How big tech is enabling Chinese censorship around the world (The Telegraph)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Deputy editor of Index on Censorship magazine Jemimah Steinfeld talks to The Telegraph’s James Cook and Sophie Yan about the impact of technology on China’s tendency towards censorship beyond its borders.

“China exports its censorship. This is something that will become more common if companies like Zoom don’t take a stand now. I say this because we have already seen it happening. This is not the first example.”

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Quiz: How well do you know your ‘complicity’ facts?

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The special report in the spring 2020 edition of Index on Censorship magazine, Complicity, focuses on the ways we give away our information and privacy and why. Take our new quiz to see if you know your facts about surveillance, app data and China’s global reach.

How well do you know your 'Complicity' facts?

What is the estimate for the number of people in Sweden who have microchips inserted under their skin?
How many summits have there been between the ruler of North Korea Kim Jong Un and president of South Korea Moon Jae-in since 2017?
In what year was journalist Miroluba Benatova, who now works as a taxi driver, voted one of Bulgaria’s most influential women by Capital magazine?
How many CCTV cameras are there estimated to be in China by 2021?
What was the name of the period in the 1930's in the Soviet Union when you could be accused of being an enemy of the state with little or no evidence?
What have catwalk brands Versace and Givenchy apologised to the Chinese government for?
According to a survey by the Centre for Data Innovation, what percentage of people would support the idea of paying a fee for Google and Facebook in return for giving up less of their data?
The Chinese government funds a collection of institutes around the world in which China’s three T’s, Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen, are said to be taboo subjects. After which ancient Chinese philosopher are these institutes named?
How well do you know your 'Complicity' facts?
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In emergencies we give away our essential freedoms lightly. Do we need to rethink?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Keeping our heads down can mean that hard-won rights can easily be lost. Sometimes we choose to stay quiet, but often we are complicit without realising, says Rachael Jolley” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_single_image image=”113251″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

“It is easy to part with or give away great privileges, but hard to be gained if once lost,” said Quaker William Penn, who went on to establish the state of Pennsylvania in the USA.

Far more recently, another wise man, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord Judge, said: “There are still many countries in the world where what we happily call our rights remain privileges waiting to be won and entrenched.”

These thoughts are the cornerstones of the theme of this issue – the idea that we can give away our rights if we do not stand up for them.

We can be complicit in letting them erode if we feel they are not important enough or let other things take precedence, and many are willing to give away freedom for security.

The Merriam Webster dictionary tells us that the root of the English word “complicit” comes from the Latin word “complicare”, meaning “to fold together”, and that it has evolved over time into meaning helping to do wrong or to commit a crime in some way – in other words, allowing ourselves to be folded into a bad idea.

In allowing ourselves to be complicit, we potentially allow those in power to take away some of our rights forever.

As Lord Judge also points out in his book The Safest Shield, we should be careful never to assume that liberties, rights and justice can be taken for granted.

Complicity is our theme for today because, in 2020, there are multiple powers that like us to give things away – our privacy, our knowledge and even our power to say no. They try to get us to fold into their purpose, to agree it and let them move forward.

It comes at us in many forms.

Many of us are complicit in giving away lots of information about ourselves, such as our contacts and photo albums from our phones. We do this in exchange for free use of software apps – Facebook or Google Maps, for instance.

We do a deal with their owners that they will let us use their stuff, and not charge us, but all along, deep down, we probably guess there is some pay-off.

We know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so why would there be free email or free software? The answer is: there isn’t. There is a price to pay – you exchange your knowledge and contacts for that which is “free”.

And, as Mark Frary investigates on page 31, taking some decisions – such as being logged in all the time – means you are giving away more than you might imagine.

Frary tracks how much information Google is storing about him and his movements, and realises that it knows 700 places which he has visited in the past six years. That’s a lot of knowledge about  him, his movements and where he might be going.

It doesn’t take much imagination to think back to a time when that would be a treasure trove to a government wanting to know more about its citizens because it wanted to prevent them having information, passing it to others and knowing what was going on.

Let’s take the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, where journalists and many others were “disappeared” for asking the wrong questions.

What if that kind of information had been available to those governments? What extra power would it have given them to track down dissenters and to send in the police?

Shift forward in time to Venezuela today, from where Stefano Pozzebon reports for us on why the media and activists feel afraid. Threats and imprisonment are being used by the authoritarians in charge of this troubled nation to silence those who disagree with them.

And that government could try to access individuals’ whereabouts from Google Maps simply by putting in a request to Google. The company doesn’t always hand over information to governments which request it, but many times it does. Imagine for a moment what that might feel like.

Pozzebon said: “For those who don’t want to join the almost five million Venezuelans who have already left, not saying anything about anything becomes the only way to cope.”

When we are afraid we are most at risk from the pressure that others might place on us not to speak out or criticise. We can be complicit in attempts by the powerful to change society and remove those rights that Penn set out.

