Freedom to Connect, a conference that usually addresses the “nuts and bolts” of internet connectivity, focused sharply this year on fundamental freedoms.
Conference organiser David Isenberg attributed the need for this shift to recent developments, most notably the January suicide of computer programmer and internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz delivered the keynote speech at last year’s conference. At the time of his death, he faced up to 35 years in prison and $1,000,000 in fines for violating the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Power and its subversion were central themes at the two-day conference.
Darcy Burner, a Washington state Democrat and former Microsoft executive, delivered the opening “After Aaron” lecture commemorating Swartz. She argued that for the purposes of inciting meaningful change, network power built on consent is much stronger than economic, political or military power.
Glenn Greenwald, Guardian writer and Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder, said Aaron Swartz and WikiLeaker Bradley Manning were both victims of prosecutorial excessiveness and abuse. He added that increasing state surveillance “threatens to turn the internet into a weapon that shields, protects and strengthens power” rather than subverting it. Other speakers reiterated this notion that the internet can be both a tool for democratising discourse and a weapon for control and censorship.
Dan Gilmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, discussed corporate abuse of power. He said consumers often prefer convenience to liberty when technology is concerned. Convenience, or perhaps dependence, explains why users opt in to restrictive terms of service and sacrifice elements of their privacy to use certain online platforms and services like Facebook and Twitter.
Christopher Soghoian, who works on the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, argued that US telecommunications providers are among the worst corporate abusers of power. Soghoian argued that telcos want power over software without assuming responsibility for updating it, leaving consumers vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches. Access Now highlighted the most egregious violations by wireless carriers in its recent Telco Hall of Shame competition.
Former Republican staffer Derek Khanna spoke on Democracy Now!, which broadcast live from the conference both days, about his campaign to reverse a recent US decision that made unlocking cell phones illegal. My Index post from January explains the policy, which AT&T and Verizon pushed for, but which the White House announced Monday it favours overturning after an online petition against it garnered more than 100,000 signatures.
Khanna was recently fired for arguing in a House Republican Study Committee report that the US copyright system should be reformed to expand fair use and limit copyright terms. Copyright was another recurring theme throughout the conference, touched on by artists, entrepreneurs and psychedelic soul legend Lester Chambers.
Gwenn Semmel, an artist, decided not to show the audience where she drew inspiration from for her paintings, saying, “I don’t want to call down the wrath of the copyright gods, because they are temperamental and expensive.”
Ben Huh, CEO of the lolcats and internet meme empire Cheezburger Network, Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, and Mike Godwin, famed internet lawyer, discussed their fight against the 2012 US copyright bills SOPA and PIPA.
One of the most interesting presentations came from dominatrix, performance artist and blogger Mistress Clarissa who made the free speech pitch for porn, arguing that the industry pushes cultural boundaries and provides invaluable opportunities for expression and self-exploration.
Several speakers promoted community-owned networks, arguing that the internet represents critical infrastructure that should not be left solely in the hands of self-interested monopolies. Nineteen US states currently impose legal barriers that restrict the building of community-owned fibre broadband systems.
Vint Cerf, famed “father of the internet” and Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, wrapped up the conference by criticising new copyright alert systems in the US and France, the lack of fair and open ICT competition in many regions, and troubling internet governance developments to come out of December’s World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. Cerf will move to London for six months later this year to concentrate on developments likely to affect our freedom to connect in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In an increasingly connected world, regional debates have unavoidable global implications.
Freedom to Connect’s increased focus on political freedoms and free speech comes amid increased obstacles to an open and uncensored internet. Taking action on our discussions at this conference will be crucial if we wish to continue preserving and promoting digital freedom of expression.
Freedom of expression needs championing online as much as off. The internet and social media have opened up debate and interaction within and across countries, and transformed how we access and share information. But governments and companies are intervening in a mixture of ways to limit or even directly block, censor and monitor what we can do and see on the web.
This policy note highlights key threats to internet freedom and outlines our recommendations for protecting and promoting freedom of expression online.
