09 Jan 11 | Digital Freedom, Uncategorized
Almost exactly a year ago, Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech in support of internet freedom, in which she condemned surveillance and censorship overseas. The tactics that the US government is now using in its continuing attempt to indict Julian Assange have robbed Hillary Clinton’s policy of any remaining credibility and leaves the United States compromised in seeking to impose international human rights standards for freedom of expression online.
The investigators appear to be on a fishing expedition to unearth information that will enable it to prosecute Assange and have no shame not only in attempting to force Twitter to hand over personal data about its users, but in trying to keep that attempt secret. Thanks to Twitter’s stand, there is now a chance of challenging the court order.
Reports this weekend reveal the desperate lengths to which the administration will go to: not only in seeking details on an elected member of parliament, Iceland’s Birgitta Jonsdottir, but in being wholly undiscriminating in its requests for information. Why would Twitter have the financial details of its users?
In an interesting post today, privacy expert Christopher Soghoian points out that the judge is not supposed to issue a court order unless the government “offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents of a wire or electronic communication, or the records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation”. Is it in any case likely, as Soghoian points out, that someone like Assange would use Twitter for anything private?
06 Dec 10 | Uncategorized
Imagine if an American politician had called for the execution of the editor of the New York Times.
Or if the newspaper’s bank had declined to handle its business any more because it considered that it had published information that promoted illegal activities. There would be an outcry and widespread denunciation of such an assault on press freedom and the First Amendment. The latest revelations today, following Wikileaks’ publication of strategic sites considered vital to the US’s national security will increase the pressure to isolate and condemn Wikileaks and anyone who supports the site and Julian Assange. Not only have Amazon and PayPal now refused to do business with Wikileaks, but students at Columbia University have been warned that they risk their job prospects if they download the leaked diplomatic cables or even make comments about the documents on Facebook and Twitter. The advice was sent to students by Columbia’s Office of Career Services, following a tip off from an alumnus working in the State Department.
It is perhaps the fallout from Wikileaks’ mass publication of diplomatic cables, rather than the content of the cables themselves, that may do the most harm in the end. When one of the world’s leading liberal educational institutions advises self-censorship to its students, rather than encouraging them to explore and read one of the most significant publications of our time, it is clear that we are in the grip of such a damaging panic that it is threatening the core principles of freedom of speech. The fury over Wikileaks’ publication of the diplomatic cables is not only undermining the United States’ historic commitment to the First Amendment, but the Obama administration’s avowed support for internet freedom (spearheaded by Hillary Clinton) now looks decidedly hollow. It is the Swiss who currently emerge as the world’s champions of freedom of information, vowing to stand up to political pressure.
Wikileaks is here to stay. Wikileaks.org is still offline, but the content can now be accessed on more than 300 mirror sites. Even if the United States and its supporters such as France were successful in removing it for good, another version or a successor to Assange and his colleagues would take their place. Prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act (one of the most draconian pieces of legislation in US history) will solve nothing beyond chilling the freedom not only of whistleblowers, but of everyone who wants to enjoy the right to share and exchange information freely. When Daniel Ellsberg faced trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1973, it was press freedom and the public’s right to know that was in jeopardy. This time it’s the freedom of expression of us all. Whether you think Wikileaks’ behaviour is reckless or admirable, we all need to take the long view in considering the consequences.
02 Dec 10 | Uncategorized
Last time I wrote about an Armenian newspaper editor who was abused and persecuted for exercising his right to free speech, it was Hrant Dink in Turkey, cruelly murdered for his courage and principles.
It is with horror that I am now writing to ring the alarm bell for another Armenian editor in Yerevan, Armenia. Nikol Pashinyan is editor–in-chief of Haykakan Zhamanak (Armenian Times). The 35-year-old journalist is leader of Armenia’s National Congress movement.
Pashinyan was jailed in 2009 during the stormy protests in Yerevan that followed the hotly disputed February 2008 elections and is now serving a 47-month sentence. Despite warnings, he continued to write articles from jail protesting and opposing the present government.
The trial and imprisonment were criticised Council of Europe, European Union, the United States Government and many other international organisations and foreign governments.
