15 Apr 14 | Events
We asked the public in which decade they felt women had the strongest roles in cinema? After a close battle for the top spot, the votes have been counted and… the 1950s is victorious!
The multi-Oscar winning movie All About Eve fought off stiff competition from films spanning six decades, edging out Annie Hall (1970s) and Working Girl (1980s) at the last minute to claim the title.
A rare chance to see this female tour-de-force on the big screen followed by a lively discussion with Index on Censorship Editor Rachael Jolley, Rich Mix CEO Jane Earl, co-founder of Underwire festival Gabriella Apicella and LA-based actress Olivia J Fox.
When: Sunday 27th April, 12:00 noon
Where: Rich Mix Cinema and Arts Centre, E1 6LA
Tickets: Book your tickets here.
15 Apr 14 | Academic Freedom, Egypt, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Egyptian demonstrators chanting for the army and police and raising flags and banners bearing images of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. But since the military-backed removal of Mohamed Morsi in summer 2013, academic freedom has been further corroded. (Image: Adham Khorshed/Demotix)
Since the military-backed overthrow of Mohamed Morsi’s government last summer, censorship of journalism in post-revolutionary Egypt has become an urgent concern of human rights and freedom of expression organisations. A quieter and more gradual undercurrent to the question of censorship, however, has been the continued corrosion of academic freedom of expression in post-revolutionary Egypt.
Under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, academic freedom within Egypt was notoriously limited, not least by the fact that since 1994, deans and presidents of public universities were appointed by the state, and professional career progress in academia frequently depended on compliance with the state line. Political activism was prohibited on campus and police units were stationed inside universities to “maintain order”. However, the dramatic increase of Egyptians in higher education in the last fifteen years of the Mubarak era – without the improvement of either higher education facilities or graduate employment prospects – is widely held to have been a central factor in the popular uprising that overthrew the regime in 2011.
Activist academics played a pivotal role in the 2011 revolution. In particular, the March 9 movement, founded in 2004, acted as a complement to the more clandestine student activist April 6 movement, and was comprised of politicised professors and academic administrators who were focused on protesting the impingement of academic life by the state.
As such, the post-Mubarak era was heralded by many as new “window“ for academic freedom in Egypt and “an opportunity to revive the Egyptian universities’ founding ideals as autonomous institutions seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” Like freedom of the press, however, none of the “stages” of the post-revolutionary period have allowed this to come to fruition. Under the immediate, post-revolutionary, interim SCAF period, and under Morsi’s short-lived presidency, university reform was never substantively addressed, whilst activism on campuses splintered along the increasingly polarised lines of post-revolutionary political discourse. Moreover, many of the student activists of the 2011 uprisings were concerned at the possibility of Islamist encroachment on academic freedom of expression, and the policing of secular and female students’ activities at universities.
Since the military-backed removal of Morsi in summer 2013, and the mass violence that accompanied it, academic freedom has been further corroded both by the discourse and strategies of the new ruling powers on the one hand, and by the return of university premises as physical sites of political violence. The return of state security to campuses has been met with resistance from student activists and those who see it as a return to Mubarak-era surveillance of the university space. This has, however, been framed as a necessary step to prevent further violence as that witnessed since late 2013, which saw intense clashes at Al-Azhar University and an engineering student shot dead on the Cairo University campus.
Alongside the physical space of the university, the discipline of academic practice has been significantly impinged by the increasingly fractious and polarised political situation. Like journalists, academics have been caught in the political cross-fire of the post-July 2013 government’s campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, who the government declared a terrorist organisation in December. Over the summer, two Canadian academics were detained for nearly two months despite no independent proof that they had engaged with the Muslim Brotherhood or taken part in “terrorist activities”.
As Ursula Lindsey has noted in The New York Times, political scientists working on the subject of contemporary Egyptian politics have faced particular difficulties. The 2011 revolution is itself now the subject of academic study, yet its protracted aftermath impedes research, and academics such as Nathan J Brown, a leading scholar on Egypt’s constitutions and judiciary, have noted that foreign academics are now cautious against travelling to Egypt for research. The military-backed government that overthrew Morsi has engaged in both a physical clampdown and a war of narratives with the Muslim Brotherhood, quick to frame all association with the Islamist organisation as collusion.
This presents particular problems for academics who wish to conduct interviews for the purpose of academic research. After all, this time last year, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed regime was the official government, and, as such, academic researchers would likely have had contact with the group — not out of political allegiance but in order to conduct their studies. Yet such “contact” can now find scholars isolated, silenced, or even accused of “espionage”, as in the case of Professor Eman el-Din Shahin. Professor Shahin’s colleagues have spoken out in his defence, arguing that he is a well-respected and thorough researcher whose contact with political enemies of the new regime would have been in his legitimate capacity as a researcher. Such a climate is naturally conducive to self-censorship on the part of other academics, a loss for all of us who wish to understand and engage with contemporary Egypt. As an academic, you may not be politicised, but the state is very interested in politicising you.
The March 9 movement, formed in the Mubarak era by scholars seeking freedom of academic expression, marked its anniversary last month in sombre circumstances — these new challenges for academic freedoms overlay the continuing, unresolved issues of the pre-2011 period, from workplace nepotism to underfunding in public education. The uprisings of 2011 were ignited in part by the March 9 movement’s campaign for academic freedom of expression, yet in the various incarnations of the post-revolutionary order, this dream is still far from being realised.
This article was posted on 15 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
15 Apr 14 | Brazil, News and features, Politics and Society
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Journalists continue to come under pressure from police and protesters in Brazil, according to a report released on 8 April. Just days after the report, two journalists were targeted by police during the forced eviction of a Rio de Janiero favela.
Attacks on journalists increased 232 percent according to the study commissioned by federal authorities. The report found that there were 41 cases of violence against media workers in 2012, rising to 136 in 2013. The report, prepared by the Council for the Defense of the Human Person (CDPH), said the rise in violence can be attributed to the mass protests that began in June 2013 against transport fare rises, corruption and the amount of money spent on preparation for the FIFA World Cup 2014.
Since 2009, Brazilian media workers have been the victims of 321 attacks involving violence. Eighteen journalists have been murdered in the same period. As a result, Brazil is among the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist.
The report concluded that “impunity and a lack of criminal responsibility for perpetrators of attacks on freedom of expression have contributed to the increase in violence”. It also highlighted the dangers to journalists and demonstrators from police during mass protests.
