Archive for the ‘Police Powers’ Category
Sweden: Universities cut off P2P students-The Local
[FACT comments: Note that students need not be proven of sharing copyrighted material: they are cut off just for sharing via BitTorrent! Gotta love the name: Young Pirates!]
Universities clamp down on internet piracy
The Local: May 15, 2009
http://www.thelocal.se/19460/20090515/
Swedish universities have begun denying students suspected of illegal file sharing access to school computer networks, prompting criticism from both student groups and file sharing advocates.
The internet access bans have come following complaints from American film companies that the university’s networks are being used to illegally download copyrighted material.
“We cut people off when we get a second notice,” said Linköping University IT-security specialist Johannes Haasmund to Sveriges Radio (SR).
But Haasmund admitted that the university doesn’t verify whether or not the file sharing actually involves copyrighted material, but instead takes actions based only on the complaints it receives.
According to Sweden’s new anti-piracy law, a film company wishing to block a user suspected of illegal file sharing via a commercial internet service provider (ISP) must submit the request to judicial review.
In contrast, universities connected to the Sunet university computer network can simply cut off access without any formal review.
Thorbjörn Wiktorin, who works with IT-security at Uppsala University, said his school takes swift action because it is a public institution, not a commercial venture.
He estimates about 100 Uppsala University students have had their internet access revoked since October, but added that improved behaviour can lead to a restoration of network access privileges.
But the universities’ actions have sparked outrage from Moa Neuman, head of Sweden’s association of student unions, Sveriges förenade studentkårer (SFS) who is concerned about the consequences a loss of internet access might have as the end of the academic year approaches.
“It can have consequences for students and their ability to complete their studies if they don’t have internet access, because that’s really important for a lot of students right now,” she told SR.
“It can also have consequences for how these students’ views about a just society.”
In reaction to the university’s decision to cut off internet access for students suspected of internet piracy, SFS has joined forces with the Pirate Party’s youth wing, Young Pirates, to demand that universities stop the practice.
David Landes (david.landes@thelocal.se/+46 8 656 6518)
Sweden seeks to force ISPs to data retention-The Local
Sweden wants to force ISPs to save user data
David Landes
The Local: May 15, 2009
http://www.thelocal.se/19478/20090515/
Internet service providers (ISPs) in Sweden will be forced to store customer data for at least six months starting in 2010, according to a new proposal from the government.
The proposal, which is still in its initial stages but was leaked onto the internet and reported on by the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper, is an attempt by the Ministry of Justice to prevent internet providers from diluting a new law meant to make it easier to hunt down people suspected of illegal file sharing.
Under Sweden’s new anti-piracy law, which is based on the EU’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and went into force on April 1st, ISPs can be forced by a court order to release information about users under investigation for possible copyright violations.
But because several internet providers, including Bahnhof and Tele2, continually erase customer data, the companies currently have no data to hand over should they be asked to do so.
As a result of the ISPs’ policies, the efficacy of Sweden’s IPRED-law has been greatly diminished.
In order to rectify the law’s shortcomings, Sweden’s Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask has laid out plans in an unpublished referral to Sweden’s Council on Legislation (Lagrådet) which would force ISPs to save information about their customers for six months.
A spokesperson for the justice minister, Martin Valfridsson, stressed that the proposal isn’t finished yet and that nothing is set in stone.
“There is no referral to the Council on Legislation. The government hasn’t taken a decision about any referral to the Council and until the government has done so, nothing is finished,” he told the TT news agency.
Word of the new proposal prompted the Pirate Party to issue a statement condemning the government’s plans, calling the suggestion a “mass-registration” of communications between individual citizens.
“Storing the data means that the state has a register of all contacts ordinary people have via the internet and the telephone, even though they aren’t suspected of any crime. It violates the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights,” said Christian Engström, the Pirate Party’s top candidate in the European Parliamentary election, in a statement.
“The internet isn’t a playground where politicians get to do what they want. The constitution applies, even on the internet. We have the right to keep our private lives private,” said Engström.
Ministry of Justice legal expert Karin Walberg told DN that the government had hoped to present a government bill in June, following a review of the proposal by the Council on Legislation which was expected to be completed within a few weeks.
But the Pirate Party’s Engström theorized that the government had planned to wait until after the June 7th EU-parliament elections to officially release the proposal.
Filmmaker supports torrent upload-TorrentFreak
Documentary Filmmaker Supports BitTorrent Uploader
TorrentFreak: May 14, 2009
http://torrentfreak.com/documentary-filmmaker-supports-bittorrent-uploader-090514/
When a filmmaker first discovered that his new movie had leaked to the Internet, he was pretty upset. However, this creator has some hacker friends who persuaded him to feel more relaxed about reaching a whole new audience. Right now, he is embracing file-sharing and even the uploader who released his work via BitTorrent sites.
Last week, ‘godcanjudgeme‘, a prolific uploader to Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, Mininova and OneBigTorrent, made another upload to add to his long list of releases, but this one turned out a little differently to all the others.
