From Meedan: Three Lebanese men have been placed under arrest by Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza for “slandering” the country’s President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. A search warrant has been issued for a fourth man.

Explaining the decision, Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar said that “media freedom in Lebanon and any civilised country reaches its limits when the content is pure slander and aims at undermining the head of state.”

Change and Reform MP Nabil Nicolas expressed shock at what he said were arrests for the “crime of expressing an opinion,” and called upon the President to “set the university students free immediately.” Arabic text follows: Read the rest of this entry…

Update: Facebook responds. Kind of.

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Update: RSF is trying to find out how Moroccan prosecutors determined Mourtada’s indentity.

Reporters Without Borders wonders how the police identified Mourtada. “Did the police get his computer’s IP address? And if so, how? We have asked the ISP, Maroc Telecom, in which the French company Vivendi is a shareholder, to provide us with the relevant information.”

The CPB wonders as well. And, keeping Yahoo in mind, as well as Facebook’s response below, we wonder if the list of people to ask is one name shorter than it ought to be? Laila Lalami wonders the same thing, in The Nation.

How the Moroccan police found out Mourtada’s identity remains a bit of a mystery. They could have obtained his IP address from Facebook, or from his service provider, Maroc Telecom, or from an old-fashioned snitch. But the preliminary court hearing did not include details of the police investigation, so the possibility of corporate cooperation cannot be ruled out. After all, China cracked down on dissidents last year with the help of Yahoo.

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We wondered how Facebook felt about the recent arrest and three year sentence of Moroccan Fouad Mourtada for his satirical Facebook page of his country’s crown prince. So we wrote them. What we got was, well, given the precendents set by Yahoo, Google and other American companies, it can hardly be called surprising. It was disheartening, though.

Here’s my first email to the PR department.

To Whom It May Concern:

Could I get someone at Facebook to comment on the recent arrest in Morrocco of Fouad Mourtada? As you no doubt know, satirical Facebook pages are rampant.

I would also be interested in Facebook’s position on the arrest of Facebook commenters in Lebanon and its ban in Syria and Iran.

I am asking for two reasons. I am the director of the Committee to Protect Bloggers and I am also taking part in a weekly conversation with PRI’s The World. Here’s that public radio show’s last Tech Podcast, in which I took part. The next time Clark Boyd and I talk I would like to be able to mention Facebook’s position on these issues.

Regards,
Curt Hopkins
Director
Committee to Protect Bloggers

I received a response, if you can call it that, from a Facebook representative named Jaime Schopflin.

Hi Curt,

Here is our statement on this:

“We do not comment on these specific situations. Under our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, Facebook may share information with law enforcement and other government agencies when it has a good faith belief it is legally obligated to do so.”

Please attribute this to a Facebook spokesperson.

Let me know if you have any other questions,

-Jaime

Well, that’s boilerplate nonsense. And it stank of expectation. Here’s our non-answer and you’ll report it like a good little collaborator. I decided instead to talk Jaime’s offer seriously and send some questions. Here they are.

Jaime:

Really? That’s it? No condemnation of the imprisonment of one of your users for making a joke? No condemnation of authorities known to use torture (such as Syria) for arresting your customers (sic-Lebanon arrested; Syria banned)? No condemnation of censorship? No advocacy for the free speech that makes your service, site and business possible in the first place? In a morally unambiguous situation such as the suborning of communications for the preservation of personal power no comment except “no comment”? When students in Lebanon are arrested no expression of fellow-feeling or solidarity based on the fact that Facebook could not have been possible were it not for a) free speech and b) an engaged student population?

I’m very disappointed in this response, Jaime, and in Facebook. I hope someone higher up decides that it is incumbent on them to distinguish themselves from companies like Yahoo and Google. In the meantime, I’ll accept this as your answer. (And as to instructing me in how to attribute this “quote” of yours, don’t.)

Best wishes,
Curt Hopkins

I got the same response from a different PR person, Malorie Lucich, from an outside agency called Outcast.

Hi Curt,
Thanks for your email. Here is Facebook’s statement on the issue:

“We do not comment on these specific situations. Under our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, Facebook may share information with law enforcement and other government agencies when it has a good faith belief it is legally obligated to do so.”

Please attribute to Facebook or a Facebook spokesperson.

Best,
Malorie

This is ridiculous PR boobery, especially for a company that provides a product for radical communication and connection. Do you think they’ll find their voice, if not their souls, if a great many more people ask the same questions? It’s worth a try.

Here’s Facebook’s general PR email address: press@facebook.com. Here’s Jaime’s email address: jaimes@facebook.com And here’s Malorie’s: malorie@outcastpr.com.

Via IFEX:

On 10 January 2008, the prosecutor general of Bekaa arrested four students at Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Zahleh (eastern Lebanon) on charges of slander, libel and public insult following conversations between them on a Facebook webpage that were deemed inappropriate by one of their colleagues who pressed charges against them.

Does anyone have more information on this? Who are the students? What is the nature of the comments?

Update: Lisa has published an op-ed on her situation on Ha’aretz, entitled “Why us – and why now?” It seems that the chief factotum of the Israeli Government Press Office, Daniel Seaman, may have had an axe to grind. The truth will out, I imagine.

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Update: Lisa finally made a statement on her blog, On the Face. She has written for a piece about this situation in Ha’aretz soon.

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Update: Lisa told CPB that she has been inundated with bloggers’ expressions of support and questions, both from bloggers and traditional journalists. She said she’d be posting something today on her blog, On the Face.

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Lisa Goldman, a journalist who blogs at On the Face, was recently interrogated by Israeli police for “unauthorized travel to an enemy state,” according to Ha’aretz (via Israellycool).

Goldman, who traveled to Lebanon this summer for Israeli Channel 10 news, has been interrogated along with two other journalists.

Much more shocking than the charge (odd indeed, at least to a non-Israeli) is the type of support she is receiving from the Israel Press Council: none.

(From Ha’aretz)

Dalia Dorner, president of the Israel Press Council, said that “one of our missions is to preserve the freedom of the press – that is fundamental. The catch is that if a journalist commits a deed that is considered a legal offense, then of course we cannot get involved.”

Goldman was surprised at the suddenly-public nature of the charges.

Lisa Goldman confirmed to Haaretz on Thursday that she had been interrogated a month ago, but expressed great surprise that details of the investigation had emerged, given that the police had told her not to discuss it.

“I have no idea who leaked this story,” she said. “I was completely flabbergasted when an Israeli reporter telephoned me today to inform me that the investigation had been announced on the radio. I have no idea who leaked it and very surprised that it’s now been released. The police told me not to discuss the interrogation and I didn’t. Therefore I am very surprised that the matter is now being exposed in the media.”

Goldman said that she had been unaware that she had broken any laws, adding that, “if I had known there was no way I would have gone.”

She told Haaretz that she had received congratulatory calls from “very senior members of the Prime Minister’s Office” after her report from Lebanon had been broadcast on Channel 10 television, and it seems that they “were not aware of the law either.”

Goldman said that she had been surprised by the fact that police were investigating the issue at all, given that a significant number of Israeli journalists had traveled to Arab states in recent years.

“I’m very surprised that the police have now opened an investigation against three Israeli reporters when there must be at least 10 who traveled to Arab countries using foreign passports over the last couple of years alone, and there are certainly many, many precedents over the last decade.”