The cases of journalists Mauri Konig and Andre Caramante were referenced, both of whom received death threats for their work. Konig was forced into a two-month exile in Peru because of his coverage of illegal police activities in the Brazilian state of Parana. Konig, who has since returned to Brazil, has said he will stay away from police coverage. Caramante was also forced to leave the country and go into hiding after he and his family were the subject of threats. Caramante’s situation worsened after the publication of an article exploring the election campaign of a retired military police colonel and Sao Paulo councilman. Caramante was later fired by Folha de S. Paulo.
The most recent incidents against the press took place Friday, 11 April, when journalists were covering the forced evictions of residents from the Telerj Favela, at Rio. Journalist Bruno Amorim was roughed up by a police officer, who accused him of inciting violence through his reports. Protesters also attacked the press, setting fire to several marked media vehicles. Another reporter – O Globo’s Leonardo Barros – was ordered to leave the area or face arrest. The operation ended with more than 20 arrests and three children were injured, according to sources.
The country’s environment for freedom of expression “worsened dramatically during 2013 and the first months of 2014” according to a second report, Press Freedom in Brazil – October 2013 to March 2014, which was presented in February at Sociedade Interamericana de Imprensa.
That report found that there were 4 deaths, 66 cases of aggression, 2 cases of judicial censorship, 6 threats, 1 attack, 1 arrest and 3 cases of intimidation in Brazil during the six months it covered. “The cases of unpunished murders of journalists and other press professionals continue to be the most serious issue” facing the Brazilian media, the report warned.
The authors found what they called “cause for alarm” in the persistence of judicial censorship practised by magistrates”. The text states that it is “noteworthy that the censorship applied to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo on 31 July 2009 has not yet been subject to final decision”.
In an especially severe episode cited by the report, Santiago Andade – a cameraman for the Banderantes Network, died in February after being hit by a rocket. The press freedom report went on to warn that incidents like the ones that claimed the lives of Andade and three of his media colleagues could take place during the World Cup.
The report also detailed how the ANJ met with Brazil’s minister of justice Eduardo Cardozo to ask for concrete measures to halt the attacks on journalists. The minister recognised “the seriousness of the situation” and promised to take steps to create a protocol for police to use during street protests.
This article was posted on 15 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
15 Apr 14 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom, Young Writers / Artists Programme
(Photo: Shutterstock)
At the University of Bristol the stagnating number of female academics in multiple degree subjects has become an increasingly important and concerning issue. Over 65.4% of Bristol students, according to my March 2014 survey, perceived a noticeable imbalance of female to male lecturers. I agree. My research led me towards an obvious concern for Bristol students: gender inequality of academia in all subjects.
With The Independent reporting that 63.9% of female undergraduates are leaving universities with “good” degrees, a lack of visibility of female academics at the University of Bristol — especially in the more scientific faculties — is in stark contrast to the number of undergraduates in the same subjects. More and more articles are appearing asking “Where are the men?” seeking to discover why the gender gap of undergraduates is weighted in women’s favour, but few have even commented on the fact that women are still struggling for visibility as academics. Women are avoiding the academic world and important questions must be asked about whether this is evidence of institutional laziness on the part of universities.
A recent Commons Report titled “Women in Scientific Careers” (focussing solely on the topic of academia) found the gender diversity – or lack of it – in senior academic positions in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) “astonishing”. This conclusion of surprise is certainly supported by the Bristol experience: only 19% female Biology academics and fewer than 7% female Chemistry academics. Science students are beginning to question the gender gap at an academic level and why in 2014 it still remains an issue for women to break into STEM academia. One biology student commented: “I’m in my second term of University and I’ve yet to be taught by a woman. Representation is important and it’s worrying that female undergraduates might be less inclined to pursue an academic career.”
Universities are attempting to improve the imbalance in STEM departments with processes such as the Athena Swan awards. However, the School of Chemistry at Bristol holds a Bronze award for “promoting gender equality” despite having fewer than ten female academics in one of the largest departments at Bristol. The bar seems quite low. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a tangible appetite to tackle inequality in academia head on, it just seems that there has been little visible progression, simply supplementary reports and promises to improve.
Many female academics such as Athene Donald, professor of experimental physics at the University of Cambridge, have expressed disappointment with the Commons Report mostly due to it appearing to provide nothing more than “superficial recommendations”. I agree with Donald when she suggests more “drastic action” to tackle the current gender norms in university departments, without a vocal and aggressive protest calling for more inclusive hiring strategies. “There is a long, long way to go but all parts of the system need to be addressed if we are going to get past the stage of mere astonishment,” Donald wrote in February. We need to involve all levels of education; if women aren’t being encouraged equally at all stages of schooling then fixing the top level of academia will do little to fix the imbalance.
Personally, it’s been my experience with the history department at Bristol that has sparked this article. Why in a subject such as history with an equal amount of male and female undergraduates are there only 29% female academic staff? Having so few women lecturers in history when both genders are so equally matched at undergraduate level causes students to wonder if the higher jobs remain a boys’ club even in 2014.
Lynne H. Walling, head of pure mathematics at University of Bristol, has experienced more than her fair of sexism on her route to the top of her profession. Maths stereotypically has always been seen as a masculine pursuit and women have often been excluded or stymied in their interest. “More and more women do math, but we can hardly find female mathematicians who keep on researching the field.” She commented in interview with Somin Kim: “Only a few speakers at academic conferences are women, and sometimes none. Women feel that they don’t fit in the mathematical society and this is the hardship to continue their research.” Representation has always been a core issue. Without at least an approximation of gender equality among lecturers, female students are less like to dream to achieve. There isn’t an absence of female curiosity or intellect, there’s a lack of a platform.
But does a mismatch between women students and male lecturers actually impact free expression? At an undergraduate level the gender of their tutor seems to greatly impact female students. It becomes an issue of their future career as many women are told by those in academia that their gender is a weakness in the fight for research funding. No wonder women are half as likely to choose academia as a preferred career than men. Penelope Lockwood investigated whether the gender of career role models affected university students and she conclusively proved that women are more greatly motivated when inspired by the women in their chosen career, not the men. This is because the female students understood that their role model had surmounted and survived gender-specific challenges that they anticipate combatting in the future. They decisively empathise better with a female tutor.
