LGBT panel attacks global homophobia
Fareed Zakaria (left) chaired two panels of LGBT activists at Davos. The first (above) consisted of Alice Nkom, Masha Gessen and Dane Lewis (Image: Twitter/@m_delamerced)
A panel of LGBT activists used the World Economic Forum last week to scrutinise recent homophobic laws passed by the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, despite rumours prior to the event suggesting it would be Putin who, for obvious reasons, would come under attack at the discussion.
Those taking part were flown into the event from around the world; Russian and American journalist Masha Gessen, Cameroonian lawyer Alice Nikom and J-FLAG Executive Director Dane Lewis were all present, as well as Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin, and Republican mega-donors Paul Singer and Dan Loeb.
Opening the breakfast discussion the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said: “Two weeks ago President Jonathan of Nigeria signed into law a bill that criminalises, among other things, gay wedding celebrations, any public display of any same-sex affection, as well as the operating of gay clubs, businesses or organisations, including human rights organisations that focus on protecting the rights of LGBT people.”
Held rather ironically across the street from a discussion the Nigerian President himself was currently attending, Griffin followed suit: “Just to be clear what he signed, so everyone understands it in this room, it was already illegal to be LGBT but he further legalised it. You can be in prison for 14 years for simply being a gay person.
“Each one of you here would be subject to arrest because you’re in this room today: you’d go to prison for ten years. That’s what’s happening right now in that country and I bet you most people in that room don’t know what he’s just done.”
Putin’s name did manage to crop up in conversation and, not surprisingly, it was Gessen who had something to say.
She believes the Kremlin legitimately felt the LGBT community was the one minority it could beat up without fearing a backlash from the rest of the world- how wrong they were. The international reaction may have been slow to take off, she said, but the strong global response has come as a real shock to the Russian government.
“There is a reason why we talk about human rights and there is a reason why we talk about the protection of minorities, because minorities often do have to be protected from the majority, that’s the point,” Gessen said.
The ski resort of Davos, Switzerland welcomes around 2,500 of the world’s top business leaders, politicians, intellectuals and journalists each year to talk business. The singling out of countries or politicians for criticism during the conference is unheard of, according to Politico, which referred to the forum as a “week of political calm”.
This year’s conference came under the banner The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business. Singer and Loeb, who organised the panel, reshaped the theme into a discussion about global sexuality and equality.
Loeb said: “We’re at the World Economic Forum. They say we’re here to make the world a better place. I think we need to take care of the injustices imposed on others in our efforts to make the world a better place.”
Griffin closed the talk by looking at the future of LGBT discussions at Davos, emphasising what an incredible start the first attempt at grabbing the world’s attention at the World Economic Forum was. But there were wishes that the intimate breakfast event would one day “be in the building across the street”.
Watch the full video of the discussion here.
This article was published on 30 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
Turkey’s internet law following nebulous drafting process
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Philip Janek / Demotix)
A few weeks ago, internet privacy activists in Turkey began expressing alarm over newly proposed amendments to the law already governing the country’s internet activity.
If implemented, the changes would serve to increase the government’s already strong hold over the internet. Taking to social media and posting critical declarations on their websites, opponents of the law braced themselves for another debate over censorship in Turkey. Protests held on 18 January drew the attention of the riot police, who responded with pepper spray and water cannons. Despite this, some freedom of speech activists insist that the most effective resistance to censorship will be promoting internet security.
Law number 5651 was passed in 2007 and has since regulated freedom of expression on the internet in Turkey by censoring thousands of websites, including a two-year ban on YouTube. There has even been a European Court of Human Rights ruling against it. Opponents of the new, amended, bill have criticised its ability to collect and store internet users’ personal data and its increased censorship of websites deemed offensive. Others have cited its potential to slow down internet connections and damage Turkey’s beleaguered economy. The bill has already been redrafted this month, with a recent version extending the time period during which the Directorate of Telecommunication (TİB) would decide on banning websites from four to twenty-four hours. However, the previous time limit remains in “emergency” cases. This could also potentially change, as the bill will be redrafted again before it’s voted upon. While it is unclear when the vote will take place, it is expected soon.
The bill’s nebulous drafting process has prompted uproar among Turkey’s internet activists. Zeynep Karahan Uslu, the member of parliament who presented the draft bill, first tweeted last month that amendments were being prepared. Members of the Pirate Party of Turkey reacted by starting a public Google doc and encouraging their followers on Twitter and Facebook to contribute information about the law. At the beginning of this month, the Pirates posted a twelve-page declaration on their website, and news of the amendments spread through social media. Serhat Koç, a telecommunications lawyer and spokesperson for the Pirate Party, says people outside the party began editing and tweeting the declaration. Eventually, an aide for the recently formed People’s Democratic Party (HDP) approached Koç to ask if he would draft an opposing bill for their party. Koç remains pessimistic about what efforts to oppose the amendments can achieve. “I think nobody can change that draft bill,” he said.
Lawmakers and supporters of the new bill have argued that it serves to protect internet users’ privacy with regulations safeguarding their reputations against obscenity or defamation. But opponents have drawn attention to the dangers posed by the amendment’s blocking of URLs. While lawmakers have promoted this measure by saying URLs can be banned more selectively, critics argue the extent of censorship will be less visible to internet users. İsmail Alpen, a founder of the online campaign Sansürü Durdur, says that while court orders were previously displayed on blocked websites, “in the new system you won’t be able to see any warning,” leaving visitors to speculate about why they cannot access a website. “People won’t be notified about what has been censored,” Alpen said.