Blue Gold : World Water Wars from director Sam Bozzo is a movie about one of planet earth’s most precious resources – water. It examines the ‘future’ for water and how various corporations are plotting to control its supply, how governments use water for political gain and how the control of this essential liquid could be the source of future military conflicts.
Of course, when anyone uploads a movie to the Internet in breach of copyright, there is always the chance of a different type of conflict – one with the entertainment companies and their anti-piracy allies. However, this particular movie is independent and less likely to attract that type of attention. Perhaps because of this and a warmth towards independent creators, the movie’s BitTorrent uploader godcanjudgeme added a note to his release on The Pirate Bay, encouraging people to financially support the movie by giving donations to the creators via their website.
Then something surprising happened. “A message was sent to a third party ‘acquaintance’ of mine, from the film’s producer Sam Bozzo,” godcanjudgeme told TorrentFreak.
Dear Torrent users,
I thank all of you for your interest in my film. When I read the book Blue Gold, I knew immediately I must utilize my film talents to relay the urgency of prioritizing our fresh water management for the survival of our race. I had no idea of the financial and physical risks that making this film would entail at the time, and if I did I honestly would not have made the film. Luckily for the world, the film exists, and so it is my goal to follow the advise of the first press review which proclaimed “Every person on the planet must see this film”. In this respect I thank godcanjudgeme for uploading this torrent and bringing a new audience to the film.
I have seen film festival audiences around the world transformed by the stories of the heroes of the water wars. I am thrilled that in the US and Canada the DVD is available via shoppbs.org and amazon.ca respectively. I respect the internet community that chooses to view films through torrents like this for whatever reason. In fact my first documentary, Hackers Wanted, focuses on the philosophy of true hackers and their journeys exploring cyberspace.
It is important to understand that independent films costs a great deal of personal finances to create, in this case over $100,000. In order that I may make other films in the future, I must at least make my money back. I respectfully ask that if you download the film you consider donating $5-$10 to the further publicity of the film via PayPal on my site http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com. Also consider reviewing the film favorably on IMDB and recommending that others buy the DVD.
To be honest, at first I was upset to see this torrent, this film ‘leak’, but some good hacker friends have suggested I embrace the opportunity to reach a new audience, and I feel honored to be doing so!
So what inspired godcanjudgeme to upload the torrent in the first instance?
“I had received a number of requests for “Blue Gold : World Water Wars” after uploading another documentary entitled “Flow : The Love Of Water” which runs along similar lines,” he told TorrentFreak. “It is a topic which should be close to everyone’s hearts. The main reason for uploading “Blue Gold” was that it simply wasn’t available outside America, and so many people were wanting to see it,” he added.
Godcanjudgeme explained that he firmly believes that the downloaders of this particular documentary are not the average ‘hit and run’ movie grabber.
“I felt that in this case these are people that would have gone to a screening or purchased a copy if it was an option,” he told TorrentFeak. “Therefore I truly hope people will realize that independent filmmakers do need our support. If this were a multi million dollar production I could expect no consideration for the producers of the film, but in this case however it was decided to ask that people give something in return to the persons responsible for providing not only entertainment but insight.”
“We all have movies that we have downloaded for free,” he added, “probably large numbers of them, in this case I think it’s time to show our support.”
Since Sam Bozzo is embracing BitTorrent, it seems appropriate to add links where people can download the movie. And in the spirit in which godcanjudgeme uploaded the movie, please consider donating.
The DVDRip can be downloaded from OneBigTorrent or The Pirate Bay .
War on sharing impacts open-source-TorrentFreak
The War on Sharing: Why the FSF Cares About RIAA Lawsuits
John Sullivan, Free Software Foundation
TorrentFreak: May 13, 2009
http://torrentfreak.com/the-war-on-sharing-why-the-fsf-cares-about-riaa-lawsuits-090513/
In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology.
We don’t make (much) music here at the Free Software Foundation, so it’s natural for people to wonder why the FSF has been standing up for individuals targeted by lawsuits launched by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Most recently we filed an *amicus curiae* brief in the case of *Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum* showing the RIAA’s theory of statutory damage awards to be unconstitutional.
Some would prefer that we refrain from fighting these lawsuits, suggesting that they are a distraction from the FSF’s core charter. But opposing them is actually an important part of our mission to support free software. First, these lawsuits represent a concerted attempt to rewrite copyright law in a way that threatens to undermine the ultimate goals of the free software movement. Second, a vocal minority in the entertainment industry uses these lawsuits as warrants to justify DRM technology and other measures to monitor and control the flow of information over the internet. Third, if unopposed, these lawsuits create a culture in which people are afraid to share, presuming sharing to be theft.
In their response to our brief, the RIAA says, “The FSF is not a neutral friend of the Court. Rather, FSF is an organization dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs, classic intellectual property, much like the sound recordings at issue in this case [*sic*].” It’s unclear what legal aim the RIAA lawyers from the firms of Holme Roberts & Owen and Dwyer & Collora think they are accomplishing with this attack. Having an interest in the outcome of a case is the reason organizations file such briefs. William Rehnquist defined *amicus curiae* as, “a phrase that literally means ‘friend of the court’ — someone who is not a party to the litigation, but who believes that the court’s decision may affect its interest.”
