Since I am always blogging about social networks, and the power of social media, I began wondering just how many times I have given away my personal information on the internet. Never having been overly paranoid about revealing my identity, I tended to switch off when others started talking about privacy and personal information. I am lucky enough to have a generic enough name to not have a presence on Google, but for some reason the other day I found myself googling my Twitter handle, and I had a mini heart attack!
Recently I heard about Facebook’s decision to block Suicide Machine’s access to users information. The Suicide Machine refers to the scripts that promise to delete you from Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and until last year, from Facebook as well. Because I was interested in finding out just how many times my nickname had been echoed over the internet without my knowledge, I decided to see what would be involved in manually cutting down my online presence. What did I do?
Can we disappear online completely?
1. Searched my Twitter nick- there were at least 3 or 4 pages directly linking to tweets I had made, tweets mentioning me, pictures I had been tagged in or posted.
2. Delete all old tweets with Twitwipe and a custom Perl script. While in the Twitter applications area I removed at least ten applications that I had previously granted access to my Twitter account. I logged into Facebook and found at least another 30 applications such as quizzes, photography apps and games which I hadn’t used in months, and which I promptly denied access.
3. I severed all links between my accounts by changing them to different handles, URLs or deleting them completely- Status.net, Identi.ca, Last.fm, Blip.fm, Facebook, MySpace, Flattr, Youtube, Tumblr, Blogs, Foursquare and other geotagging applications, shopping sites such as Amazon, Bookstores, Reddit, Digg, Google Buzz.
4. Image searched my nick in Google, Yahoo, Bing
5. Removed all images from image hosting sites such as Yfrog, Twitpic, and emailed them requesting that they close my account. This was a painstaking process as I had to manually delete each picture I had ever posted on these services. I had to email several times before I received a reply from one of YFrog – several days later my empty account has not been deleted.
5. Being an Instagram user, I was under the impression that my photographs were visible only to the 200 odd iPhone users that I had not blocked from following me. I was surprised to discover that some enthusiastic coder had developed Listagr.am, a web application that gives anyone free access to all the photos you have posted. I protected my Instagram account, which produced ‘user not found’ within several minutes.
7. Locked down my Twitter account, change my username and URL.
8. As an IRC user with fairly regular channel operator and tweeting privileges I have been using the same nick. While I use SSH for IRC, not all servers offer host-masking for users and so I created a new i2p tunnel and unrelated nick to chat. Unless I reveal my identity, there is no way of anyone knowing who I am.
9. There were a huge number of annoying mentions of my nickname in ‘Social Search Engines’ such as Topsy, Twitoaster, Boardreader that had cached my Twitter conversations. I emailed Twitoaster and received a prompt reply asking what information I wanted deleted, which I was happy with. There are still instances of people mentioning my nick in conversations, however, this being their property.
10. Twibbon also had a revealing profile for my Twitter account which included a live feed of my twitter stream (before it was protected) and my avatar several times on the page. I emailed Twibbon requesting deletion of my profile and was asked to mention them in a tweet as a security measure. I did this a few hours ago and I will update if and when they delete my account.
10. Requested Google cache removal of all URLs that linked to deleted mentions of my nickname- such as the previous dot points- by using the Google’s URL Removal Tool. This requires you to submit the dead URL and specify your nick as the removed text. A day after I submitted this response the caches had been removed, but interestingly the URLs have not. As an interesting side note, the caches were from 3 March, and the date that I requested deletion was 22 March.
11. Removed myself from mailing lists and deleted old email accounts. The majority of these were from sites I had shopped at once, and forgot or was too lazy to untick the marketing newsletter option.
A few days after I first started, I still have a lot of presence when I type my nick into search engines. It will be interesting to see which sites are quick to respond, and which are hesitant to surrender my personal information, so I will update this post over the next couple of days.
The coverage of the Arab Revolutions has been interesting in the sense that citizen journalism and the use of social media has played a huge role. As I have mentioned so many times, the governmental attempts to censor citizens from internet access and free speech has highlighted the importance of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and independent blogs in information dissemination. With these powerful platforms and the panic that protest and political upheaval incite, it comes as no surprise that misinformation can spread as quickly as checked facts. When so much is at stake it is important to check facts against reliable sources. With this in mind, I want to mention the Wikileaks-inspired Egyptian State Security leaks that have taken place recently.
