DG_Handbuch_NN.pdf. Herdict Blog » Blog Archive » DPI Threat to Freedom of Expression. The Fragile State of Media Freedom in Latin America. "The recent declines in this region, which had previously seen such broad advances in media freedom, are a stark reminder that such freedoms are fragile and must be nurtured and defended when they come under attack. " This blog entry describes a range of negative developments over the past decade that "have left media freedom on the defensive in much of Central and South America. " It highlights some data shared in the Freedom of the Press 2012" report. For example, in Hispanic America, meaning the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking parts of the Americas, only 3 (15%) of the countries were rated Free, and just 1.5% of the population lived in Free media environments.
"Also worrying are the trends over time. To cite an example from a specific country in the region, Mexico fell to Not Free status in 2010 and continued to suffer from high levels of criminal violence in 2011, the year covered by the 2012 report. Netzaktivisten: Club der Visionäre | Digital. Berlin ist die Heimat der Netzaktivisten: Sie kippen Gesetze, beraten Parteien und bringen die alte Ordnung durcheinander. Die Nerds haben jetzt Macht.
Aber was wollen sie damit? DIE ZEIT Nº 29/201212. Juli 2012 08:00 Uhr Speichern Drucken Twitter Facebook Google + Der Mann, der gegen die EU kämpft, trägt ein T-Shirt mit dem Slogan »arm aber WLAN«. Beckedahl ist einer, der die EU-Gesetzentwürfe zum Produktpiraterie-Handelsabkommen Acta mit Leidenschaft gelesen hat, um sich darüber mit Leidenschaft zu empören. Anzeige Seit zehn Jahren bloggt Beckedahl über Netzpolitik. Es ging bei den Protesten vor allem darum, ein anderes Weltbild zu verteidigen. Ihr Feindbild ist die alte, analoge Generation, die das Netz beherrschen und zensieren wolle – so wie Ursula von der Leyen, die als Familienministerin ein Gesetz vorschlug, das die Sperrung von kinderpornografischen Netzseiten ermöglichen sollte. Den gläsernen Staat wünschen sich viele, den gläsernen Bürger nicht. Oh no they di’nt… | the engine room.
The engine room has been on the road recently, Alix presenting the Tahrir data project at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum, and I presenting on open data standards for international human rights indices, with quite a bit going on in-between. More about all of this soon, but first a quick post to clear up a story I have seen shooting across the politico-tech sphere: No, the United Nations did NOT declare the internet to be a human right. A headline to the contrary is great, and fits well into the Arab Spring narrative that many of us are still vainly hoping will blossom into a real domino effect of democratization. So it is understandable that many smart commentators have grabbed at it–with varying degrees of precision (PdF notes that the “declaration” was in a report, Mashable that disconnection constitutes a violation).
A few clarifications: “The UN” did not do anything. It is in this sense the thematic rapporteurs are perhaps most important. The report did not “declare” anything. Action | Access. The War for India's Internet - By Rebecca MacKinnon. "65 years since your independence," a new battle for freedom is under way in India -- according to a YouTube video uploaded by an Indian member of Anonymous, the global "hacktivist" movement. With popular websites like Vimeo.com blocked across India by court order, the video calls for action: "Fight for your rights. Fight for India. " Over the past several weeks, the group has launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites belonging to Internet service providers, government departments, India's Supreme Court, and two political parties. Street protests are being planned for this coming Saturday, June 9, in as many as 18 cities to protest laws and other government actions that a growing number of Indian Internet users believe have violated their right to free expression and privacy online.
Only about 10 percent of India's population uses the web, making it unlikely that Internet freedom will be a decisive ballot-box issue anytime soon. India is not China or Iran, however. Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention. Posted by Ethan on Feb 22nd, 2010 in Geekery, Human Rights | 19 comments Secretary Clinton’s recent speech on Internet Freedom has signaled a strong interest from the US State Department in promoting the use of the internet to promote political reforms in closed societies. It makes sense that the State Department would look to support existing projects to circumvent internet censorship. The New York Times reports that a group of senators is urging the Secretary to apply existing funding to support the development and expansion of censorship circumvention programs, including Tor, Psiphon and Freegate. I’ve spent a good part of the last couple of years studying internet circumvention systems. My colleagues Hal Roberts, John Palfrey and I released a study last year that compared the strengths and weaknesses of different circumvention tools.
