TheHotSpring.net :: As the Pentagon issues its official cyber-security posture, it is imperative that we move into the era of strategic cyber-security with one paramount aim: that cyberspace not be militarized in any substantive way by any nation. Cyberspace should operate much the way our space exploration has worked: aiming for technological superiority and peaceful, international cooperation.

The Pentagon’s publicly released policy report suggests that were a military-type cyber attack to lead to damage and casualties comparable to a conventional military attack, it might be treated as an act of war and warrant a military or cyber-military response. But wisely, at least as is publicly known, there is no existing plan to organize a “cyber force” to militarize cyberspace as already exist with land, sea and air.

The Internet was developed in large part by Pentagon advanced research as a communications tool, to help improve the chances of ably protecting against an intercontinental or sea-borne attack during the Cold War. But as a tool of civilian communication it has far outstripped the projected value and productivity of its original design.

So much so, there is a growing legal movement, across the world, to treat Internet access as a basic human right, on a par with access to clean air and clean water. Knowledge, of course, has nearly the same value, in terms of determining whether an individual or a population will have the ability to compete and to stave off oppression, in a technologically organized global civilization.

Cyber-security is an issue of human rights and democracy. If governments, foreign or domestic, are able to use the Internet to impose their will on otherwise free people, real freedoms can be infringed and democratic societies can become vulnerable to the whims of tyrants. But cyber-security is in many ways like environmental security: just as we have a right to clean drinking water, we have a right to unobstructed access to information.

This should be the aim of any regime of national cyber-security, not the application, or projection, of centuries old military force doctrine to the world of digital information and communication. In the atmosphere of true hyper-convergence, the web beyond Facebook and gMail, the integrated freedom of the individual depends on the integrated civil liberty of the world wide web.

Just as we expect to go about our days without tanks rolling down our streets, we must demand we have the liberty to use the Internet as we choose, and safely, without military intervention or monitoring.

What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle—, the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.

The three estates were the “Lords Spiritual” (bishops of the Church of England), the “Lords Temporal” (the House of Lords) and the Commons. The members of the “Fourth Estate” sat in the reporter’s gallery of the parliament and were, by their influence as writers, researchers, editors and publishers, the most significant of the four groups in terms of their ability to move public opinion and channel the influence of popular sentiment into the decision-making of the government.

In other words, the press are the necessary foundation of political influence for the people. It is through the press and what it does for the dissemination of evidence and of fact-based independent analysis that the citizens of a free republic are able to monitor, judge and influence the actions of their government. It is through the press that the governed are able to ensure they are governed only in line with their informed consent.

Since the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, the war on journalists has escalated across the world. The chaos in Iraq and the attitudes of hardline regimes like that led by Vladimir Putin during his years as president of the Russian Federation, have led to the expanding of violent persecution of journalists across the world.

In the last 10 years, the spread of the Internet, and its open transfer of information across the world, has put authoritarian regimes on the defensive, and they have responded by lashing out at print reporters, bloggers and human rights activists. In high profile cases across the Caucasus, Russian operatives and pro-Russian regimes have assassinated journalists with impunity.

Most of those cases remain unsolved. Investigations have been curtailed, and human rights advocates involved in the investigations have been targeted. In Iraq, in Colombia, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, journalists have been targeted for abduction, arrest, abuse, and even death. In Iran, China, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, journalists are routinely detained, accused of spying, and used as props to make it seem the regime in question is combatting foreign infiltrators.

In all of these cases, it is understood that the methodology is intended to intimidate witnesses of all kinds, whether ordinary civilians, potential defectors or journalists and human rights advocates.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been diligently tracking aggression against the press in nations with rising pro-democracy movements and mass demonstrations calling for change. They reported on Friday:

The regime of Hosni Mubarak, in its violent quest to cling to power, engaged in what many observers described as an “unprecedented” and coordinated attack on journalists across the nation, beating and detaining foreign journalists, falsely accusing them of being “infiltrators” or Israeli and/or Iranian “spies”.

The violent and “sustained” sexual assault on Lara Logan, a CBS reporter working in Cairo, on the day Mubarak resigned from power, has been blamed by some on the paramilitary “thugs” the regime hired to attack journalists. Sexual assault was reportedly a routine tactic used by Mubarak’s paramilitary mercenaries to attack women who were seen as critics or opponents of the regime.

