The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in 2006, and has now been signed by 82 countries. The convention amongst the document’s 50 articles, there is one that specifically guarantees disabled persons the right to freedom of expression:

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities can exercise the right to freedom of expression and opinion, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas on an equal basis with others and through all forms of communication of their choice, as defined in article 2 of the present Convention, including by:

a) Providing information intended for the general public to persons with disabilities in accessible formats and technologies appropriate to different kinds of disabilities in a timely manner and without additional cost;

b) Accepting and facilitating the use of sign languages, Braille, augmentative and alternative communication, and all other accessible means, modes and formats of communication of their choice by persons with disabilities in official interactions;

c) Urging private entities that provide services to the general public, including through the Internet, to provide information and services in accessible and usable formats for persons with disabilities;

d) Encouraging the mass media, including providers of information through the Internet, to make their services accessible to persons with disabilities;

e) Recognizing and promoting the use of sign languages.

The United Kingdom is one of the countries that has ratified the convention, and statistics on media literacy for disabled persons in the UK shows just how important it is to increase access to information across different channels. According to the UK regulator Ofcom, 64 per cent of disabled persons use television as a source of news, and are more likely than their able-bodied counterparts to rely on one source for news.

According to Jo Roach, who has worked with people with learning disabilities for over 30 years, freedom of expression hinges on having equipment and support workers who can “understand the person’s needs”. Roach says that the support worker is key to learning how to use things like the internet.

“If support workers aren’t well-informed, you aren’t well-informed,” says Roach.

This is particularly important when thinking of ever-advancing mobile phone access and capabilities: while internet usage for disabled persons currently sits at 62 per cent, mobile phone access is 82 per cent. Most disabled people under 65 use mobile phones for calls and text messages. With smartphone penetration on the rise in the UK, there are possibilities for increasing accessibility for disabled persons — but this relies entirely on access to not only the equipment, but tailored training on how to use it.

Smartphones open up the doors to apps catering to disabled persons, and this is already being explored. For example, the voice-operated “Georgie” app, which helps blind users find buses or navigate. The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions recently announced a plan to train 200 people to use the application. Apple’s iPhone has been celebrated for the usability of its “assistive” features, and this also increases options for developers of apps.

But there is still a long way to go: the head of London-based accessibility consultancy Hassell Inclusion, Jonathan Hassell, told the Guardian that a narrow definition of accessibility could also be a barrier:

“In audience terms, the needs of the small audience of totally blind people are being catered for well, whereas the needs of the much larger audience of people with more moderate vision difficulties, probably because of ageing, seems to be being ignored.”

While this is a slow process, it will surely improve in the coming years.

The post Freedom of expression and disabilities appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Politicians voting on press regulation:
If press freedom,and freedom of expression, are to be respected as fundamental rights, politicians should not vote on specific laws and rules aimed at the press. The press cannot be under politicians’ thumbs if they are to hold power to account, and the press must obey the law like anyone else. But press laws or MPs voting on how the press is regulated are the tools of authoritarian regimes.

Political Control?
Both sides have moved towards a degree of political involvement in press regulation that is undesirable –– even if Clegg and Miliband have gone further.

Both Cameron’s and Clegg-Miliband’s proposals now involve MPs voting  on the control and characteristics of a press regulator. This is highly undesirable.

Secondly, Cameron’s Royal Charter proposal has a requirement of a two-thirds majority in both Houses before the Charter can be changed –– it’s a form of statutory underpinning and is undesirable.

Thirdly, the Clegg/Miliband proposal goes beyond this, wanting a form of statute (introduced into another bill — probably Crime and Courts bill) to underpin in law a Royal Charter (preferably their version). This is breach of the basic principle of politicians not  passing laws on the press.

Fourthly, both sides now favour a Royal Charter — but this fudge involves politicians in the Privy Council determining how the press is regulated.  It’s not independence, it’s political.

Exemplary Damages
There appears to be somewhat more agreement between the two sides that some form of penalty for staying outside the regulator. But exemplary damages could well be struck down the European Court of Human Rights as essentially unfair. Agreement between the sides is no guarantee that basic principles are being respected — they are not.

Both sides versions of the Royal Charter also say that a publisher is any website carrying news-related material, with news being defined to include gossip on celebrities. In the age of Twitter and Tumblr will we all risk exemplary damages when we comment on the internet?

Press Veto on the Regulator
Cameron’s version of how the so-called appointments panel decides who is on the board of the press regulator says it must be a unanimous decision. This allows any press member of the appointments panel, even if in a minority, to have an effective veto. This makes a mockery of the idea of an independent board. Clegg-Miliband’s proposal simply says the appointments panel should take a view on who is on the board (but doesn’t discuss what happens if the panel is split three: two –– is that good enough?). There are serious issues here but with Monday’s vote looming there is no time for a serious wider debate.