But here, it is the public’s interest that we are defending, not our own. While we don’t agree — as the RIAA claims — that we are more “virulent” than an organization that intimidates everyone from the elderly to college students to the severely disabled into either paying “settlement” money or facing the crushing expenses of defending against unwarranted prosecution in faraway jurisdictions, the RIAA is correct that the FSF does have a position on copyright. Although we are primarily concerned not with music, but with how software can be made and shared so as to benefit and empower everyone, neither are the impacts of the RIAA’s actions restricted to the distribution of music. Their lawsuits are a deliberate campaign to rewrite copyright law through the courts. They are attempting to set precedents which will affect all works governed by copyright law, including software.
The RIAA, which in its litigation campaign represents exclusively EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and their affiliates, would like to change copyright to be an ordinary physical property right. Through these lawsuits, they seek to establish near exclusive permanent control over each and every use of the recordings their members distribute, expanding the power of copyright owners to include things which are not part of the existing body of law, and extracting financial penalties from the largely defenseless individuals accused of disobeying them.
But copyright is not and was not intended to be a right like this. In fact, copyright requires that the public give up some of its rights, such as to free speech and free association, in order to promote another of its fundamental interests — progress in the sciences and useful arts. In “Misinterpreting Copyright,” FSF president Richard Stallman draws an analogy between this tradeoff and government procurement. When doing any kind of purchasing necessary to do the public’s work, the government seeks (if imperfectly) to minimize the amount of taxpayer money spent to obtain the needed goods. This means paying a price that suppliers will find acceptable, while avoiding being gouged by those suppliers who may claim that the goods are worth a lot more than they really are. When the U.S. Navy was accused of paying Lockheed $640 per toilet seat for some of its aircraft, people were understandably outraged, because the government had squandered the public’s money.
In the case of copyright, it’s the public’s freedom that the government is spending, to obtain in return for the public scientific and cultural goods. Right now, governments are squandering this freedom. They are spending far too much and getting far too little in return. Plenty of authors and artists are telling the government that works can and will be made without such expenditure. The international free software movement has been proving this for many years now, having successfully produced a fully functional operating system in GNU/Linux that can be freely used, shared and improved upon by anyone who wants to do so; and more recently there have been people doing similar things in encyclopedias, textbooks, and the world of the arts (including music).
Previously, because the required equipment was large and expensive, normal readers and listeners did not have the means to easily make copies. Restrictive copyright did not negatively affect them. But now, because so many more people do have the ability to easily exercise this freedom, the burden imposed by copyright restrictions on our society has become unacceptably heavy. Even while these restrictions have become more burdensome, they have become less necessary — with the cost of publishing so much lower now, less incentive is required. Instead of acknowledging this, the government has been taking the side of those who, out of greed akin to selling us $640 toilet seats, see an opportunity to freeze what should be a contingent and evolving bargain into a permanent and natural right for themselves, expanding ownership powers under copyright law far beyond its current and historical borders.
In the U.S., the new administration continues to side against the public. Vice President Joe Biden recently spoke at a MPAA luncheon. He adopted the entertainment industry’s loaded “piracy” language, saying, “It’s pure theft.” Biden also assured the MPAA that President Obama would find the “right” copyright czar. His attitude is not surprising, given his past eagerness as a senator to sponsor and support RIAA-backed legislation. He was, after all, one of four U.S. senators invited to a champagne celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) hosted by the MPAA, RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. Obama himself has already appointed Tom Perrelli and Donald Verrilli, both former lead attorneys for the RIAA, to be associate and deputy associate attorney general.
If we are going to achieve sane copyright law, we have to avoid confusing this institutionalization of corporate greed with “art.” In fact, it seems most artists disagree with the RIAA. Sony artists reportedly earn a tiny $0.045 for each song sold on iTunes, and most of them will never receive even that much from Sony. As one example among many, singer Courtney Love answers the charge of piracy by saying: “What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.”
The RIAA doesn’t stop at manipulating copyright law to gouge artists and the public. They also use their lawsuits as leverage to argue for control over any technology that could be used to distribute music. For example, they have pushed to require all wireless access points to be encrypted and closed, to restrict technologies like BitTorrent and other forms of peer-to-peer distribution, to impose bandwidth caps on home internet users, and to monitor traffic through service providers. Such efforts directly hurt free software. Because free software authors around the world work by collaboration, they rely on open distribution networks to move software, data, and conversation around. In particular, peer-to-peer technologies make this easier and cheaper for people with less bandwidth, and so are a powerful means of boosting grassroots free software distribution and development efforts.
The RIAA further attacks free software when they use these filesharing cases as ammunition to advocate DRM under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It was the RIAA that attacked Princeton scientist Ed Felten for wanting to publish useful mathematical information, because this generally useful information might possibly be used to decrypt their specific DRM scheme. Sony saw no problem with secretly installing a rootkit on users’ computers, to facilitate spying on them and blocking certain activities. These efforts to turn computers against their users and to restrict technical information are on-face incompatible with free software. If we allow the RIAA to win outrageous damages in these lawsuits, then we are letting them manufacture evidence of losses due to illegal copying, which they will then use to demand from Congress more control over our technology.