While Mubarak was still in power, NPR reported that “reports of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault against women by government security forces are rampant”. The connection between abject corruption, attacks on the press, impunity and the brutalization of the civilian population, is clear.

We need to celebrate the committed and courageous work of the world’s truth-tellers, journalists who take the serious personal risk of entering into the dark, threatening corners of the world, or dare to lift the cloak that covers up political corruption, who risk their lives just for the opportunity to report facts to whomever might read or hear their words, as heroic defenders of democratic freedoms.

Their work, performed with no weapons, no legal power, no prosecutorial authority, often at great personal risk, is the necessary underpinning for any informed and widespread resistance to arbitrary power and abuse of whole populations. When the free and independent, and now international, press is heard explaining and denouncing illegitimate power grabs and pervasive abuses, it motivates the human conscience generally to reject those responsible and move forward independent of their corrupting methods and aims.

That is an heroic achievement, and a gift to the rest of us, given by human beings willing to stand between the truth and a lie, defining the difference with their own human dignity.

After intense pressure from Amnesty International, foreign governments, private business and the press, Egypt’s new vice president Omar Suleiman pledged yesterday that Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who is reputed to have launched a Facebook page denouncing police brutality and political persecution, would be freed. He was abducted by regime police near the beginning of the pro-democracy demonstrations, on 28 January, and was not heard from publicly till today.

The Facebook page, “We are all Khaled Said“, was reportedly used to organize the most far-reaching pro-democracy campaign in Egyptian history, bringing together opposition groups, human rights watchdogs, concerned citizens and tech-savvy young people who see no need for military government and want to determine their own future. On Sunday, news began to spread around the world that a security agent had leaked information that Ghonim was being set up on trumped up charges and was likely to face torture.

Ghonim gave an exclusive live interview to a private Egyptian television channel, DreamTV, after his release this afternoon. The release appears to have been a gesture to business leaders the regime seeks to keep close relations with, and possibly to satisfy demands from foreign governments that political detentions end. The interview has stirred and inspired citizens across Egypt, reframing the official story and reminding ordinary Egyptians that the regime, and not the demonstrators, is the source of suffering and strife.

The interview was intensely emotional; Ghonim spoke of the deep patriotism of the pro-democracy activists, of people who are putting their lives and their livelihoods at risk for the sake of giving their nation a better future, free of political persecution and authoritarian violence.

According to the Guardian:

Ghonim’s stature across the country now appears destined to rise dramatically if the post-interview reaction on the internet is anything to go by. Calls are being made for him to stand as president. Others predicted that his performance, which was being acclaimed as a tour de force of calm but explosive political passion, would inevitably boost the numbers of those attending the latest mass demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir square and elsewhere this morning.

“I am not a hero. I only used the keyboard, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. Those I can’t name,” said Ghonim, who sobbed throughout the interview, which ended with him being overcome with emotion as he was shown images of some of those who died in the uprising.

Ghonim said he was not tortured and that his jailors did not mistreat him, but said the methods of the security forces were not acceptable to the protest movement. But he said he was shocked to hear that people inside the prison had heard he was a “traitor”. “Anyone with good intentions,” he said, is viewed as a traitor, “because being evil is the norm.”

He added that “If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, let this country go to hell.” He said the protest movement was spontaneous and grew from the aspirations of the Egyptian people, and that far from being traitors, the organizers’ sincere aim was to save their country from the ongoing disaster of authoritarian rule.

Ghonim said every Egyptian has a right to have full and complete information about what the government is doing with the wealth it draws from the people. “Inside I met people who loved Egypt,” he said “but their methods and mine are not the same. I pay these guys’ salaries from my taxes, I have the right to ask the ministers where my money is going, this is our country.”

There are now calls for Ghonim to be given a leadership role, at least as spokesperson for the coalition of pro-democracy parties. The interview is also being seen as a potential threshold moment, after which the regime will no longer be able to pursue a strategy of persecution and detention or of talking reform while seeking to disperse the protesters gathered at Tahrir Square.

Tuesday has reportedly been labeled a “day for decorating Tahrir Square”, which some in the movement hope will be another opportunity for hundreds of thousands to flood the square in central Cairo, which is now being called adoringly “Free Cairo”, “the Free Republic of Tahrir” and “the embryo of a new nation”.