I strongly believe that we need strong, anonymized and useable censorship circumvention tools. Here’s the problem. Most internet traffic is domestic. Freedom of the Press 2012. Breakthroughs and Pushback in the Middle East The year 2011 featured precarious but potentially far-reaching gains for media freedom in the Middle East and North Africa. Major steps forward were recorded in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, where longtime dictators were removed after successful popular uprisings. While trends in these countries were not uniformly positive, with important setbacks to democratic prospects in both Egypt and Libya toward year’s end, the magnitude of the improvements—especially in Tunisia and Libya—represented major breakthroughs in a region that has a long history of media control by autocratic leaders. The gains more than offset declines in several other countries in the Middle East.
And even the greatest declines, in Bahrain and Syria, reflected the regimes’ alarmed and violent reactions to tenacious protest movements, whose bold demands for greater freedom included calls for a more open media environment. Continue reading essay. Threats to the Open Net: May 4, 2012. When Social Networks Become Tools of Oppression: Jillian C. York. When Syria’s government unblocked Facebook, YouTube and Blogspot in February, many activists saw the move as an overture to protesters, possibly one offering a semblance of the freedoms won by insurgents in Egypt and Tunisia. Others saw it as a potential means of surveillance. They were right: Within weeks, reports began to emerge from detained Syrian activists who said that authorities had demanded their Facebook passwords. Others inside the country noted that their friends’ Facebook walls had been compromised and now contained pro-regime sentiment.
On Twitter, Syrian protesters have noted the emergence of pro-regime “spambots”: accounts set up with automated feeds that post benign content, including links to attractive photographs of Syrian landscapes, to the hashtag used by protesters and supporters, presumably to flood it with contradictory information. Activists believe the bots have been created by regime supporters, paid or otherwise.
Upper Hand Alarm Sounded No Pseudonyms. A Moment in Time: A Very Short History of Content Regulation. Renata Uitz of Central European University welcomes Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center and the OpenNet Initiative. "A bunch of smart people invented the internet," says Faris, highlighting the wonderful ways in which the Internet brought millions of people together. "People began using the Internet for various other things too - porn, making fun of religion and national leaders...On the Internet we have the good, the ugly, and the illegal, and a whole lot of it.
" Faris asks us to pause and think about how we might draw a line between that which is offensive or very offensive and that which is illegal. "Governments then caught on and started to think about how to rein in activity on the Internet," says Faris. "The US Congress tried to block content on the Internet," but the Supreme Court repeatedly blocked it; thus, the only large-scale filtering in the United States exists in schools and libraries. The changing face of digital rights activism.
San Francisco, CA - In February 2012, Twitter announced a new mechanism that would allow the company to minimise the effects of government censorship requests. Though new for Twitter, the idea of per-country takedowns has existed in the industry since at least 2006, when Google blocked Thai visitors to certain YouTube videos by IP address in order to comply with local laws. Now, Google relies upon the mechanism to operate within the laws of the more than 60 countries in which it has offices. Other companies, such as Facebook, do the same. To the surprise of many long-time observers, Twitter's announcement was largely met with anger from users who had believed the company - which last year had referred to itself as the "free speech wing of the free speech party" - was an exception.
Indeed, in the past two years or so, the global threats to online free expression have not only diversified, but have attracted more public interest than ever before. Digital rights activism SOPA and PIPA. Video: 10 Most Censored Countries - Reports. Why is Data Journalism Important? The Guardian on Facebook. Media Sustainability Index (MSI) - Europe & Eurasia | IREX - Civil Society, Education and Media Development. Overview of MSI Europe & Eurasia The 2013 MSI study for Europe & Eurasia found a mix of positive and negative developments in almost every country. As last year, overall significant improvement, defined as 0.10 points or more, was observed in six countries, while significant regression was observed in five. Eleven of 21 countries showed little overall average change from 2012.
Significant findings included the following: Only Moldova showed a second straight year of significant improvement in overall sustainability, maintaining its momentum from 2012. Competitive political scenes in Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia correlated with sustainability gains in each country for 2013, largely due to increases in free expression and plurality of news sources. Business management remained the key constraint for the region, the lowest objective in 12 of 21 countries, and near the bottom of four other countries’ tables. For more information or to request a hard copy, email msi@irex.org. MSI E&E Data. Open Government Partnership: an introduction | Public Leaders Network | Guardian Professional. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a global effort to make governments better. It is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and create safer communities.
