19 July: What surveillance means to YOU
Join us 19 July for a live Google hangout with Index on Censorship as Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Rebecca Mckinnon of Gloval Voices discuss what mass surveillance means to all of us as individuals. Hosted by Padraig Reidy of Index, the hour-long event will delve in the issues around government surveillance of innocent civilians.
(More information)
INDIA Impediment of Speech and Imbalance of Justice
In March 2013 Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was invited by some pro-business, pro-industry students at an American university to give a keynote address via video conference.
(Dissident Voices)
RWANDA Rwandans Consider Their Media Free – Survey
A Rwanda Media Barometer (RMB) survey carried out by Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) and consultants from Transparency International Rwanda has shown that media freedom in the country, in the perceptions of its population, was at its highest.
(AllAfrica)
TURKEY Turkish journalists join up against censorship and violence
Protests against the Turkish government continue, with journalists and artists now joining the fold. They’re speaking out against the violence against journalists and censorship of the press that takes place in Turkey.
(DW)
UNITED KINGDOM UK Ideological Travel Ban Helps Hate
So, this sounds like as good a time as ever to make a counterintuitive argument. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer—two notable critics of “creeping sharia” and the “Islamization” of America—were invited to speak at an English Defense League (EDL) rally in Woolwich, the city where a British soldier was brutally murdered in May in what has been described by authorities as a terrorist attack. The EDL is a far-right nativist street protest group, formed out of the soccer “hooligan” subculture in Britain. It is frequently identified as a “hate group.”
(ACLU)
UNITED STATES Should we have a list of words for self-censorship?
The other day, a young child scolded her father for using the “S” word. She further explained her teacher had told her class not to call people the “S” word, From this information the word might have been “stupid” or “silly,” adjectives important today.
(Delaware Online)
Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban for fighting for girls’ education, will address the United Nations today.
The speech will be her first public appearance since the attack in October 2012. Malala, who won Index on Censorship and Doughty Street chambers Advocacy award this year, was shot in the head and chest by an unknown assailant while she was on her way home from school. The Pakistani Taliban spokesman took responsibility for the attack, saying that the young girl was “anti-Taliban and secular”.
Watch Malala’s speech live here:
At 11, Malala began blogging anonymously for BBC Urdu about living in Swat, a Taliban-controlled district in Pakistan. She eventually became an outspoken advocate for girls’ education, and brought international attention to the importance of education for children. Since her attack, she has established the Malala Fund, an organisation that demands education for all.
UNESCO has called the right to education a “fundamental human right”, that serves as a foundation for all other rights, including freedom of expression. With 200 million children denied the basic right to an education around the world, Malala’s fight is important now more than ever.
Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, accepted the Index award on his daughter’s behalf saying: “I want to give a message to the world. I didn’t do anything special. As a father, I did one thing, I gave her the right of freedom of expression. All fathers and mothers, give your daughters and sons freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is a most important right. The solution of any conflict is to say the right thing, to speak the truth.”
Listen to what Malala’s father had to say at this year’s Index awards:
Whatever happens to the NSA whistleblower, the repercussions of his actions will endure
Edward Snowden placards at a protest in Berlin (David von Blohn/Demotix)
This is a guest post by Daniel Keane
Edward Snowden’s leaks have exposed an ideological chasm between the partisans of free information and liberty and the guardians of state security. They have also asked demanding questions of the public at large: when does intelligence gathering become an unwarranted intrusion into private lives? Is the first responsibility of an intelligence agent to the country he serves or to a — self defined — greater good? Can we have a free society without people who do dirty work like spying on our emails?
Public reaction in the polls remains mixed, with a Huffington Post/YouGov’s poll this week finding that 38 per cent of Americans believe Snowden did the wrong thing, while 33 per cent believing the contrary. However a survey released by Quinnipiac showed that 55 per cent of Americans believed Snowden was a whistle blower rather than a traitor.
Snowden also denied in interviews published that he gave any information to the Russian or Chinese governments while in transit there. Allegations of leaking information to these authorities arose from the New York Times, which claimed China had ‘drained the contents of Snowden’s laptops’. Snowden claimed he “never gave any information to either government.”
Snowden also declared in an interview given before he left his home in Hawaii with German newspaper ‘Der Spiegel’ that the NSA is “in bed together with the Germans the same as with most other Western countries” and that the USA and Israel co-wrote Stuxnet, the malicious computer virus utilised against an Iranian nuclear site.
These revelations made by Snowden come as a shock to the public consciousness and this is certainly reflected in the activities of pressure groups in the US and the UK. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington DC, has filed an emergency petition to the US Supreme Court in order to halt the NSA’s logging of the nation’s telephone records.
Meanwhile in the UK, human rights group Liberty has filed a claim to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal against the British Intelligence Services for their role in the PRISM or Tempora surveillance programmes. It remains to be seen, however, whether both of these attempts to halt or impair mass surveillance will be successful: the US Supreme Court is unlikely to do away with a programme seen as vital to domestic security, while the IPT makes its decisions in private leaving any reform in Britain largely improbable.
If he reaches asylum, possibly in Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia, Snowden could continue to leak crucial information regarding the NSA. The Obama administration finds itself in a crisis should he evade extradition: the inevitable slew of secrets weakening their international credentials.
Furthermore as Snowden reveals more regarding the collaboration of the US with Western European states, countries like Britain and France face a public dilemma as we learn more about the undermining of our personal liberties. These governments risk being whisked into undesirable public debate regarding the legitimacy of organisations such as GCHQ.
Even if Snowden returned to America to face trial the issue would not disappear. People will want to hear what he will say in court.
Many governments probably wish Edward Snowden was condemned to perpetual Limbo in Sheremetyevo Airport. But whatever happens, the repercussions of his actions are sure to endure for a long time as the debate between liberty and security rages ever on.