It looks a lot like the Egyptian people are getting a taste of democracy- and a chance to have a say in their future. A positive turnout for the elections has been reported- with instances of people waiting for several hours to vote, many for the first time. Of the estimated 45 million people eligible to vote, 41% turned up. Seventy seven percent of these voters were in favour of dynamic changes to the Egyptian Constitution. Just days ago Mubarak’s security police force, until recently used by Mubarak to quash political dissent, was disbanded. What have the people voted for? A package of nine amendments (more here) was passed- among the constitutional amendments will be the following:
The president will serve a maximum of two four-year terms (rather than the current six) and will no longer have the power to refer civilians to the military courts.
The state of emergency which has governed Egyptian life for decades will be able to be imposed for a maximum of six months without endorsement in a popular referendum.
Restrictions on who can run for president will be eased, if not entirely relaxed, and judicial supervision of all elections will be restored to prevent vote-rigging.
The president will be required to choose a deputy within 30 days of election
Criticism remains, however. The constitutional amendments have been criticised by some proponents of change - including some of the youth coalition that led the revolt against Mubarak-who argue that they are not dramatic enough, and that the entire constitution needs to be rewritten. A second main concern of voters is the apparent distribution of unstamped ballots, which are illegitimate and can be tossed out. Another disturbing article reports that opposition figure El Baradei- who has apparently announced his intention to run for President- was harassed when attempting to vote, being shoved out of the line and rocks pelted at his car.
Keeping the recent and ongoing protests in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries in mind, it will be interesting to keep an eye on the political climate in Egypt and Tunisia, post ‘revolution’. In particular the role of the people who until recently were largely stifled by authoritarian regimes, and who now continue to voice their wishes through live protest and online. How will civilian protest shape the future of democracy in the Middle East?
Al Jazeera has received a lot more attention and popularity since the beginning of the Arab Uprisings. As Frank Schaeffer argues: “We Americans are so isolated from the larger world that we will always be a dollar short and a day late unless we find alternatives to our “media.” Al Jazeera is that alternative”. Their Live Blogs provide detailed and up to the minute coverage from civilian journalists and media that manages to slip through the cracks in mainstream media- especially in Libya where Gaddafi’s aversion to the internet and foreign press is well-known. In my opinion Al Jazeera’s distinct advantage stems from its approach to news collection- videos and other items are sourced from social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. But what happens when access to these sources is cut off?
The Intercom Project is designed to act as an Emergency Communications division to handle crisis situations. All Telecomix/Intercom agents will get their own extensions and thus be able to communicate, join conferences, and receive calls from anyone anywhere in the world. For this reason security is the most important factor. The Project uses the following technologies to achieve this goal.
PBX (Private Branch Exchange)
A PBX is a switch station for telephone systems consisting of several branches of telephone systems. It switches connections to and from them, thereby linking phone lines. Currently Intercoms most ambitious project is to create a distributed phone exchange to facilitate contact between INTERCOM agents and the greater public- the aim being to allow anonymous/secure access via I2P and support for ZRTP point to point encryption system. Features will include:
• Inbound phone numbers on every continent and rapid deployment of new numbers in any country that needs immediate assistance.
• Bridging functionality; for individuals who need to proxy their communications through a trusted third party.
• Specially purposed message boxes.
• Press contact directory
• IRC bot to indicate new messages and incoming calls
• SIP service via I2P
The Intercom system provides all the functionality of a regular PBX on a secure platform. It is intended to be used by political dissidents, journalists, and the general oppressed public. We have a VPN service in place to allow users to traverse hostile networks and communicate with our IP PBX. We are always in need of hosting and phone numbers to allow inbound and outbound calls from the intercom system. Priority is currently on the following internet-hostile countries:
Libya – TOP PRIORITY
Saudi Arabia – PRIORITY
Bahrain – PRIORITY
Burma
China – PRIORITY
Cuba
Iran
North Korea
Syria
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
United Arab Emirates
Radio Listening Posts
We are maintaining a listening post close to the Mediterranean Ocean for listening to emergency broadcasts from that area. We are capable of receiving Morse code transmissions which can be passed on via online communications channels. We currently listen on 7110Khz Region 1 Emergency Broadcast frequency, and you can listen online here.
