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WHY IS A CRUCIAL CONFERENCE ON INTERNET FREEDOM TAKING PLACE IN A DICTATORSHIP?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/azerbaijan/9658427/Why-is-a-crucial-conference-on-internet-freedom-taking-place-in-a-dictatorship.html
4:18PM GMT 07 Nov 2012
IT'S OF DEEP CONCERN THAT A CONFERENCE ON INTERNET FREEDOM IS BEING
HELD IN ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST TAWDRY DICTATORSHIPS, WRITES MIKE
HARRIS
Ilham Aliyev The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and his wife
Mehriban, on a visit to London in 2009 Photo: REX
By Mike Harris, Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship
For Azerbaijan's President Aliyev, the hosting of the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku is yet another propaganda coup in a year
marked by the Eurovision Song Contest and the launch of Azerbaijan's
bid for Baku to host the 2020 Olympic Games. The regime is slick -
it spent an estimated $500 million on Eurovision alone, hires the
smoothest spin doctors, and takes British MPs on all expenses paid
trips to see "the real Azerbaijan" (as opposed to the Azerbaijan
where their Parliament contains not a single opposition MP).
Azerbaijan is also a country with a track record of persecuting
internet activists, such as bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada.
Elnur Majidli, a Strasbourg-based blogger and internet activist,
was threatened with a 12 year jail sentence for "inciting hatred"
after setting up Facebook groups that facilitated rare public protests
in Azerbaijan during 2011. Because of his online activism, police
officers turned up at his family home. His father was held for eight
hours by the police, then swiftly lost his job in the state shipping
firm Caspar, all because his son set up a Facebook group. Majidli
junior cannot return to Azerbaijan. State TV broadcasts programmes
that allege Facebook and Twitter cause criminality among Azerbaijan's
young people. Just last year, the country's chief psychiatrist warned
that social media caused mental disorders.
This is the country that will host the IGF (a United Nations
initiative) and help set the framework for the future of internet
freedom. While a bitter irony for brave people like Majidli, it's
more worryingly symbolic. Russia and China have been particularly
vocal in their desire to grab control of the internet - and the IGF
is one important vehicle where they can build alliances to begin this
process. It isn't just autocratic states that want state-led regulation
of the internet. Just last year, Brazil and South Africa called for
a global internet governance body. It's a call that has delighted
the dictators who recognise that taming the internet is a large job
that cannot be dealt with solely at national level. It isn't just
about the state censoring websites and ISPs, but also controlling
protocols, the export of technologies and the telecommunications
infrastructure. As Prof. Milton Mueller argues in the next issue of
Index on Censorship magazine:
"Internet technology - TCP/IP protocols - can be installed in
computers in North Korea, but it won't make communications in
that country free. If a repressive government owns and operates the
telecommunications infrastructure, blocks trade in computer and telecom
equipment, does not allow a free market for access, devices or services
to develop ... it's [then] easy to contain and control the internet."
If the future governance of the internet were in the hands of a
statutory international body there is no doubt that countries like
China and Russia would attempt to undermine the multiple underpinnings
that ensure internet freedom. They may start by undermining the
ability of private telecoms companies to negotiate directly and
freely with each other on how their networks operate and bring in
state oversight. Or they might turn telecoms companies, many of which
are still state-owned, into the gatekeepers of internet services to
fragment the internet. Current draconian proposals on cybersecurity
hark back to a time when state monopolies like BT ruled supreme and
had teams of spooks working internally to tap phones.
They expose the concern that the borderless internet is making the
Westphalian approach to national security increasingly redundant. As
Index points out in a recent policy paper, while pursuing a global
agenda, states continue to curtail net freedom at home. Last summer
Russia created a blacklist of websites that contain "extremist"
content (condemned by Russian NGOs and political activists who fear
they will be targeted). China defends the borders of its increasingly
national internet with its "Great Firewall" (also known tellingly
as the "Golden Shield Project") and has an internal army of censors
including 20-50,000 internet police officers alongside a further
250,000 active party members who monitor and report online content.
To discuss internet governance with this darkening global outlook in
a place such as Azerbaijan should wake slumbering Western democrats.
The backdrop to a discussion can make a difference. The World
Summit on the Information Society, the IGF's predecessor, was held
in pre-revolutionary Tunisia in 2005. Ronald Koven of the World
Press Freedom Committee saw first-hand what happens when you hold
an internet freedom conference in an autocracy. Speeches criticising
Tunisia's human rights record were pulled, including a speech by Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, Tunisian delegates shouted down
views they disliked at the open forums, a Belgium cameraman had his
equipment seized by the security services. Worse still it is alleged
that the security services had intercepted emails between NGOs and
the German Embassy's Goethe Institute as they turned up on mass to
prevent Tunisian dissidents from attending a meeting there.
Koven told me that prior to the meeting in Geneva, a group of
Tunisians approached him and said they were looking forward to seeing
him in Tunis as "Ca sera voter fete" ("It will be your holiday") a
colloquialism meaning, "You'll get a working over". A similar pattern
has preceded the IGF. Internet activists have been rounded up and
NGOs and politicians have been warned their hotel rooms may be bugged.
