As spite spurs activism among the nation’s youth, Egypt contemplates banning Facebook- the infamous Social Networking Site (SNS) that has taken the country by storm.
The rising food prices and consequential rise in cost of living in Egypt has caused a great deal of unrest, especially in the lower strata of society. Interestingly, though, it is the middle and upper classes that have been using the Internet (namely social networking sites) and other digital goods as a medium to organize protests and strikes comprising of over 80,000 people. Despite the class divide that is apparent in the Egyptian social structure, it seems that their mutual dislike of the governing system has united them, and thus instilled the use of Facebook and other social networking sites as a means to ‘spread the word.’
In a Los Angeles Times’ op-ed, Sherif Mansour (of the US based human rights group Freedom House) wrote that the Egyptian government is considering blocking Facebook soon; a site that the Egyptian government heeds as an eminent threat to the ruling National Democratic party. Mansour praises Facebook’s ability, or rather the medium it provides for activists, to mobilize and engage massive numbers of young Egyptians. This was confirmed by the crucial role the site played in recent protests against textile workers’ salaries and soaring food prices. Facebook is lauded for having opened real space for media and also for providing a venue for secular activists- as opposed to the Islamist opposition representing the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
The opinion of the Egyptian government, however, differs. Facebook and other social networking activists are being targeted by government-based media campaigns defaming the website and the youth activists who use it. In fact, Egypt has the third highest number of Facebook users - after the U.S. and Canada – but this has not gone unnoticed, and so the deliberation on banning the site altogether continues.
Thus, the government and its state-run media are lashing out against what Mansour describes as the “Facebook movement” and authorities have jailed dissidents like Ahmed Maher who was also tortured for his activities. Young activists have flocked to the site to choreograph widespread protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s 27- year rule as it is the perfect tool for them to voice their opinions, especially in a country that outlaws gatherings of more than five people. With the use of blog sites, Facebook and YouTube, their messages can now be projected not only within the country but also globally.
“They [the government] were horrified by Facebook because it was something totally new that they could not control,” says Nadia, a key promoter of a recent day-long general strike in which three protestors were shot dead and 400 were jailed, including her.
For now the government is only contemplating and hasn’t, as yet, taken any immediate actions to carry out their threats. The only thing that can be stopping them, it seems, is the outrage that will occur with the banning of such a popular site or the fact that many commercial businesses and companies in Egypt use the site to attract consumers and would suffer heavily if it were to be banned.
But is that enough reason to stop the government? Well, that is yet to be seen.
-Kanupriya Tewari
Congress is considering new legislation to prevent US companies from assisting the censorship and surveillance regimes of so-called Internet-Restricting Countries (IRCs): China, Iran, and so forth. On balance, the Global Online Freedom Act would probably help companies make smarter decisions about blocking and monitoring its customers, and at the very least would provide some valuable data on just what is being blocked and monitored. Yet the bill has some serious flaws which would not help the cause of Internet freedom, and would probably hurt it. You can read about Sec. 201, which would force companies to relocate servers out of IRCs, on Jonathan Zittrain's blog. This post focuses on Sec. 202, which would prevent companies from giving customers' personal information to governments for purposes the Department of Justice did not deem "legitimate." (Just what is an "illegitimate" government purpose? It's hard to say, though the bill states that any effort for "control, suppression, or punishment of peaceful expression of political or religious opinion" would fall under that category)
US companies ought not to violate fundamental human rights, and to the extent that Sec. 202 prevents them from doing so, that is a good thing. But under Sec. 202, any company that complied with an illegitimate request - say, by handing over the emails of a Chinese journalist - would face hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil liabilities, and the officials within the company would face up to five years in prison. The trouble is, if a company refused to comply with an illegitimate request, it might face similar liabilities from the IRC. Put in such a bind, a US company might simply opt out of doing business in an IRC and be replaced by a less scrupulous indigenous company.
If we want to prevent IRCs from making illegitimate requests, rather than just prevent US companies from assisting them, we need to do more. Here are three suggestions:
- Make surveillance costly: by making Internet privacy a formal consideration point in trade deals and foreign aid pacts with the US government, IRCs may find it unattractive to persist in their surveillance regimes. And by making Internet openness a formal consideration in international trade dispute mechanisms, companies within IRCs might find it appealing to pressure their governments to reform.