Among both the government and the public, the RIAA lawsuits create a culture which frames these issues in terms that make it harder for free software to succeed, by creating a culture that fears sharing. This leads to confusion like the recent case of a schoolteacher who assumed that a student handing out GNU/Linux discs in class was breaking the law. One can hardly blame her for having this impression when the RIAA lawsuits and propaganda thoroughly permeate the news media, encouraging everyone to assume that sharing is wrong unless they are told otherwise.
The RIAA’s framing of the issue as “intellectual property” is another key way they foster this fear. They cite our opposition to this concept in their reply to our brief, and they are correct. The use of “intellectual property” language threatens to undermine the free software movement. The term lumps together disparate concepts like copyright, patents, and trademarks, which are legally distinct. The RIAA would like to lump them together because doing so increases the size of the gouge they can extract. By drawing an analogy with physical property, they erase the actual histories behind these specific areas of law and rationalize the obscene damages they are demanding. It skews discussion of the issues involved so that good solutions can’t be found, and if it is used in place of a clear discussion about copyright in the arena of music then people will accept it when discussing software as well.
The bottom line is that for art and software alike, sane copyright law should facilitate and promote sharing so that everyone can benefit from what is produced, and participate meaningfully in making it. For software, the easiest way to share is to put source code in the public domain, and not require any End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) or patent licenses. Anyone can then study and use the software, make changes to it, and redistribute changed versions to anyone they want. However, this leaves the door open for other people to use copyright law to make some changes to that software and strip away the freedom, redistributing their version without the freedoms that were originally there. Copyright law allows people to play middleman like this, intercepting works that are intended to be free and turning them into proprietary programs to control users.
To ensure that software written to be free remains free, the FSF uses a copyright license called the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL says that anyone is free to use, copy, change, and distribute modified versions of the software to which it is attached — as long as they pass on those same freedoms to whomever else they give the software. The GPL can do this because copyright law gives copyright holders the authority to outline those terms. Instead of using that authority to make copying illegal, the FSF uses that authority to make it illegal to make copying illegal.
Despite this, the FSF will continue working to reduce the power of copyright restrictions by fighting these lawsuits, filing briefs in specific cases, and collecting contributions to the RIAA Expert Witness Fund. We do not intend to shoot ourselves in the foot by supporting proposals to reduce the scope of copyright that would weaken the way the GPL protects freedom without simultaneously weakening the way companies like Microsoft and Apple use it as a weapon to take away freedom. But neither will we support the RIAA’s expansive approach to empowering copyright owners at the public’s expense on the grounds that it would make the GPL “stronger.” We will not accept losing the GPL as an effective shield unless as part of a plan that we could be confident would make software generally free. But neither will we confuse it with the end goal, which is a world where people are not called criminals when they want to see what the software on their computer is actually doing, or to share a copy with their neighbors, or to improve it and share their improvements.
Executives like Rolf Schmidt-Holtz of Sony Music Entertainment should get the message and back off. Although they claimed in December that they would stop filing lawsuits against individuals, the RIAA filed 62 more in the month of April alone. Citizens are tired of watching their governments squander their freedom to enrich this handful of corporations, and they are tired of being intimidated. We will continue our work to support this opposition to the War on Sharing, and to restore or replace copyright law for its intended purpose — progress in science and the arts, for everyone.
Guatemala: Assassinated lawyer, arrested Twitterer-Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman: May 14, 2009
SI USTED ESTA LEYENDO ESTE MENSAGE ES QUE YO RODRIGO ROSENBERG MARZANO FUI ASESINADO por el Secretario Privado de La Presidencia GUSTAVO ALEJOS Y SU SOCIO GREGORIO VALDEZ, CON LA APROBACION DEL SEÑOR ALVARO COLOM Y DE SANDRA DE COLOM.
That’s the beginning of a three-page letter written and signed by lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg on May 9th. “If you are reading this message, it’s because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was assasinated by the private secretary to the President, Gustavo Alejos, and his associate Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of President Alvaro Colom and of (the President’s wife) Sandra De Colom.” (A translation of the full statement is available here.)
The following day, Rosenberg was shot while bicycing in Guatemala City. In the letter – and the accompanying video, above – Rosenberg tells his audience that, if he is killed, it’s because he represented a prominent Lebanese businessman, Khalil Musa, and his daugher Marjorie Musa. The elder Musa had been involved with complex dealings with state-controlled bank, Banrural – he’d been offered a board seat and then later had it withdrawn, and believed his involvement with the bank was being used to assuage concerns that the bank was engaged in corrupt practices, including laundering drug money. Earlier this month, the elder and younger Musa were killed – while the police report that the Musas were killed by workers in one of their factories, Rosenberg believed that they were killed because they threatened to expose government corruption. The Guatemalan government strenuously denies Rosenberg’s posthumous charges.
