate the 2007-era censorship equipment left over from the Ben Ali regime.

The conference occurred shortly after the revelation that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting widespread surveillance through platforms such as Facebook and Google, making surveillance a hot topic of discussion. From a side event (video) held at Tunisian media organization Nawaat.org emerged a statement presented in the final plenary of the conference. The statement urges Freedom Online Coalition governments to adopt the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance:

The explosion of digital communications content and information about communications, or “communications metadata,” the falling cost of storing and mining large sets of data, and the provision of personal content through third party service providers make State surveillance possible at an unprecedented scale. Broad collection of such information not only has a chilling effect on free expression and association; it threatens confidence in the internet as a safe platform for personal communications. It is therefore incumbent upon FOC members to extend and defend fundamental rights in ways that respond to this changing environment.

Although the Freedom Online Coalition meeting gave a boost to Tunisia’s burgeoning image as a leader in protecting free expression online, the country still has a long way to go. Just weeks before the conference, blogger Hakim Ghanmi faced trial for comments he made criticizing the management of a military hospital in the southeastern city of Sfax. And just two days before the conference kicked off, rapper Weld15 was sentenced to two years in prison for a song in which he insulted police. After a formidable international campaign for his freedom, the rapper was released on July 3 and given a suspended sentence of six months in lieu of imprisonment. Article 19 issued a report in July on restrictions to online freedom in Tunisia.

Syria

Telecomix released findings that 34 Blue Coat servers “dedicated to intercepting communications and data circulating on the Internet” were operational in Syria as of May 22. This is not the first time that servers from the US-based surveillance technology firm have been found in the embattled country: In 2011, Citizen Lab detected the use of Blue Coat devices in Syria. Shortly thereafter, intermediary sales company Computerlinks was fined for selling devices to Syria, a violation of US sanctions. Reporters Without Borders has named Blue Coat a corporate “enemy of the Internet,” calling on the company to “explain the presence of 34 of its servers in Syria and their use by the regime to track down its opponents.”

In late May, activists around the world celebrated Bassel Safadi Khartabil’s birthday, the second the Syrian software engineer and open-source enthusiast has spent behind bars. In honor of Bassel’s birthday, Index on Censorship asked his friends to submit birthday messages, which they posted on their blog.

Lebanon

In Lebanon, a popular campaign to ‘take back parliament’ has been organized largely online. The campaigners describe themselves thus:

We are tired of the polarization of March 8/14 and the total disconnect and inefficiency of the Lebanese Parliament from our daily lives. We are tired of sectarianism and its paralyzing effect on social justice demands. We are young and we want to change this country. Odds are, we’re just like you.

The campaign crowdsourced their platform, and used Facebook to mobilize participation.

Frustrated by the statistic that nearly 70% of mobile phones are smuggled into the country, Lebanese officials have instituted a regulation that only phones with International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers registered at the customs office would be able to access local networks.

In early June, Telecommunication Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui began an online campaign to #FreeTheBandwidth. The campaign is directed at Abdel Minem Youssef, an executive at local telco Ogero (majority owned by the government) who has held positions at both Ogero and the Ministry of Telecommunication. In a press statement, Minister Sehnaoui accused Youssef of limiting the development of Internet infrastructure in the country. Minister Sehnaoui provided numbers to prove that the Lebanese government is losing $750,000 each month due to decisions made by Youseff.

The campaign stirred up the Lebanese online sphere for a week, but has yet to lead to any tangible outcome.

Palestine

In early May, Google took a step toward recognizing Palestine as a state, changing “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” across its many platforms. The decision angered Israeli officials, who stated that the company’s action “pushes peace further away.” Google, however, has stuck with its initial decision.

The Internet Society (ISOC) in Palestine has been working to establish the Palestine Internet Exchange Point (PIX), hosted at Birzeit University. Right now, seven out of Palestine’s 11 ISPs have connected as peers, while the Palestinian National Research and Education Network (NREN) will connect universities to the service. The project recently received equipment from Google to host a copy of their global cache, increasing access speeds to Google services.