Directing or Requiring Corrections and Apologies
The two sides also have differences over the degree of power the press regulator should have to “require” corrections and apologies or to “direct” them. There are important issues here. Apologies hidden at the bottom of a page may be unreasonable. A regulator stepping into the shoes of an editor and determining what goes on the page where is a major intrusion. Yet again there is now no time to have a serious political debate — not just restricted to politicians — about the way forward.

There are other differences but these are some of the main ones. Yet instead of an open public debate, many of these issues have been the subject of bargaining behind closed doors — bargaining which has apparently involved all three parties, some of the press, and Hacked Off. Now the proposals are in the open but amidst a confusion on even exactly what the MPs will vote on this Monday.

Hacked Off, speaking for some of the victims of phone hacking, continues its high pressure lobby insisting that the test of any agreement is whether the victims support it. But when, in democratic life, was it ever agreed that laws and regulations should be written by victims? The many victims of the Mid-Staffs NHS appalling dereliction of duties and standards deserve answers and there is a clear need for change – but noone suggests those victims and their families should have the sole say on NHS reform. Yet this is the situation we are in on press regulation.

Politicians on all sides should step back, look at the shambles they have created, remind themselves of the basic principles of freedom of expression, press freedom and democracy, and call off this chaotic vote on Monday, a vote that could tarnish British democracy and undermine our long history of press freedom.

The post Leveson debate must be brought back from brink appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Index urges that there is a serious, considered debate about Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations. The free speech organisation opposes the statutory underpinning of press regulation proposed by Lord Justice Leveson.

Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship said:

 We consider that the statutory-voluntary approach to independent press regulation would undermine press freedom in the UK. However, we support the proposal for cheap, effective arbitration, which would help victims get swift redress to their complaints.

Index welcomed the response of the Prime Minister to the Inquiry’s findings. In a statement to parliament, David Cameron said that he had “serious concerns” about passing legislation in relation to the press, which he rightly said would be an “enormous” step.

Kirsty Hughes said: “We share David Cameron’s concerns that statutory underpinning would undermine free speech, and could be the start of a slippery slope of government interference in the media.”

Index’s response to Lord Justice Leveson’s main recommendations are:

Statutory underpinning of an ‘independent’ regulatory body: Statutory underpinning of an ‘independent’ and ‘voluntary’ regulator is a contradiction in terms. Any law which sets out the criteria that the press must meet, by definition introduces some government or political control of the media. Politicians of all hues have an interest in getting the most positive media coverage they can. Keeping print media independent of government so journalists can report on political debate and decision-making, robustly and without fear, is fundamental. Even “light” statutory regulation could easily be revisited, toughened and potentially abused once the principle of no government control of the press is breached.

Arbitration service:  Index welcomes Lord Justice Leveson’s proposal for cheap, effective arbitration.

The press and the police: Index is concerned that proposals to restrict contact between senior police officers and the press could deter legitimate journalism and whistleblowing.

Voluntary membership of regulator: Index suggests that the statutory-voluntary approach proposed by Lord Leveson contains a catch-22 and is set up to fail. While the paragraphs describing the regulator say membership is voluntary, paragraph 23 of the executive summary states that the ‘recognition body’ (suggested to be Ofcom) should only recognise and certify the regulator as ‘sufficiently effective’ if it covers ‘all signifcant news publishers’. This means the proposed system can only work – and be recognised in the way the statute would demand – if no-one exercises their right not to join. If they do exercise this right, then the regulator will fail to meet the required standards.

For further comment on Leveson’s proposals, please contact Pam Cowburn on 07749785932 or pam@indexoncensorship.org

Background

Index’s chief executive on why Leveson goes too far

&

Index Policy Note: Freedom of the Press, Governance and Press Standards: Key Challenges for the Leveson Inquiry

The post Index on Censorship’s response to the Leveson report appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Index on Censorship – Leveson Report Policy Note – December 2012

The post Leveson: The way ahead for a free press in the UK appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Guidelines issued by the Crown Prosecution Service today could give greater weight to free speech online by establishing a high threshold for prosecutions for offensive or abusive comments made on social networking sites.

Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has expressed concern over “the potential for a chilling effect on free speech” for prosecuting people who send communications that are “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing.”

Starmer said that a prosecution was unlikely to be necessary, proportionate or in the public interest if the communication were “swiftly removed, blocked, not intended for a wide audience or not obviously beyond what could conceivably be tolerable or acceptable in a diverse society which upholds and respects freedom of expression.”