Other opponents of the bill see the proposed URL-based banning as means for legalising increased data collection. Ahmet Sabancı, a member of the Alternative Informatics Association, explains that blocking URLs instead of entire websites requires TİB to use deep package inspection. “URL-based page blocking forces ISPs to keep all logs for two years, putting all of our information into their hands,” he said. But according to Sabancı, most internet users aren’t concerned about data retention: “They think they can change their domain name server (DNS) numbers and surpass most censorship.” A few weeks ago, the Alternative Informatics Association launched the website kem gözlere şiş, which features guides explaining how to use tools for internet anonymity or circumventing censorship, like Tor, VPNs or encryption. Sabancı said most feedback he’s received since the site’s launch has been from political activists, and that most are excited about Tor because it’s the easiest to use.
In 2013, average user numbers of the Tor browser in Turkey remained low, at just a few thousand a month, according to statistics published on the anonymity network’s website. But if the amendments to law 5651 are passed, the potential increase in website censorship could see a surge in Tor and VPN use. “In general, as soon as a government starts talking about censorship, the populace responds by finding ways to circumvent the censorship,” Tor executive director Andrew Lewman wrote in an email.
Koç and other Pirate Party members are developing projects for secure communication, including a local mesh network and a whistleblowing platform for journalists. Currently, whistleblowers barely ever leak to journalists because anonymity software is not widely used, Koç says. Both Koç and Sabancı say many internet users’ disinterest in government surveillance has made it difficult to raise awareness about the new amendments to 5651 and the likely effects on internet censorship and data collection. But interest in anonymity has been growing since last year’s protests in Gezi Park were met with police brutality, Koç says.
Recently, more people have been contacting both Koç and Sabancı through social media to seek advice on using the internet anonymously. At a recent workshop held by Pirate Party members, on instruction on internet security, drew diverse visitors. “There were activists from the Turkish Green Party, citizen journalists, people who used Ustream in Gezi Park, some leftists associations. Censorship is not the thing for lots of people, but anonymity is necessary,” Koç said. “They want to be anonymous.”
This article was posted on 29 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
Limits on surveillance: A global right to privacy
The revelations by Edward Snowden last June about massive, unaccountable surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart GCHQ have raised one vital question. Is there a global right of privacy? If so, what form might it take?
In November 2013, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued in favour of a global human right of privacy. “All [governments] should acknowledge a global obligation to protect everyone’s privacy, clarify the limits on their own surveillance practices (including surveillance of people outside their own borders), and ensure they don’t trade mass surveillance data to evade their own obligations.”
Fundamental to this discussion is the role technology has played in outpacing legal oversight. In April 2013, the report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression had one express focus: To examine “the implications of states’ surveillance of communications in the exercise of the human rights to privacy and to freedom of opinion and expression.” In the Rapporteur’s view, it was clear that the march of technology, with its move to low cost mobile communications as opposed to previous fixed-line methods had “increased opportunities for state surveillance and interventions into individuals’ private communications.” Borderless surveillance has become a reality.
In their remarkable article on privacy in the Harvard Law Review of 1890, Louis D. Brandeis and Samuel D. Warren argued that, “The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and the vicious, but has become a trade”. Through sharp, analogical reasoning, the jurists decided that grounds for a civil wrong in breaching privacy might be found. The law had to keep pace with the type of technology involved. In their times, it was the telegraph.
International law accepts that a right to privacy exists and should be protected. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) makes it explicit. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, through Article 17, has the same effect. Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has spawned rich jurisprudence on the subject. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Council of Europe, have various guidelines and protocols in place for data protection.
That said, common law countries such as Britain and Australia have shown a reluctance to find a genuine civil wrong when someone’s privacy is violated. Preference is given to finding a breach of confidence. In the United States, there is a reasonable expectation under the Fourth Amendment that one’s privacy will be protected, though it has no application to foreigners. Civil code countries have shown a greater willingness to identify the human body as inviolable before unwarranted interference.
Analysts have argued that a protected global right to privacy is urgent because the global surveillance state has itself become a reality. It is not merely sufficient to restrain through warrant and judicial control the actions of the NSA regarding American citizens. As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Centre argues (Just Security, Oct 29, 2013), focus must lie beyond the limited social contract between US government and its citizens. The rights of non-US citizens to privacy, in other words, extra-territorial rights, matter. Privacy rights are transnational issues, requiring transnational measures of protection.
In the United States, President Barack Obama has at least acknowledged the globalised nature of the surveillance problem, and the need for global protections that consider the rights of non-US citizens as well. His latest suggestions can be found in Presidential Policy Directive 28 (PPD-28.
A notable feature in PPD-28 is the restriction on monitoring foreign citizens, which might be termed the “Merkel” clause after it was revealed that the German Chancellor’s phone was being monitored by the NSA. Section 4 of PPD-28 also serves to create the machinery by which the US will form a “point of contact for foreign governments who wish to raise concerns regarding signals intelligence activities conducted by the United States.”
In these proposals, Obama fails, as executive director of Amnesty International USA Steven W. Hawkins explains, to accept “the abusive nature of mass surveillance or put international human rights standards at the centre of US policy”. They do not so much curtail surveillance as simply limit aspects of its reach. Executive Order 12333 still affords Obama powers to authorise surveillance programs without judicial review. The law is still kept at arm’s length.
The normalisation of Stasiland is the great feature of the twenty first century – no political system has been spared that, largely because the technological means have outpaced the legal regulations. A collective of some 500 writers, among them Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis, and Don DeLillo, have argued via a petition in December 2013 that, “A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy. To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space.” It is time to consider not merely limits to the bulk surveillance, but enforceable obligations on the part of states to abide by a global rule on privacy.
This article was posted on 29 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org