Without an equal amount of female lecturers and tutors, female students are hindered in their progression through academic ladder. We need female lecturers teaching at an undergraduate level on an equal basis with men otherwise young women will continue to find the idea of achieving equal academic freedom with men in their subject simply unachievable. It’s a cyclical system: a minority of women teach, a minority of women become academics. Freedom of expression in academia involves an equal standing at all levels, and if we’re teaching equality at undergraduate level we need to clear the career path of gender obstacles for women from the grassroots up.
It’s obviously a more complex topic than can be covered in my brief assessment but the debate needs to be breached, universities need to answer questions about their hiring process and work together to close any forms of gender imbalance that still exist in higher education – including the wage gap. The statistics referred to above appear to support the conclusion that women are still experiencing sexism, especially when applying for jobs in STEM departments.
Universities would be well advised to address the issue swiftly so that the gender balance of academic, at the very least, reflects the gender balance of their undergraduates. Research support gender equality, so why aren’t universities?
This article was posted on 15 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Apr 14 | Egypt, News and features
Political activists rallied in front of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate in Cairo to demand the immediate release of detainees. (Image: Khaled Basyouny/Demotix)
Within the next few days, Egypt is expected to put into effect a new counter-terrorism law that rights groups warn could “severely erode civil liberties” and “reinstate the old police state that existed under deposed president Hosni Mubarak”.
Earlier this month, three bombs exploded outside Cairo University killing a police general. The attacks — the latest in a string of bombings targeting security forces — prompted the government to speed up review of the stricter security bill that the authorities say is necessary “to better protect citizens against the terrorist threat”. The bill contains provisions that would significantly broaden the definition of terrorism and would give police and prosecutors more power to deal with “terror suspects”. If passed, the new legislation would also allow for stricter punishment of perpetrators of “terrorist crimes”.
Skeptics meanwhile, fear that the controversial anti-terrorism law would pave the way for more repression and greater rights violations as the authorities intensify and widen their crackdown on dissent of all stripes. In an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera, Dr. Abdalla El Ashaal, an Islamist thinker and professor of international law at the American University in Cairo stressed the need for a precise definition of terrorism. He cautioned that under the new law, government critics and opponents would likely be classified as terrorists.
The proposed bill defines a terrorist act as “use of force, violence, threats or intimidation to disturb public order or endanger the safety of the society”. It also lists a wide range of activities that would be considered “terrorist crimes” including harming individuals, intimidating them , putting their lives, freedom and security at risk; harming national security, harming the environment, monuments and public property and hindering the work of the authorities, judicial bodies, houses of worship, educational institutions and diplomatic and consular missions. The bill also extends the definition of “a terrorist act” to include behaviour that “damages or harms the communications or information system, financial sector or national economy”.
Under the draft law, “establishing, organising or heading a terrorist group is punishable by death”. Leaving no ground uncovered, the draft law further stipulates a two-year jail sentence or a fine of up to LE 10,000 (Egyptian Pounds) for anyone insulting a public employee verbally or with a sign.
The “loose definition” of terrorism in the bill has drawn denunciation from Egyptian rights organisations. In a joint statement released by 20 rights groups, they warned that “absence of the rule of law and resorting to repressive security measures and exceptional laws will undermine human rights and only lead to increased acts of armed violence and terrorism”. The broad provisions in the bill also pave the way for harassment of “peaceful political opposition members, rights activists, and pro-democracy groups,” the statement added.
The anticipated issuance of the new legislation comes as revolutionary groups in Egypt become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the draconian anti-protest law passed late last year. The pro-democracy groups have in recent days organised a series of events including a weekend marathon of runners and cyclists to bring attention to the plight of “political detainees” jailed for staging “unauthorised protests”. Three liberal activists and leading figures of the January 25 uprising are among the detainees. Last week, a Cairo appeal court upheld the jailing of activists Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel for three years for protesting without police permission and assaulting a police officer. In comments to Reuters, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch criticised the verdict against the activists as “another nail in the coffin of the January 25 Revolution”.
Both the anti protest law passed in November and the counter-terrorism bill — which will likely be signed into law before the end of the week — are part of the government’s efforts to stifle political activism and silence dissent. Revolutionary activists and rights campaigners fear the draconian laws will provide legal cover to extrajudicial killings, torture in prisons and unfair trials, allowing the authorities to clamp down even harder on the opposition.
Rights activists are also cautioning that the new law “may intensify violence and terrorism in Egypt” — a country wracked by political turmoil since the unseating of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by military-backed protests in July 2013. At least 1,400 people have been killed and thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters have been arrested in a massive security crackdown on dissent in the wake of Morsi’s ouster. Most of the deaths have occurred in violent clashes between pro-Morsi protesters and security forces in which the latter have been accused by rights organisations of using disproportionate lethal force. The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group which rose to power in Egypt’s first free and fair parliamentary elections, post revolution — and from which Morsi hails — was designated as a terrorist organisation in December.
Since the ousting of Morsi in July, there has been a surge in militant attacks targeting mainly military and police forces but also, the country’s minority Christian population and tourists. Initially concentrated in the Sinai Peninsula, the terror attacks — mostly claimed by the Sinai-based jihadi group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis — have in recent months spread to other parts of the country. Over the last few weeks, Egypt has also been rocked by a wave of student protests at state-universities across the country. Clashes between student protesters and security forces using tear gas and bird shot have resulted in the deaths of several young protesters and the arrests and detention of scores of others. The students are protesting a recent court ruling allowing police to return to university campuses and are demanding the release of student-detainees .The protesters are also opposed to former Defence Minister Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s presidential bid. Field Marshal El Sisi retired from the army earlier this month and announced his candidacy in the presidential elections, scheduled to take place on 26 and 27 May. In a televised address to the nation announcing Morsi’s removal from power last summer, the former army chief had promised an inclusive government, pledging a limited role for the army in politics .
“The proposed counter terrorism bill signals a reversal of the hard-earned freedoms gained after the January 2011 uprising and will take the country back to its pre-January 25 revolutionary state,” laments Gamal Eid, the Executive Director of the Arab Network for Human Rights.
This article was posted on 14 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Apr 14 | News and features, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom
Asif Quraishi, better known as drag queen Asifa Lahore, sits unassumingly in a TV studio. “One question I’d like to ask”, he says, “is when will it be all right to be Muslim and gay?”
The programme is Twitter-powered BBC Three debate series Free Speech, whose host Rick Edwards (of Tool Academy and, unexpectedly, Cambridge) makes Nicky Campbell seem subdued, and where no thought is too complex for 140 characters. Producers, show name notwithstanding, spiked the question from a previous edition when officials at Birmingham Central Mosque, where Free Speech filmed on March 13, “expressed deep concerns” about gay Muslims being discussed. The speed at which showrunners acquiesced, postponing the segment, speaks to a wider trend.
