Contents – Unsung heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression
Contents
Book censorship is rife on Amazon.com, according to a report from The Citizen Lab
What do rainbow-coloured hair extensions, Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science and Sex Addiction: A Survival Guide have in common? They have all allegedly been swept up in broad censorship measures by retail giant Amazon, according to a new report by The Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto.
The Citizen Lab, which studies openness and transparency on the internet, analysed the US storefront Amazon.com to uncover restrictions on certain products being ordered from specific regions. They found that the most common product category that is restricted is books, often with themes of LGBTQ+ lives, the occult, erotica, Christianity or health and wellness. These are censored in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, as well as Brunei Darussalam, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles and Zambia.
But it isn’t just products actually banned in these countries that are restricted. The Citizen Lab uncovered a raft of “collateral censorship” where items were miscategorised (for example, because they contained the word “gay” in their title or description), hence the banning of rainbow-coloured hair extensions due to the word “rainbow”.
When potential consumers from these regions try to purchase various products from Amazon.com, they are given various error messages, such as an announcement that a product is out of stock. But, according to The Citizen Lab’s methodology, these items are not out of stock. The organisation’s research can distinguish between products being genuinely unavailable for delivery in a region, and being restricted.
Noura Al-Jizawi, senior researcher at The Citizen Lab and co-author of the report, told Index that this sheds light on a potential broader strategy around censorship.
“Rather than taking responsibility or openly acknowledging its role in restricting certain content, Amazon masks these decisions as stock or availability issues,” she said. “This tactic allows the company to evade accountability and makes it difficult for stakeholders — customers, authors and publishers — to challenge or appeal such practices.”
She claimed that this helps Amazon to maintain its reputation and avoid accusations of censorship, as restrictions are framed as logistical problems rather than deliberate decisions. But transparency, she explained, is crucial.
“If a book has been miscategorised or unfairly censored, users have the right to appeal such decisions,” she said. “Similarly, authors and publishers deserve the opportunity to request Amazon to reconsider its decision to restrict their work. Without transparency, these stakeholders are left in the dark, unable to understand or address the reasons behind such restrictions.”
Jeffrey Knockel, senior research associate at The Citizen Lab and another of the report’s co-authors, told Index that his organisation had previously identified censorship on the Saudi Arabia and UAE Amazon storefronts, and were trying to systematically measure which products were blocked when they realised that the same censorship existed on Amazon.com.
The Citizen Lab has written to Amazon to inquire about the pressure the conglomerate might be under from various governments. They have also made recommendations, including that Amazon should “provide transparent and accurate notifications to customers when products are unavailable due to legal restrictions of the destination region” along with details on the relevant law and a mechanism for customers to flag improperly classified items. At the time of publishing, Amazon has not replied to The Citizen Lab.
Yuri Guaiana, senior campaigns manager at All Out, a global movement campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights, spoke to Index in response to the report. He believes Amazon should implement The Citizen Lab’s recommendations as a first step, but should then go even further.
“As a global leader, Amazon has the power to influence norms. It should take a stand against oppressive laws that force censorship, actively working with human rights organisations to advocate for change in restrictive regions,” he said.
All Out has launched a petition demanding that Amazon stops censoring LGBTQ+ books. “For businesses like Amazon, complying with oppressive local demands may seem like a pragmatic choice, but it risks reinforcing systemic discrimination,” he said.
He echoes The Citizen Lab’s concerns around lack of transparency around censorship, which he says shields “both Amazon and oppressive governments from scrutiny”.
If there was better transparency, he explained, customers and human rights campaigners would be more equipped to push back against unjust restrictions and oppressive laws.
He also shared concerns about the issue of “collateral censorship”. “We’ve seen this pattern escalate in places like Russia,” he said. “After Putin’s regime implemented laws censoring so-called ‘LGBT+ propaganda’, enforcement spiralled beyond media and literature. People have been arrested for as little as wearing rainbow [earrings], showing how quickly such policies can expand into every facet of life,” he said.
Index approached Amazon for a right of reply but Amazon did not respond to Index’s request for comment.
Will Syria’s future leaders restore human rights for all?
Hello, readers. This week, the world watched in shock as Bashar al-Assad’s government was toppled by Syrian rebels, bringing the dictator’s 24-year-reign to a close and suddenly ending the country’s brutal 13-year civil war. He and his family have since fled, and allegedly claimed asylum in Russia.
One of the defining legacies of Assad’s ruthless regime were his inhumane prisons, where many political activists, journalists and protesters have been held. According to the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, nearly 60,000 people were tortured and killed in these jails. As news broke of the collapse of Assad’s government on 8 December, videos emerged of the Syrian rebel forces, led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), freeing people from the notorious Saydnaya prison, which had frequently been referred to as a “human slaughterhouse”. Many more people are thought to still be trapped in hidden underground cells.
Assad’s regime has been one of the most repressive for free speech in the world today. It became more violent and restrictive following the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians took to the streets to peacefully protest the government. A major crackdown on freedom of assembly followed, with political activists being detained and tortured, and civilians being targeted with artillery and internationally banned substances such as chemical weapons.
Journalists were imprisoned, tortured, killed and forcibly disappeared. Reporters Without Borders reports that 283 journalists have been killed in Syria since 2011, with 181 of these at the hands of Assad and his allies. On the day his regime fell, 23 journalists were reported to be in prison and another 10 missing. The human rights organisation ranked Syria a woeful 179 out of 180 countries in its latest World Press Freedom Index.