A thirteen-year old Brazilian girl claims she has faced death threats through a Facebook community page she created to denounce problems in her school.
Isadora Faber created Diário de Classe (or “Classroom Diary”) in July 2012 to “show the truth about public schools,” as she writes on the page description, leading her to become an internet celebrity and a teen champion of free speech through new media.
Isadora filled the page with updates on life at Maria Tomázia Coelho School in Florianópolis — capital of the southern state of Santa Catarina — addressing problems in the school including exposed wires, damaged doors, transparency issues and improper teaching practice.
On 17 February, Isadora alerted her 581,000 subscribers to a message published on Diário de Classe’s wall that demanded the fan page be deleted, or Isadora and her classmate Lucas Alves — who also posts content on the website — would end up “with a bullet right on their foreheads”. The children’s parents were also threatened .
The apparent death threat was posted under the profile of teenager Bruna Meneises Silva, which is believed to be a fake one and has been deleted since. Police authorities asked Facebook to provide Bruna’s IP address, so they could trace the person who posted the message.
Isadora’s mother Mel Faber told Index her daughter would never feel intimidated by the threats. “Isadora responds the opposite way. When she’s threatened, she gets more compelled to go public and face her attackers. But I can’t say if that happens because she’s so young and incapable of measuring risks.”
Last November, the student posted a picture of her injured grandmother after her house was allegedly stoned, possibly in retaliation to the Facebook page.
On 22 February, Isadora was ranked by Financial Times in a list of 25 outstanding Brazilians in areas including politics, social work, business, sports, arts and entertainment.
In an appeal on 20 February, a judge ruled that a banned blog that criticised Brazil’s most influential daily newspaper should remain offline. The case has been deemed by critics as an example of judicial and financial harassment by big Brazilian media companies and high-profile people over their critics.
The blog — named Falha de S.Paulo — was created in 2010 to criticise newspaper Folha de S.Paulo for its coverage of that year’s general elections. A satirical take on Folha (meaning “paper”), the content of Falha (meaning “fail”) imitated the newspaper’s design and text style.
Folha filed a lawsuit against Falha, claiming the blog’s logo, content, pictures and text font imitated its graphic design, confusing web users. Besides that, the paper accused the bloggers of benefiting financially from the website.
By the end of September 2010, a judge had demanded the blog be removed and imposed a daily fine over its authors. Falha’s creators appealed, but the decision was maintained on Wednesday by another judge from the São Paulo State Court.
“It’s not a simple thing (to appeal), both STJ (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, or High Court of Justice) and the Supreme Court won’t accept any case. But we’ll study which way we could appeal. We intend to go to the highest courts”, said one of the blog’s creators, Lino Bocchini, to Rede Brasil Atual agency.
Pressure in court
Some see this case as an example of an ongoing trend in Brazil — powerful people and companies putting financial pressure on their critics by simply going to the courts against them.
“Politicians, business people and other powerful personalities found that they can silence their critics by filing lawsuits”, says journalism teacher Marcelo Träsel from PUCRS University in Porto Alegre.
“To take a lawsuit to its very final stages can cost tens of thousands of reais. One that’s involved in a scandal can create a juridical torment to its critics, if one has the financial means to do that,” he says.
“These people don’t even need to win in court. Only to impose financial damage to a whistle-blowing blogger, for example, would probably make him shut up. I believe that’s the main threat to free speech in Brazil in a near future, and I believe that cases like Falha de S.Paulo will grow in number.”
The practice of filing lawsuits to remove defamatory content from the internet also disturbs Google Brazil’s Public Policy & Government Relations Senior Counsel Marcel Leonardi.
“Internet gives you the possibility to immediately respond to anyone, and in many different ways, like posting videos or creating hyperlinks. In this case, the most intelligent way to reply to criticism would be to have an online presence, though which one could inform and reply to critics in one’s own virtual space,” he says.