Of course, acting out of fear is understandable. It is easy for those far away who are not risking their lives, or those of their families, to say: “Oh you must do this, or stand up for that.” It is not so easy to do that once you know what, and whom, you put at risk.

This desire to quiet your anger and put it away until a less dangerous time is something that most humans can understand.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fas fa-quote-left” size=”xl”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”The petition said she demanded the imprisonment of scholars who had signed a ‘Peace Petition’. The thing was, she didn’t” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

That’s why Kaya Genç’s article from Turkey is so important. In it he describes the moment that changed one academic’s attitude dramatically. The name of Anıl Özgüç, a professor of medicine at Istanbul’s Aydın University, was added to a pro-government petition without her knowledge. The petition said she demanded the imprisonment of scholars who had signed a “Peace Petition”. The thing was, she didn’t.

And by that action, her attitude – which had been to keep quiet and hope for the best – changed.

She had reached her tipping point and she was no longer prepared to shut up: it was a step too far to take her name from her. Like John Procter in The Crucible, giving up her name was too much.

Suddenly she put aside her fears and spoke up. She is now an open critic of the government’s attempts to restrict academic freedom.

This chimes with new research from Jennifer Pan, at Stanford University, who looks at repression in authoritarian countries. Her research found that arrests of outspoken activists in Saudi Arabia had the effect of silencing the individuals but, surprisingly, did not deter others from speaking out. In fact, it motivated more people to criticise the government and the monarchy, and stepped up calls for change.

So while outsiders might expect the opposite to be true – that people would be cowed – Pan’s research shows that there is a tipping point and it can prompt more outspoken calls for change.

Complicity is not an easy topic. We should all be able to see there are sometimes reasons for not challenging the powerful, and times when it would be understandable to feel afraid or at risk.

Many around the world take that responsibility very seriously, and choose to make brave choices – even when it might put them in danger. It is these people whom Index often profiles, and we are in awe of those who can be incredibly brave when the odds are stacked against them.

Complicity is a challenge for us constantly, and in small and large ways we will be confronted by it all our lives. The question is: what is our response?

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The piece is part of the 2020 spring issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Buy a copy or subscribe here.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Why and when we chose to censor ourselves and give away our privacy” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_column_text]The spring 2020 Index on Censorship magazine looks at how we are sometimes complicit in our own censorship[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”112723″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.

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States’ use of surveillance to fight pandemic must respect human rights

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is among 107 organisations that are urging governments to respect human rights and civil liberties as they attempt to tackle the coronavirus pandemic through digital surveillance technologies.

“As the coronavirus continues to spread and threaten public health, governments are taking unprecedented actions to bring it under control. But the pandemic must not be used to usher in invasive digital surveillance,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, Policy Research and Advocacy Officer at Index on Censorship. “Measures must have a legal basis, be targeted exclusively at curtailing the virus, and have safeguards in place to prevent violations of privacy.”

STATEMENT:

The Covid-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency that requires a coordinated and large-scale response by governments worldwide. However, states’ efforts to contain the virus must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.

We, the undersigned organisations, urge governments to show leadership in tackling the pandemic in a way that ensures that the use of digital technologies to track and monitor individuals and populations is carried out strictly in line with human rights.

Technology can and should play an important role during this effort to save lives, such as to spread public health messages and increase access to health care. However, an increase in state digital surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association, in ways that could violate rights and degrade trust in public authorities – undermining the effectiveness of any public health response. Such measures also pose a risk of discrimination and may disproportionately harm already marginalised communities.

These are extraordinary times, but human rights law still applies. Indeed, the human rights framework is designed to ensure that different rights can be carefully balanced to protect individuals and wider societies. States cannot simply disregard rights such as privacy and freedom of expression in the name of tackling a public health crisis. On the contrary, protecting human rights also promotes public health. Now more than ever, governments must rigorously ensure that any restrictions to these rights is in line with long-established human rights safeguards.

This crisis offers an opportunity to demonstrate our shared humanity. We can make extraordinary efforts to fight this pandemic that are consistent with human rights standards and the rule of law. The decisions that governments make now to confront the pandemic will shape what the world looks like in the future.

We call on all governments not to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic with increased digital surveillance unless the following conditions are met:

1. Surveillance measures adopted to address the pandemic must be lawful, necessary and proportionate. They must be provided for by law and must be justified by legitimate public health objectives, as determined by the appropriate public health authorities, and be proportionate to those needs. Governments must be transparent about the measures they are taking so that they can be scrutinized and if appropriate later modified, retracted, or overturned. We cannot allow the Covid-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse for indiscriminate mass surveillance.

2. If governments expand monitoring and surveillance powers then such powers must be time-bound, and only continue for as long as necessary to address the current pandemic. We cannot allow the Covid-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse for indefinite surveillance.

