The Venezuelan Government's Rhetorical Contortionism

Not to be outdone by the Chinese, the Venezuelan government has decided to tighten the gag on the country's independent media to fight "new forms of criminality that have arisen as a consequence of the abusive exercise of freedom of information and opinion."

The government's excuse just missed one of the usual justifications, protecting national security, but its intentions are just as repressive.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz, in a speech before Congress, promoted a bill named Media Crimes Law, which would make the practice of independent journalism in Venezuela a big step closer to a Utopian enterprise.

Latin America Herald Tribune:

It was necessary, she argued, to bring in new laws to provide “an appropriate protection of the citizens who are left defenseless against the irrational use of power by the media.” Just in case anybody hadn’t got the message, she added: “It is necessary that the Venezuelan state regulates freedom of expression.”

There was a limit to freedom of expression, she claimed, and she urged legislators to put that limit in place. Regulating the conduct of “the owners of the media and all the people who work in them” was a priority for the country, she said, and nobody should be allowed to get away with “committing punishable things nor helping to commit them.”

Neither could the media be allowed to “generate intranquillity, nor alter social peace or public order, nor generate a sense of impunity through news items.” What the media instead had to do was “comply with an educative function” as was stipulated by the constitution.

While Ortega Díaz spoke in general terms of the media, all the indications were that she did not have in mind state broadcasters – who, their critics claim, are all too willing to do the government’s bidding.

In a shameless exercise of rhetorical contortionism, Ortega said she is out not only to limit freedom of the press but to regulate it, adding that there are no states where "conducts are not regulated." Even so, she insisted "we are promoting" freedom of expression.

Can it get much more Orwellian than this?

China about to Toughen Its Toughest Press Law

Tomorrow, July 31, is the deadline for public comments on the reform of China's most toxic law when it comes to press freedom.

And the outcome on the reform to the 1998 Law on Guarding Sate Secrets looks bleak. Human Rights in China (HRIC) has done an extensive study on the implications of the proposed additions to this most repressive law and has come up with the following points that would make it even more dangerous:

Exclusion of limitations on the definition of state secrets via deletion of the current requirement that matters not satisfying the state secrets definition “shall not be considered state secrets” (Article 8 of the Law on Guarding State Secrets).

Detailed provisions regulating electronic information management, including electronic data storage and connectivity to the Internet or public networks  (Draft Articles 22-26 of the draft revision).

Specific details on the power of state authorities to investigate, prosecute, and punish misconduct involving state secrets (Draft Articles 37-43 of the draft revision), in contrast to current provisions calling only for authorities to “deal with” such matters “without delay” (Draft Article 8 of the Law on Guarding State Secrets).

Detailed classifications of the personnel handling state secrets and provisions requiring personnel to sign agreements to ensure secrecy Draft Article 33 of the draft revision).

Increased severity of penalties for violations of state secrets rules, including specific monetary fines and administrative and criminal consequences (Draft Articles 44-49 of the draft revision).

Restriction of the number of people or entities with knowledge of state secrets “to the smallest scope allowed by work needs”(Draft Article 14 of the draft revision).

Expansion of the scope of state secrets to explicitly include all electronically stored or processed information (Draft Article 21 of the draft revision).

HRIC encourages Chinese citizens to get involved by providing comments on this very dangerous reform and offers instructions and Internet links to submit these comments.

You either get involved in the reform process or else the law will become even more toxic than what it is now.

Chinese Litigators, a Brave Breed in the Human Rights Frontier

A human rights attorney in China may sound as contradictory as a democracy convention in the middle of Tiananmen Square.

Yet there are close to 200,000 lawyers in a country that had banned this profession only until 1976, which is quite an accomplishment for a country with a regime as paranoid as the one calling the shots in Beijing.

Problem is too many lawyers bringing too many human rights cases are stepping on too many powerful toes among the ruling elite, who is starting to push back hard.

That's what this very interesting op-ed column in The New York Times by former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh is saying:

Yet if lawyers now enjoy increasing independence, those who defend human rights are increasingly under attack, with legal restrictions impeding their ability to provide an effective defense, to champion causes that challenge local power, or to form independent bar associations.