- Make surveillance illegitimate: By setting an example of freedom and innovation around the world, the US can show that openness and prosperity go hand-in-hand. Therefore the US ought to re-examine its own censorship and surveillance policies before trying to reform the policies of others.
- Make surveillance useless: By giving citizens access to technologies like Tor and Anonymizer, the US can make it impossible for governments to track political, religious, and personal communication. In this way, IRCs can continue to request private consumer information from US companies, but the companies simply won't have anything to give.
But don't let all this criticism overwhelm: GOFA is, on balance, a good bill. But as I have written elsewhere, it alone cannot make the Internet more free: it needs smart users and responsible companies to help.
An increasing number of American companies are being asked to obey censorship and surveillance laws in China that run contrary to free speech and privacy guarantees in the United States. These companies have been asked to monitor Internet users' activities, to give subscriber information such that the government can monitor users itself, and to release private communications of accused political dissidents.
Faced with such requests, most companies have complied with Chinese laws. In 2005, Yahoo! released the private emails of journalist Shi Tao, emails which eventually led to Mr. Shi's incarceration. In 2006, Microsoft prevented users from creating blog posts with "democracy" in their titles. And today Google limits its search results in China for controversial topics such as the Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square.
Some companies are even profiting from censorship. A newly leaked Powerpoint presentation reveals that Cisco Systems executives saw China's desire to censor the Falun Gong as an opportunity to sell filtering technologies.
Observing that most companies have complied with Chinese law, Congress is considering legislation to force these companies to adhere to American standards of freedom of speech and privacy protection. The Global Online Freedom Act would require that ICT companies operating outside the US not release private user information to governments, except for “legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes” (the Justice Department would decide what constitutes a legitimate purpose)
This May, the Berkman Center's Executive Director, John Palfrey, submitted written congressional testimony to Congress about this and related bills. "At this moment of dynamic change," Prof. Palfrey wrote, "it would be premature to act now with blunt legislation." A legislative approach would simply discourage companies from investing in countries like China, where emerging indigenous ICT companies, less likely to adhere to any privacy and free speech guarantees, would take their place.
Rather, Prof. Palfrey suggested that companies develop a set of standards regarding which censorship and surveillance laws to comply with, and which to fight. Such an effort is already underway. Today the Center for Democracy and Technology, Business for Social Responsibility, the Berkman Center and several ICT firms are working to develop a code of conduct for companies operating in regimes which lack U.S.-style privacy and free speech guarantees. Some initial discussions of this collaboration are available here and here.
This doesn't mean that the government has to stand still as ICT companies regulate themselves. Palfrey suggested that Congress take action on the following:
1. Support research on and awareness of existing censorship practices
2. Fund technologies to promote internet freedom
3. Create regular exchanges between the government, ICT sector, human rights organizations, and academic researchers
4. Provide incentives for companies to participate in this industry-wide code of conduct
5. Lead the way as a government on privacy and freedom of speech
6. Encourage companies to inform users about possible violations to their privacy
7. Consider codifying the code of conduct, once it's developed.
Of course, none of these suggestions are uncontroversial, nor is the industry-wide code of conduct Prof. Palfrey is working to develop. Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch, who testified at the same hearing, argued that:
"A voluntary [industry] initiative will not apply to companies that do not join and it is difficult to see how it will get effectively implemented in countries where the government is very good at dividing and pressuring companies to capitulate to its demands, sometimes in exchange for access to a lucrative market. And most importantly, a voluntary initiative may be least effective in curtailing governments’ efforts to obtain user information about cyberdissidents from companies, because a voluntary effort is not sufficient to stand up against the pressures a government can assert against companies."
