Committee to Protect Bloggers

We’ve got a problem.

Facebook gave up user info to the Moroccan secret police and announced that the user, Fouad Mourtada, had violated terms of service. The company also “clarified” these terms of service, announcing that anything posted on their site would become Facebook property. They later backpedaled, but only after a loss of credibility.

The latest move on the part of the social network is to allow a host of Nazi groups to use their services, saying that Nazis, by and large, do not violate Facebook’s terms of service.

So, let’s review.

• Facebook wants to steal all your stuff
• Facebook believes in cooperating with secret service groups with a history of torture
• Facebook believes imitating royalty is an evil act
• Facebook believes promoting Nazism does not violate their terms of service

Fantastic.

Generally speaking, we are slow to jump ship on a social media service because of a questionable action. That is because almost every large social media company is guilty of it and we think there is something to be said for attempting to change things from within. However, given this company’s record of relentlessly bad choices, is Facebook really the place for the CPB to communicate? We’d welcome your comments on the Committee to Protect Bloggers Facebook Causes page or in the comments on this post. I’d also welcome suggestions to an alternative way of keeping track of and communicating with members.

GVO reports that several Ajeri bloggers were arrested, then later released.

Frontline Club blogger and Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov has reportedly been detained in Baku as the Azerbaijani capital prepared for a planned youth demonstration. Tweets from a reliable source report that at least one other blogger was also detained along with the head of the National Democratic Institute in Azerbaijan, but that they were simply walking on the streets.

It was reported in the posts comments that all arrestees were subsequently released, thankfully. This is not the first time an Azeri blogger has gotten in trouble with the authorities.

Hamid tells us another Iranian blogger has been arrested.

Change for Equality reports that six members of One Million Signatures Campaign were arrested during and after a peaceful demonstration on Friday which was held in Tehran to celebrate May 1st. One of them is Nikzad Zanganeh, an Iranian blogger.

As if all the censorship and monitoring we have in the world is not enough we now have United Kingdom’s plan to monitor internet communication between users in the country.  UK’s Home secretary has called for implementation of a plan to monitor and record internet contact between users there.

The new system would track emails, calls and internet use yet the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith says there will be no government database to store these logs. we wonder what they’ll be using

Under the plan communication providers would be compelled to track and record internet contact between users, while the Home Secretary says that they’ll be no recording of content only recording of who speaks to who, we are concerned with the potential abuse of a service like this.  What will stop the government from recording content after all just knowing that two people spoke is pretty much useless while recording what they said  is more important.

Already the plan has run into criticism from the opposition with various individuals focusing on the inportance of privacy, which to us here at CPB is an inalienable right.

We have only one word for the UK Home Secretary, “STOP”

Image source

On his Foreign Policy magazine, net.effect, Evgeny Morozov got his snark on, titling the post “Should we also make lists of the world’s ten worst places to be a vegetarian?” It was a response to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ slightly funky list of “10 Worst Countries to Be a Blogger.”

Hilarity notwithstanding, Morozov did make some good points.

The problem is that all too often these bloggers have other identities; some of them are prominent journalists, some are old-school activists ,and some are intellectuals. Blogs usually provide jthem with ust another platform for engaging in traditional activist campaigns; quite often, it’s not even the most effective platform at their disposal.

One example he gave was the Burmese blogger (take that, Evgeny!) Zarganar. In Burma, this man, who was sentenced to 59 years in jail, which was then lowered to 35, is much better known as a comedian and actor. But I outlined some possible criteria that make a person a blogger for the purposes of public discussion. I also offered an alterative view of Zarganar. This doesn’t disprove Moronov’s point that the media often latches onto the “blogger” title in its coverage of imprisonment, a point I myself have made before.

It’s fair to identify them as bloggers if either 1. their main mode, or one of their primary modes, of communication is via blog or 2. if their arrest was based all or in part on material they posted on their blog or 3. because their blog was identified as an amplifier that made them more dangerous to the arresting party.

Many of those, if not all, in the CPJ list, would qualify. There are plenty of examples of people who were arrested solely due to their blogs - like Omid Reza Mirsayafi or Omid Sheikhan - but more many blogging was either an important threat or the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Unfortunately, I suppose, material on people arrested by the Egyptians, Iranians, Chinese, or whomever else, are not often cut and dried. Even finding out whether an American was fired because of their blog is all but impossible. The information you can get, experience, common sense all unite with an uncomfortable lack of finality when examining cases of bloggers and other users of social media.