Emergency Fax Broadcast Service
When emergency information must be disseminated and the internet is out of service, Intercom maintains a series of servers capable of mass faxing documents into any country in the world.
Please see our latest operation workpad and the Wiki for more information. Emcom is accepting donations from Paypal, anonymously via Bitcoin http://www.bitcoin.org/, and donation of time and server/resources. Please join us at #telekompaketet or #emcom on the Telecomix IRC or visit Intercom Support if you have ideas or want to donate.
The Chinese Government has long been well known for its strict internet censorship rules. The Government has recently launched it’s own search engine which offers a state-approved version of the Internet, coverage of the Arab uprisings has been censored, and whispers of a Jasmine Revolution met with fierce resistance in a bid to underline the Communist Party’s strict attitude towards rebellion. In a country where Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Liu Xiao Bao are incarcerated and where sources reporting this news supposedly warrant immediate censorship, it is not a surprise that the use of metaphors to describe censorship is a common practise. For the aforementioned reasons also, it would be a bad idea- most likely impossible actually- to try to cover these issues in a single comprehensive post. I stumbled on this article and decided to look at the use of metaphor to describe current internet censorship events in mainland China.
This video uses the metaphor of the people as bunnies and the government as tigers. It has been spread on Twitter, Weibo-a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter, and other Chinese social networking sites. The translation of the video makes the thinly-veiled references to real life current events yet more apparent. It begins innocently enough, looking as though it will be a cartoon for children, but the metaphors for real life become quickly apparent. The movie ends with the bunnies storming the tiger palace and eating them all. What message do you think the video is trying to convey about the Chinese people and their tolerance for censorship? For those not acquainted or familiar with the references, as most Chinese viewers would be, I have borrowed the following analyses from ChinaGeeks:
The milk powder death- This name sounds very similar in Chinese to Sanlu, the name of the company that produced melamine-tainted milk powder, that killed at least 6 children, caused over 300,000 to fall sick, and for which two Chinese men were sentenced to death . The issue caused controversy in China as the public accused government officials and Sanlu Group management of general disinterest and concealing these details from the public. *This research paperis an interesting study into the Sanlu Dairy Jokes that circulated online afterwards, in the context of Chinese Culture
The 1994 Xinjiang fire- in which 228 children were killed as a result of being instructed to remain seated while Communist Party Officials and theatre staff fled the scene. Blogger Chen Yaowen published a documentary in 2007 “Belated Report: Unveiling the mystery surrounding the 12-8 Karamay fire” on his blog and here. The post features pictures of ‘a man ‘trying to open a locked exit billowing with smoke… an official weeping and apologising on television… of the funeral and the injured lying in hospital beds
The illegal housing demolitions and the associated self-immolation- two reports (Part 1 and Part 2)- publishing of which has been forbidden in mainstream Chinese media. A summary can be found at the end of Part 2, but two of the take-away points, according to the ChinaGeeks translation, are as follows:
Laws about land seizure, housing demolition and compensation are unclear and conflicting, so everyone ignores them
Law enforcement is not particularly inclined to hold anyone responsible when things go wrong, and local government has not been responsive in addressing grievances.
The beating of protesters- Qian Yunhui was allegedly crushed to death under a truck for repeatedly demanding compensation for farmers after 150 hectares of land was taken over by an energy company
The Tiger Gang incident- reference to the recent news story of an official’s son who after drunkenly running over a young woman and killing another University student, apparently responded with “Sue me. My father is Li Gang”, in the belief that he was immune from repercussions due to the high-ranking status of his father. A gag order was issued by the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China, and further censorship actions were put into place to prevent discussion of the incident.
“Anti-Japanese demonstrations, smashing Japanese products, that was all done years ago by Guo Quan [an activist and expert on the Nanjing Massacre]. It’s no new trick. If you really wanted to kick it up a notch, you’d immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese Expo pavilion.”
