27 Nov 14 | Americas, Digital Freedom, Europe and Central Asia, Ireland, News and features, United Kingdom, United States
How did people organise protests before the internet? How did riots happen? How did terrorists carry out attacks? All these things definitely happened. I remember them distinctly. In the days before the world wide web, all sorts of things occurred without anyone “taking to social media” or “using sophisticated communications technology” (phones).
But current discussions are premised on the idea that the web in itself has created civil disorder and even terrorism.
In Ireland, as protests have got to the point where government ministers can barely leave the house without being confronted by citizens unhappy with proposed household water metering, commentator Chris Johns suggested that “Social media has brought more illness to Ireland than Ebola has. Anarchists, extremists and all-round loonies can find a voice and organisational structure – if only for a decent riot – amidst a political fragmentation that rewards those who shout the loudest.”
Considering there have been no recorded incidents of Ebola in Ireland, the first part of this assertion could be technically true; or we could say that social media has brought the same amount of illness to Ireland — none. As for the anarchists and loonies, well, they have always been with us, and had some success in organising before Facebook came along.
Across the Atlantic, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said that “nonstop rumours on social media” had significantly hampered the investigation into the killing of Michael Brown, and contributed to his decision not to prosecute. This in the land of the First Amendment, where the justice system long ago learned to deal with hearsay.
Back over the ocean again, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee report into the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale pointed to a Facebook message sent by Adebowale, in which he expressed a desire to kill a soldier. In spite of several failures by the intelligence services, who were long aware of Adebowale’s tendencies, Facebook faced criticism for not “flagging up” the message to the security forces. Social media to blame once again.
Why do we do this? Why must every single occurrence now have a social media angle?
Partly because everything many of us do now does have an internet angle. The web is simply part of human interaction for millions.
But for some it seems foreign. My generation is the last that will remember life before the internet.
For all that, it is still shockingly new. I’m not just saying that to make myself feel younger. Some people my age and older (“digital immigrants”, apparently, which makes me a double immigrant) have adapted reasonably well to our new environment. Some really haven’t. I have watched a QC attempt to explain the difference between a reply and a direct message on Twitter. It was as you’d expect, equal parts cute and infuriating, but it did also make one think how insanely fast we have adapted to certain technologies, and how some people are left behind.
When was the last time they changed Facebook? I honestly couldn’t say. But remember when complaining about changes to Facebook was a thing? We used to object; now we install our own mental updates and carry on, using new features and forgetting what went before. I have literally no idea what Facebook looked like when I joined it. Or Twitter for that matter.
And I, remember, am an immigrant, not a native. There are still a lot of people who don’t want to emigrate to the web, because they think it’s full of conspiracy theories and pornography. And there are some who occasionally “log on” to the internet, and then “log off” again, like an overnight work trip to Leicester.
So when something happens that involves an email, a tweet, a Facebook update or whatever, for some that is still of interest in itself.
Will this ever end? Hopefully. As time goes on, the distinction between the internet and THE INTERNET will become clearer. THE INTERNET is a culture; the place where the likes of Doge and Grumpycat come from, and all their predecessors (I still have a soft spot for Mahir “I Kiss You” Çağrı. Look it up, youngsters). The internet is simply a communications tool, like millions upon millions of tin cans joined with taut string. When we can get this a little clearer in our heads, then finding a web angle for every occasion will feel a bit silly, like blaming Bic for poison pen letters.
That is not to say that we should take the web for granted, or become blase about its use and abuse. But we must treat it as simply a part of the environment. Essentially, we have to stop thinking about things happening “on the internet”. There is no “internet freedom” — there is just freedom. There is no “internet privacy” — there is privacy. There are no “internet bullies” — there are bullies.
Put simply, we need to ban the word “internet”.
This article was published on 27 November 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
12 Nov 14 | Events
In the 1980s, Stewart Brand declared that “information wants to be free”. The phrase became a slogan for technology activists, who argued that tech can liberate information from expensive patents and help further the ever expanding limits of human knowledge. As a part of the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival, Rana Mitter tests the promises of the internet to spread ideas quickly and democratically. Catch up online with this event featuring:
- Dr Rufus Pollock (Founding President of the Open Knowledge, an international non-profit organisation that promotes making data and information accessible)
- Jodie Ginsberg (Chief Executive of Index on Censorship)
WHERE: BBC Radio 3
WHEN: Thursday 20 November 2014, 10:00pm (then on iPlayer)
TICKETS: Listen live here
04 Sep 14 | Digital Freedom, Iran, News and features
(Image: Meysam Mim/Demotix)
President Hassan Rouhani is fond of rhetorical flourishes that promise Iranians freer access to virtually all forms of information, from satellite television to uncensored books to a less tightly-regulated press. While in all of the aforementioned areas his policies have failed, or failed to exert themselves, there is one domain where the Rouhani government has pushed forward seriously: securing Iranians better and faster internet connections, including mobile internet that would enable them to properly use the smartphones they buy with such enthusiasm.
In remarks to a group of clerics on Monday, Rouhani presented the internet as crucial to the nation’s progress in both science and academic research, areas that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has also identified as paramount to Iran’s development. “We cannot cannot close the gates of the world to our younger generation,” Rouhani said.
He warned that if Iran refuses to tolerate the technological needs of a savvy young generation now, “we will have to do it tomorrow. If not, the day after tomorrow.”
Though Rouhani has backtracked on a number of cultural reforms in the face of fierce hardline opposition, he has been steadfast in backing his internet ideals with hard policies. In the past two weeks, the government has granted 3G and 4G licenses to the country’s two main mobile operators, and has in recent months also permitted internet providers to increase bandwidth on home connections.
