24 Jun 13 | Campaigns, Digital Freedom
Index on Censorship is extremely concerned about the reported extent of mass surveillance of both meta data and content, resulting from the alleged tapping into underwater cables that carry national and international communications traffic.
Index calls on the UK government to clarify the extent and legality of the alleged surveillance by GCHQ. Index believes that GCHQ is circumventing laws such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to allow surveillance that undermines the human rights of British and other citizens.
Index CEO Kirsty Hughes said:
“The mass surveillance of citizens’ private communications is unacceptable – it both invades privacy and threatens freedom of expression. The government cannot continue to cite national security as a justification without revealing the extent of its intrusion and the legal basis for collecting data on this scale. Undermining freedom of expression through mass surveillance is more likely to endanger than defend our security.”
Index is calling on the British government to:
• Confirm whether GCHQ is undertaking the mass surveillance of meta data and content by tapping into communications cables
• Clarify which laws are being used to authorise the collection of data by this method and on this scale
• Commit to protecting the right to privacy and to freedom of expression of people living in the UK and beyond
03 Jun 13 | Campaigns, Europe and Central Asia, Turkey Statements
As protests continue in many cities across Turkey, the reactions of government, police and media have shown up only too clearly to a wider audience – domestic and international – the increasingly problematic nature of Turkish democracy, and its growing authoritarian tendencies. Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes writes
Police brutality in response to the mainly peaceful protesters has been rightly criticised. The failure of mainstream Turkish media to cover the protests from the start – choosing instead cooking programmes and other non-contentious fare – has surprised some, and also being strongly criticised. If anyone inside or outside Turkey had not paid attention to growing censorship, including self-censorship, of Turkish media, it has now been widely exposed for all to see. Yet comments from some, including the European Union, have been surprisingly limited – focusing mainly on police brutality and not the wider human rights and democracy issues.
While some commentators rashly labelled the protests a ‘Turkish spring’, those who have followed Erdogan’s AKP government in its move from promoting a number of key democratic reforms ten years ago to showing a more authoritarian side in the last few years were clear that these authoritarian tendencies are underpinning this outburst of discontent. As Amberin Zaman writes: “My overall impression, and it’s commonly shared, is that the Taksim Park project has morphed into a vehicle for popular resentment against Erdogan’s increasingly dismissive and authoritarian ways”.
As she concisely puts it: “He is a democratically elected leader who has been acting in an increasingly undemocratic way.”
While Erdogan successfully stood up to ‘soft’ and anti-democratic attempts to undermine his government – the ‘e-coup’ in 2007, the attempted ‘ judicial coup’ in 2008 – subsequent years have seen increasing numbers of journalists jailed, considerable political pressure on media outlets, with journalists and editors widely self-censoring, and many being dismissed for expressing opinions freely in their writing.
Index highlighted this censorship in shortlisting Turkish journalists for its media freedom award this year. The Turkish media themselves have now highlighted it in their failure to fully cover these widespread protests.
Those who have been promoting Turkey as a role model for ‘Arab Spring’ countries like Egypt and Tunisia, or who have been holding back on criticising Turkey’s increasing attacks on free speech for reasons of diplomacy and real politik, now must surely face up to the more difficult reality that Turkey is a country that imprisons more journalists today than Iran or China. The European Union’s foreign policy supremo Cathy Ashton did, with a delay, come out to condemn disproportionate use of force by the police.
Related: “There is now a menace which is called Twitter”
Index Events
Join Index on Censorship and a panel of Turkish and British writers to discuss free speech in Turkey, 22 June, Arcola Theatre London
But the EU should have addressed sooner and more strongly the clear and growing attacks on media freedom in Turkey – and Ashton has, even now, yet to come out strongly on this in the context of the protests. The EU has rather little influence in Turkey compared to a decade ago when membership talks were about to start – these talks have now faltered and slowed. But the EU does insist all candidate countries meet its ‘Copenhagen Criteria’ that say candidates must be democracies who respect the rule of law and human rights. Back in 2004, when the Union’s leaders agreed to start talks Turkey was said to “sufficiently meet” those criteria.