Egypt

In late May, nearly a month before the June 30 protests that resulted in the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, Europe’s Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes met with Egypt’s Telecommunications Minister Atef Helmy to discuss Internet governance. Soon thereafter, they issued a joint statement calling for “openness, inclusiveness, accountability, effectiveness, coherence and respect for applicable laws.” The statement read:

We agreed that it is of the utmost importance to ensure that the Internet remains an open platform, that all attempts to fragment it into national “Intranets” are resisted and that all discussions and decisions concerning the “rules of the game” are based on a multi-stakeholder approach ensuring openness, inclusiveness, accountability, effectiveness, coherence and respect for applicable laws.

In this context, we agreed that in order to ensure broader participation and diversity in these debates, it is necessary to find “smart” ways to develop capacity and expertise on these complex issues, especially among less-resources stakeholders…

The Egyptian Blog for Human Rights recently published a report on ICT indicators in Egypt. The report includes data on the intersections of Internet usage and education, age, and gender.

The Cairo-based Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) has released a legal guide to digital security for Arab human rights activists. The guide emphasizes legal aspects of digital security and offers suggestions on using tools for digital safety.

As in Jordan, leaked information about the NSA’s ‘Boundless Informant’ program shows that Egypt is among the top countries under surveillance by the US agency, with 7.6 billion reports on the country allegedly generated by the program. The Wall Street Journal reported that Egyptians were said to not be surprised by the program, just “disappointed.”

Coinciding with the June 30 protests was the launch of Mada Masr, a new online publication. According to the site's creators, Mada Masr aims to focus on investigative and data-based reporting. On July 4, the site published a scathing piece by Sherif Elsayed-Ali about the NSA’s global surveillance efforts. In it, Elsayed-Ali writes:

Internet access is integral to human rights because of its importance to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, education, and other widely recognized human rights. It is now clear that internet access, free from unlawful interference, must be protected as a legally enforceable right if our privacy is to mean anything in the 21st century.

We need a dedicated legal instrument that codifies our digital rights and clarifies the obligations of governments and responsibilities of service providers in relation to internet access. This is too important to be left to the whims of unaccountable agencies and repressive regimes.

Following the ouster of Morsi, the army shut down several Islamist media outlets, prompting a statement signed by seven human rights organizations, including the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, and the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre. The organizations state that Egyptian authorities “must respect principles of media freedom as stipulated by international law.”

Qatar

Qatar, which has generally been the most open of the Gulf States in terms of online speech, has proposed a new cybercrime law that would—among other things—punish anyone who:

…infringes on the social principles or values or otherwise publishes news, photos, audio or visual recordings related to the sanctity of the private and familial life of persons, even if they were true, or infringes on others by libel or slander via the Internet or other information technology means.

Jan Keulen of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom stated that the law “raises questions over why a cybercrime law is now dealing with issues which were initially intended to be covered by the draft media law” and that online freedom of expression should be protected.

Kuwait

So far, 2013 has seen dozens of arrests relating to online speech in the Gulf nation of Kuwait, including the one-month imprisonment of the editor of online publication al-Aaan; the imprisonment and deportation of Egyptian blogger Abdullah Aziz al-Baz; and the two-year prison sentence of an online activist for remarks made on Twitter. The apparent crackdown has been condemned by Human Rights Watch and other organizations.

Most recently, 37-year-old teacher Huda al-Ajmi was handed an 11-year prison sentence for remarks made on Twitter deemed “insulting to the emir and calling for the overthrow of the regime.” It is the longest known sentence ever to have been issued for online dissent in Kuwait. Notably, Kuwait is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which it ratified in 1996. The ICCPR protects the right to freedom of expression, including peaceful criticism of public officials.

Bahrain

In early May, digital rights advocates rejoiced as Ali Abdulemam—a Bahraini blogger sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2011—came out of hiding, making his first public appearance at the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Global Voices Advocacy conducted an interview with Abdulemam in which the blogger stated that in Bahrain:

The situation is not developing…attacks on peaceful demonstrations continue. There is no moving forward for reforming, or giving the people their universal rights, there [are] no individual rights, there is no freedom of speech, there is no free press. So the situation is just like a state living 200 years back.