The release of Rosenberg’s written statement and video have led to street protests as well as a great deal of online organizing. Xeni Jardin – who’s covered this story very closely on BoingBoing – reports that these protests have been streamed live on the internet via Ustream.tv, with the broadcast periodically interrupted by police harrasment. Guatemalans and others following the situation are organizing groups on Facebook and tagging their posts on Twitter with the #escandalogt tag.
In one of her posts, Xeni notes that the young people organizing online to protest Rosenberg’s murder are taking a great deal of personal risk. That was a prescient warning on her part – today, Guatemalan police arrested Jean Ramses Anleu Fernández, who was twittering under the handle @jeanfer.
The tweet that got Anleu into trouble read as follows: “Primera accion real ’sacar el pisto de Banrural’ quebrar al banco de los corruptos. #escandalogt” – which (very roughly) translates as “The first thing to do is to withdraw money from Banrural to break the naks of the corrupt”. While many of Anleu’s tweets may have annoyed the government, authorities argue that this one constituted inciting a financial panic. (Xeni’s translation of the previous link, a story in Prensa Libre, is here.)
Now #freejeanfer and #jeanfer are joining #escandalogt as popular tags in the Guatemalan twittersphere. Needless to say, I’m setting up scripts to track all these tags and will release data here as it comes in. I’m intrigued to see whether we see pro-Colom voices in the tagstream as well as those protesting against the government, as we did with the #pman tag in Moldova.
Anleu’s arrest is a reminder of the very real dangers associated with online protest in repressive nations. Marc Lynch offered his concerns about Egyptian activists protesting on Facebook in a recent talk in New York – he worried that the ease of organizing online protests would motivate people to confront the Mubarak government without understanding the possible consequences. If the Colom government is willing to kill whistleblowers – which they strenuously deny – and arrest people for twittering in protest, it’s reasonable to assume that online activist carries some real risks in Guatelama. But Guatemalans aren’t running away from the medium – in the past couple of hours, dozens of people have reposted the tweet that led to Anleu’s arrest as a sign of solidarity and as a challenge to authorities.
Xeni’s all over this story on BoingBoing. Wikipedia’s got a good overview of Rosenberg’s death and the surrounding circumstances. Prensa Libre in Guatemala City is covering these interrelated stories very closely, for Spanish speakers. We’re late to the story on Global Voices, but I hope we’ll be covering it soon.
I ran a little tool I developed a few weeks back to check the frequency with which phrases and hashtags appear on Twitter. #escandalogt isn’t hugely frequent, registering at 0.052% – compared to #swineflu, for instance, which was running at over 2% at the height of hype/hysteria. What’s interesting is that #escandalogt is about as frequent as several of the tags listed on Twitter’s “Trending Topics”, getting more use than #fixreplies, #GoogleFail and #theoffice, all currently featured on the right sidebar. It’ll be interesting to see whether #escandalogt emerges there… or whether this is a sign that those topics aren’t entirely algorithmically generated and some human curation is involved.
Online censorship in Guatemala-ONI
“Financial Panic” and Online Censorship in Guatemala
Renata Avila
OpenNet Initiative: May 14, 2009
http://opennet.net/blog/2009/05/“financial-panic”-and-online-censorship-guatemala
The headlines in Guatemala’s top newspaper, as well as on internationally popular site Boing Boing reported that a Twitter user was arrested by Guatemalan authorities, facing charges of “intent to incite financial panic.” The last couple of weeks have been complicated for Guatemalans. Many human rights activists have received death threats via SMS; a YouTube video blamed high rank authorities for the murder of a prestigious lawyer, protests requesting the President to quit were live-streamed; and now a blogger and user of Twitter has been arrested on nonexistent charges.
Financial Panic as a Crime?
After some news of instability in the Guatemalan financial system spread via email last year, two commissions of Congress proposed and approved a law punishing the creation, distribution, or reproduction by any media or system of any information that might harm the financial system. On November 20, 2008, Decree 64-2008 introduced a new crime in the Guatemalan Criminal Code: “Financial Panic.”
While the original purpose of the law was to be an instrument to protect financial institutions from “rumors” that might harm the stability and good reputation of the financial institutions, this time it was used as a tool of censorship by the office of the prosecutor, with intent to control the distribution of online content against the interest of the Government and its private-public bank.
In accordance with the Law, the actions of the alleged criminal must be effective, resulting into massive withdrawals and cancellations of bank accounts in any financial institution. Intent is therefore not prosecutable, as intent is not a crime. Furthermore, to be prosecuted one must have a motive.
Why was Jeanfer Arrested?
The accused blogger and Twitter user sent a “tweet” message to his 250 followers, only some of whom were Guatemalan. Guatemala, which has a population of approximately 13 million, has only about a 10% Internet penetration rate. Most of the clients of Banrural are either public officers or people living in rural, isolated areas. Too few rural Guatemalans can read, and too little Internet content is written in indigenous languages; therefore, many of the bank’s users could not possibly have been effected by Jeanfer’s tweet.