In Leonardi’s opinion, Brazil will remain one of the top countries in the world in terms of digital content removal — as stated in the latest Google Transparency Report — unless this “culture of lawsuit” is somehow overcome.
Concerns about Brazil are shared by watchdogs such as Freedom House, which states on its 2012 Freedom on the Net report that actions taken by judges and other public agents could represent “a possible barrier to free speech and a means of removing content deemed undesirable.”
Last year Falha’s case was brought to Frank de la Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. While visiting Brazil, he said the situation was “terrible”.
January saw a dramatic escalation of internet filtering in Russia. The League for Internet Safety, an organisation backed by the Kremlin, launched an experiment in the Kostroma region in central Russia in which 29 local internet service providers signed new contracts with users, giving them access only to a sanitised internet – in other words, websites included on a “white list”. Those wishing to surf beyond the confines of the white list are required to notify their provider explicitly.
At the start of the experiment the white list included about 500,000 sites; by the end of the experiment, scheduled for April, it is expected to include up to 1 million.
The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media has stated that it does not support the experiment and considers it unnecessary in the light of existing legislation, in which Roskomnadzor, the Federal Agency for Supervision of Telecomms, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, plays a central role.
Communications minister Nikolai Nikiforov declared: “There is only one legitimate procedure for filtering of harmful content — the one operated by our subordinate agency Roskomnadzor. If operators impose restrictions, which are not covered by the law, they violate the rights of subscribers. Moreover, our country constitutes a single indivisible information space, and a specific region can not construct its citizens’ access to information under a different set of rules.”
But the League seems to have been unaffected by this comment. Its initiative was proudly presented at the Safe Internet Forum in Moscow on 8 February, attended by Russian MPs and high-placed officials, and mentioned by a Russian representative at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe conference Internet 2013 — Shaping policies to advance media freedom held in Vienna on 14 and 15 February.
Extremism
On 22 January the central district court of Volgograd accepted a demand from the Volgograd regional prosecutor’s office to recognise as extremist two websites that published books by the Turkish theologian Said Nursi listed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. Once the court’s decision comes into force, the websites will also be added to the list.
It was reported on 23 January that the Ordzhonikidze district prosecutor’s office of Yekaterinburg had found a publicly accessible website featuring the lyrics of the song “Every Day, Under the Sign of Death” by the Norwegian black metal band Zyklon B and the anti-Semitic tract Poisonous Fish: Zionists and Freemasons in Japan by A Klimov, recognised by courts as extremist. The site also included several other extremist items. The prosecutor’s office filed 15 writs against the ISP AKADO-Yekaterinburg, demanding that access to this website be limited. The proceedings came to an end because of the ISP’s voluntary compliance with the prosecutor’s demands.
The Arkhangelsk regional prosecutor’s office reported on 24 January that its audit of ISPs to check compliance with anti-extremist legislation had found a publicly accessible electronic translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ tract What Does the Bible Really Teach?, declared extremist by the Rostov regional court. The prosecutor filed a writ against the regional branch of the ISP VimpelCom, demanding that access to this material be blocked. The ISP voluntarily complied with the request, and the case was dropped.
On 29 January it was reported that the Dolzhansky district prosecutor’s office in the Orel region had found that the regional branch of the ISP Rostelecom was providing access to a website listed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials, and to another that contained instructions on making explosives and drugs. The prosecutor’s office filed a writ demanding that access to the identified sites be restricted. Despite the ISP’s argument that the website’s owner should be responsible for monitoring content, the district court granted the prosecutor’s request.
Gambling and online casinos
It was reported on 18 January that the Voronezh city prosecutor’s office had identified a website that could be used for online gambling. It filed writs against several ISPs, including MegaFon, Tele2, MTS and Kodotel, demanding that they limit access. The court ordered the ISPs to comply.
The Omsk regional prosecutor’s office announced on 22 January that after an audit of ISPs’ compliance with the gambling ban, the central district prosecutor’s office in Omsk had sent several demands to ISPs that access to gambling sites be restricted.