This month alone has seen several devastating setbacks. On July 9, the Beijing Justice Bureau announced that it had canceled the licenses of 53 lawyers for allegedly failing to apply for re-registration. The disbarred lawyers were all involved in high-profile cases challenging local or central authorities: the Sanlu contaminated milk scandal; allegations of corruption in the construction of schools that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake; a challenge over government control of the official Beijing Bar Association; and an alphabet soup of human rights cases ranging from forced evictions of tenants and farmers to politically motivated prosecutions of dissidents and religious dissenters.

Thornburgh lists a number of cases and instances where Chinese lawyers are finding themselves on the receiving end of the regime's wrath.

This is a must read.

Newspapers and Baseball, What a Striking Similarity

You don't need to like sports to get a kick out of this story of two cities.

Chairman and CEO of Tribune Co., the parent company of the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers in dire straights, told the CNBC network that his embattled company could be out of bankruptcy this year.

Sam Zell said to the TV business network that, even though on Monday he asked the court handling its bankruptcy procedures to delay the filing of his plan to exit his current situation, he expects to get out of the woods as early as the end of the year.

One key component of Zell's plan is the sale of one of his most valuable properties, the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball team and its storied Wrigley Field, for which a bidder has already offered some $900 million.

But the sale needs to be approved by both the bankruptcy court and the Major League Baseball team owners.

The Tribune's somewhat encouraging news fallows on the heels of The New York Times' parent company announcing last week higher quarterly profits than analysts had forecast. 

Curiously enough, The Times' fate is also tied to another baseball team. The Boston Globe, which is owned by the Times and whose holding company also owns the Boston Red Socks, is trying to get out of the bankruptcy abyss by selling the team.

Bottom of the ninth, two out and the bases are loaded. Stay tuned.

Gannett Newspapers Making It Even Harder for Victims of Slump

A severance payment scheme at Gannett, one of the US largest newspaper publishing corporations, is making a lot of laid-off employees regretful that they ever worked for the company.

This is yet one more indication of the dire straights America's print press is going through in the industry's worst ever crisis.

The New York Times:

The company says that for most employees the result will be about the same — that in fact, many will get a little more, and a few could get much more. But employees are discovering that some of them, like Ms. Poon, stand to get a lot less than they would have under the old severance packages, and some will get nothing.

Ms. Poon, 26, has a graphic design business that generates a little income, which will lower her state unemployment benefits and may be enough to wipe them out entirely. She is awaiting the state’s ruling to learn which. And if she is not eligible for payments from the state, she will receive nothing from Gannett.

Other former Republic employees who had part-time second jobs say those jobs now mean missing out on thousands of dollars from the company.

“I don’t blame them for cutting and trying to save money because things are bad, but there ought to be a decent severance,” Ms. Poon said. “This way it punishes people for trying to find work.”

Gannett, a largely nonunion company, is under no obligation to make severance or any other payments to most of the people it lays off, and it is not alone in looking for ways to spend less on employees as it weathers the downturn; many newspaper companies, including The New York Times Company, have cut wages and benefits.

There exists a gloomy atmosphere among press workers in the United States that their proud trade will never recover to its former proud self. There exists a gloomy sense in all of us that the world's most shining example of a free press can't find a way to stop the free fall.  

Nokia Siemens Answers Back to Critics in Iran, Including Us

Nokia Siemens is hitting back on critics who said this world communications giant was cooperating with the Iranian regime to put down the on-going pro-democracy demonstrations.

And the way it's doing it is by claiming that the company is following standard procedures in that country and that it "has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran."

Here:

In most countries around the world, including all EU member states and the U.S., telecommunications networks are legally required to have the capability for Lawful Intercept and this is also the case in Iran.  Lawful Intercept is specified in standards defined by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).

To fulfill this Lawful Intercept requirement as part of an expansion to provide further mobile connectivity to Iran in the second half of 2008, Nokia Siemens Networks provided TCI, the Iranian national operator, with the capability to conduct voice monitoring of local calls on its fixed and mobile network.

The restricted functionality monitoring center provided by Nokia Siemens Networks in Iran cannot provide data monitoring, internet monitoring, deep packet inspection, international call monitoring or speech recognition. Therefore, contrary to speculation in the media, the technology supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks cannot be used for the monitoring or censorship of internet traffic.

