Surveillance technology destroys political opposition more effectively than guns or grenades. And it’s big business.

Surveillance technology destroys political opposition more effectively than guns or grenades. And it’s big business.
As online freedom comes under attack from big business and governments alike, Jennifer Granick assesses the legal landscape
Online irreverent political protest is here to stay. But, asks Gabriella Coleman, what will be the legacy for digital freedom?
WCIT 12: Milton Mueller asks if governments are turning their backs on the global internet? A push to change the business model that delivers online content could stifle innovation and make the net an instrument of sovereignty, stuck behind national walled gardens
An anti-Muslim video, the Innocence of Muslims demonstrated how the politics of fear dominate the online environment. It’s time we took action, argue Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman
What should the Inquiry do? As little as possible, suggests Trevor Kavanagh. The press does not need licences like dogs and gun owners Lord Justice Leveson is said by those who know him to regret taking on David Cameron's ill-conceived inquiry into...
With power comes responsibility, warns Martin Moore of the Hacked Off campaign There is no shortage of quotes or aphorisms about the corrupting nature of too much power. From Thomas Bailey’s warning that "The possession of unlimited power will...
The UK has a press-controlled state rather than a state-controlled press. Phone hacking lawyer Mark Lewis reports on lessons from Leveson Time and again, the criticism of the Leveson Inquiry is that it is another nail in the coffin of a free press....
To improve the culture, practice and ethics of the press, we must protect and promote the best of journalism. Alan Rusbridger makes the case for a new settlement I have always believed that the most interesting period in the phone hacking story was...
Tougher legislation will lead to judges becoming censors, says political blogger Guido Fawkes So far Lord Justice Leveson has been angry with me, threatened me with jail, censored me, twice summoned me, argued with me at his inquiry and thrice...
A quarterly journal set up in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across hundreds of issues.
The brainchild of the poet Stephen Spender, and translator Michael Scammell, the magazine’s very first issue included a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year.
The magazine continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet censors, but its scope was far wider. From the beginning, Index declared its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere – it was particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America but was also clear that freedom of expression was not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The winter 1979 issue, for example, reported on a controversy in the United States in which the Public Broadcasting Service had heavily edited a documentary about racism in Britain and then gone to court attempting to prevent screenings of the original version. Learn more.