On 22 January it was announced that the Chernovsky district prosecutor’s office in Chita had identified more than a dozen publicly accessible websites that provided online casino services. The prosecutor filed a writ with the district court demanding that the local ISP limit access to the identified websites. The ISP voluntarily blocked the sites.
The prosecutor’s office in Ivanovo reported on 24 January that the Teykovo interdistrict prosecutor’s office had filed five writs against the ISP Gorizont for providing access to gambling websites. The prosecutor’s office demanded that access to these sites be blocked.
On 1 February the Tula regional prosecutor’s office announced that the prosecutor’s office of the Sovetsky district had reviewed implementation of legislation on gambling. Four writs were filed against the ISP Altair Tula demanding restrictions of access to online casinos, which were accepted by the Sovetsky district court.
On 1 February the Pskov regional prosecutor’s office announced that it had decided that the regional branch of the ISP Rostelecom was responsible for blocking access to gambling sites.
Schools, students, and a beauty salon
The Tambov regional prosecutor’s office announced on 9 January that the Oktiabrsky district prosecutor’s office had found a computer located in a beauty salon that allowed access to websites containing extremist material. The salon’s ISP, Lanta, has been instructed to cease the violations and bring disciplinary charges against those responsible.
On 14 January it was announced that the Komi Republic had launched a content filtering system for computers that provide students with access to the internet. The system covers 285 educational institutions of the republic and 150 computers used for home-schooling of children with disabilities. The goal is to prevent schoolchildren from accessing online information that “is incompatible with the objectives of education and training”. Lists of acceptable and unacceptable sites will be maintained jointly by the republic’s government and staff of educational institutions. The content filtering system is to be extended to cover all the Komi Republic schools.
It was reported on 15 January that bailiffs had ordered the management of four schools in the Kurumkansky district of Buryatia (in Kurumkan, Baragkhan and Sakhuli) to comply with court decisions on limiting students’ access to banned sites. Content filters have been installed.
On 18 January it was reported that the ministry of education and science of the Volgograd region had signed an agreement with the local branch of Rostelecom for the ISP provider to assume responsibility for filtering students’ access to websites containing dangerous material. Rostelecom provides internet access for 85 per cent of the region’s schools.
The Moscow regional prosecutor’s office announced on 18 January that the Yegoryevsk town prosecutor’s office had conducted an audit of compliance with legislation by local schools. The audit had established that in three schools in the district installed filters did not provide sufficient protection from extremist material. The prosecutor’s office has demanded that the head of the local administration ends the violations and brings disciplinary charges against those responsible.
On 21 January it was announced that the department of information technology of the Moscow city government will provide all city schools with wireless internet access by the end of February. The company that won the contract for implementation of this programme, MGTS, must also provide content filtering in order to protect students from extremist, pornographic and other harmful material.
Drugs
It was announced on 8 January that the Pervomaisky district court of Kirov had accepted the demand of the Leninsky district prosecutor’s office that the regional branch of the ISP Rostelecom block access to a website that contained information about cultivation of hemp and producing a psychoactive substance from it.
On 10 January it was announced that the Simonovsky interdistrict prosecutor’s office in Moscow had identified several websites that contained information on illegal drug distribution. The prosecutor’s office filed three writs against the ISP AMT Group Telecom, demanding that access to these websites be restricted by adding an IP-address filter on its router. The Khamovniki district court dismissed them on the grounds that restricting access to the sites would also deprive users of access to other sites. The prosecutor’s office appealed the decision. The Moscow city court subsequently reversed the district court’s judgment and ordered the provider to restrict access to the sites.
On 14 January the Kirov regional prosecutor’s office reported that a court had granted a request by the Oktyabrsky district prosecutor’s office to order the ISP Rostelecom to limit access to a website containing information about drugs and psychotropic substances. The court’s decision has not yet come into force.