In June, it was reported that Bahraini authorities had expressed intent to restrict the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services such as Skype and Viber. The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights expressed concern over the move, stating that “these restrictions will contribute [to] restricting digital rights in Bahrain and will increase the control of Internet users.”

High school student Ali Al Shofa was sentenced to a year in prison for allegedly tweeting insulting comments about Sheikh Hamad Al-Khalifa on the news account @alkawarahnews, which the young man denied. The month prior, six Twitter users were charged with “misusing the right of free expression” and sentenced to a year in prison.

Saudi Arabia

In early June, popular messaging and VoIP client Viber was blocked in Saudi Arabia following threats from the government to block such clients if they refused to follow “rules and regulatory conditions” (which, according to Wired, is “commonly taken to mean access for the security services to monitor calls and texts”).

In May, security researcher Moxie Marlinspike reported being contacted by Saudi telecom Mobily and asked for help with a surveillance project being undertaken in the country. Marlinspike refused the offer and published the email exchange on his website.

On June 24, seven citizens were convicted of “inciting protests” and “harming public order” on Facebook and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 5 to 10 years. The men were held in pre-trial detention for a year and a half at the General Investigations Prison in Damman.

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates has also gone after Twitter users recently, sentencing Abdullah al Haddidi to ten months in prison for “spreading false news” about an ongoing trial of activists. Al Haddidi was charged with violating Article 265 of the Penal Code, which essentially criminalizes the dissemination of false news, with police and courts determining what communication is “truthful.”

In another case, Salah Yafie, a Bahraini national, was allegedly detained at Dubai International Airport for a “controversial” tweet. Little has been reported about Yafie, but a recent article from Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News reports that human rights groups in the country are urging Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry to secure Yafie’s release.

Iraq

Iran, which according to reports has been plotting to cut itself off from the world’s Internet, has allegedly offered its services to Iraq for the same purpose. Earlier this year, Iraq revoked the controversial proposed Cyber Crime Law, showing initiative to protect certain fundamental rights online.

The Iraq Network for Social Media, which was instrumental in campaigning to revoke the Cyber Crime Law, organized the first Iraqi blogger conference last year.

Oman

According to Zawya, Oman ranks second highest amongst GCC countries in terms of smart phone usage. The same report found a 2000 percent increase in Internet usage in the region.

Blogger Diab Al Amiri was reportedly detained in late May, but released just two days later, pending formal charges. No further information has been reported on his case.

Morocco

Morocco will soon be launching 4G services. According to recent reports, the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT) will invite bids for 4G licenses by year's end. Morocco's Internet penetration is just shy of 50%.

E-Joussour, Morocco's first online community radio project launched in June. The project will reportedly function as an advocacy tool for free expression and will offer broadcasts in Amazigh, Arabic, and French.

Mauritania

In Mauritania, where only an estimated 3 percent of the population has access to the Internet, a hacking community has emerged. A recent report from Lebanon’s Daily Star profiled hacker Mauritania Attacker, who “[targets] websites worldwide in the name of Islam.”

Deutsche Welle’s Best of Blogs competition has yielded a winner this year from Mauritania. Ahmed Ould Jedou, a Global Voices contributor, won this year’s award for Best Arabic Blog. In a recent interview, Jedou stated that: “Blogging for me is a space for electronic resistance and for the spread of a culture of human rights. It is the victory of humanity and stands in the face of tyranny…”

Sudan

Recent research found that devices made by Blue Coat have been found in Sudan, possibly in violation of US sanctions. The devices, which can be used for monitoring network traffic, have also been found in Iran, Syria, and other countries.

Popular blogger Amir Ahmad Nasr (formerly known by the pseudonym ‘Sudanese Thinker’) released his first book, entitled My Islam: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind—and Doubt Freed My Soul. Nasr was the subject of a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal.

Algeria

A report by Good Governance Africa details Internet censorship and social activism in Algeria which—although its Internet penetration rate is nearly 15 percent—is rarely reported on by digital rights advocates.

Yemen

Yemen recently launched a satellite Internet service that will provide access to previously unconnected villages in the country. The country’s Internet penetration currently sits at roughly 14.9 percent.