The first guest to comment, kufi-clad Portuguese convert Abdullah al Andalusi, calls condemning gay sex “the Islamic position” with a party leader’s certainty. It’s unsurprising: al Andalusi, who defends public segregation by gender and from whose talks women have been banned, seeks a nondemocratic “modern [Islamic] Caliphate” under sharia government, free among other things of “women wearing bikinis”, “the hijab being optional” and “men and women having identical inheritance and gender roles”. Al Andalusi rails in-studio against notions of “extremism”, declaring them a means of profiling “Muslims with orthodox beliefs”. He sees himself as holding these, and so apparently do programme-makers, since he speaks much more than Asif does.
The counter-extremist whose work he attacks, Lib Dem candidate for Hampstead Maajid Nawaz, is also in the room. (“I will speak out”, he tells the drag performer, “on your right to identify however you want.”) Nawaz too has been hounded by religious would-be censors, despite being a Muslim himself. This January, following the LSE’s attempts to ban it, he tweeted an image from the atheist web strip Jesus and Mo, commenting “This is not offensive and I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it.” A subsequent Change.org petition calling for his sacking gained over 20,000 signatures, some with death threats attached. Though Nick Clegg eventually stepped in to condemn them, spokespeople told the press the party “urged all candidates to be sensitive to cultural and religious feelings”, and Nawaz – presumably after internal bickering – conceded in a joint statement with Mohammed Shafiq, head of the Ramadhan Foundation and leader of the witchhunt, that “images of the spiritual leaders of all religions should be deemed to be respectful”.
In February Shazad Iqbal, a hitherto unknown British Muslim, used a similar petition to demand YouTube remove Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” video, in which an Ancient Egyptian turns to sand whose pendant, on close inspection, reads “Allah”. “Blasphemy is clearly conveyed in the video”, Iqbal wrote. “Such acts are not condoned nor tolerated.” While the offending necklace, which had to be indicated using photoshopped freeze-frames, was barely visible, tens of thousands of signatures poured in – today, the page boasts more than 65,000 – and Perry’s producers digitally obscured it.
Iqbal, who used his petition site to share evangelistic videos, gained a platform much like Iqbal’s and al Andalusi’s. All three, and countless more religious rightists, have sold themselves as commentators, “community leaders” and de facto spokesmen for Muslims (“men” is applicable here), grabbing the spotlight neither through skilled writing nor through views polls say are actually widespread. They owe their standing to officialdom’s mounting anxiety to please the most censorious believers, its instinct that those eagerest to cleanse the public sphere of blasphemy are those who matter most.
Recycled lines about a scaremongering anti-Muslim press over-reporting extremism come easily, but demagogues of this kind are media’s darlings; far from casting them as bogeymen, it heaps meetings with politicians, TV appearances and public validation on them. Nor is this pattern unique to Islam. In a 2012 speech for the National Secular Society, Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters cites the case of Behzti, a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti which portrayed sexual violence in a Sikh temple. “Fundamentalists, but also so-called moderates,” says Patel, “took offence, protested and had the play removed”, theatre staff bowing to their demands. Leaders on the Sikh right, she says, stated once Bhatti entered hiding that if Labour’s Racial and Religious Hatred Act had existed at the time, it would have been used to censor the play.
Authorities sided with those attacking her, as they sided with Shafiq over Nawaz, al Andalusi and Birmingham Central Mosque over Quraishi, Iqbal over every Muslim undisturbed by Katy Perry. Reformists and minorities like them, as much as a free society, are casualties of this love for religious censors. If minor faiths, still mysteries in the public eye, need representatives, far better ones exist: A media that paints puritans and fanatics as mainstream forfeits its right to condemn them.
This article was posted on 14 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Apr 14 | News and features, Russia
(Image: /Demotix)
Censorship of anti-war sentiment in Russia now uses a mixture of state-sponsored media attacks, arms-length loyalists, crooked think tanks and legal strong-arming – but is it working?
Politonline, a website well-known for its support of Putin, has produced an article with the top twenty most “negative” news sources in Russia. Editors claim to have pioneered a methodology which can gauge “emotional sentiment and tone” in online articles. Politonline don’t elaborate on how the algorithm has been put together, or indeed the source data they used. However some of the keywords used have been published, including the words “annexation” and “support for Crimea.”
Meanwhile, a prominent academic has been publically slammed by a pro-Putin think tank, in a pro-Putin newspaper, after he compared Hitler’s strategy in Anschluss with the annexation of Crimea. Professer Andrei Zubov was also dismissed by his employers – the Moscow Institute for International Relations. The Institute for Democracy and Co-operation, the think tank who critiqued the article, included a list of American academics who had lost their jobs over their political views – although many had been fired for comments which were overtly racist, sexist, or incited hate.
The man who blew the whistle on Putin’s invasion in Crimea, Lev Shlosberg, has also been targeted by his opponents. Some of the masked paratroopers now in Crimea were originally based in his home region : Shlosberg helped alert the media when the invasion began. A legislator and newspaper editor, he has since been accused of being a “fifth columnist” and “traitor.” In an interview on the Russia 1 television channel, Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov adopted a similar strategy when he smeared dissenters as “professional critics” and a “nano-fifth column.”
Alexey Navalny, a lawyer, blogger and pro-reform opposition politician has also faced penalties. A lengthy article he published on his blog regarding Crimea prompted authorities to accuse him of breaking the terms of his house arrest. Authorities then blocked access to the site, and warned citizens that anyone promoting his article online would be subject to unspecified sanctions.
Protesters brave enough to go on the streets are also being met with state-sponsored aggression. Tanya Lokshina, Russia Program Director and Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Index that “anti-war protesters have been subject to arbitrary detention, harassment, intimidation, and even physical attacks.”
Between February 21st and March 4th, the NGO allege that police detained well over a thousand peaceful protesters in Moscow alone. Courts ordered at least fifteen of them to serve ten days of administrative detention for alleged failure to obey police orders, and fined dozens of others for participating in unauthorized public gatherings. The majority are still awaiting administrative court hearings. Other cities have seen similar policing tactics and unfair judicial process.
“Many wondered what a post-Sochi crackdown might look like,” Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch told Index. “These detentions, the crackdown under way on the media, and violent attacks against dissenters by unidentified assailants paint a stark picture of what is going on in Russia right now.”