You can read the full testimony of Mr. Ganesan here and the testimony of all the witnesses here. You can also track this ongoing debate, and learn more about the industry code of conduct as it develops, here
Some signs have indicated that Chinese government is loosening the Internet censorship before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. According to reports , the Chinese government has stopped restricting access to the Chinese Wikipedia in China since July 3. Hong Kong Ming Pao also reported that China unblocked Hong Kong news websites-except "Apple Daily" -ahead of Olympics. On Wednesday, July 9, six ONI volunteers from three Chinese cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, used China Telecom or Netcom Internet service to test the Chinese Wikipedia and four Hong Kong and Taiwan websites that were reported to be unblocked on Tuesday.
In contrast to these reports, our testing results showed that Chinese Wikipedia is still not accessible in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing on Wednesday. Most of our volunteers received the error message reading “This page cannot be displayed,” except one volunteer in Beijing who just received the following blank webpage when he tried to access to the Chinese Wikipedia.
To look at the claims of Hong Kong and Taiwan websites being unblocked by Chinese government, we chose Ming Pao news website based in Hong Kong, Singtao news website based in Hong Kong, Yahoo! Hong Kong, and Liberty Times news website based in Taiwan. With the exception of the Liberty Times, the other three websites are accessible in three cities.
In order to further test whether Chinese Internet users are able to access to all information on those Hong Kong based news websites, one ONI researcher in the U.S. sent our volunteers the hyperlinks of two specific pieces of news on Ming Pao and Singtao websites about Funlungong and China Internet censorship including a lot of sensitive keywords, such as “June 4,” “Falungong,” and “human rights.” The volunteers are asked to directly access to these two pieces of news. The testing results showed that only volunteers in Beijing can successfully access to these two pieces of news. The volunteers in Shanghai and Nanjing were not able to read the content of the news (see the following screenshot), or their connections to the webpage were severed with an error message reading “This page cannot be displayed.” Despite low connection speed, other news without sensitive topics or keywords on Ming Pao and Singtao websites are accessible to all volunteers.
However, once our volunteers searched for sensitive topics, such as “Falungong,” “June 4,” and “Tibet riot” on three Hong Kong websites, all of their connections to those websites would be reseted for several minutes and then they received an error message reading “This page cannot be displayed.”
“Journalists are our friends”
Our testing results indicate that although China government appears to have at least momentarily unblocked some foreign websites in a move that can be attributed to the fast approaching Games, the user experience is still hampered by the documented system of using TCP reset packets to terminate connections based on sensitive keywords. Under Beijing’s “host city contract”, China should guarantee that the Internet is freely accessible for the entire duration of the Olympic Summer Games. However, this guarantee can also be narrowly construed. According to Hong Kong Ming Pao , the Beijing Olympic Committee is considering unblocking a part of foreign websites for foreign journalists. One month before the Olympics, the Chinese government has guaranteed press freedom and convenient and possibly unfettered Internet access—but only for the approximately 21,000 journalists gathering en masse to cover the Games. At the Main Press Center, various Venue Media Centers, and Olympics venues, the Internet may very well be fast and free , but whether Chinese citizens and critical voices will also be accorded the same openings has yet to be determined.
China has tightened control on online information concerning a massive riot in southern China that heightened security concerns just 39 days before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Last weekend, about 30,000 angry residents in Weng'an County in Guizhou province smashed government buildings and torched several police cars to protest against the alleged cover-up of a girl’s death. Although the Wall Street Journal reports on netizens’ clever uses of technology to circulate information on the incident, the gears of the government’s information control machinery appear to be churning in all the usual ways.
Last weekend, only one piece of news was released by the official Xinhua News Agency, describing those protesters as “some people who did not know about the exact context of what had happened” and failing to discuss any investigation of teenage girl’s death. In contrast to the silence of state-run media, numerous photos and video clips quickly appeared on various online forums and personal blogs, cataloguing thousands of people surrounding a police headquarters, riot police guarding the burning shell of the building, and charred overturned police vehicles. Unconfirmed and conflicting stories about the girl’s death were also circulated on the Internet on last Saturday, and netizens demanding justice were very angry at the government cover-up of information. The following is a screenshot of one online forum in China at 17:03 on June 29. Among 20 posts in that page, 15 are related to the Weng’an riot.