Even more suspicious was the quick and effective arrest in the land of impunity. In recent years the government has flaunted international criminal law, committed extra-judicial executions, and forced evictions. The judiciary, a branch of government that in other countries might serve as a check on violence and corruption, only exacerbates these problems in Guatemala. Plagued with inefficiency, capacity shortages, and constant threats against judges, the courts perpetuate the impunity system, where only 90% of the murders are prosecuted.
But in this case, the suspect was arrested as soon as authorities could; perhaps they thought it was a good idea to produce a “chilling effect” among the social networks in Guatemala. It wasn´t. Now the community is active both in local and global levels to fight for an open Internet and free flow of ideas using any media and enforcing their rights guaranteed by the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights.
The blogger has been fined approximately USD 5,000 and has been placed under house arrest.
Censorship & impunity in Malaysia-NutGraph
“Nothing serious” about Perak?
Jacqueline Ann Surin
NutGraph: May 15, 2009
http://thenutgraph.com/article-3689.html
ACCORDING to the Bar Council’s Little Red Book about the police and citizen’s rights, a person is under arrest under the following circumstances:
1) the police says “yes” to the question (asked politely if possible), “Am I under arrest?”, or
2) does not allow you to leave or wants to take you to a police station, or
3) handcuffs you.
The Little Red Book derives its understanding of the rights of citizens and police action from nothing less than the Criminal Procedure Code.
What then does this mean about police action against Perak Speaker V Sivakumar? The video below aside, police held Sivakumar in a room in the state secretariat building for 90 minutes after they violently dragged him out of his chair. He was only allowed to leave the room after the state assembly was adjourned by hastily, and some might add illegally, installed Speaker Datuk S Ganesan from the Barisan Nasional (BN).
By legal definition then, Sivakumar was either unlawfully imprisoned or under arrest for those 90 minutes. Either way, Malaysians have just cause to be alarmed. If the police can so boldly and publicly act in such an unlawful manner against a speaker and an elected representative, we obviously have a serious problem with our police force. Unfortunately, they are not the only ones we should be alarmed by.
Not above the law
When, on the night of 7 May, the police arrested five legal aid lawyers who were only trying to represent the peaceful protesters who had been arrested at the Brickfields police station, both the Bar Council and the MCA expressed outrage. Indeed, the Bar Council is holding an extraordinary general meeting today, 15 May 2009, to protest and condemn such police action.
What, though, was Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein‘s response?
“If they think just because they are lawyers, they are immune to the law, then that is not so,” he said on 8 May when asked to respond to the Bar Council’s outrage that its members had been arrested for trying to do their job.
Indeed, this has been Hishammuddin’s refrain when asked to comment on police action that not only smacks of abuse of power but is also partisan in favour of the BN. For example, despite the heavy-handed police action in arresting scores of people outside the Perak state assembly building and the unlawful imprisonment of Sivakumar on 7 May, Hishammuddin said he was “thankful” that no “serious incidents” occurred in Perak that day.
“I am happy with the action taken,” he said, because, he argued, it averted “chaos on the streets which could threaten public safety.”
Hishammuddin (Pic courtesy of theSun)
It could be that the new home minister is trying to obfuscate the matter in order to justify police action in the interest of the BN holding on to power. Or it could be that Hishammuddin really doesn’t know any better?
Either way, isn’t it problematic that we either have a minister who upholds police abuse of power or who is clueless? Or worse, who may be both?
As former Bar Council chairperson Yeo Yang Poh said in a message circulated on e-mail: “Many were arrested and detained just for advocating a view, denied access to lawyers, and then five lawyers who were trying to provide legal assistance to the detainees were themselves arrested. What’s next? Arrest doctors who try to give medical assistance to opponents of the government?”
Hiding the truth
According to a Malaysiakini report, Media Prima, believed to be linked to Umno, has instructed the four TV stations under its fold — TV3, ntv7, 8TV and tv9 — not to air footage of Sivakumar being forcibly removed from his chair so that Ganesan could take over.
Such censorship is of course rather futile in the age of affordable gadgets, YouTube and the internet. But that doesn’t change the fact that Media Prima’s action, if Malaysiakini’s report is accurate, is about hiding the truth so that those who commit abuses will not be exposed.
In fact, it’s hardly different from the earlier decision to only allow 13 BN-controlled media access to the historic 7 May Perak state assembly meeting. Imagine what citizens would have been denied if that ruling hadn’t been challenged and then reversed so that all media could cover the chaos in the assembly chambers.
Twice in my life, I have seen a man beat up his woman partner in public. In both cases, it left me wondering how much more violence the man was capable of in private if he didn’t have qualms abusing his partner in front of others.
We need to ask this same question of our police, and by extension, the BN government. If the police have no qualms unlawfully detaining or arresting a citizen or lawyers, who should have access to their clients, in full public view, what else is it capable of behind doors? Beatings and torture that led to the kind of death A Kugan experienced in police detention?
(Pic by Mark Coggins / sxc.hu)
For sure, police arrogance and impunity don’t exist in a vacuum. Police abuse of power is made possible because the BN government, as evidenced by Hishammuddin’s justifications, allow for it to happen. Just as the decision by some media to censor what the police have done is also a form of collusion.