Other News

• A recent study conducted by Northwestern University in Qatar found that support for online free expression in the Middle East and North Africa is widespread. An analysis of the report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) tackles some of the apparent contradictions in the Northwestern report’s findings.

• A new report from Hivos entitled “Internet Governance: The quest for an open Internet in the Middle East and North Africa” [PDF] looks at the state of Internet governance in six countries: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Tunisia.

• A new UNESCO report looks at how ICTs are being used in education across five Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Palestine (West Bank only) and Qatar.

• The 4th edition of the Arab Social Media Forum was held in Ramallah, Palestine on June 8, 2013.

• The second Arab Internet Governance Forum (Arab IGF) will be held this autumn in Algiers.

Digital Citizen is brought to you by Global Voices Advocacy, Access, EFF, and Social Media Exchange. This month’s report was researched, edited, and written by Reem Al Masri, Hisham Almiraat, Nadim Kobeissi, Katherine Maher, Mohamad Najem, Mohammed Tarakiyee, and Jillian York with editorial support from Ellery Roberts Biddle.

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After spending almost a month unseen in the international transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden met with representatives of Russian human rights organizations and Russian MP Vyacheslav Nikonov. During his public appearance on June 12, Snowden made a brief statement and took questions from journalists (full audio available here [en and ru]) at what was termed a “G9 meeting.” Snowden criticized his government's secret courts, overarching system of surveillance, and the diplomatic campaign aimed at preventing him from finding political asylum. He also announced his intention to take asylum in any country that could ensure his security and thanked those countries that have offered him assistance:

Even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world.

While the Russian government has come out in tacit support of Snowden's asylum rights, Russians themselves are divided on whether he is a genuine whistle-blower or a hypocritical traitor. Snowden's press conference (video clip below) has re-ignited the debate.

In a blog post [ru] for the independent Ekho Moskvy radio-station, journalist and human rights activist Natalia Gulevskaya directed her ire at the Russian human rights activists who met with Snowden, claiming they were state-sponsored and self-centered hypocrites:

Из собравшегося правозащитного бомонда штатных и внештатных агентов Кремля в транзитной зоне аэропорта Шереметьево никого особо не интересуют граждане России, которые погружаются в репрессии, судебные, административные и физические расправы.

None of the human-rights-defending crème de la crème of official and non-official Kremlin agents, who have gathered in the transit zone, hold any interest for the citizens of Russia, who are drowning in repression, in legal, administrative and physical violence.

Political commentator and human rights activist Marina Litvinovich was even more scathing, writing on her blog [ru] that Snowden's meeting was nothing more than a “typical secret service operation” that “decent people and decent human rights organizations refused to take part in.”

Pavel Chikov, head of the the legal defense NGO Agora [ru] and member of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, was also suspicious of Sheremetyevo airport's new-found enthusiasm for helping human rights activists. He tweeted [ru]:

Помнится, в декабре 2011 года аэропорт Шереметьево задерживал и незаконно (суд потом признал) изымал ноутбук у директора Ассоциации ГОЛОС

I remember, in December of 2011 [after the Duma elections] Sheremetyevo Airport arrested and illegally (as determined by a court) seized a laptop from the director of [election monitoring group] GOLOS [ru]

The idea that Snowden's stay in Russia is closely monitored and controlled by the Russian secret services has permeated the discourse to such a degree that when Nikita Batalov, a radio journalist, found [ru] a suspicious door in one of the Sheremetyevo terminals, he automatically assumed this was where Snowden was being held:

И теперь главное! На одной из маленьких дверей в терминале Е бумажка со скотчем с надписью “СПЕЦОБЪЕКТ ФСБ РОССИИ, ВХОД ЗАПРЕЩЕН”

And now for the main bit! One of the small doors in terminal E [where Snowden held his press-conference] is labeled with a scotch-taped piece of paper “RUSSIAN FSB SENSITIVE SITE, NO ENTRY”

Pro-Kremlin activist and blogger Kristina Potupchik thought that the real hypocrisy lay with the human rights groups that had refused to speak up for Snowden. In a blog post entitled “Edward Snowden, Why is the Opposition Keeping Quiet” [ru] Potupchick mockingly wrote,

Почему молчим? Почему не требуем от кровавого режима в срочном порядке без каких-либо условий предоставить убежище герою, рассказавшему миру правду о нарушении прав человека и подвергающемуся за это преследованиям на родине??? Это же ваша тема! А может быть, они молчат потому, что это СОЕДИНЕННЫЕ ШТАТЫ АМЕРИКИ? Или кто назовет иные причины?