It should be noted that Human Rights Watch has argued that the punishment of re-education by labour is a violation of International Law as stated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed by China in 1998 and asserting that ‘anyone deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court’, a procedure that not always followed.
On April 5th 2010, WikiLeaks released the confidential US military video Collateral Murder, which depicts the arbitrary massacre of eleven people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad- including two Reuters news staff. The timeline of events in the video can be seen on the page, along with a transcript of the events. On May 2010 Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was entered into solitary confinement at the US Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. He had spent the two months prior to this in a military jail in Kuwait. At the time of writing, Bradley has been held in isolation forover 300 days, charged with disclosing the ‘Collateral Murder’ video and releasing thousands of US Embassy Cables. Manning has been the focus of international activists and Human Rights groups since his arrest- the inhumane conditions of his detainment are not a secret, and include solitary confinement 23 hours a day. Categorised from Day One as a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, Manning’s treatment has been overshadowed by the media hype surrounding Wikileaks. According to interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard), Bradley is exposed to detention conditions ‘likely to create long-term psychological injuries…he is stripped down to his boxers at night and is not given pillows or blankets’. Manning’s lawyer also reports that defence officials recently placed the young soldier on suicide watch, which meant taking away his boxer shorts and leaving him to sleep naked.
Daniel Ellsberg, former military analyst best known as the whistleblower responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971 has condemned Manning’s mistreatment. 1996 article in the New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers “demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance”.a top-secretUnited States Department of Defense history of the United States‘ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967- Daniel Ellsberg, has called Mr. Manning a ‘hero’. He refers to Manning’s treatment as “…what the CIA calls ‘no-touch torture’… its purpose is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession”. In fact it is well documented in psychiatric and criminological academia that solitary confinement is a punishment that can be ‘worse than physical torture’. Bentham’s original Panopticon design seen in the Millbank Prison adopted a similar design playing on the psychological torture of being solitary- the prisoners were never aware of whether they were being watched or not, being placed in such a manner that they could not see the guard or their fellow prisoners.
A recent article I read mentioned the bipartisan National Commission on America’s Prisons, a document created in 2006 that calls for the elimination of prolonged solitary confinement. The Report acknowledges various psychiatric studies of individuals subject to prolonged isolation. Amongst the documented reactions to this mistreatment, individuals display “a constellation of symptoms that includes overwhelming anxiety, confusion and hallucination, and sudden violent and self-destructive outbursts…psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis.” The study points out that long-term psychiatric and even physiological effects are possible- ‘Medical tests conducted in 1992 on Yugoslavian prisoners subjected to an average of six months of isolation — roughly the amount to which Manning has now been subjected — “revealed brain abnormalities months afterward”’.
In early March this year, Manning was charged with 22 further felonies-one of which ‘aiding the enemy’, is punishable by death. The Apache crew and those behind the cover up depicted in the video have yet to be charged. In an interesting opinion piece in Al Jazeera, the authors Benjamin and Davis compare current US President Obama- who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any president in history-with Richard Nixon, who made a similar argument that Daniel Ellsberg had “given aid and comfort to the enemy” for revealing facts about the war in Vietnam. As Lisa Hajjar points out in her Al Jazeera article, ‘States that utilise torture inevitably expand the reasons to justify its use’.
This week has seen both more support and associated dissent from within the US Government. Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson Philip Crowley resigned on Sunday after expressing his view on the Department of Defences management of Manning. Needless to say his statements were quickly contested by a State Department official. The President retaliated in a press conference on Friday, declaring that he has “actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards…They assured me that they are,” Obama said. For the last few months, Mr. Crowley had devoted much of his time dealing with the repercussions of the release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks. He has confided his deep concern over the mistreatment of Manning and that it might ‘undermine the legitimate prosecution of the young private’. His comments, which were Mr. Crowley’s comments- made in response to questions from a small group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology- caused a political backlash in Washington and were rejected by President Obama at a news conference on Friday. They first appeared in the blog of BBC Correspondent, according to whom Crowley described Manning’s treatment as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid”.