Prosecutors will now be required to differentiate between such messages and communications that amount to credible threats of violence, a targeted campaign of harassment or those which breach court orders.

The age and maturity of a suspect will also need to be taken into consideration, particularly if they are under 18. The guidelines state that prosecutions of children would rarely be in the public interest, as children may not appreciate the potential harm of their communications.

“We welcome these guidelines and hope that they will be used to end the excessive prosecutions that we have seen in recent years,” said Index CEO, Kirsty Hughes. “In a plural society that respects free expression, there is no right not to be offended, and these guidelines acknowledge that.”

The UK has seen a recent rise in social media prosecutions. In October, Lancashire man Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for making “despicable” jokes about missing five-year-old April Jones on Facebook, having pleaded guilty to “sending by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive” (section 127 (1)a of the Communications Act 2003). Also in October, Azhar Ahmed, who posted on Facebook that British soldiers should “die and go to hell”, was given a community order and a fine.

Paul Chambers, the man at the centre of the Twitter Joke Trial who was convicted in 2010 of sending a “menacing communication” after jokingly tweeting that he would blow an airport “sky high”, told Index: “I’m far more heartened than I expected to be. All the noises coming out of the early discussions suggested that lessons had not been learned, but it appears the DPP has finally taken a step in the right direction.”

He added:

I’d like to know, however, are how this is to be applied to arrests, given that this is more geared towards prosecutions. Users shouldn’t face arrest for the same reasons they shouldn’t face prosecutions in these situations. Secondly, given that the guidelines make mention of users who immediately take down the posts and show genuine remorse, where does this leave Azhar Ahmed, who did exactly that yet still finds himself with a criminal conviction. There should be moves to rescind this immediately.

The guidelines are open to public consultation, which is available on the CPS website and closes on 13 March 2013.

More on this story:

Read the guidelines in full here

Graham Linehan on the Twitter Joke Trial

Padraig Reidy: We cannot keep prosecuting jokes

The post High threshold set for social media prosecutions appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Social Media Dpp

The post Social media and free speech appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Index opposed the proposals on the basis they would have led to the filtering legal material by default; ergo censorship. Index also had serious concerns that child safety would be used as a criteria to filter a range of content beyond pornographic material. Under the Daily Mail’s proposal, only consumers over the age of 18 who had completed a “strict age verification check” would be able to remove such a block.

The news came in the government’s response to a consultation  into internet child safety and parental controls run by the Home Office and the Department of Education. The results were emphatic; parents rejected the default block.

The report says that rather than automatic filtering, most parents “want information about internet safety risks and what to do about them. There was no great appetite among parents for the introduction of default filtering of the internet by their ISP: only 35 per cent of the parents who responded favoured that approach.”

Internet filtering solutions are imperfect, they are easy to circumvent and frequently block legitimate content and legitimate sites. Sites such as those of sexual health clinics or even Essex Council are illegitimately blocked and it can be difficult and time consuming to get such errors fixed. Index’s own website has found itself a victim of such over-blocking in the past.

A 2012 study by the Open Rights Group in conjunction with the London School of Economics revealed that child protection filters “block many more sites than they should.” One of the report’s authors, campaigner Peter Bradwell, said: “These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks.”

Last year after government consultation the major ISPs, BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Sky Broadband agreed a code of practice, and will offer parental internet controls nicknamed ActiveChoice. Many internet service providers are already offer options to parents who want to block adult content.

TalkTalk began offering a Home Choice solution that protect an entire home internet connection rather than a single device earlier this year, but only one in three TalkTalk broadband customers have enabled it.

On Saturday Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Harriet Harman, expressed anger at the government’s response to the consultation, writing in the Daily Mail that:

The horrifying truth is that while parents are watching Downton Abbey downstairs, their children are upstairs watching degrading images of sex and violence. We need to grasp this painful reality.

Harman expressed common fears about the dark side of the web, where “pornography, bullying, violence and websites promoting suicide and eating disorders are only a few clicks away.”

Yes all of the above can be found on the web, but Harman and her allies need to recognise that no filter will ever be able to successfully block all such material, and a network filter is no match for an educated, alert parent monitoring their children’s internet use. And no filter will ever be able to help and advise a child on how to deal with a cyberbully, children’s number one concern, according to the consultation report.

Emily Butselaar is online editor at Index

The post “Porn filters” fail parents and children appeared first on Index on Censorship.

This article was originally published in Press Gazette

As newspaper editors are put under pressure by David Cameron to conjure up rapidly a Leveson-like press regulator that doesn’t require legislation, there is still much confusion around what Lord Justice Leveson’s voluminous report actually means.