3. States must ensure that increased collection, retention, and aggregation of personal data, including health data, is only used for the purposes of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. Data collected, retained, and aggregated to respond to the pandemic must be limited in scope, time-bound in relation to the pandemic and must not be used for commercial or any other purposes. We cannot allow the Covid-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse to gut individuals’ right to privacy.

4. Governments must take every effort to protect people’s data, including ensuring sufficient security of any personal data collected and of any devices, applications, networks, or services involved in collection, transmission, processing, and storage. Any claims that data is anonymous must be based on evidence and supported with sufficient information regarding how it has been anonymised. We cannot allow attempts to respond to this pandemic to be used as justification for compromising people’s digital safety.

5. Any use of digital surveillance technologies in responding to Covid-19, including big data and artificial intelligence systems, must address the risk that these tools will facilitate discrimination and other rights abuses against racial minorities, people living in poverty, and other marginalised populations, whose needs and lived realities may be obscured or misrepresented in large datasets. We cannot allow the Covid-19 pandemic to further increase the gap in the enjoyment of human rights between different groups in society.

6. If governments enter into data sharing agreements with other public or private sector entities, they must be based on law, and the existence of these agreements and information necessary to assess their impact on privacy and human rights must be publicly disclosed – in writing, with sunset clauses, public oversight and other safeguards by default. Businesses involved in efforts by governments to tackle Covid-19 must undertake due diligence to ensure they respect human rights, and ensure any intervention is firewalled from other business and commercial interests. We cannot allow the Covid-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse for keeping people in the dark about what information their governments are gathering and sharing with third parties.

7. Any response must incorporate accountability protections and safeguards against abuse. Increased surveillance efforts related to Covid-19 should not fall under the domain of security or intelligence agencies and must be subject to effective oversight by appropriate independent bodies. Further, individuals must be given the opportunity to know about and challenge any Covid-19 related measures to collect, aggregate, and retain, and use data. Individuals who have been subjected to surveillance must have access to effective remedies.

8. Covid-19 related responses that include data collection efforts should include means for free, active, and meaningful participation of relevant stakeholders, in particular experts in the public health sector and the most marginalized population groups.

Signatories:
7amleh – Arab Center for Social Media Advancement
Access Now
African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms Coalition
AI Now
Algorithm Watch
Alternatif Bilisim
Amnesty International
ApTI
ARTICLE 19
Asociación para una Ciudadanía Participativa, ACI Participa
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
ASUTIC, Senegal
Athan – Freedom of Expression Activist Organization
Barracón Digital
Big Brother Watch
Bits of Freedom
Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD)
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Economic Justice
Centro De Estudios Constitucionales y de Derechos Humanos de Rosario
Chaos Computer Club – CCC
Citizen D / Državljan D
Civil Liberties Union for Europe
CódigoSur
Coding Rights
Coletivo Brasil de Comunicação Social
Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
Comité por la Libre Expresión (C-Libre)
Committee to Protect Journalists
Consumer Action
Consumer Federation of America
Cooperativa Tierra Común
Creative Commons Uruguay
D3 – Defesa dos Direitos Digitais
Data Privacy Brasil
Democratic Transition and Human Rights Support Center “DAAM”
Derechos Digitales
Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative (DRLI)
Digital Security Lab Ukraine
Digitalcourage
EPIC
epicenter.works
European Digital Rights – EDRi
Fitug
Foundation for Information Policy Research
Foundation for Media Alternatives
Fundación Acceso (Centroamérica)
Fundación Ciudadanía y Desarrollo, Ecuador
Fundación Datos Protegidos
Fundación Internet Bolivia
Fundación Taigüey, República Dominicana
Fundación Vía Libre
Hermes Center
Hiperderecho
Homo Digitalis
Human Rights Watch
Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies
Index on Censorship
Initiative für Netzfreiheit
Innovation for Change – Middle East and North Africa
International Commission of Jurists
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Intervozes – Coletivo Brasil de Comunicação Social
Ipandetec
IPPF
Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL)
IT-Political Association of Denmark
Iuridicum Remedium z.s. (IURE)
Karisma
La Quadrature du Net
Liberia Information Technology Student Union
Liberty
Luchadoras
Majal.org
Masaar “Community for Technology and Law”
Media Rights Agenda (Nigeria)
MENA Rights Group
Metamorphosis Foundation
New America’s Open Technology Institute
Observacom
Open Data Institute
Open Rights Group
OpenMedia
OutRight Action International
Pangea
Panoptykon Foundation
Paradigm Initiative (PIN)
PEN International
Privacy International
Public Citizen
Public Knowledge
R3D: Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales
RedesAyuda
SHARE Foundation
Skyline International for Human Rights
Sursiendo
Swedish Consumers’ Association
Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)
Tech Inquiry
TechHerNG
TEDIC
The Bachchao Project
Unwanted Witness, Uganda
WITNESS
World Wide Web Foundation

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