Benjamin questions Obama’s betrayal eloquently in her article- “Remember back when Obama campaigned against such Bush-league torture tactics? Recall when candidate Obama said “government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal”?
In my previous post, I wrote a little bit about Syria and the repressive censorship (both on and offline) that the government has implemented to prevent free flow of information. I mentioned a post by blogger Ahmad Al Khair about using HTTPS to access websites securely. In the light of his warning to fellow Syrians, and in the wake of the Tunisian government’s Facebook phishing scandal, I decided to ask my fellow Telecomix agent Jaywalk to explain a little more about HTTPS. I have tried to keep to the bare minimum needed to grasp the concept, but if you wish to develop a little more thorough understanding of HTTPS I have asked Jay to elaborate in italics, otherwise these can be skipped.
HTTPS is not a protocol of its own, but more of a combination of two existing technologies. HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, and the S is for SSL (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (TLS)).
If you’re using darknet software like I2P or Tor (only hidden services) HTTPS is less important, since end-to-end encryption is already provided. The certification could however be handy, depending on what you access / if you don’t know the trust of the destination (for example if a third party provides the darknet-tunnel). Observe that using TOR to surf the vanilla internet makes HTTPS even more important, since you add lots of new middle men who can intercept your traffic.
To begin with, we will skip the HTTP part, as this is what we use for everything on the web, take this page for example. What HTTPS does is put all the HTTP traffic inside a secure tunnel, encrypting both everything you send and everything you recieve from the website you are visiting. In addition to this the encryption provides a certificate which can be used to make sure that what you are looking really is what you expected, and you haven’t been subjected to a Man in the Middle Attack.
Web browsers usually warn about certificates being untrusted, generally if the certificate is ”unsigned”. WeReBuild (https://werebuild.eu/wiki/) is an example of such a page. This doesn’t mean the page is not secured, just that it hasn’t been signed by a Certificate Authority, or ‘CA’. In general, your browser will trust too many CAs, so the procedure is not always foolproof or trustworthy even if your browser does say everything is fine.
If a nation state wantsto accessacitizens data, this can (and hasmany times) beenattempted by implementinga man in the middle attack. If you are using HTTP this is very hard to spot, andwillmost likelygo unnoticed. With HTTPS, considerablymore effortis necessary on their part, butit is important thatusersarestill awarethat there arerisks. Firefox trusts these following Certificate Authorities and any sub delegations of them,amounting to a net total ofwhat couldpossibly beseveral hundredGovernments, institutions or companies:Trusted Certificate Authorities.If the nation state/Government hascontrol over one of these, theymay be able tofool your browser into believing the connection is genuine, without needing to break any ciphers.
Alternative solutions exist that allow you to check and approve certificates without manually checking them. One such system is MonkeySphere, which is based on a personal web of trust instead rather than the Certificate Authority system.
In the aftermath of Tahrir and Sidi Bouhzid, the Libyan government has been intermittently shutting off internet traffic (see Google Transparency Report), making it increasingly tricky for Libyans to stay in contact with the outside world. Libya has always been fairly strict on journalists wishing to enter the country, but as protests erupt and Gaddafi grapples for power, the regime’s grip has tightened- according to Agence France-Presse, Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Khaim warned those who entered Libya illegally that they will be arrested if they do not give themselves in to authorities. “There are journalists who entered illegally and we consider them as if they are collaborating with Al-Qaeda and as outlaws and we are not responsible for their security,” Khaim said. The violence in Tripoli, as well as the arrests and the release of 1500 political prisoners from unground prisons, has also seen the disappearance and death of of Libyan journalists. I have been following the case of Tal Al-Malouhi, the 19 year old Syrian blogger who was arrested this year as a high school student, and had her computer confiscated. Her blog was best-known for its dedication to and sympathy for Palestinian causes. It has recently been announced that Tal has been sentenced to five years imprisonment, and accused of spying for the United States Embassy in Cairo. Activists are concerned that she may have been arrested for a poem she wrote attacking constraints on Freedom of Expression. The charge has been denied by Washington, who called for her ‘immediate release’ in mid-February. Human Rights activists have condoned the arrest and the treatment of bloggers and internet activists in Syria- who now boast the youngest prisoner of conscience in the Arab World (Al-Malouhi) and the oldest. Global Voices lists threatened Syrian bloggers who have been arrested, disappeared or classified as ‘at risk’ both this year and further back. They have described Tal’s arrest, detention and sentence as “typical of the cruel, arbitrary behaviour of Syria’s security services”.