Why are [you] keeping quiet? Why aren't [you] demanding the bloody regime to immediately and unconditionally grant asylum to this hero, who has told the whole world about human rights violations and who is being persecuted for this by his homeland??? This is the kind of thing you do! Or maybe, they are quiet because it's the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [that is doing the persecuting]? Or can anyone offer another reason?

Some bloggers who are usually critical of the Russian government also sided with Snowden in this instance. For example, the Twitter parody account of Russia's former grey cardinal Vladislav Surkov criticized [ru] perceived attempts at intimidation by the Americans:

Интересно, как США отреагируют на потенциальное выдвижение Сноудена в кандидаты на Нобелевскую Премию Мира?… Разбомбят Швецию?

I wonder how the USA will react to the potential nomination of Snowden as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize?… Bomb Sweden?

The writer and blogger Boris Akunin also thought [ru] that if what Snowden uncovered is true, he deserves the support of the Russian opposition, regardless of all the “fuss that our officialdom has started around him.”

We are often accustomed to thinking that civil society is, while not apolitical, primarily above the often dirty business of party politics. Some of those present at Snowden's press conference can be linked to the Russian government, but others, like Tatiana Lokshina of the Human Right's Watch, who wrote an account [en] of the meeting, have consistently criticized the Russian government in the past. A broad refusal of Russian human rights defenders to speak out favor of Snowden could leave them open to charges of hypocrisy, even though they may find it distasteful to help someone who categorizes Russia as “the first to stand against human rights violations.” With the ever-tightening regulation of Russia's NGO sector, its human rights defenders may have to decide which is more important: being consistent on a range of issues, or trying to prevent the Kremlin's from scoring a few PR points.

Written by Daniel Alan Kennedy · Translated by Global Voices · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Yuqi Chen, Alex Laverty, Hae-in Lim, Ellery Roberts Biddle and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. We begin this edition in the EU, where last week France trashed its controversial ‘Hadopi’ anti-piracy law and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for greater protections for user data in the EU, reminding us that not all news is bad news.

National Policy

French legislators struck down the heavy-handed ‘Hadopi’ online copyright law. Under the law's “three strikes” rule, users who violated copyright restrictions three or more times could be punished by having their Internet connections cut. The Guardian reports that legislators are seeking policy reforms that will shift the focus of law enforcement towards commercial piracy issues.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to push for tougher laws in the EU aimed at protecting personal information on the Internet. According to Merkel, a region-wide approach that unifies the diverse range of data protection laws that individual European states have adopted will improve user protections overall.

Iran launched a “national email service” that all citizens will be required to use to “safely” communicate with government officials. It remains unclear whether this will impact access to other email providers. President-elect Hassan Rouhani has called for less filtering of the Internet, saying “gone are the days when a wall could be built around the country.” Analysts see the debate over Internet policy as critical to Iran’s future, as relaxation of controls could help bolster the country’s economy.

Censorship

A Brazilian blogger was sentenced to seven months in prison after being convicted of defamation by a court in the northeastern state of Aracaju. According to Reporters Without Borders, a state-level judge pressed charges against the blogger due to an allegorical blog post that called attention to corrupt judicial practices in the region.

idcloak Technologies recently released a new anti-censorship, anti-surveillance tool, Web Unblocker. The site-based proxy service allows users to view blocked websites using three “layers” of security, incorporating an SSL connection to a remote proxy server, along with the option to encrypt both web pages and URLs. The tool was designed to serve politically active Internet users in countries with strong online censorship and surveillance regimes.

Thuggery

In Bahrain, a government spokesperson warned opposition groups against holding protests next month, stating that participation in the “Rebellion of Bahrain” movement will be considered illegal. The spokesperson noted that citizens were welcome to raise their concerns with the government's legislative branch.

Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev, deputy editor of Russian independent news outlet Novoye Delo and a contributor to independent regional news website Kavkazsky Uzel, was killed on July 9 in a drive-by shooting in Dagestan, a region with a long history of ethnic conflict. According to CPJ, Akhmednabiyev covered politically controversial topics and had received multiple death threats in the past. Russia's Investigative Committee, a federal agency tasked with solving serious crimes, released a statement acknowledging political motivations behind the journalist's murder.

Surveillance

The Indian government has reached an agreement that will allow law enforcement agencies to intercept certain data sent using Blackberry devices, including emails, attachments, web browsing data, and BlackBerry Messenger chats. The agreement does not include access to BlackBerry’s Enterprise servers, something the government had previously demanded from the company. Instead, Blackberry will have to notify law enforcement about which companies use Enterprise services. Human Rights Watch has heavily criticized the Indian government’s Central Monitoring System, which it calls “chilling,” and “reckless.”

Devices used for Internet monitoring made by American firm Blue Coat were detected in Iran and Sudan this week. Previously detected in Syria, the California-based tech company’s products allow governments to censor web sites and monitor online communications. Blue Coat denies having allowed for the sale of their products to embargoed countries and claims their products are not intended for surveillance purposes.

Members of Russia’s Parliament are using Edward Snowden’s presence in Russia’s airport to strengthen their arguments in favor of greater state-level control over user data held by multinational Internet companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Drawing from recent revelations about the extent to which Skype, owned by Microsoft, allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on users’ communications, Slate.com constructed a timeline of key public statements and private actions taken by the VoIP provider on the issue.

Netizen Activism

Anonymous shut down the official website of Gabonese President Ali Bongo as part of Operation Gabon (#OpGabon), a campaign against ritual killings and government corruption in the West African nation.

Cool Things

Developers including Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde are creating a “spy-proof” text messaging app that will use highly secure end-to-end encryption. Sunde and his team are crowdfunding the effort, accepting both cash and BitCoin donations.

Publications and Studies

• Some Devices Wander by Mistake: Planet Blue Coat Redux – Citizen Lab & Canada Center for Global Security Studies
• Rationing the Digital: The Policy and Politics of Internet Use in Cuba Today – Berkman Center for Internet and Society
• OpenNet Initiative 2013 Latin America Research: Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela – Berkman Center for Internet and Society
• Understanding the Tshwane Principles of National Security and the Right to Information – Open Society Justice Initiative
• Privacy Disclosure and Auditing: An Exploratory Study – The University of Auckland

 

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

 

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Studies show that most organizations use some mobile apps; that more are planning to do so; and that, in a few years, it will be unusual to find a commercial or homegrown enterprise business application that doesn’t have a functioning client for smartphones and tablets. slashdot reports.

That doesn’t mean building and deploying such software will be easy or cheap, especially for the corporate application-development teams actually responsible for the apps, which run on some of the least-secure devices available while interacting with data stored in some of the most-protected datacenter storage networks. More than two thirds of businesses utilize some business apps on mobile devices, according to a new Yankee Group study that also found use of mobile customer resource management and sales-force automation had tripled during the past five years.

That rate of growth is pokey compared to what’s coming, according to research firm Gartner, which predicted the number of mobile versions of CRM clients would leap 1,200 percent by the end of 2014.

... One out of four large companies spends more than $100,000 to build a single enterprise-class mobile app, but not because of the portion of it that actually runs on a mobile device, according to a report on mobile development released by AnyNet, which offers cloud-based middleware and data-integration services for mobile apps.

More than half the companies surveyed by AnyNet reported taking at least three months to develop a mobile application, and a third said they release updates to each app at least once per month. Three quarters expect their companies to add three new mobile apps this year; 38 percent expect to launch six.

Read full article.

Studies show that most organizations use some mobile apps; that more are planning to do so; and that, in a few years, it will be unusual to find a commercial or homegrown enterprise business application that doesn’t have a functioning client for smartphones and tablets. slashdot reports.

That doesn’t mean building and deploying such software will be easy or cheap, especially for the corporate application-development teams actually responsible for the apps, which run on some of the least-secure devices available while interacting with data stored in some of the most-protected datacenter storage networks. More than two thirds of businesses utilize some business apps on mobile devices, according to a new Yankee Group study that also found use of mobile customer resource management and sales-force automation had tripled during the past five years.