Does it cross the Rubicon of statutory involvement in the press? Or does it really set out the path to an independent, voluntary and self-regulatory approach?

While the power and behaviour of large media corporations have rightly been under an intense spotlight, little attention has been paid to questions of political power and the reasons why politicians around the world can so easily be tempted to pressurise or even control the press. Leveson’s report is also remarkably easygoing on the misjudgements of politicians and police in their relations with the media, allowing for good faith even where bad decisions have been taken, especially by the police.

Yet part of what Leveson — and others — exposed so effectively to the world was an extraordinary cronyism in some media-political-police networking. Coming so quickly after the expenses scandal, it is surprising that so many people — hacking victims, politicians, academics, celebrities — are ready to say the answer to the phone-hacking scandal is to let politicians vote on regulating newspapers.

Leveson’s so-called “statutory underpinning” of a press regulator would mean MPs voting on the characteristics such a regulator should have, set out in 24 paragraphs that Leveson says would form the core of the definition of an acceptable regulator. This breaches the vital principle for a free press and freedom of expression — that state, politicians, and government should not have any sway over newspapers beyond general laws that apply to all citizens and organisations.

It is hardly new to point out that politicians care about their media image and how the press report on them, and do what they can to spin good coverage. Good coverage can help to keep them in power, impacting on what voters think and how they vote. And so we need journalists and politicians to be independent of each other if we want our democracy to function as it should.

A vote by MPs to establish the characteristics of a press regulator means that body would not be independent. Nor, if it follows his principles for an “independent” board with no current editors, is it ‘self-regulation’ either. Is it at least voluntary, like the Irish model, which is set up by statute but voluntary to join? Here confusions reigns. Leveson says it is. But one characteristic he insists a press council must meet is that “all significant news publishers” join.

So if anyone exercises their voluntary right not to join, the press council fails.

Leveson suggests (as a view not a recommendation) that if it fails, Ofcom should act as a statutory backstop. Catch 22: the press council fails if anyone chooses voluntarily not to join; but if the body fails, compulsory backstop regulation steps in. Joseph Heller would be proud of him — but it’s no way to protect press freedom.

Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship. She tweets at @Kirsty_Index

Background

Press Release: Index on Censorship’s response to the Leveson report

Index Policy Note: Freedom of the Press, Governance and Press Standards: Key Challenges for the Leveson Inquiry

Index Magazine: Leveson must protect press freedom

The post Why journalism and politics should remain independent appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post UK “snooper’s charter” to be redrafted appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The coalition’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a serious blow by a parliamentary committee report. Padraig Reidy reports

Home Secretary Theresa May’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a severe blow by a parliamentary committee report.

In a report seen by Index on Censorship, the Joint Committee on the Communications Data Bill described the proposed new law as “too sweeping”, and going “further than it need or should”.

The committee was particularly concerned by a clause in the bill that would give the Home Secretary the power to extend the remit of the law at any time, without putting the changes before parliament. The government claimed that this was needed in order to “future proof” the legislation, saying it would otherwise be impossible to keep pace with digital communications innovation.

But critics of the Communications Data Bill, including Index, said the clause was unacceptable, allowing huge levels of surveillance and storage without any democratic oversight. The committee today endorsed that view, while acknowledging the need for governments to be able to carry out limited surveillance.

Currently, communications service providers store data on communications traffic for one year. The government’s proposal would oblige them to hold it indefinitely. The Home Office defines “communications data” as: “[T]he information about a communication. It can include the time and duration of a communication, the number or email address of the originator and recipient and sometimes the location of the device from which the communication was made.”

The cross-party committee of lords and MPs also criticised the government’s consultation on the bill, saying: “Meaningful consultation can take place only once there is clarity as to the real aims of the Home Office, and clarity as to the expected use of the powers under the bill.”

The bill’s proposal for a “request filter”, allowing government agencies to search stored information, also came under fire. While acknowledging the capacity would have certain benefits, the report warns that safeguards should be introduced to minimise the risk of “fishing expeditions”, by restricting search criteria.

Index on Censorship welcomed the report: Head of Advocacy Mike Harris said:

“The Joint Committee report supports what Index has been saying all along: that the draft Communications Data Bill would threaten the privacy and free expression of British citizens, effectively reversing the presumption of innocence and potentially chilling the information that we share. If enacted in its current form, it would mean that the UK had one of the most draconian data laws in the western world, giving justification to surveillance tactics carried out by authoritarian states such as Belarus and Kazakhstan.”

Comms Data Bill Index Submission 22 August 12

The post Communications Data Bill: Setback for UK government as “snooper’s charter” slammed appeared first on Index on Censorship.