In a blog post I wrote back in November about the International Day of the Imprisoned writer, I listed several cases and zones where journalists are at high risk for reporting or providing commentary. Current events have drawn my attention towards the obstacles that free speech faces in Syria and the middle east- the difficulties faced by activists such as Tal, and hopefully highlight some issues that may help aid the free flow of information. Syrian Blogger Ahmad Abu al-Khair was arrested on February 20th while driving from the coastal town of Banias to Damascus. While the exact reason for his arrest is unknown, his blog contains coverage of the Tunisian Revolution, and comments on Tunisia’s repressive attitude to media and the Internet. In his blog, Ahmad recognises and promotes the importance of the internet as a tool for change- the last blog post before his arrest provides an outline of how to quickly circumvent blocks of Facebook and Twitter using HTTPS – websites loaded over a secure tunnel, protecting against man-in-the-middle attacks and surveillance. It should be noted that HTTP Secure does not provide anonymity for the user. Ahmad’s blog contains posts in solidarity with Tal, and fellow Syrian bloggers such as TariqBiasi- a 23 year old computer technician arrested on charges of “undermining national sentiment”, or “spreading false information to weaken the morale of the nation”. Biasi was held incommunicado at the Palestine Security Branch in Damascus and sentenced to three years imprisonment after holding him for six months without any official charges. His arrest raised questions and outcry in the Syrian online community, as other bloggers criticized the government’s stringent censorship. Some of the comments on Tariq’s arrest:
‘Tarek Bayasi was detained on 7-7-2007 for a comment he left on one of the forums called “I am a Muslim” in which he presented the advantages and the disadvantages of the Syrian security forces policies. His house was searched and his computers were confiscated after his detention. Investigators were through with him ever since he confessed posting the comment, but until now he was not taken to court and no one knows his whereabouts.’ – Ahmad Abu Al-Khair
‘When I criticize my nation and its leaders, it doesn’t mean that I dislike them or wish them harm. I just do it to make my country better in all fields. Those youngsters are the nation’s blossoms; they’ll defend and protect the country, and with them we build it. So why are we stripping a man of his dignity for a word he said? If we knew that a few words would lead us to jail, we would stop writing, shut our mouths, cut our tongues and sit back as slaves waiting for God’s mercy.’ – owner of Msabba’ el Karat Syrian blog
Tal and Ahmad are two of the more high profile cases in which bloggers have been persecuted by Syrian authorities attempts to restrict the online comments and activity. In July 2007, Syrian minister of communications and technology ruled that all website owners must display “the name and e-mail of the writer of any article or comment [appearing on their site] … clearly and in detail, under threat of warning the owner of the website, then restricting access to the website temporarily and in case the violation is repeated, permanently banning the website.” Asthe Human Rights watch article points out- Under international law, the rights to privacy and free expression entail a corollary right to communicate anonymously. Allowing persons to speak anonymously, without fear of reprisal or stigma, encourages the sort of expression that is critical to protection of rights and a democratic society – from political pamphleteering, to anonymous tips for journalists, to “blowing the whistle” on corruption by officials or companies. While the right to anonymity is not absolute, the restrictions imposed by the Syrian decree eliminate it altogether in the name of repressing purportedly “criminal” expression.
Visit the Surveillance Self Defence Tutorial on our wiki for more ideas and information on defensive technology such as i2p and Tor for protecting free speech. My personal interest lies in looking at the role of technology and the internet as a means of communication and protest for freedom of expression, access to information and free flow of Datalove. The interplay between these human factors, social media platforms and technologies are in my opinion, truly important in shaping the future of human rights and politics in both authoritarian and ‘less repressive’ regimes.