That rate of growth is pokey compared to what’s coming, according to research firm Gartner, which predicted the number of mobile versions of CRM clients would leap 1,200 percent by the end of 2014.

... One out of four large companies spends more than $100,000 to build a single enterprise-class mobile app, but not because of the portion of it that actually runs on a mobile device, according to a report on mobile development released by AnyNet, which offers cloud-based middleware and data-integration services for mobile apps.

More than half the companies surveyed by AnyNet reported taking at least three months to develop a mobile application, and a third said they release updates to each app at least once per month. Three quarters expect their companies to add three new mobile apps this year; 38 percent expect to launch six.

Read full article.

Scientists at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, have demonstrated that a commercially available mobile phone can be charged and powered with urine. RSC Publishing reports via The Belfast Telegraph.

A team of experts working at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have been able to charge a Samsung phone by putting urine through a cascade of microbial fuel cells. They have generated enough electricity to send text messages, browse the internet and make a brief phone call. The scientists now plan to develop the technology to be able to fully charge the handheld device.

The project has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Gates Foundation and the Technology Strategy Board. The 'Waste to Real Energy: the first MFC powered mobile phone' article has been published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

Read full article.

Related::

-- In 2006, Cellular News reported that physicists in Singapore had developed a battery that could be powered by human urine for for those "emergency" phone calls when your conventional battery has died.

-- The first urine-powered paper battery was created in Singapore. The credit-card sized unit could be a useful power source for cheap healthcare test kits for diseases like diabetes, and could even be used in emergency situations to power a cellphone.

Scientists at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, have demonstrated that a commercially available mobile phone can be charged and powered with urine. RSC Publishing reports via The Belfast Telegraph.

A team of experts working at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have been able to charge a Samsung phone by putting urine through a cascade of microbial fuel cells. They have generated enough electricity to send text messages, browse the internet and make a brief phone call. The scientists now plan to develop the technology to be able to fully charge the handheld device.

The project has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Gates Foundation and the Technology Strategy Board. The 'Waste to Real Energy: the first MFC powered mobile phone' article has been published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

Read full article.

Related::

-- In 2006, Cellular News reported that physicists in Singapore had developed a battery that could be powered by human urine for for those "emergency" phone calls when your conventional battery has died.

-- The first urine-powered paper battery was created in Singapore. The credit-card sized unit could be a useful power source for cheap healthcare test kits for diseases like diabetes, and could even be used in emergency situations to power a cellphone.

Last Friday, Latin American government leaders issued a strong statement against the mass surveillance of their citizens by the US government at an emergency meeting of MERCOSUR, South America's leading economic and diplomatic alliance. Approaching the meeting, a collective of activists, academics and NGOs from Latin America wrote an open letter [es] to MERCOSUR, inviting leaders to consult with civil society in building human rights-protective policies for the region. The letter put forth a collaborative vision for Internet policy making:

We want Latin America to become the model both of laws and practices allowing and enabling us to exercise our human rights to the maximum degree. The espionage problem we are facing right now is…an opportunity for us. Working together, governments and civil society, we can design a regional policy allowing us to develop in full all the potential of new technologies while protecting our citizens.

Civil society leaders encouraged governments to hold open, participatory policy-making processes and enable citizens to collaborate in the design of a new regional approach to the Internet, embracing principles of free expression, access, openness, privacy and the free flow of information.

In their declaration [es], MERCOSUR leaders rejected the interception of communications, characterizing it as a violation of human rights, the right to privacy, and the right to information (see item 8). They recognized the importance of ICTs for development and the urgent need for robust infrastructure in the region, especially broadband access (see items 45, 46).

They also embraced free software:

We support free software development, as it will enable us to develop regional ICTs solution, so we will achieve a real appropriation and promotion of free knowledge and free transfer of technologies, reducing our dependence on solutions from transnational companies which are not willing to respect our emergent industries. We affirm our interest in the promotion of free software in all national digital inclusion programs.