By finding new ways to engage with citizens, including using the latest technologies, governments can tap their expertise to make better decisions. The OGP was formally launched on 20 September 2011 when eight founding governments – Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States – endorsed an Open Government Declaration, and announced their country action plans. In the spirit of collaboration OGP is overseen by a steering committee of governments and civil society organisations. Since its establishment OGP has welcomed the commitment of 46 additional governments. Within the OGP, civil society and businesses have as important a role in driving openness as governments. Wer kontrolliert Medien? Wer kontrolliert Medien? Medien haben Macht: Die Meinung von Journalistinnen und Journalisten verbreitet sich großflächig und hat in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung starkes Gewicht.
Ein EU-Projekt (7. Rahmenprogramm) mit dem Titel "MediaACT" vergleicht nun in 14 Ländern Europas und im arabischen Raum die so genannte Medienselbstkontrolle. Dazu wurde eine repräsentative Umfrage mit 2.000 Journalistinnen und Journalisten durchgeführt. Den WissenschaftlerInnen geht es darum, Faktoren zu identifizieren, welche die Medienselbstkontrolle stärken oder schwächen und Instrumente zur Stärkung verantwortungsbewussten Journalismus aufzuzeigen. Pressekodizes, Presseräte, Medienkritik in diversen Formaten, aber auch die Kontrolle durch die Öffentlichkeit in Social Media und Blogs gelten als verbreitete Instrumente.
Die Umfrage ist in einigen der befragten Länder noch offen. Weitere Informationen: THE ASIA MEDIA DIRECTORY 2011, Media Programme Asia. Edited by Alastair Carthew and Simon Winkelmann Asia Media Update Overview The overwhelming trend in the 33 countries analysed in the Asia Media Update for the first half of 2013, from Kazakhstan in the west to New Zealand in the east, are introducing, or planning to introduce, new media laws and regulations. Fifteen countries are undergoing this process, much of it driven by the unrelenting growth of the Internet and the consequential explosion in social media, bloggers and netizens; some of it by internal political change. Governments across the region are either taking an even handed approach, or more draconian measures, to meet these challenges. The trend is particularly strong in South East Asia.
In China, there was a call for new rules on Internet espionage and the government announced it will upgrade laws involving the Internet as well as saying it would welcome U.S. network companies investing in the industry. Not All Keen on New Laws Violence Against Journalists Continued Conclusion.
Data Retention. Freedom of connection, freedom of expression: the changing legal and regulatory ecology shaping the Internet. This report provides a new perspective on the social and political dynamics behind the threats to expression. It develops a conceptual framework on the ‘ecology of freedom of expression’ for discussing the broad context of policy and practice that should be taken into consideration in discussions of this issue. Over the first decade of the 21st century, the Internet and its convergence with mobile communications has enabled greater access to information and communication resources. In 2010, nearly 2 billion people worldwide – over one quarter of the world’s population – use the Internet.
However, during the same period, defenders of digital rights have raised growing concerns over how legal and regulatory trends might be constraining online freedom of expression. Anecdotal accounts of the arrests of bloggers, the filtering of content and the disconnection of users have sparked these concerns. MediaLandscape2011.pdf (application/pdf Object) Case study reports – Media regulation: A panacea for free and independent media? « MEDIADEM. The 10 Tools of Online Oppressors - Reports. SAN FRANCISCO In reporting news from the world’s most troubled nations, journalists have made a seismic shift this year in their reliance on the Internet and other digital tools. Blogging, video sharing, text messaging, and live-streaming from cellphones brought images of popular unrest from the central square of Cairo and the main boulevard of Tunis to the rest of the world. In Other Languages • Español • Português • Français • Русский • العربية • Multimedia • Audio Report: Offenders and TacticsIn Print • Download the pdfMore on This Issue • CPJ Internet Channel: Danny O'Brien's blog • Blogging in Egypt: Virtual network, virtual oppression • Burmese exile news site endures hacking, DDoS attacks Yet the technology used to report the news has been matched in many ways by the tools used to suppress information.
In two nations we cite, Egypt and Tunisia, the regimes have changed, but their successors have not categorically broken with past repressive practices. Key country: Iran.