However, on Monday, many if not most postings concerning this incident had been deleted from online forums and blog entries--only a few references could be still found on Monday. Many online forums and blog services appear to have listed “Weng’an” as a sensitive news keyword and warn users not to discuss the Weng’an riot. On Monday, June 30, an ONI researcher from inside China tested five popular blog websites by posting a paragraph from Hong Kong Ming Pao’s news coverage containing with word “Weng’an.” Tianya and Kaidi did not allow him to post a paragraph from, and the rest ( Blogbus , Blogcn , and Mop) deleted the post within 24 hours. The error message read: “This post contains sensitive words, please inspect!”
Although hundreds of video clips appear on YouTube, none appear on two of biggest China’s domestic video-sharing websites, Tudou.com and Uume.com. ONI researchers from Beijing and Nanjing have not found any video clips concerning the Guizhou riot on these two websites since Saturday. Although Chinese Internet users still can access YouTube, they cannot access to certain video clips about the Weng’an incident (e.g. 1, 2, 3) on YouTube. Information relating to the incident appears to have been made a keyword that triggers a reset connection-- once our ONI researcher searched for “Weng’an” on YouTube, his connection to YouTube would be severed for several minutes and then users would receive the following error message reading “This page cannot be displayed.”
The Chinese government also appears to have censored search results about “Weng’an” on Baidu, the most popular search engine in China. When “Weng’an” is entered as a search term, Baidu returns results that include mainly news from state-run media. Google.cn showed similar results. Information sources from dissenting or foreign websites that were either blocked or did not appear on Baidu or Google.cn did appear in search results for Google.com.
But when users entered other words, such as “Weng’an riot”, they could receive some uncensored results from online forums or personal blogs, however, most of these have already been deleted and cannot be accessed successfully.
Since Monday, the government and state-run media have increasingly reported more news and governments’ announcements regarding Weng’an riot on Chinese news websites every day, but most news websites are still not allowing Internet users to leave comments.
On Monday, China responded by launching a nationwide campaign to defuse protest ahead of the Olympics. According to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao paper, President Hu Jintao required the local government in Guizhou to release information in a timely manner to lead the public opinion instead of blocking information. But so far, there are still few signs of relaxed information control in Chinese cyberspace over this incident.
ONI has obtained a copy of regulations for the operation of cybercafes in Burma. Since March 2006, the Burmese government has been 'encouraging' the growing number of cybercafes to become licensed as public access centers (PACs) under the management of Myanmar Info-Tech, a state-owned company. The regulations mandate that screenshots be taken every 5 minutes and user data be submitted routinely to Myanmar Info-Tech, and even require that computer monitors be placed for maximum public viewing.
Below is an unofficial translation. The original version in Burmese is available here.
Public Access Center Regulations by Myanmar Info-Tech
=================================
1) All cyber cafe users must supply his/her name, Identity card or (Passport Number), address, and phone number to the cybercafe. Cyber cafe owners must record their identities.
2) Internet Usage must be recorded in Date/Time/Screen Shot/URLs format and send it to Myanmar Info-Tech via CD-Rom every 2 weeks.
3) Owners and operators of cybercafes should keep backup logs of Internet usage.
4) Screenshots must be taken every 5 minutes.
5) Monitors must be faced to side where they can be easily viewed publicly.
6) Cybercafes must post a sign stating that "Only subscribers of MPT's official email and Mail4U can use email. Other email use is not allowed."
7) Cybercafes must post a sign stating that "Tunneling Website/Software are prohibited"
8) Cybercafes must post a sign stating that "Cyber Crimes (Hacking, Virus Distribution, Port scanning and etc.) and acts against Myanmar culture are prohibited"
9) No access of political web sites is allowed.
10) Do not host or engage in gambling activities in PACs (Public Access Centers)
11) Sale of alcohol and drugs is prohibited.
12) Use of speakers is not allowed. Must use headphones.
13) Do not allow use of disk drives, CD drives or USB Port in PACs.
14) If a user wants to download or copy files from the Internet, he/she must register in logbook.
15) Do not remain open after 11pm.
16) Make fire prevention arrangements.
17) If someone disobey the PAC regulations, owners must promptly inform Myanmar Info-Tech.
18) Owners and operators must obey the Wide Area Network law and related policies for ICT use (3/2003).