This then makes Hishammuddin’s statement about the 7 May state assembly sitting farcical beyond belief. Being thankful that “nothing serious” happened in Perak is like saying “nothing serious” happened to Kugan while in police detention. It’s like saying the police, acting on the BN’s instructions, saved the day in Perak.
Dire events occurred in Perak that day. Dire events continue to happen in Malaysia under the BN’s watch, whether in Perak or elsewhere every time dissent is violently repressed, and then when the repression is denied or justified. If citizens, and the media, allow these events to continue as if “nothing serious” is happening, we can be certain it will only get worse, not better.
Jacqueline Ann Surin subscribes to the Quaker‘s wisdom of bearing witness. She believes that it is only when citizens and the media are watchful of those in power that abuses can be prevented and abusers held accountable.
Malaysia's official secrets-NST
So, where’s the transparency?
TOP secret, secret, confidential. These are not exactly terms one expects to be used by those propagating transparency and accountability.
New Straits Times: May 15, 2009
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Friday/Columns/2557198/Article/index_html
A bigger taboo would be resorting to the Official Secrets Act (OSA) — the “draconian” law — that has been roundly condemned by all and sundry since its formulation.
Those who have been at the forefront calling for the abolition of this restrictive law include the National Union of Journalists Malaysia, non-governmental organisations and opposition parties.
The DAP has been among the parties that have many times over the years fought for the repeal of oppressive legislation like the OSA.
It therefore came as a shock to many when none other than DAP’s secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, used the OSA stick to beat civil servants in Penang.
“I want to remind all civil servants that they are under the OSA oath and they should know that they must not leak confidential information to outsiders,” he warned after four of his new special assistants took the oath at office on Wednesday.
His beef this time was that opposition assemblymen from Umno had allegedly become privy to some details of the state executive councillors’ meetings.
Lim went on to say that the state secretary had started investigations to find the culprit who leaked the information, and action would be taken against the mole.
He said the state government had nothing to hide and was not worried about the opposition having such information. However, he expressed concern that information may be leaked for profit or the benefit of interested parties, especially business interests.
It seems odd, but Lim is resorting to the same OSA card that he and others aligned to him have been opposing all this time. This has not escaped the attention of people, including Internet critics, and Lim’s warning on the OSA has become a hotly-debated topic.
His stand on the OSA has been described as incongruous and against the principles of his administration.
On the one hand, he is opposed to the OSA and rules affecting press freedom, and yet he imposes rules and regulations akin to censorship and infringing access to information.
No one can deny that official secrets cover a wide range of government duties — from cabinet papers to specifics of the country’s defence system.
It is also undeniable that the need for maintaining official secrets is unavoidable.
There are, however, matters that concern the general public, and that was all that opposition representatives raised in the recently concluded state assembly.
There certainly wasn’t any information revealed that could in any way jeopardise state security or be used against the interests of the people.
It is incomprehensible why Lim should wear two hats on the same subject, one portraying himself as the champion of complete liberalisation, and the other of a control freak.
It is also ironic that Lim is resorting to threats of invoking the OSA after ranting on the shortcomings of such laws.
After all, it was Lim himself who said that transparency promotes integrity and fights corruption, and who promised that decision-making would be done in an open manner subject to public scrutiny and oversight.
Vietnam: Editor fired over 'sensitive' articles-RFA
Editor Fired Over ‘Sensitive’ Articles
Radio Free Asia: May 15, 2009
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/editorfired-05152009183717.html
The Deputy editor of a Vietnamese tourism publication is fired from his job after the government accuses him of writing what they call ‘sensitive’ articles.
Deputy Editor in chief of Vietnam’s Du Lich (Tourism) newspaper was fired from his job on May 12 and had his press card withdrawn for writing articles critical of Chinese influence on Vietnam.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication said Nguyen Trung Dan, 53, had published the ‘sensitive’ articles in the publication’s Lunar New Year issue earlier this year against government directives.
Du Lich, which publishes twice a week, belongs to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.
Authorities suspended publication of Du Lich for three months on April 14 and vowed to reshuffle the paper’s management after it published articles related to a dispute with China over the Spratly and Paracel Islands.
Dan said the authorities have not told him if their action against him will be permanent.
“I do not know the root of the problem. Officially, they said it was because of two articles, which were ‘Nam Quan Border Gate’ and ‘Thoughts About the Far Islands.’ I’m not sure about the bauxite mining articles,” Dan said.
Nam Quan Border Gate addressed China’s unofficial push of Vietnam’s long-held northernmost border further south. Thoughts About the Far Islands examined the dispute between China and Vietnam over claims to the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
In its Lunar New Year edition earlier this year, the newspaper ran a series of articles supporting anti-China protesters, praising them for their “pure patriotism.”
Thousands of demonstrators, mostly university students, gathered in late 2007 near the Chinese diplomatic missions in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to protest China’s policy toward three archipelagos in the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands.
Although Vietnam’s communist government opposes China’s policy in the Spratlys, it wants to maintain friendly relations with its powerful northern neighbor.