So is all this working? In December, Putin’s popularity was at its lowest since 2000, according to a report on the Reuters website. Polling conducted by the Levada Agency showed that “61 percent of respondents voiced approval for Putin’s performance in November, down from 64 percent in October and the previous low this year of 62 percent, recorded in January.”
It’s also notable that before the Crimea crisis escalated, the Russian people were indifferent to Euromaidan. Another Levada poll showed that 63% of Russians didn’t sympathise with either Yanukovych or the protesters.
However a poll by VTsIOM, conducted in March after troops had moved into Crimea, showed that Putin’s approval ratings had leapt up. VtsIOM is state-run but according to Russian politics analyst Mark Adomanis, “remains one of the most widely respected polling outfits in Russia.”
Crimea has sent Putin’s poll numbers skyrocketing,” says Adomanis, who writes a column for Forbes about Russian politics and economics. “Levada currently has him at a little over 80%, his highest level since 2010.”
“Other agencies have shown a similar rebound in his numbers – pretty much everyone agrees that the poll numbers are the best in a long time.”
Adomanis also commented on the lack of media, political and academic freedom surrounding the Ukraine crisis.
“Even in democratic societies there’s always a concern that polling can be heavily influenced by the nature of media coverage. It’s definitely more of a concern in Russia, given the heavy-handedness with which the authorities manage the press
“You can’t totally separate the biased coverage from popular support, but I don’t think one can fully explain the other.”
So Putin’s strategy in Crimea has played out well politically. It’s hard to know what the polls would have been like had the press been able to fully criticise his actions, or had street protests been allowed to go on unhindered. It’s also likely that the long-term economic impact of the annexation will be great enough to push polls down again in the future. However, the tactics used by the authorities to keep dissent out of the public psyche appear well-rehearsed and difficult to counter. A quick review of any Russia Today bulletin, compared with multiple on the ground sources in Kiev, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, reveal that the Russian public are not getting the full picture about their leaders international transgressions.
This article was published on April 14, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Apr 14 | Africa, Europe and Central Asia, European Union, Gambia, News and features
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has bowed to EU pressure to implement political reforms — including changing the country’s restrictions on the media.
This comes barely a year after he rejected a proposal from the European Union to introduce reforms, including repealing draconian media laws, establishing a National Human Rights Commission as proposed by the Commonwealth Secretariat, and abolishing the death penalty within 24 months.
In January last year President Jammeh told local media The Point and Observer newspapers that he will not be blackmailed by the European Union with what he described as “chicken change” to accept what is not in the interest of the Gambia people. He said the “Gambia will never be colonised twice”.
The EU delegation held a closed door meeting with Jammeh last Tuesday to discuss the way forward. Dominique Delacour, the Dakar-based European Union ambassador, told a local journalist that: “We discussed also the issue of consular affairs issuing visas to Gambians. So we had a very frank discussion on an array of issues, which was very productive. The Gambian side also presented their main strategy in terms of governance, and human rights and development cooperation,” she said.
Delacour said the delegation was also in Banjul to present to the Gambian leader with the result of the their preliminary discussions in the country, as well as the declaration that came out of the recent EU-Africa summit held in Brussels.
The European Union is the leading aid provider for the Gambia with a total of €65.4 million of grants allocated for for the period 2008 -2013.
But its demands for more political freedom are seen by the Gambian regime as interference in the country’s domestic politics. Article eight refers to the political dimension of the Cotonou Agreement, the legal framework covering political, developmental and trade relations between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, of which the Gambia is a signatory.
A group of Gambian rights activist led by the Amadou Scatted, Janneh former Information Minister who was jailed for attempting to stage a non-violent protest against the dictatorship in Gambia has present a set of recommendation to the human rights bodies ahead of the Universal Periodic Review meeting in Switzerland later this year. This is with a view to pressure authorities to carry out comprehensive reform such as the repealing all draconian media laws, and the protection of human right in general.
However, the Gambia National Assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted two books entitled A Million Reasons to Leave the Commonwealth and How the Tragic Consequences of British Looting and Misrule in The Gambia Inspired the Foundation of the United Nation’s Drive for Decolonisation in January 1943 and Beyond.
According to pro-government newspaper Daily Observer, the books were authored by the president with a view to reaffirm its commitment to end Gambia’s decade-long membership to the Commonwealth, the 53-member organisation headed by the Queen of England.
Parliamentarian Seedy Njie said in a motion in the first session of the legislative that the content of the books were reason enough for the Gambia to leave the commonwealth. Meanwhile, NJie’s statement has confirmed the argument of Mr Halifa Sallah on the content of the book authored by the authoritarian leader.
This article was posted on 14 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
11 Apr 14 | News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom, Young Writers / Artists Programme
Protesters gathered outside a Stop Porn Culture conference in March 2014 organised by Gail Dines. Protesters included porn stars, filmmakers, artists, sex workers and supporters who believe in freedom of expression. (Photo: Rachel Megawhat/Demotix)
Last year London Mayor Boris Johnson’s aide, Simon Walsh, was arrested for possession of extreme pornography: depictions of anal fisting and urethral sounding. The respected barrister’ very public prosecution tore his life apart and lost him his jobs. In just 90 minutes the jury threw out his case – Walsh’s images were safe and legally produced.
The law under which he was prosecuted (Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) was intended to affect only 30 people per year, but over 1,300 were prosecuted in 2012/13 alone. Clarification of what should be classed as “extreme”, promised by the Lords, never materialised. Government lawyers have attacked a wide range of materials, many of which juries consider innocent.
Now the government is sneaking through a vast extension to pornographic prohibition. It’s so vaguely worded that it could cover 50 Shades of Grey (if filmed), Game of Thrones or Florentine statues. Those found guilty of possession could face 3 years in prison and an unlimited fine.
Under the cloud of Cameron’s anti-child abuse crusade, possessing explicit/realistic portrayals of “the non-consensual penetration of a person’s vagina, anus or mouth by another,” real or simulated, will be illegal. The rhetoric that launched Claire Perry’s disastrous internet filtering initiative – the one that blocks abuse support, sex education and suicide helpline websites – also mandated this law. That rhetoric displays utterly muddled thinking, a confusion between stopping child abuse, stopping children accessing adult material and stopping anyone accessing non-mainstream material.