19) Owners and operators must obey Myanmar Info-Tech's rules and regulations that are announced as needed.
Free wireless broadband has been a goal of academics, activists, and politicians for years, and M2Z, a new start-up led by former FCC official John Muleta might give it to them. Unfortunately, it will not be the broadband they’ve been looking for, because the FCC has proposed that M2Z “filter[] or block[] images and text that constitute obscenity or pornography.”
Now, Wendy Seltzer and ONI’s Sally Walkerman have already written some great posts about how this sort of restriction would hurt innovation and free speech. This post focuses on the potential legality of such regulation.
The US government has tried once already to prevent minors from finding pornography online: it was the Communications Decency Act of 1996, and key portions of it were ruled unconstitutional a year later in Reno v. ACLU. The reasons the court overturned those provisions are highly relevant to the proposal the FCC is making today.
Television and radio, the court observed, have been regulated by the government since their inception. Additionally, they are inherently scarce media: there just isn’t enough spectrum to present every possible view. And relatedly, they are traditionally invasive media: if a television is on in a public room, it’s hard not to pay attention. For these three reasons the court believed itself justified in regulating certain content on TV and radio.
Justice Stevens, writing for the majority in Reno, observed that none of these conditions exist for the Internet. There is no substantial history of regulating cyberspace, nor is its content scarce, nor is it an inherently invasive medium: computers in public places are easily ignored.
Furthermore, with TV or radio it is comparatively easy to control content at its creation: NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox are all headquartered in the United States. If they broadcast pornography they can be sued, or if necessary, their executives can be arrested. But no such legal options exist online. It is virtually impossible to control content from the source of creation – there are too many people creating content in too many different places to effectively regulate them all.
And so, the court ruled, the government could not regulate pornographic content online for the purpose of protecting children. Would this ruling apply to the FCC’s proposed standards for M2Z? It’s an interesting question. While M2Z’s network like television or radio would be carried over the airwaves, its content would not be scarce or invasive in the way radio and television content is. And while the wireless network would be free, making it easier for children to find Internet access outside the home, it would remain easier to censor at the end-user, not the content-creation level. Of course, all this is just speculation – these proposed rules may not even be adopted. But you can contribute to the debate by filing a comment with the FCC here (the proceeding number is 07-195)
A group of people gathered in the northwest mountains of Turkey last week – and it wasn’t to cheer on the national football team in the Euro 2008 Cup.
The Eurasia Daily Monitor reports that a group of lawyers, academics, and Internet professionals gathered in Abant, Turkey on June 18 and 19 to discuss the country’s growing Internet censorship. These experts aimed to “define the border between societal values and individual freedoms,” Today’s Zaman details. The two-day workshop, sponsored by the Ankar Bar Association and turk.internet.com, convened in an attempt to find solutions for the disturbing frequency by which the Turkish government has been blocking Web sites, especially in the last year. So far, YouTube and several blogs - reportedly including the CNN Political Ticker - were blocked.
Turkey’s censorship policies have been coming under fire since the government adopted Internet Publication Law No. 5651 in 2007, which includes stricter guidelines for what is deemed appropriate online content. The most noteworthy of these stipulations is one which has remained a constant feature of the country’s legislation since 1951: the prohibition of denigrating the memory of the Republic of Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – a crime which has landed several journalists in prison over the years.
Sure, there are many other governments which censor online content, and an even greater number that target printed materials criticizing government officials or celebrated religious or cultural figures. Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code – which criminalizes dissenting opinions of “Turkishness” or the “Republic” - makes it no different from such countries. What does make it different, however, is its geopolitical position. Not only is it a state which some political theorists would call a “democracy in transition,” but it seems to be perpetually straddled both geographically and politically between several divergent forces: East and West, Religious and Secular, and now, it hinges on a delicate balance between having a “mostly free and open internet” and one which extensively “filters the content that their citizens see” – as John Palfrey noted in February.