Pashinyan has been subjected to physical and psychological abuse in prison. He has been attacked four times in the last two months. According to reports on 17 November two masked individuals assaulted him while he was asleep. Even before they launched an investigation, prison authorities issued a statement denying the charge, saying that Pashinyanhad dreamt it. The journalist presented them with evidence — his bed sheet with footprints of military boots and traces of blood.
Colleagues and editors of major Armenian newspapers and websites organised a protest action in Yerevan urging the Armenian authorities to stop the assaults against Nikol Pashinyan in prison and to release him immediately, running the headline “Free Nikol” on their front pages.
“We call upon our colleagues, journalists and human rights defenders worldwide to support us in our struggle for freedom and justice. We believe that actions of international solidarity will sober the Armenian authorities and empower Armenian civil society in its fight for Armenia without political prisoners,” says Isabella Sargsyan from Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Armenian Committee.
You can sign a petition for the release of Nikol Pashinyan at http://keghart.com/Pashinyan_Free
Nouritza Matossian is the Author of Black Angel, A Life of Arshile Gorky and director of the documentary Hrant Dink, Heart of Two Nations. www.arshile-gorky.com
23 Nov 10 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
It started out as a routine night on the Egyptian parliamentary campaign trail, and ended as a clear lesson in the methods that a police state uses to control, intimidate and generally confuse journalists.
Along with several colleagues, I traveled to Shubra Al-Kheima — a grim industrial Cairo suburb — on Sunday night at the invitation of Dr Mohamed Beltagui, a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated parliamentarian, seeking to defend his seat.
The Brotherhood is illegal in Egypt and officially banned from forming a political party. Nevertheless in 2005 parliamentary elections, Beltagui and 87 other Brotherhood members won seats running as nominal independents — instantly establishing the Brotherhood as the country largest opposition bloc.
This time around the government seems determined to cut the Islamist group down to size. Hundreds of Brotherhood supporters have been arrested in the past week, often after police moved in to break up Brotherhood rallies.
At first there was no sign of such a crackdown on Sunday night. My colleagues and I walked along with Beltagui’s sign-carrying supporters, recording their chants and watching the candidate give several brief campaign speeches over a portable loudspeaker.
After about two hours, I got into a taxi along with Ursula Lindsey, a correspondent for the BBC radio program The World, and prepared to head home. Suddenly the taxi was stopped by a crowd of plain-clothed men, obviously officers of Egypt’s ubiquitous State Security Investigations force.
They removed us from the taxi, and demanded our IDs and credentials. They aggressively asked us where was our tasreeh (permission) to work as journalists in this neighborhood. I explained several times that my press card issued by the Ministry of Information WAS my permission. It became very quickly apparent that our official state press cards were worth almost nothing.
What followed was a half-hour of surreal tedium — standing on a darkened street with 10 plain-clothed officers who apparently thought they were protecting the country from us. The officers kept explaining that they were “following orders” but refused to explain just what those orders were.
There were several comments implying that as foreign journalists, we were hopelessly biased against the Egyptian government and only gave attention to opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. At one point, one of them laughed at said, “Welcome to Shubra al-Kheima. Now don’t ever come back. Shubra al-Kheima is hazardous to your health.”
Finally I was handed a mobile phone. One the other end was a man identifying himself only as “General Ahmed.” He came off as the nicest guy in the world, and told me I was welcome to return to this neighborhood any time I wanted. But there was a catch. “To prevent problems like this in the future,” he told me, it would be best if I first stopped by the local police station to inform them of my presence. That way, he said, they could arrange a police escort, “for your protection.”
Fortunately, I restrained the urge to point out that the only protection I needed was from his men.
Finally we were allowed to leave. In the end, it was more annoying than intimidating, more bureaucratic than bullying. But it was a clear window into the type of petty harassment the regime routinely employs in order to shrink the local political playing field and limit the activities of foreign journalists.
On Monday morning came a surreal post-script. The government held a press conference to discuss their electoral preparations. The head of the state-sponsored National Council for Human Rights issued several assurances that this electoral round would be clean, transparent and free of the violations that have marred previous votes.
I mentioned that several journalists, including myself, were detained the previous night simply for doing our jobs. The responses were genuinely shocking.
Several government officials told me that it was my fault for being there. If I want to interview a candidate, I was told, I should meet them in their office. To walk alongside a campaign rally constitutes “political activity,” they said — which apparently makes me and other journalists fair game in the eyes of the state.