The change’s motivation is laudable. Genuine rape or abuse depictions (i.e. filming real crimes) should be illegal, all agree. Some women’s groups argue exposure to violent pornography affects viewers’ behaviour- RASASC calls the move a “step forward in preventing rapists using rape pornography to legitimise and strategise their crime”.
However, campaigners contend the draft law’s language is too ambiguous. A policy researcher from anti-censorship organisation Backlash argues: “The law will cover much more than the legislators imagine or intend.” Passing this law as an appendage in a “bumper bill (that includes) lots of legitimate concerns – a radical overhaul of probation and legal aid – (means this) very delicate matter isn’t getting appropriate democratic oversight”.
The government’s strategy, using child pornography as a blanket justification, makes effective opposition or refinement impossible. No politician spoke against the amendment in the bill’s readings or committee stage. Which MP, mindful of re-election, would stand for the right to possess violent erotica? Labour support the provision uncritically, denying it appropriate scrutiny.
Such a serious proscription, which might endanger harmless women and men, merits its own public debate, not back-door legislation. Solicitor Myles ‘ObscenityLawyer’ Jackman, who represented Walsh, highlights the dangerous subjectivity of judging pornography “realistic”, plus the “absence of any evidence proving…a causal link” between such material and Cameron’s “normalise(d) sexual violence against women”. A representative survey of 19,000 UK adults cited by three academics shows 1/3 of adult fantasies include domination or submission, and about 5% of Britons fantasise about delivering/experiencing violence. These academics’ parliamentary evidence repeated Jackman’s scepticism of the link between pornography and real-world crime. Groups like Rape Crisis South London and the End Violence Against Women Coalition assert such pornography does promote dangerous beliefs. The government itself “believes such images are unacceptable and most people would regard them as disgusting and deeply disturbing,” implying the majority’s moral distaste is grounds for legislation.
Groups like Sex & Censorship and Backlash protest the bill’s wording and justification, arguing millions of law-abiding kink practitioners might be criminalised for depicting safe, consensual, private acts. Sexual minorities including the LGBT community, bondage enthusiasts, horror-movie recreators and “vampire and goth enthusiasts who use fake blood in roleplay” could be covered, Backlash told me. Even Rackley and McGlynn, the Durham University academics who championed this law for years, criticise the bill’s wording, demanding clarification specifically banning “realistic images”, protection for “private depictions of consensual BDSM activity” and consideration of context.
Sex-positive feminism raises questions over what the bill would achieve. Arguments that violent pornography (and general sexual imagery) warps childhood development, perpetuates objectification and enables rape culture are valid, but attacking one subsection of pornography won’t stop children seeing questionable images. They fill celebrity magazines, tabloids, advertising and primetime TV.
In terms of child protection, then, this may be window-dressing. It’s far more important for schools to promote effective sex education covering consent, gender, identity and relationships, rather than a “see no evil” approach. Such education is woefully lacking and outdated. Meanwhile the government has cut funding for sexual health services for vulnerable teens and youth services, and is attacking endangered women’s panic rooms via the “bedroom tax”.
The government may be simultaneously attacking the harmless, and harming those who are helpless. The extension of extreme pornography censorship is dangerous because it’s had minimal public discussion, the wording is poorly considered, and it’s unlikely to address the problem used to promote it.
This article was published on April 11, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
11 Apr 14 | Digital Freedom, India, News and features, Politics and Society
(Image: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock)
Established in 2009 by executive order, the Unique Identification Number Authority of India (UIDAI) has taken on the monumental challenge of issuing each resident of the country with a Unique Identification Number (UID), more commonly known as the Aadhaar card. The driving idea behind the card was to ensure that residents could have a singular identification card that can eliminate duplicate and fake identities and also can be verified in a cost effective manner. Biometrics are the primary method for identification, while other details such as addresses, family, and even bank accounts are linked to the card.
Recently, the UIDAI was in the news as it challenged an order by the Goa High Court to share biometric details of all enrolled Goa residents with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation in order to solve an investigation. The Supreme Court of India ruled that UIDAI did not need to share its data with any agency of the government without the consent of those in its database. In his blog, the former Chairman of UIDAI (and currently running for a seat in India’s hotly contested national elections) Nandan Nilekani wrote: “We have always stated that the data collected from residents would remain private, and not be shared with other agencies.”
An audible sigh of relief was heard in the media from privacy activists who were concerned that the data collected by the UIDAI would be easily accessed by any government agency once it was in the system. This concern for privacy and data protection isn’t completely unfounded. Indian media has reported on grave gaps in the data collection process. In March 2013, a Mumbai paper reported that data collected from residents in 2011 was still lying around in cupboards in a suburb, despite the area residents repeatedly reminding the authorities to take away the information. The same state had, in 2013, “admitted the loss of personal data of about 3 lakh [100,000] applicants for Aadhaar card”, an error that sparked concerns over possible misuse of the data, not to mention the trouble of having to register personal data all over again. According to the report, the data had been lost while uploading from the state information technology department to the UIDAI central server in Bangalore, Karnataka. Government officials tried to assure the public that the data was highly encrypted and could not be misused. However, this incident wasn’t unprecedented. Just the year before, veteran journalist P. Sainath of the Hindu had highlighted this issue in a talk, saying that: “You can buy that data on the streets of Mumbai. It’s already made its way there. What sort of national security will you have when your biometric data is up for grabs all around the planet? You outsourced it to subcontractors who have subcontracted it to further people. It’s now available on the streets of Mumbai, biometric data.”
Given that the government has spent Rs 3800 crore (around $600 million) on the project already, it is interesting to note that India has not yet passed a privacy law, a comprehensive data protection law and nor did the parliament pass the National Identification Authority of India Bill, which was rejected by a parliamentary standing committee on finance in 2011. As was reported at the time, the standing committee rejected the report on the grounds that the scheme had “no clarity of purpose and leaving many things to be sorted out during the course of its implementation; and is being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion”. It also went on to raise concerns about privacy, identity theft, misuse, security of data and duplication during the implementation of the UID scheme, and cited global examples of similar schemes that were rejected.
However, it is useful to see the guiding principles behind the implementation of the scheme that made it so attractive to the Congress-led UPA II government. The spirit of UID seems to lie in two guiding principles; using Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to make government more effective, and entering the data game. In a recent interview to the Economic Times, Shrikant Nadhamuni, who headed technology for UIDAI is quoted as saying: “We wanted to move the ID game—from a state where some people had no ID and others had paper ID to something beyond even what Singapore had, in the form of smart cards, to online. Like biometric. Which is the future.”
