Letter from America: US companies outed for role in net censorship

1 Apr 2011 | Uncategorized

Hillary Clinton offered a glowing narrative of the US role in Middle Eastern Internet freedom in a speech back in February that championed American values while chastising regimes that trample free expression.

“Our commitment to Internet freedom is a commitment to the rights of people, and we are matching that with our actions,” she declared. “Monitoring and responding to threats to Internet freedom has become part of the daily work of our diplomats and development experts. They are working to advance Internet freedom on the ground at our embassies and missions around the world. The United States continues to help people in oppressive internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online.”

All of this action certainly sounded good (and the image of America as benevolent global Internet expression cop surely flattered many Americans listening). But Clinton left out of her speech one messier topic – the role of US companies in facilitating those filters, sometimes even in supporting the Internet blockades State Department money then pays to help locals circumnavigate.

That element of the story out of the Middle East over the last few months has been largely obscured from public debate in the US over global Internet freedom. Some Internet advocates lamented that Clinton’s speech didn’t tackle the topic, or propose serious measures the US could take to halt the export of homegrown technology used (often with the knowledge of US companies) in censorship abroad.

Lately, though, this uncomfortable complication has been getting real attention.

“Ethical Quandary for Social Sites,” blared a New York Times headline on Monday. The story recounted the case of Flickr, the photo-sharing site (owned by Yahoo), which removed photos uploaded by an Egyptian blogger of images swiped by activists from the State Security Police headquarters. Flickr insisted the photos violated its policy that users may post only their own, original work. But activists jeered what appeared to be selective application of a policy some of Flickr’s own employees don’t follow themselves.

Facebook, meanwhile, was caught this week in a similar awkward spot over a fan page devoted to promoting a Third Palestinian Intifada. Israeli officials demanded Facebook remove the page, which had already amassed more than 200,000 friends. Facebook originally refused, arguing that content that is upsetting to some “alone is not a reason to remove the discussion.” But Wednesday, the social networking site reversed course and yanked the page (now with more than 350,000 followers), on the grounds that its peaceful discourse had dissolved into out-right calls for violence that violated Facebook policy.

That flip-flop has compounded claims that Facebook hinders protesters around the world just as much as it helps them, particularly given the company policy that porhibits activists from signing up for accounts without exposing their true identities.

In the media, stories questioning the role of less visible US technology companies have also proliferated.

“US Products Help Block Mideast Web,” warned the Wall Street Journal this week.

“Censorship: Made in the USA,” read the Huffington Post headline above a story written by Free Press campaign director Tim Karr.

Both pieces relied on revelations unearthed in a new report from the OpenNet Initiative by Jillian C York (a contributor to the new Index magazine) and Helmi Noman. The two found that American and Canadian-made software had been used to block socially and politically objectionable online content for more than 20 million web users in nine North African and Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, the AUE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan and Tunisia.

“This is not simply a case of a general purpose, neutral tool being used for an end not contemplated by its maker,” reads the forward to the report. “The filtering products of today engage in regular communications with their makers, updating lists of millions of websites to block across dozens of content categories, including political opposition and human rights. When McAfee Smartfilter or Websense do their utmost to maintain lists of non-profit and advocacy groups their efforts directly affect what citizens in some authoritarian regimes can and cannot access online.”

The discovery is about as embarrassing as those images of Made-in-the-USA tear gas canisters that turned up in Tahrir Square, and US politicians have begun to take notice, too. Earlier this month, Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate human rights subcommittee, wrote an op-ed for the popular Washington-based political site Politico under the banner “Tyrants can use Facebook, too.”

He finally said what Hillary Clinton did not.

“US technology companies allow millions around the world to express themselves more fully and freely,” the senator wrote. “But the industry has a moral obligation to ensure that its products and services do not help repressive governments. If U.S. companies are unwilling to take reasonable steps to protect human rights, Congress must step in.”

 

The Intifada, Facebook and free speech

1 Apr 2011 | Uncategorized

Earlier this week, Facebook was reported to have removed a page calling for a third Palestinian intifada, after Israeli minister Yuli Edelstein — acting, oddly, in a personal capacity, claimed that it contained direct incitement to killing of Israelis and Jews. Facebook also received complaints from the Anti-Defamation League. The social media giant initially resisted calls to take the page down, but the page was eventually removed. Now it’s back.

Anyway, the whole episode led to me being interviewed on the BBC World Service’s World Update. You can listen to it here (about 43 minutes in).

Julian Assange and the big picture

3 Mar 2011 | Uncategorized

This article was originally published in the Guardian

I’ve always wanted a walk-on part in a Hollywood movie, but I don’t suppose Steven Spielberg will indulge me. The mogul has bought the film rights to two recent books critical of Julian Assange, both of which provide racy accounts of the difficult relationship between the WikiLeaks founder, his comrades and the newspapers he worked with. Now my role as an alleged “Jewish” conspirator against him may, if I’m lucky, go celluloid.

All this would be entertaining, but for anyone who cares about free expression and freedom of information, the catfight between WikiLeaks and the organisations that were longstanding supporters is a shame. At the risk of sounding pious, it’s time to refocus on the big issues.

When Index on Censorship began nearly 40 years ago, the issues were perhaps more black and white than those posed by instant information and the internet, and the competing needs of free expression, confidentiality, privacy and security Assange has raised. Index strongly supported the publication of the leaked US embassy cables. With the odd exception, we saw no evidence that they posed a clear and present danger to sources; we saw them as strongly in the public interest. The days when governments or corporations believed they had a right to secrecy, to protect their narrow interests or save them embarrassment, are gone.

Index’s association with Assange goes back some time. In 2008 WikiLeaks won the new media prize at our annual awards. We were pleased to host him in a debate in London last September, but his combative demeanour that evening was a surprise. Throughout the past few months we have been at the heart of the tussle. Two of Index’s trustees are Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens and his agent, Caroline Michel. Whenever asked, particularly in the US, about reconciling Stephens’s two roles, I have pointed out that Index is a broad church, and that Stephens has been a longstanding battler for free speech.

It has often felt like treading on egg shells. We were asked in December to channel Assange’s defence fund through our bank account. Our chairman, the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, and I thought it inappropriate for a charity to become involved in the personal allegations against Assange. So we declined.

When urged at the start of January by Assange’s publisher to help him write his memoirs I said I was ready to assist, but only if I had strong editorial input and that no subject was off-limits. This, I was told, was not acceptable. Roughly at the same time our organisation started asking questions about Israel Shamir, a man accused of Holocaust denial and of being a close associate of Belarus’s autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko. Index is one of the founders of the Belarus Committee. Despite repeated but polite requests to WikiLeaks, our team was stonewalled, so we went public with our concerns.

Assange’s reported conspiracy remarks to Private Eye magazine about me and senior figures in the Guardian do not help his cause. With so many genuine adversaries, why seek more? His approach has reinforced a view that whistleblowing is the preserve of irresponsible eccentrics — playing into the hands of malign forces in the US seeking to prosecute him for “terrorism” or under the espionage act.

Thanks in large part to WikiLeaks, no matter how hard the authorities try, it will be impossible in future to prevent conscientious whistleblowers from passing on material that seeks to cast a light on the actions of the powerful — information that might otherwise remain secret. Due to the published documents, people around the world — notably in the Middle East and north Africa — have a better sense of what others thought of their autocratic leaders. All this is the positive legacy. The rest is soap opera or, dare I say it, Tinseltown.

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