It is no longer clear, given its deliberate creation of media censorship, and the brutality of police in the face of mass protests, that Turkey does meet those criteria. If the EU stands for human rights in its neighbourhood, surely it should make a much stronger, robust condemnation of Turkey’s growing anti-democratic tendencies and its attacks on freedom of expression.
22 May 13 | Digital Freedom, Europe and Central Asia
Does surveillance and monitoring chill free expression? Is population-wide mass surveillance always a bad idea? Amongst many questions and debates at today’s Stockholm Internet Forum, the answers to these two questions are surely obvious – yes to both, writes Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes from Sweden.
But not for Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, who made it clear at the conference that he thinks while surveillance invades privacy and needs proper judicial control, it is not a free speech issue.
And European Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom couldn’t quite bring herself to agree that monitoring an entire population is always wrong, suggesting if it were ever necessary then it, too, would need appropriate judicial permission and control.
We have to hope most European politicians have a stronger understanding of human rights online. Certainly, in lively debates at plenary sessions and on the conference twitter feed (#sif13), it was clear their views had little support with intense exchanges over how to protect free speech and other rights online.
Bildt’s view that democratic governments can be trusted with surveillance and censorship online was challenged by many attendees. The idea that the world can be divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ countries was a recurring issue with perhaps the predominant view being that neither governments (democratic or not) nor companies should be trusted with our digital freedom but should be challenged, monitored and held to account for the myriad of ways they control the internet space.
Today on Index: South Africa’s secrecy bill signals growing political intolerance | Today is Bassel’s second birthday in prison | Free expression in the news
Index on Censorship Events
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The internet: free open space, wild wild west, or totalitarian state? However you view the web, in today’s world it is bringing both opportunities and threats for free expression. More >>>
Big web companies were also challenged in Stockholm. The BBC’s Stephen Sackur asked Google’s head of free expression Ross Lajeunesse if he thought all Google users knew that US laws applied to the search engine even when it operates outside the States (along with local laws). When Lajeunesse said he wasn’t sure, Sackur suggested Google make this clear on its home page. We will see if this happens since Lajeunesse made no commitment. A civil society activist asked from the floor how he could discuss with and lobby Google in the way that in open societies we can lobby governments. Lajeunesse said Google values dialogue. But the question of how we hold companies with large and increasing control of the net to account is a big one. There are no clear answers.
Facebook was challenged on this, too. Asked why the social media giant doesn’t produce a transparency report as Google and Twitter now do, no satisfactory answer was forthcoming. Facebook did announce it is joining the Global Network Initiative which brings web companies and human rights groups together. Index on Censorship is a member of the GNI.
University of Toronto Professor Ron Deibert argued persuasively that cybersecurity will remain dominated by defence, military and foreign affairs departments — with freedom rolled back — unless civil society engages more with security issues. Others disputed this suggesting many government security measures and arguments actually create insecurity. Deibert insisted though that basic democratic checks and balances are being eroded in the name of cybersecurity and civil society must ensure rights online.
Along with the calls to hold governments and companies more strongly to account, there were heated discussions of how to stop the wide misuse and export of surveillance technology, challenges to telecom companies to start to take their human rights responsibilities seriously, calls for more transparency on how takedown decisions are made and a host of other debates. This year’s net forum so far is an equal mixture of disturbing and inspiring – disturbing in the extent and range of threats to digital freedom, inspiring in the energy and ideas of so many of the participants committed to standing up to those threats.
02 May 13 | Europe and Central Asia
The European Union on World Press Freedom Day should be celebrating continuing press freedom across its member states and championing press freedom abroad. But instead today there is less to celebrate and more cause for deep concern that the EU is failing to protect this core element of its democracies, Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes writes.
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