On 16 January it was reported that the Berezovsky district prosecutor’s office in the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous area (also known as Yugra) had found several publicly accessible sites that promoted illegal drugs or contained extremist or pornographic material. The prosecutor’s office filed a writ against the ISP Rostelecom demanding that access to these websites be blocked.
It was reported on 22 January that the Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor’s office had identified several websites that promote distribution of illegal substances. The prosecutors of Nizhegorodsky and Sovetsky districts of Nizhny Novgorod and the city prosecutor’s offices of Arzamas and Vyksun filed writs against multiple service providers, demanding that the identified websites be blocked.
And the rest…
On 3 January Roskomnadzor added the blog kazantripreport, hosted on the portal lj.rossia.org, to its register of banned sites. The creator of lj.rossia.org had agreed to remove the page on 2 January, having discussed doing so since 28 December. The notification from Roskomnadzor arrived a week after the page had been removed. The management of lj.rossia.org accused the user kazantripreport of spamming and using the resource for commercial purposes. In addition, the blog had published reviews of an illegal substance, as well as Russian translations of Philip Greave’s book The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct.
On 6 January Roskomnadzor notified the online encyclopedia lurkmore.to that the address for one of its articles had been included on the register of banned sites. The article discussed various ways to commit suicide in a satirical manner. The management of lurkmore.to has since removed the article and intends to appeal the ban in court. Roskomnadzor had taken similar measures against the online encyclopedia on previous occasions.
On 10 January Roskomnadzor notified Ilya Dronov, the manager of SUP Media’s LiveJournal Russia project, that the blog of Rustem Agadamov had been added to the register of banned sites. Propaganda for suicide was cited as the reason for the ban. The post in question was a photo report, dated March 2012. It depicted an attempted self-immolation of a Tibetan independence activist in protest against the visit of the president of China. Access to the page has been restricted. The administration of LiveJournal Russia intends to appeal Roskomnadzor’s decision.
The Guardian today ran a front page story on tech company Raytheon’s RIOT search tool, which promises to integrate social media data to build a complete picture of people’s movements, using geotagged pictures, FourSquare check ins and and other means.
There has been some slightly offputting hyperbole about the software’s potential ability to “predict crime”, with frequent mentions of the Philip K Dick story and later Tom Cruise film Minority Report, in which psychics are used to predict potential crime, allowing police to arrest people before any damage is done.
This is largely down to the Raytheon representative’s boast in the promotional video obtained by the Guardian that RIOT can predict where people will be, based on previous behaviour.
When one looks at what he actually says and demonstrates, it’s seems to me that the programme can not really predict anything. It can identify patterns, from which users can make assumptions.
The example used in the video is that by far the most frequent time and place for the surveillance subject (a Raytheon employee) to “check in” on FourSquare is 6am at the gym. From here, a human user can reasonably assume that the subject will be at his gym at 6am most days. Not quite seeing into the future then.
And not exactly revolutionary, but merely a way of presenting data that users themselves have already volunteered into the public sphere.
Nonetheless, this technology is disquieting. More and more of our lives are recorded, day-to-day, online and publicly. Technology such as RIOT shows how easy it is to build up a very detailed picture of someone’s life, movements, interests etc. All this freely available data could have huge implications for users in the present and the future.
The UK government is currently in the process of redrafting the Communications Data Bill, which faced heavy criticism (not least from Index) for its far-reaching provisions which would force communications companies to retain data, and allow government agencies to track vast amounts of users traffic – not just publicly available social media messages, but emails, text messages phone calls and even letters. Should such a bill eventually go through with similar powers, it’s likely that other countries will follow suit.
Of course, some states are ahead of the game: yesterday it was reported that journalists working in Burma had received warnings from Google of potential email security breaches. Though the Burmese authorities have denied being behind the hacking, suspicions remain.
Surveillance inevitably has an effect on free expression, as people will not speak freely if they fear they are permanently watched and recorded. But we live in an age where tracking has become so easy, and so cheap, that without a principled stand against it, surveillance will become the norm.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer at Index on Censorship. He tweets at @mePadraigReidy