The basis of the design of what was to become the UID was also laid out in the Report of the Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects, submitted to the Ministry of Finance in 2011, headed by Nandan Nilekani, a respected figure in Indian business and later to become CEO of UIDAI. Others involved with the report were the chairman of the Security and Exchange Bureau of India (SEBI), the secretary, Department of Telecommunications of the Government of India, the chairman of the privately owned IFMR trust which seeks to ensure that every individual and enterprise has access to financial services, and a few other experts on the subject. Many government officers constituted the secretariat. The report put out some revolutionary ideas about how to integrate private expertise into the public sector. It deduces that “the most important lesson that needs to be acted upon is that business change’ should drive the design and implementation of these projects”.
This was to be done by implementing a National Information Utility (NIU), which would be private companies with a public purpose: profit-making, not-profit maximising. The NIU would be flexible in its functioning, and the government would keep strategic control over the project. Private ownership of the project should be at least 51% and the government’s share at least 26%. Once the NIU is to become steady, the government would become a paying customer and would be free to take its business elsewhere. However, the report also admits that given the massive investments in building the NIUs, they would essentially be set up to be natural monopolies. At the time, the report had looked at the following schemes of the Indian government: Goods and Services Tax (GST), Tax Information Network (TIN), Expenditure Information Network (EIN), National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) and New Pension System (NPS). The first Unique Project to take off, however, was the UIDAI.
This strategy raised red flags as well. Usha Ramanathan, an academic activist, wrote in Moneylife that: “In this set-up, we are witnessing the emergence of an information infrastructure, which the government helps — by financing and facilitating the ‘start-up’, and by the use of coercion to get people on to the database — which it will then hand over to corporate interests when it reaches a ‘steady state’.” She continues in the same piece that: “The NIU was not explained to parliament, and no one seems to have raised any questions about what it is. This, then, is the story of how the ownership of governmental data by private entities is silently slipping into the system.”
Controversies surround the Aadhar project. Nilekani, who was appointed Chairperson of UIDAI in 2009 by the current UPA government, and simultaneously given the rank of a cabinet minister, is increasingly in the news because rumours are swirling in India that a new government might choose to shelve the project. The card, that was envisioned to become an almost one-stop-shop in the future years regarding the delivery of welfare schemes and subsidies, is no longer mandatory to avail some of these, according to India’s Supreme Court. This is a setback to the government that considered the Aadhar card a method to plug “leaks” in the government delivery systems. Despite this, reports of data leakage, and even stories of fake Aadhar cards making their way into the news, the current establishment seems hopeful. The deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, Montek Ahluwalia, made a statement that the card did not require a legal basis to be used for transferring benefits to citizens, much in the same way citizens are not legally required to hold degrees to gain jobs.
The UIDAI project remains complex – a herculean task. The UK government shelved its identity card project because it was untested and the technology not secure, and because of the risks to the safety and security of citizens. With India in the midst of an election, it remains to be seen what will happen when a new government is formed, and whether the country can succeed in this task.
This article was published on April 10, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
11 Apr 14 | Egypt, News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture
The trial of three journalists working for the Al Jazeera English Channel (AJE) was adjourned on Thursday until April 22.
For award-winning Australian journalist Peter Greste, AJE ‘s Cairo Bureau Chief Mohamed Fadel Fahmy (a Canadian-Egyptian) and producer Baher Mohamed who have been locked up behind bars in a Cairo prison for more than 100 days, this means spending twelve more days in a dark, cramped cell with only an hour a day of exercise, fresh air and sunlight.
The AJE journalists are among 20 defendants accused by prosecutors of spreading false news that harms Egypt’s national security and aiding a terrorist organisation–charges the jailed journalists have repeatedly denied.
“There is not a shred of evidence incriminating us,” Mohamed Fahmy shouted out to a group of foreign journalists covering Thursday’s hearing. ” The case is political and we are scapegoats caught up in the middle of the Egypt-Qatar political rift.”
The patience of the three journalists is clearly wearing thin. While they had smiled and joked with family members and journalists attending the previous court sessions, signs of fatigue and frustration were evident on their faces Thursday as they appeared in the makeshift court at the Torah Police Institute, south of Cairo, for a fifth time. After 103 days in detention, their nerves were clearly frayed and Fahmy made no attempt to hide his anger. After the judge rejected his pleas to dismiss the charges against them and release him and his colleagues on bail, Fahmy shouted out from his cage , “Our acquittal won’t be enough! We shall seek compensation from prosecutors for the months we have spent here.”
Fahmy also vowed to expose what he said were ” crimes against humanity” being committed inside the prison walls. He however, refrained from disclosing the details of those crimes, telling journalists that what he and the other defendants say in court “is often taken against us” and results in the maltreatment and abuse of the defendants at the hands of investigators and prison guards .
Thursday’s hearing was briefly interrupted when Khaled Abdel Raouf , one of the defendants, fainted inside his cage and had to be carried away by prison guards. Fahmy later explained that Abdel Raouf’s ailing health was the result of the poor conditions at the Scorpion high security prison where he is being held. “The conditions there are inhumane; the prison is not fit for an animal,” Fahmy complained bitterly.
Fahmy himself had spent a month in solitary confinement at the high security prison before being transferred to Torah Prison where he now shares a cell with Greste and Baher and where conditions are slightly better. Some of the other defendants in the case– including Abdel Raouf and Anas El Beltagy– however, remain at the high security prison where hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood leaders also languish. Unlike the Al Jazeera team, the “Scorpion” defendants are being denied family visits and reading materials and have also complained (in a previous court session ) of torture at a detention camp where they were held immediately after their arrest.
Thursday’s court session opened with the screening of video footage that the prosecution had claimed supported the case against the Al Jazeera news team. The video material that was shown however, clearly had nothing to do with the case. It consisted of content from Sky News Arabia’s coverage of the political crisis in Egypt, a press briefing by a Keyan government official on the September terror attack at a Nairobi shopping mall, and part of a news report on Somali refugees in Nairobi that had earned Greste a Peabody Award. Asked by a journalist how he had felt watching his report in the courtroom, Greste replied, ” If they had played more of it, they would realize this is the type of work we do.”
A defence lawyer in the case told the judge that the charges were not against a terrorist news network that was inciting violence but against well-educated, patriotic young Egyptians .”The case is tarnishing Egypt’s image in the eyes of the world and must come to an end soon,” he insisted.