On March 31st, 2009 Nokia Siemens Networks and Perusa Partners Fund I L.P., a private investment firm advised by Munich based Perusa GmbH, successfully closed the sale of Nokia Siemens Networks’ Intelligence Solutions business to Perusa.  Nokia Siemens Networks made the decision to exit this business as it primarily addresses customer segments which differ from telecom service providers and is therefore not part of Nokia Siemens Networks core business.

In all countries where it operates the company does business strictly in accordance with the Nokia Siemens Networks Code of Conduct and in full compliance with UN and EU export control regulations and other applicable laws and regulations.

Nokia Siemens Networks provides the mobile technology for millions of people in Iran to communicate with each other and the outside world.  Nokia Siemens Networks firmly believes that providing people, wherever they are, with the ability to communicate ultimately benefits societies and brings greater prosperity.

Such a fine line it is that by which we all can hold a corporation responsible for the misdeeds of a regime. Then the line moves back and forth, and one wonders whether that corporation should have been doing business in that country in the first place.

Decisions, decisions.

Iran Tightens Its Grip on Internet Censorship

And it is by citing the oldest excuse in the censorship manual: to protect national security.

The Jurist reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered the implementation of a law that requires Internet service providers to keep records of users' activity for at least three months.

The Iranian regime insists that the monitoring will be conducted under court order and "in the interest of national security." It also said they just are after personal data thieves.

Iranian opposition is up in arms denouncing the regime's
anti-democratic stronghold on power. (EPA photo)

After what has taken place in Iran in the last three months, the regime's explanations are just not credible. This blog is full of posts about the outrageous efforts by the Ahmadinejad government to restrict access to Internet information as an attempt to crush the most intense pro-democracy demonstrations in a generation.

More from The Jurist:

Iran has been experiencing political unrest since Ahmadenijad won the country's disputed June 12 election. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported that some arrested protesters were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with torture in an effort to force false confessions.

Also this month, opposition leaders called for the release of those detained for their alleged involvement in the protests. Human rights groups have viewed the arrests as political repression, saying that Iranian forces are using the protests to "engage in what appears to be a major purge of reform-oriented individuals."

After the pro-democracy demonstration and the violent crackdown on protesters and opposition members, Iran became the world's worst jailer of journalists and bloggers.

And that was also done, of course, "in the interest of national security."

The Associated Press Cracks the Whip

The Associated Press, the 163-year-old news cooperative, is determined to make more money off the Internet and prosecute those who use its materials without authorization.

AP's head Tom Curley in 2003 shortly after he took
over the helm at the cooperative. (WPFC photo)

And the way to do it is called an "informational wrapper," a built-in beacon attached to all its news pieces that would flag any website using its content illegally.

I am going to quote AP's news release hoping that the beacon will not attract the content police:

The beacon is meant to be a policing device aimed at deterring Web sites from posting AP content without paying licensing fees. The AP and its member newspapers contend unlicensed use of their material is costing them tens of millions of dollars in potential ad revenue.

"This is a pivotal step in the fight to ensure that quality journalism can be funded in the digital era," Tom Curley, AP's chief executive, said in an interview. "We have stood by too long and watched other people make money off the hard work of our journalists. We have decided to draw a line in concrete."

The AP calls the project a "news registry," and it is set to debut in November, beginning first with text stories and later expanding to videos and photos. Starting next year, newspapers that own the cooperative will be able to put their material into the registry as well.

The AP hasn't determined how it will make money from its registry, but believes there will be plenty of opportunities. "If you can stop the unlicensed use, the value of the content goes up," said Jane Seagrave, the AP's senior vice president of global product development.

The word "beacon" and what it does brings back memories of a similar system Facebook used that tracked what other websites its users would visit. After the understandable outrage, Facebook turned it into just an option.

AP, however, assures us all that even though its beacon will be able to determined what's read on your computer, it "will not collect personal information" from users.

It is understandable AP wishes to protect its content. According to the cooperative, it found 3.4 million unauthorized uses in just one month. Also AP is losing a ton of money because of the current nosedive of the US newspaper industry and the advertisement recession.