The statement emphasized free software principles for the effective use, implementation, research and transfer of technology and established as priority the development of regional public policy to achieve these ends.

If MERCOSUR leaders are able to to act on their stated aims, working with other countries and civil society groups in the region and reforming national-level legislation to meet the standards they put forth last week, the region could provide a powerful example for the global south, becoming a safe haven for expression, innovation and human development.

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The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) is proud to release new reports on Internet regulation and filtering in Colombia,

read more

A study to be undertaken next month by the University of Sydney is expected to provide valuable insights into the uses of mobile technology by homeless women and children, and young people, two of the fastest-growing homeless groups in Australia. [via ITWire]

Results from the study, to be conducted by University of Sydney lecturer in Digital Cultures, Dr Justine Humphry, is aimed at influencing how government departments – increasingly using apps and other digital channels – stay in touch with “vulnerable and difficult-to-pinpoint groups of people” which together make up two-thirds of Australia’s homeless population.

Read full article.

Related: - A Homeless Man and His BlackBerry (TIME)

Other article on the importance of cell phones for the homeless blogged by textually over the years

A study to be undertaken next month by the University of Sydney is expected to provide valuable insights into the uses of mobile technology by homeless women and children, and young people, two of the fastest-growing homeless groups in Australia. [via ITWire]

Results from the study, to be conducted by University of Sydney lecturer in Digital Cultures, Dr Justine Humphry, is aimed at influencing how government departments – increasingly using apps and other digital channels – stay in touch with “vulnerable and difficult-to-pinpoint groups of people” which together make up two-thirds of Australia’s homeless population.

Read full article.

Related: - A Homeless Man and His BlackBerry (TIME)

Other article on the importance of cell phones for the homeless blogged by textually over the years

A study to be undertaken next month by the University of Sydney is expected to provide valuable insights into the uses of mobile technology by homeless women and children, and young people, two of the fastest-growing homeless groups in Australia. [via ITWire]

Results from the study, to be conducted by University of Sydney lecturer in Digital Cultures, Dr Justine Humphry, is aimed at influencing how government departments – increasingly using apps and other digital channels – stay in touch with “vulnerable and difficult-to-pinpoint groups of people” which together make up two-thirds of Australia’s homeless population.

Read full article

Related: - A Homeless Man and His BlackBerry (TIME)

Articles on the importance of cell phones for the homeless blogged by textually over the years

What are our devices doing to us? We already know they're snuffing our creativity--but new research suggests they're also stifling our drive. How so? Because fussing with them on average 58 minutes a day leads to bad posture.FastCompany reports.

The body posture inherent in operating everyday gadgets affects not only your back, but your demeanor, reports a new experimental study entitled iPosture: The Size of Electronic Consumer Devices Affects Our Behavior. It turns out that working on a relatively large machine (like a desktop computer) causes users to act more assertively than working on a small one (like an iPad).

That poor posture, Harvard Business School researchers Maarten Bos and Amy Cuddy find, undermines our assertiveness.

Read more.

What are our devices doing to us? We already know they're snuffing our creativity--but new research suggests they're also stifling our drive. How so? Because fussing with them on average 58 minutes a day leads to bad posture.FastCompany reports.

The body posture inherent in operating everyday gadgets affects not only your back, but your demeanor, reports a new experimental study entitled iPosture: The Size of Electronic Consumer Devices Affects Our Behavior. It turns out that working on a relatively large machine (like a desktop computer) causes users to act more assertively than working on a small one (like an iPad).

That poor posture, Harvard Business School researchers Maarten Bos and Amy Cuddy find, undermines our assertiveness.

Read more.

A phone insurance company acting as a 'mobile graveyard' for the public to honour their old handsets and how they met their bitter end has launched today. The Telegraph reports.

One recent gravestone reads: 'Here lies a Nokia 3210, which lost its life being thrown from the window of a 1997 Nissan Micra.’ Another reads: 'Here lies a iPhone 3G which lost its life being dropped into a bowl of milk after the user consumed all his Lucky Charms. Safe to say its luck ran out'.

The microsite hopes to highlight the ways in which handsets of today are most commonly broken, and to encourage people to be more careful with their mobile phones.

Read full article.