The fact remains, however, that the Turkish government has been censoring its citizens for a long time – especially in the arts or regarding discussions of the Armenian Genocide – using Ataturk’s founding philosophy of “one nation, one language, one history, one culture” as a premise for extreme censorship practices both through legislative and judicial acts (acts which, by the way, could harm its chances of joining the EU.) Yet, whether the challenge Turkey faces is really about “societal values and individual freedoms,” or the tension between its religious roots and secular ambitions, meetings such as the one in Abant are crucial building blocks in affecting which way the country will lean regarding Internet filtering.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - the organization that licenses domains like .com and .edu - meets in Paris this week to discuss two proposals which could change the shape of the Internet. The first would create a new class of non-latin alphabet domains - Cyrillic and Chinese, for example - while the second would create a potentially infinite number of 'generic' domains - .museum, for example, or .africa. (See [here] for a post on the second proposal.) The first proposal includes potential censorship concerns, which are discussed below.
The new proposal considers adding non-latin country names - the Chinese character translation of .cn, for example, and the Cyrillic translation of .ru - and if approved would cede management of those domains to their countries' respective governments. The Chinese government already operates .cn and the Russian government operates .ru, and both countries have repeatedly censored material within these domains. Last year Russia censored the popular website Lenta.ru for criticizing Uzbek elections, and this year Russian lawmakers proposed censoring any online material the government deemed "extremist". China has a long history of censoring websites related to the Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square, and continues to censor politically sensitive sites in the run-up to the Olympic games.
In the face of ongoing censorship, ICANN could do two things to aid free speech in these countries. First, it could require an 'open access' provision for these new non-latin domains. That is, it could require that any person who wanted to buy a specific site within the Cyrillic or Chinese domains (www.falungong.cn, for example) could do so, regardless of his or her politics. Second, ICANN could relax registration requirements for purchasing new domain names. For example, it could strike its own requirements that buyers give their addresses or contact information, or it could mandate people be allowed to purchase domain names under pseudonyms (provided, or course, that the buyers actually paid their bills). In this way governments would have a much harder time controlling end-user content.
The current proposal for non-latin domains does neither of these things. After all, ICANN considers itself a technical body, not a political one. And even if ICANN were to impose these sorts of requirements, a government could try to create its own top-level domains, and provide its own registry services, ostensibly making a separate Internet. Yet even if ICANN's influence on the Chinese (or any) government is small, it remains the best-placed organization to make just such a demand for free speech.
You can track the debate in Paris here and here; a decision on the non-Latin domains is expected this week.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission released a report , addressing their efforts to build broadband access. So far, recent efforts have centered around auctioning off portions of the wireless spectrum, and some with the requirement that the spectrum be used to offer free wireless connectivity. Don't get too excited yet. Free (as in you don't pay for it) wouldn't quite be free. Provisions to require companies offering free wireless to block pornography - "content harmful to minors". This could require the blocking of many hard-to-monitor uses of the Net, such as encrypted messaging and VOIP.
Wendy Seltzer points out:
To block naked pictures among the 1s and 0s of Internet data, you need first to know that a given 11010110 is part of a picture, not a voice conversation or text document. So to have any hope of filtering effectively, you have to constrain network traffic to protocols you know, and know how to filter. Web browsing OK, peer-to-peer browsing out. You’d have to block anything you didn’t understand: new protocols, encrypted traffic, even texts in other languages. (The kids might learn French to read “L’Histoire d’O,” quelle horreur!) “Should any commercially-available network filters installed not be capable of reviewing certain types of communications, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, the licensee may use other means, such as limiting access to those types of communications as part of the AWS-3 free broadband service, to ensure that inappropriate content … not be accessible as part of the service.”
We often write about how ineffective filtering is at blocking access to content, and how difficult it is to be accurate -- blocking only what is unlawful, no more, no less. This case brings up several disturbing points. First, pornography (with the exception of child pornography) is not illegal in the United States. It is only illegal to provide it to minors. Internet service providers cannot determine who is a minor and who is not, creating a situation of blatant overblocking for any user over the age of 18 (even if they get the block list right in the first place). Second, to block access to technologies, simply because they could carry porn is not even close to an option under the first amendment. It may, instead, be up to all of us to come up with better ways to carry out age verification and the like. The FCC is stretching uncomfortably into content control territory, from which precedent and common sense advise staying away.
See also Scott Bradner, David Weinberger, and Persephone Miel