Dan also published articles about the controversial bauxite mines under construction by Chinese firms in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
“What I did was not a big problem. It was my idea,” Dan said.
Dan, who has been a Communist party member for 15 years, said he has not heard any decision from the government concerning his being disciplined.
After the reunification of Vietnam, Dan worked as a reporter for a local newspaper in the country’s central Quang Nam province. He had held positions with widely-read newspapers Lao Dong (Labor) and Thanh Nien (Young People), before moving to Du Lich.
Censorship in the media
According to Internet World Stats, Vietnam now has more than 20 million Internet users, or about 24 percent of the population, placing Vietnam as the fifth largest market in Asia, behind China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. [FACT: Note Thailand is not included in this list!]
Vietnamese bloggers are estimated at one million.
Vietnam follows China’s example of Web censorship and reports indicate the two countries exchange censorship technology.
The Vietnamese police censor Web content and monitor e-mail in order to track Internet users sending “subversive” content.
In September, blogger Dieu Cay, also known as Nguyen Van Hai, was jailed for 2-1/2 years on tax evasion charges after he tried to persuade people to protest Olympic torch ceremonies in Ho Chi Minh City last summer.
In November, Pham Thanh Nghien, an Internet writer and independent journalist, was arrested and detained without charges.
She has not yet been brought to trial.
Journalist Huynh Nguyen Dao was released from prison on Feb. 15 after completing a 30-month jail sentence for circulating Internet material criticizing the government.
New measures were introduced on Jan. 20 to regulate blogging.
Bloggers are now required to provide only personal information and forbidden from disseminating material banned by Vietnam’s press law.
Blog platform hosts are required to regularly provide the government with information about the activities of their clients.
Original reporting by Nam Nguyen for RFA’s Vietnamese service. Vietnamese service director: Diem Nguyen. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes.
Google helps China's censors-p2pNet
[FACT comments: Almost all Internet users now use a wide range of Google services. Google’s convenience, for most, outweighs our privacy concerns about the responsibility of a giant, profit-driven corporation. That’s one thing: we make a conscious choice. But when Google starts censoring news-sites in other countries for Chinese consumption, that’s evil. It’s up to all of us to vent our outrage at Google. only public pressure will keep them honest.]
p2pNet: May 15, 2009
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/2490
Google has denied claims that its Chinese service is censoring news.
However, the ceo of a company which runs services aimed at allowing Chinese people to access un-filtered news has condemned Google practices he says are helping the Chinese authorities to maintain an online ‘matrix’ which keeps people from finding out the truth.
A volunteer working with Dynamic Internet Technology’s DynaWeb – a free proxy network created to circumvent internet blocking in China – noticed Google’s Chinese news returned different results depending whether the search was conducted in China or in the US. DynaWeb is .
DIT ceo Bill Xia told p2pnet he’d confirmed the report through proxies in China.
“Search results inside China do not contain news from blocked sites such as http://www.epochtimes.com.au.”
A Google spokeswoman told p2pnet, “In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons”.
“For example, they may display improperly in our service, or be inaccessible to users. We have not included links to a number of sources that are not accessible to mainland China Internet users. These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible and therefore their inclusion does not provide a good experience for our News users who are looking for information. These sources represent only a tiny fraction of the sources available in simplified Chinese.”
Website Matrix
However, “The Chinese government controls the media and the military and through them, is able to create a ‘Matrix’ that hides websites that relate to civil rights and opinions the Chinese authorities don’t want people to see,” DIT ceo Bill Xia told p2pnet.
“And of course, these are the only places people can find this find of ‘forbidden information’ and by excluding them, Google is actively helping the Chinese government to enhance its ‘Matrix’.
“This exercise is no different to Yahoo China’s exclusion of oversea sites when words such as “Falun Gong” are searched.
“I condemn it and urge the public to demand that Google explains how it’s able to justify the practice.”
Xia also noted that he’d demonstrated that Google is using geographical differentiation to display different results to different locations.
Google has a minority share in Baidu.com, a Chinese search engine.
“Baidu is the largest independent search engine, but much smaller than the leading portals Sohu.com and Sina.com,” says Poynteronline, going on:
China ‘particularly tough’
Two years ago, Baidu put itself on the media radar and angered many Chinese Internet users. China’s censors had installed new filtering software to keep unwanted information out of the country. For yet unclear reasons, Google was very prominent on the hit list of those new IT-goodies and people who wanted to Google ended mostly up in the Baidu.com website.”
Internal Google documents obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle say in Europe, Google is the clear search leader but Asia is, “an entirely different story”. The company was No 3 in Hong Kong and only No 10 in Japan.
“China is also considered to be particularly tough,” says the story.
“Many Chinese companies already dominate the search market there. In June, Google invested a reported $10 million in one of them, Baidu.”
The Chronicle story also points out that wherever Google has offices, “it faces a variety of laws. In some cases, that includes filtering Web sites for illegal content.
“Google has blocked more than 100 such Web sites in France and Germany, according to a study by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Google insists that it is merely complying with the law and that the filtering does not affect search results elsewhere in the world.”
FACTback - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (Backup) 