***

Criteria can be useful. But I think it’s important to remember that our topography of the world is quite fluid. Depending on the criteria of the moment, we might recognize a person as “a woman,” “Hispanic,” “my wife,” “a driver” or “Senator (R), Delaware.” Wouldn’t it be hard to say this if person were more a Senator than a driver? I think it would depend on the instance of conversation or communication. As for Zarganar, perhaps the case could be made that he is much better known outside Burma as a blogger than as a comedian. I, for one, am utterly ignorant of his comedy.

According to KVNU radio, an unnamed woman from Tooele, Utah (U.S.) was arrested on contempt charges for texting her husband from a courtroom, where she was representing him in a debt collection case. Use of mobile phones in courtrooms in Utah is not allowed, though frequently happens anyway.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (no relation) has released its list of 10 Worst Countries to Be a Blogger (via Frontline Club’s blog).

1. Burma
2. Iran
3. Syria
4. Cuba
5. Saudi Arabia
6. Vietnam
7. Tunisia
8. China
9. Turkmenistan
10. Egypt

We’d probably have a slightly different list, and certainly in a slightly different order. Egypt is arrest happy, and they love torture and rape in their jail. Iran is working diligently to pass China in overall repression and specifically against bloggers. No other country is working to enact a law that would make killing bloggers legal. Still, CPJ’s list is worth reading.

Wael Abbas, who is a prominent Egyptian blogger and human rights activist, recently started a Facebook group to express solidarity with and in support of formerly jailed blogger, Mohammed Adel. Sad thing is that Facebook deemed it as against it Terms of Use and took it down.

Wael has termed the take down ‘racist’ and wants it to be rescinded forthwith.  Abbas had created the group ‘Operation General Meit‘ a few months ago in support of the then incarcerated blogger, Adel.  Abbas says the action is a blatant example of double standards as Facebook is full of profile photos and other photos showing guns, while those that were posted on the group’s page were symbolic as they called for the authorities to arrest them as they had they had done to Adel.  The group had photos of various Egyptian bloggers hold fake guns saying that if indeed Adel was a terrorist then they also should be arrested as they were also terrorists.

Menassat quotes Abbas.

I consider what Facebook did racist and dealing with middle-easterners with double standards because Facebook is full of groups about guns. Facebook is full of groups for movie posters, gangster rap pages and pages dedicated to pistols and machine guns, Real ones. None were deleted. Only Egyptians when they pose with toy guns are hateful, threatening and obscene.  Please type “guns” in the Facebook search bar and tell me what you see.

We feel that in doing this Facebook is continuing with what we are seeing as an emerging trend where companies and corporates take actions to censor speech on the platforms and then blame them on their TOS’s.

Shame on you Facebook.

At the Committee to Protect Bloggers, most of our efforts go toward chronicling unjust threats to innocent bloggers and arrests, interrogations and imprisonments of bloggers, and users of other social media, for simple expression of critical thinking, opposition politics or satire. Lately, however, there have been a number of developments in which outright criminals have used social media to effect their crimes.

Having been a journalist - I suppose I still am as I have yet to send journalism an official letter of resignation - I understand the notion of a “hook,” a so-what? peg an editor hangs a story on to get eyeballs. It’s not surprising that in a number of these recent cases the reporter, his or her editor and the editor’s publisher have used “social media” as the hook. Social media is still new enough that it can function as the “weird factor” for a story. But I think it’s important to distinguish between people who have been arrested for “thought crimes” (from bloggers such as Kareem Amer to journalists like Euna Lee) from criminals who used social media in much the same way that a violent drunk might use a broken bottle.

Read the rest »

Josh Wolf interviewed me today regarding Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the Current TV journalists detained in North Korea. Current TV has been weirdly silent about their people. In fact, they have actually scrubbed their website of any comments on the two reporters.

Click the link below to listen. Josh’s piece begins at the 50:40 mark. Or read the transcript on Josh’s blog.

The KPFA Evening News, Weekdays - April 24, 2009 at 6:00pm

Click to listen (or download)