As the Arab Spring has shown, the internet is helping to free people
across the world from the iron grip of autocracy. The leaking of cables
by Tunisian dissident website Nawaat exposed the corruption of former
President Ben Ali and helped topple his dictatorship. The internet
made it easier than ever before for activists from across the Middle
East to organise during the Arab Spring, hence the former Egyptian
government attempting to hold back the revolutionary tide by turning
it off. So it's of deep concern that the Internet Governance Forum,
one the most important global conferences on internet freedom, is being
held in Azerbaijan - one of the world's most tawdry dictatorships.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/azerbaijan/9658427/Why-is-a-crucial-conference-on-internet-freedom-taking-place-in-a-dictatorship.html
4:18PM GMT 07 Nov 2012
IT'S OF DEEP CONCERN THAT A CONFERENCE ON INTERNET FREEDOM IS BEING
HELD IN ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST TAWDRY DICTATORSHIPS, WRITES MIKE
HARRIS
Ilham Aliyev The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and his wife
Mehriban, on a visit to London in 2009 Photo: REX
By Mike Harris, Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship
For Azerbaijan's President Aliyev, the hosting of the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku is yet another propaganda coup in a year
marked by the Eurovision Song Contest and the launch of Azerbaijan's
bid for Baku to host the 2020 Olympic Games. The regime is slick -
it spent an estimated $500 million on Eurovision alone, hires the
smoothest spin doctors, and takes British MPs on all expenses paid
trips to see "the real Azerbaijan" (as opposed to the Azerbaijan
where their Parliament contains not a single opposition MP).
Azerbaijan is also a country with a track record of persecuting
internet activists, such as bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada.
Elnur Majidli, a Strasbourg-based blogger and internet activist,
was threatened with a 12 year jail sentence for "inciting hatred"
after setting up Facebook groups that facilitated rare public protests
in Azerbaijan during 2011. Because of his online activism, police
officers turned up at his family home. His father was held for eight
hours by the police, then swiftly lost his job in the state shipping
firm Caspar, all because his son set up a Facebook group. Majidli
junior cannot return to Azerbaijan. State TV broadcasts programmes
that allege Facebook and Twitter cause criminality among Azerbaijan's
young people. Just last year, the country's chief psychiatrist warned
that social media caused mental disorders.
This is the country that will host the IGF (a United Nations
initiative) and help set the framework for the future of internet
freedom. While a bitter irony for brave people like Majidli, it's
more worryingly symbolic. Russia and China have been particularly
vocal in their desire to grab control of the internet - and the IGF
is one important vehicle where they can build alliances to begin this
process. It isn't just autocratic states that want state-led regulation
of the internet. Just last year, Brazil and South Africa called for
a global internet governance body. It's a call that has delighted
the dictators who recognise that taming the internet is a large job
that cannot be dealt with solely at national level. It isn't just
about the state censoring websites and ISPs, but also controlling
protocols, the export of technologies and the telecommunications
infrastructure. As Prof. Milton Mueller argues in the next issue of
Index on Censorship magazine:
"Internet technology - TCP/IP protocols - can be installed in
computers in North Korea, but it won't make communications in
that country free. If a repressive government owns and operates the
telecommunications infrastructure, blocks trade in computer and telecom
equipment, does not allow a free market for access, devices or services
to develop ... it's [then] easy to contain and control the internet."
If the future governance of the internet were in the hands of a
statutory international body there is no doubt that countries like
China and Russia would attempt to undermine the multiple underpinnings
that ensure internet freedom. They may start by undermining the
ability of private telecoms companies to negotiate directly and
freely with each other on how their networks operate and bring in
state oversight. Or they might turn telecoms companies, many of which
are still state-owned, into the gatekeepers of internet services to
fragment the internet. Current draconian proposals on cybersecurity
hark back to a time when state monopolies like BT ruled supreme and
had teams of spooks working internally to tap phones.
They expose the concern that the borderless internet is making the
Westphalian approach to national security increasingly redundant. As
Index points out in a recent policy paper, while pursuing a global
agenda, states continue to curtail net freedom at home. Last summer
Russia created a blacklist of websites that contain "extremist"
content (condemned by Russian NGOs and political activists who fear
they will be targeted). China defends the borders of its increasingly
national internet with its "Great Firewall" (also known tellingly
as the "Golden Shield Project") and has an internal army of censors
including 20-50,000 internet police officers alongside a further
250,000 active party members who monitor and report online content.
To discuss internet governance with this darkening global outlook in
a place such as Azerbaijan should wake slumbering Western democrats.
The backdrop to a discussion can make a difference. The World
Summit on the Information Society, the IGF's predecessor, was held
in pre-revolutionary Tunisia in 2005. Ronald Koven of the World
Press Freedom Committee saw first-hand what happens when you hold
an internet freedom conference in an autocracy. Speeches criticising
Tunisia's human rights record were pulled, including a speech by Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, Tunisian delegates shouted down
views they disliked at the open forums, a Belgium cameraman had his
equipment seized by the security services. Worse still it is alleged
that the security services had intercepted emails between NGOs and
the German Embassy's Goethe Institute as they turned up on mass to
prevent Tunisian dissidents from attending a meeting there.
Koven told me that prior to the meeting in Geneva, a group of
Tunisians approached him and said they were looking forward to seeing
him in Tunis as "Ca sera voter fete" ("It will be your holiday") a
colloquialism meaning, "You'll get a working over". A similar pattern
has preceded the IGF. Internet activists have been rounded up and
NGOs and politicians have been warned their hotel rooms may be bugged.
As the Arab Spring has shown, the internet is helping to free people
across the world from the iron grip of autocracy. The leaking of cables
by Tunisian dissident website Nawaat exposed the corruption of former
President Ben Ali and helped topple his dictatorship. The internet
made it easier than ever before for activists from across the Middle
East to organise during the Arab Spring, hence the former Egyptian
government attempting to hold back the revolutionary tide by turning
it off. So it's of deep concern that the Internet Governance Forum,
one the most important global conferences on internet freedom, is being
held in Azerbaijan - one of the world's most tawdry dictatorships.