One reason why the president has been more willing to back the provision of higher speed internet is that so far, it has come at a more reasonable political price. Because service providers still implement government filters, the state censorship regime that prevents Iranians from accessing websites deemed “immoral” — everything from Facebook to many Persian news sites — will remain in place. While faster connections do mean that Iranians can more nimbly use proxy servers to get around the state filters, the speeds are still slow by developed world standards, requiring great patience from those wishing to use the internet to its full capacity. But 3G and mobile internet remain issues highly contested by hardliners made nervous by the challenges of filtering mobile devices.
Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makaram Shirazi last week issued a fatwa declaring high-speed and mobile internet haram, later comparing mobile internet to “muddy water” that requires filtering. Rouhani has sought to bypass these concerns by making the case for the internet’s importance as a research tool for scientific progress. As Rouhani joked in an 30 August press conference, the speeds that the country’s clerics are advocating are slow enough to make someone waiting to download an article fall asleep.
This framing of the issue is a canny approach, for it challenge Khamenei to back up his ardent support for Iranian scientific empowerment with policies that might otherwise make him uncomfortable. This past July at a meeting with university professors, Khamenei praised the work of the country’s “scientific movement”, saying that it “has achieved great objectives and become recognised on the international scene”.
By linking the objectives most dear to Khamenei to his own objective of pulling Iran out of the internet dark age, Rouhani is carving out a political space where his goals are seen to overlap with those of the supreme leader.
When the Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content sought to block access to the popular mobile messaging tool WhatsApp, Rouhani intervened. While this certainly endeared him to young Iranians who used the messaging service widely, Rouhani also risked riling the National Telecommunications Company, which is losing revenue as Iranians turn to cheaper foreign alternatives for messaging.
In the battle over control of the internet, there are multiple institutions across political factions vying for a role, with the competing financial interests of various mobile, 3G and telecoms providers underlaying the fray. But what’s clear is that Rouhani has chosen the internet as one of the rare areas where he will back rhetoric with clear policy.
This article was published on 4 Sept, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
02 Jun 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Young Writers / Artists Programme
(Image: Shutterstock)
Unlike any previous time in the history of the world, there is a generation growing up today with unprecedented knowledge and power at their immediate and constant disposal. Their voices cannot be silenced, they can communicate with each other instantaneously from anywhere in the world. They are children of the internet, and they are politically and socially empowered in ways that are not yet clearly understood. Increasingly defining their identities online as much as offline, net-powered Millenials are collectively reshaping social norms — defining the legacy their generation will leave society. The internet is a product of, and a critical factor in, this legacy.
For example, the internet is a key medium for personal expression. Deliberately open-access and open-source architectures that transcend national boundaries means that the online world is a place where its users become increasingly accustomed to possessing both a platform and a voice regardless of their status in society. Even where it is dangerous to criticise politicians, or to practice a faith, or to be homosexual, the internet provides shelter in anonymity and the chance to meet like-minded people. In this way, the children of the internet have access to support, advice and assistance, but also to allies. Even the most isolated human can now take action with the power of a collaborative collective rather than as a lone individual, and they do so with an attitude that has become acclimatised to unfettered freedom of speech.
For the internet generation, this translates to their political actions online and often erupts into their offline behaviour, too. Online petitions gain infinitely more traction than their pen-and-paper twins, and the more anarchic side of the internet takes no prisoners in parodying public figures, as evinced recently with the numerous revisions of the recent “beer and bingo” tax cut advertisements produced by the ruling coalition. More controversially, Wikileaks infamously released hundreds of thousands of classified government communiqués, and “hacktivist” groups such as Anonymous make their presence felt with powerful retaliations against firms and governments that they perceive to have suppressed internet freedom. Even high-security sites such as the US Copyright Office and Paypal have been targeted — civil disobedience that is symptomatic of the new, sharing internet generation that is paradoxically mindful of personal privacy and disparaging of public opacity.
For the strongest demonstration of the way this attitude and power translates, look no further than the violent reaction of a primarily young body of protesters during the Arab Spring and in Ukraine. The internet was the conduit through which popular campaigns against ruling regimes transformed into widespread civil disobedience and a full-blown political movement. Empowered with access to forms of political commentary comparatively free of governmental intervention and the ability of every protester to act as a professional journalist by virtue of a camera phone and a Twitter account, the children of the internet communicated, mobilised and acted to cast away governments from Tunisia to Yemen; Egypt twice over. They made their voices heard: not at the ballot box as previous generations might have, but in the streets of Cairo and Sana’a and the virtual spaces of Facebook and Blackberry Messenger. Small wonder then, that governments targeted and blocked social networking sites to quell dissent. In many countries the internet was shut down altogether.
Yet, the internet persevered — as John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted: “The internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”. Despite the long running tussle between the users of the internet and governments who seek to regulate it, it remains untameable. In each instance, almost immediately after internet usage has been restricted, information has circulated about circumventing government regulations — even total shutdowns have been dodged through external satellite connections.
Powered overwhelmingly by the young, the internet is changing the way our societies are structured. Its effects upon our civilisation are poorly understood, particularly among young people who have never known a world without the internet. Ultimately, however, it has done more for individual freedom than any other development in the last half-century. It grants any person a voice with mere access to a keyboard and a broadband connection. It holds governments to account in new and innovative ways, and most crucially, it is an irreversible development. An entire generation defines itself, subconsciously, through the internet; previous such advancements came only through the invention of the printing press, radio and television. One thing is for certain — as broadband usage approaches saturation in many developed countries, we are all children of the internet now.
This article was originally posted on 2 June, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