What remains to be seen is whether this aggressive drive to restrict the use of its content would backfire and push Internet users to look for other sources of information and reduce crucial traffic to AP clients.

Also would this be the right move to "get more money off the Internet" when the very existence of the web is based on free linking from one site to the next?

Stay tuned and off AP content or else.

Communications Technology, a Two-Edge Sword

Danny O'Brien, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, brings up very poignant questions in this San Francisco Chronicle column about the dual role played by communications technology, both as a liberating and repressing factor.

Facebook and Twitter are still playing a crucial role in the pro-democracy demonstration in Iran, allowing opposition activists the capacity to overcome huge censoring barriers imposed by the regime. Similar electronic social-networking tools were used by demonstrators during the Uighur uprising in Western China.

But O'Brien rightly points out that the very same regimes those activists were trying to defeat are using the same or very similar technologies to put down those uprisings, with the help of Western democracies.

Iranian authorities spied on protesters' cell phone calls using equipment purchased from Nokia-Siemens. The Chinese government's "Golden Shield" project monitors the unencrypted, unprotected online communications of dissidents.

There is an important lesson from the use and abuse of technology in these cases: U.S. lawmakers and regulators should learn that America's own tech regulations can have unforeseen consequences abroad.

The Nokia-Siemens equipment sold to Iran probably contained interception facilities because the United States in 1994 enacted the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, which forced the telecommunications industry to design networks and devices to make wiretapping easier. As went the United States, so went Europe, with the predictable result that companies like Nokia-Siemens built widespread spying capability into their standard tools.

When lawmakers punch a hole in a technology to spy on its users, they create a hole that repressive governments also use.

O'Brien adds the situation is not getting any better, including efforts by the Obama administration to make it easier to demand personal identity data on the Internet and harder for individuals to keep it secure.

The larger lesson is that wherever free speech tools exist online, those who most need them will come to use them - perhaps even depend on them. Our government must ensure that the tools we build in America are not deliberately weakened by our own misguided policies.

Amen.

Article 19 Condemns Prison Sentences on Two Azeri Journalists

Article 19 condemned the convictions of Azerbaijan journalists Faramaz Novruzoglu, editor-in-chief on Nota publication, and Sardar Alibeyli, Nota's deputy editor, who were sentenced to three months in prison because of their published work.

Here is the Article 19 alert:

Novruzoglu (also known as Faramaz Allahverdiyev) and Alibeyli were convicted under Articles 148 and 147.2 of the Azerbaijani Criminal Code and each was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Another Nota journalist, Ramiz Tagiyev, was also sentenced to six months’ conditional imprisonment.

Novruzoglu and Alibeyli have both faced previous convictions for defamation. Just two days before, on 20 July, Alibeyli received another seven-month conditional sentence on defamation charges. In January 2007, both journalists were convicted on defamation charges as the result of a lawsuit filed by the Minister of Internal Affairs. Alibeyli received a sentence of 18 months of “reformatory works” and Novruzoglu was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; he was released almost a year later after a presidential pardon.

“It is deeply ironic that these latest convictions occurred on 22 July – Azerbaijan’s National Press Day,” comments ARTICLE 19 Executive Director, Dr Agnès Callamard. The events also take place amidst an international outcry about the continued detention of two Azerbaijani bloggers on spurious charges, and just one day after the UN Human Rights Committee examined Azerbaijan’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including those related to the country’s freedom of expression commitments.

ARTICLE 19 believes that the current provisions on defamation and insult in the Criminal Code, along with the Government’s unremitting implementation of these provisions, represent a serious impediment to freedom of expression in Azerbaijan.

ARTICLE 19, together with other international organisations such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, have repeatedly urged the Government to abolish criminal defamation. Just this week, on 21 July, UN Human Rights Committee experts stated that libel and slander should be civil, rather than criminal, offenses. These latest convictions highlight once more the need for defamation to be decriminalised in Azerbaijan

“Such enforcement of criminal defamation provisions has a chilling effect on the work of journalists and other media workers, who may engage in self-censorship out of fear of prosecution”, says Callamard. “These sorts of criminal defamation provisions send the wrong message about the country’s commitment to human rights and freedom of expression, and we call on the Government of Azerbaijan to eliminate them from the law”.