In the wake of the Egyptian revolution, the media has been debating the implications of news that Switzerland has frozen tens of millions of Swiss francs in assets belonging to members of the former Mubarak regime in Egypt. I and many others have also been following the Libyan uprising on Al Jazeera’s Live Blog, and this map of Libya protests which outlines the different areas that have reported political demonstrations and violence. The map above is continually updated to show sites of police violence, gunfire, deaths, siege, fuel and electricity cuts, road blockages, injuries and protester clashes as Libya continues into its fourth day of anti government protests.
Benghazi, while not the official capital of Libya, has a population upward of 600,000 and has been described as the hub of resistance against Moamar Gaddafi, who has been the de facto leader of Libya since a coup in 1969. It has been the heart of the protests since February 17th, Libya’s scheduled ‘Day of Rage’. On his introduction to power, Gaddafi imposed a system of Islamic morals outlawing alcohol and gambling. His political philosophy is summarized in his Green Bookin an attempt to reinforce the ideals of Libya as a socialist-Islamic state. As the ABC points out, foreign journalists are banned from entering Libya and the countrys media is tightly controlled, making it difficult to verify information from the troubled country. Revolutionaries in Benghazi have taken over a radio station and commenced broadcast of their own messages, referring to the dictator as “the criminal Qadaffi” and broadcasting their message on the Internet.
The Libyan revolution has been described as a wave of blood in comparison to the comparatively more peaceful Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. Unlike the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, where the military enjoys a degree of independence from the president, exists as institutions in their own right and retains some public credibility, the Libyan military it is more ‘a personal militia for Gaddafi’, and for this reason military forces have nothing to lose in fighting to the end to defend their standing. Media and on-the-ground sources have reported a higher death toll than Egypt- according to CNN, Benghazi doctors place the death toll over 200 and reporting over 900 casualties in the recent conflicts, with the worst violence occurring as pro-Gaddafi security forces opening fire at a funeral procession using machine guns and heavy-calibre weapons. Both Saif El Islam and local hospitals are reporting a shortage of medical supplies and a strain on resources. Both the Praetorian guard and Libya’s permanent representative to the Arab League, Abdel Moneim al-Honi have joined the revolution of the people, with the latter resigning from his position in order to do so.
In a live TV appearance this morning, Moamar Gaddafi’s son Saif El Islam Gaddafi addressed the nation, denying that the death rate was high, rating the number of casualties at 14 and blaming unions, Facebook, foreign mercenaries, drug addicts and Islamic groups for the protests, claiming that they are deriving profit from the state of unrest. He verified that many of the military’s tanks and weapons have been taken over by anti-government demonstrators. In his words: “There is a plot against Libya. People want to create a government in Benghazi and others want to have an Islamic emirate in Bayda. All these [people] have their own plots. Of course Arab media hyped this. The fault of the Libyan media is that it did not cover this”.
At the same time, the BBC and Al Jazeera are reporting that several protests have burst onto the scene in the nation’s capital Tripoli. Witnesses say security forces are using live ammunition and tear gas to keep protesters in line and prevent them from throwing stones at billboards of Moamar Gaddafi. An eye-witness describes the scene:
“The past few days in Trip have seen only pro-government events. Until yesterday, the biggest crowd was Thursday, when one of Q’s sons and later Q himself showed up. On Friday, some of the Imams spoke against the protests and those ‘who would corrupt the country and begin civil war.’ Yesterday, from morning until about midnight, a crowd of easily one or two thousand people gathered in the green square. Several hundred, mostly young men, were on foot, while a few hundred cars packed with men and women continuously circled the square. Trucks would pull up periodically to distribute posters and green flags.”
A snap analysis by Reuters suggests that Gaddafi, like Mubaraks initial reflex, intends to ‘fight till the end’. Analysts believe that ‘even if international anger builds into sanctions, Gaddafi is not likely to be alarmed…His country was under U.S. and European sanctions for decades over its banned weapons programmes and support for foreign militant groups’. Moreover, Libya has a rich supply of crude oil which multinational countries would be hesitant to give up- a card that might be taken off the table if the Al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya fulfils its threat to cut oil supplies to Western countries within 24 hours ‘unless authorities stop the oppression of protesters’.