While the judge could not but dismiss the videos as “unrelated to the case”, he however, ordered another hearing later this month to allow a team of experts more time to review the videos in the presence of the Defence lawyers. His decision drew angry condemnation on social media networks from fellow journalists and internet activists around the world who for weeks had expressed their solidarity with the detained Al Jazeera staff via the Twitter hashtag: #FreeAJStaff .
”What a mockery of justice, Egypt!” retorted Australian broadcaster Mark Colvin (who works for ABC Radio) via his Twitter account. In a news report broadcast on CNN after the session, the on-air reporter sarcastically called it “ a trial by error” , saying that justice had been delayed in Egypt not once but five times.
In a statement released on Wednesday (a day before the court hearing), Amnesty International described the AJE detainees as “prisoners of conscience” and called for their immediate release.
Infuriated by the result of the hearing, Greste said he and the other members of his team were “fed up”, describing the evidence presented against them as “a joke.”
“ We have had enough,” he said. “I am unbelievably frustrated. But we still believe that in the end , justice will prevail.”
This article was published on 11 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
11 Apr 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features
(Illustration: Shutterstock)
State surveillance has been much publicised of late due to Snowden’s revelations, but allegations against the NSA and GCHQ are only one aspect of the international industry surrounding wholesale surveillance. Another growing concern is the emergence and growth of private sector surveillance firms selling intrusion software to governments and government agencies around the world.
Not restricted by territorial borders and globalised like every other tradable commodity, buyers and sellers pockmark the globe. Whether designed to support law enforcement or anti-terrorism programmes, intrusion software, enabling states to monitor, block, filter or collect online communication, is available for any government willing to spend the capital. Indeed, there is money to be made – according to Privacy International, the “UK market for cyber security is estimated to be worth approximately £2.8 billion.”
The table below, collated from a range of sources including Mother Jones, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Bloomberg, Human Rights Watch, Citizen Lab, Privacy International and Huffington Post, shows the flow of intrusion software around the world.
| Surveillance Company |
Country of Origin |
Alleged Countries of Use |
| VASTech |
South Africa |
Libya (137) |
| Hacking Team |
Italy |
Azerbaijan (160), Egypt (159), Ethiopia (143), Kazakhstan (161), Malaysia (147), Nigeria (112), Oman (134), Saudi Arabia (164), Sudan (172), Turkey (154), Uzebekistan (166) |
| Elbit Systems |
Israel |
Israel (96) |
| Creative Software |
UK |
Iran (173) |
| Gamma TSE |
UK |
Indonesia (132) |
| Narus |
USA |
Egypt (159), Pakistan (158), Saudi Arabia (164) |
| Cisco |
USA |
China (175) |
| Cellusys Ltd |
Ireland |
Syria (177) |
| Adaptive Mobile Security Ltd |
Ireland |
Syria (177), Iran (173) |
| Blue Coat Systems |
USA |
Syria (177) |
| FinFisher GmbH |
Germany |
Egypt (159), Ethiopia (143) |
Note: The numbers alongside the alleged countries of use are the country’s ranking from 2014 Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index 2014.
While by no means complete, this list is indicative of three things. There is a clear divide, in terms of economic development, between the buyer and seller countries; many of the countries allegedly purchasing intrusion software are in the midst of, or emerging from, conflict or internal instability; and, with the exception of Israel, every buyer country ranks in the lower hundred of the latest World Press Freedom Index.
The alleged legitimacy of this software in terms of law enforcement ignores the potential to use these tools for strictly political ends. Human Rights Watch outlined in its recent report the case of Tadesse Kersmo, an Ethiopian dissident living in London. Due to his prominent position in opposition party, Ginbot 7 it was discovered that his personal computer had traces of FinFisher’s intrusion software, FinSpy, jeopardising the anonymity and safety of those in Ethiopia he has been communicating with. There is no official warrant out for his arrest and at the time of writing there is no known reason in terms of law enforcement or anti-terrorism legislation, outside of his prominence in an opposition party, for his surveillance. It is unclear whether this is part of an larger organised campaign against dissidents in both Ethiopia and the diaspora, but similar claims have been filed against the Ethiopian government on behalf of individuals in the US and Norway.
FinFisher GmbH states on its website that “they target individual suspects and can not be used for mass interception.” Without further interrogation into the end-use of its customers, there is nothing available to directly corroborate or question this statement. But to what extent are private firms responsible for the use of its software by its customers and how robustly can they monitor the end-use of its customers?
In the US Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, there is a piece of guidance entitled Know Your Customer. This outlines steps to be undertaken by firms to identify what the end-use of its products is. This is a proactive process, placing the responsibility firmly with the seller to clearly identify and act on abnormal circumstances, or ‘red flags’. The guidance clearly states that the seller has a “duty to check out the suspicious circumstances and inquire about the end-use, end-user, or ultimate country of destination.”
Hacking Team has sold software, most notably the Remote Control System (RCS) to a number of countries around the world (see above). Citizen Lab, based out of the University of Toronto, has identified 21 countries that have potentially used this software, including Egypt and Ethiopia. In its customer policy, Hacking Team outlines in detail the lengths it goes to verify the end-use and end-user of RCS. Mentioning the above guidelines, Hacking Team have put into practice an oversight process involving a board of external engineers and lawyers who can veto sales, research of human rights reports, as well as a process that can disable functionality if abuses come to light after the sale.
However, Hacking Team goes a long way to obscure the identity of countries using RCS. Labelled as untraceable, RCS has established a “Collection Infrastructure” that utilises a chain of proxies around the world that shields the user country from further scrutiny. The low levels of media freedom in the countries purportedly utilising RCS, the lack of transparency in terms of the oversight process including the make-up of the board and its research sources, as well as the reluctance of Hacking Team to identify the countries it has sold RCS to undermines the robustness of such due diligence. In the words of Citizen Lab: “we have encountered a number of cases where bait content and other material are suggestive of targeting for political advantage, rather than legitimate law enforcement operations.”
Many of the firms outline their adherence to the national laws of the country they sell software to when defending their practices. But without international guidelines and alongside the absence of domestic controls and legislation protecting the population against mass surveillance, intrusion software remains a useful, if expensive, tool for governments to realise and cement their control of the media and other fundamental freedoms.
Perhaps the best way of thinking of corporate responsibility in terms of intrusion software comes from Adds Jouejati of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, “It’s like putting a gun in someone’s hand and saying ‘I can’t help the way the person uses it.’”
This article was posted on 11 April, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