During his reign, Assad had increasingly introduced laws that curbed free speech. Following the uprising, a media law in 2011 had the guise of protecting independent journalism but in reality further restricted journalists’ reporting, legislating that free expression should be “practised with responsibility and awareness”, and prohibiting journalists from reporting on certain topics such as national security, the activities of the army and religious issues. A broad sweeping counter-terrorism law then came in in 2012, which further allowed the state to criminalise peaceful acts of dissent, and a cybercrime law in 2022 imposed six-month jail sentences for Syrian citizens who spread disinformation or “false news” undermining the state’s reputation.
One of the country’s most prominent political activists is Mazen Darwish. A journalist and lawyer, he founded the NGO Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Speech in Damascus in 2004, and was himself charged under the counter-terrorism act. He, alongside other members of his organisation, was arrested during an intelligence service raid in 2012, and he was subsequently imprisoned until 2015. In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, he recalled the torture methods used in prison: electric shocks, suspending detainees by their hands, beatings and sleep deprivation. Following the fall of the regime this week, he tweeted: “For the first time in 50 years, I feel like a citizen.”
Assad’s ruthless reign is over, but the restoration of free speech and broader human rights will not be plain sailing from here. The rebel groups that have overthrown Assad have also been accused of human rights abuses. Of the 283 journalists killed in Syria since 2011, HTS is thought to have killed six journalists, whilst the group’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Joulani is allegedly responsible for the abduction of eight journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders. This is not to mention deaths of media workers at the hands of radical groups like the Islamic State, which reportedly assassinated 22 journalists in Syria between 2013 and 2017. Meanwhile, Kurdish reporters have been killed in airstrikes, which Kurdish media have attributed to the Turkish military.
Concerns also remain for the treatment of minorities such as Kurds, Assyrians and Alawites in the country following Assad’s demise. Whilst the rebels who overthrew Assad have promised tolerance and say they want to build a unified, inclusive Syria, a non-secular government or the emergence of militant factions could see further persecution of ethnic and religious minority groups, as happened in Iraq following the deposition of Saddam Hussein.
For the majority of Syrians, this week is a huge cause of celebration as political prisoners are freed and many of those who were exiled are able to return safely home. Hopefully, the violent repression of free speech in Syria will be over. But questions remain over whether the future leaders of Syria will restore human rights for all, and only time will tell.
Media regulator fails to properly protect freedom of expression in online safety draft guidance
- Leading human rights KC, Phillippa Kaufmann, urges Ofcom to review landmark European Court of Human Rights judgment which established that a “statutory requirement to decrypt communications” was not lawful
- Opinion warns that service providers can not be compelled to breach UK GDPR and compromise users’ cybersecurity
- Index on Censorship criticises Ofcom’s inadequate ‘passing references’ to users’ privacy rights and warns of legal battles if draft guidance on encryption is not updated
Index on Censorship has published a legal opinion from Phillippa Kaufmann KC and Aidan Wills (both of Matrix Chambers) in response to Ofcom’s characterisation of End-to-End Encryption (‘E2EE’) as a risk factor in their Draft Guidance on online harms.
Ofcom has been tasked with implementing the Online Safety Act since 2023 and to explain how technology companies must fulfil their duty of care to users of their online services. The regulations Ofcom has drafted will go before Parliament early next year and require a careful balance between keeping people safe online while respecting individual privacy.
Index on Censorship, as well as a host of civil society organisations who submitted consultation responses on the regulations, have highlighted the regulator’s failure to recognise the benefits of using encrypted communication technologies to users’ privacy and security online.
Ofcom has implied that service providers should weaken encryption on their messaging services to mitigate risks of illegal harms. This is despite the fact that encryption of personal data is a measure that may be taken to comply with the human rights and cybersecurity requirements outlined in the legal opinion. Ofcom should outline the benefits of encryption expressly and clearly in their guidance.
CEO of Index on Censorship, Jemimah Steinfeld said:
“Index has published censored writers across the globe since 1972. Today, we’re using encrypted messaging apps to keep in touch with our network of correspondents around the world, from Iran, to Afghanistan, to Hong Kong.
We are disappointed that Ofcom has failed to properly consider human rights and practical implications in its approach to encryption. This legal opinion confirms there is inadequate consideration of how their draft guidance could undermine the security protections that millions of people rely on every day. Ofcom should revise its guidance before it’s too late, or face a wave of costly and time-consuming legal challenges in the years ahead.
We are calling on Ofcom (and if necessary, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle) to:
- update guidance to reflect the Podchasov v Russia (Feb 2024) ruling – specifically that requiring encryption to be weakened for all users violates Article 8 rights;
- expand guidance beyond just “passing references” to provide “more detailed consideration of the human rights implications of service providers taking any measures which may weaken encryption.””
The legal opinion (which can be consulted below) was sought from expert human rights and technology barristers as Index on Censorship feared there is insufficient weight given to privacy and data protection laws in Ofcom’s draft guidance. Without encrypted communication services, journalists, their sources, and political dissidents across the world, for whom security is essential, will be negatively impacted.
Phillippa Kaufmann KC and Aidan Wills have explained the legal railguards of how content moderation regulation can operate next year when the OSA comes into force. Service providers in the scope of regulation are advised:
- When mitigating risks, they must (as per s 22 of the OSA), have particular regard to service users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy (including data rights); and can only implement measures if they are “proportionate” (as set out in Podchasov v Russia)
- They must comply with UK GDPR which can include processing personal data “in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data”, and to “implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk”.