The new burst of nationwide inspiration to support the pro-democracy movement could give weight to the activists’ argument that a swift transition to a coalition caretaker government of opposition parties would be the most responsible and orderly way to move Egypt forward and leave the chaos of the crackdown behind. US president Barack Obama said yesterday that Egypt “will not go back” to the repression of the last three decades, and the new popularity of Wael Ghonim appears to signal that Egypt’s wider population agrees.

The media storm surrounding the personal story of Julian Assange, reputed founder of WikiLeaks, is in many ways a sad commentary on the state of our security policy. The malice directed at Assange, and the coincidental pursuit of him on accusation of sexual assault in Sweden, appear to fit into a campaign designed to dissuade the general public from taking seriously anything produced by WikiLeaks. The fact is: there would be no use for WikiLeaks and no controversy whatsoever, if democratic governments did not rely so heavily on secrecy.

It is often said that secrecy is required for any meetings where people relay information to executives of the government, because without secrecy there could be no “candor”. Candor is certainly, in most settings, a virtue, but it stretches the imagination to come up with a circumstance where candid analysis of a problematic situation would be so shameful in nature as to warrant blanket secrecy for ALL such encounters. It is well understood that analytical understanding and participation in wrongdoing are not the same thing.

Top advisors on energy policy, security policy, and diplomatic outreach, may have problems bridging the divide between their own government’s intentions and those of a foreign power, but then, that’s what diplomacy is, and everyone understands it as such. Using official secrecy powers to cover up malicious accusations, or even evidence of wrongdoing, is wrong-headed, and contrary to basic democratic values. The people have a right to know what their government is doing and on the basis of what information.

Julian Assange is being made into a synonym for WikiLeaks by global media hype. This is not only disingenuous, it also poses a grave disservice to the reading public. WikiLeaks is a very logical step in the digital media revolution. If it weren’t Assange, it would be someone else. It might not be a site so explicitly devoted to the anti-secrecy cause, but it could be any number of sites that simply post documents that would otherwise have been kept secret.

The innovation is not WikiLeaks at all, or Julian Assange, but as Todd Gitlin points out in an “Entanglements” post for the New Republic, the database. The database is a major functional foundation of the digital age, helping to structure and administer everything from everyman blogs to travel websites, to Google and the work of government itself. That a given webpage, an article in an online newspaper, for instance, is not just a computer file, but a portal that links back to numerous other files and databases, is a major feature of the web today.

WikiLeaks is a logical next step in transparency. Now, maybe there are key psychological drivers related to the life and tastes of Julian Assange that have made WikiLeaks the comprehensive document dump that it is, but even critics have to admit that WikiLeaks has been somewhat more selective in its release of documents that most media reports suggest.

Yes, it is a major achievement to have access to so many hundreds of thousands of documents, and to share them with major newspapers, but that is not the same as putting everything willy-nilly into the public domain. This is a test-case for modern democracy: can we survive major releases of information that our elected leaders wish to keep concealed, without those leaders asking us to cede more power to them? Can we remain democratic, despite the embarrassment of our elected leaders?

I’ve chosen phrasing that makes it seem absurdly childish to consider the alternative: that we cede power to leaders who would request we become less free in order that they suffer less embarrassment. In part, I chose these words because what is patently absurd is never necessarily avoidable. Everything depends on what people are willing to accept. All too often, we do accept the patently absurd from major institutions, especially where not doing so would make us aware of our own responsibility in society.

WikiLeaks may not be the most convenient fact of life for people wishing to do business in government offices that rely on discretion and cooperation for efficacy. But does that inconvenience mean it is an evil to the public good? Does it mean we should forfeit our sacred liberties, like the freedom to know about our government, its deliberations and its actions? Does the problem posed by WikiLeaks mean a free society should make itself less free to prevent such discomfort? It seems doing so would only worsen the problem.

And then there’s the question as to whether any of this really impacts national security. As WikiLeaks and its defenders have many times pointed out, not one official from any agency has yet come forward with any incident in which any person or persons were harmed as a result of information WikiLeaks released into the public domain. But beyond that, we have the question of just how precarious is a security policy that relies so heavily on secrecy?

“Sources and methods” is thrown around a lot as a term of art: secrecy is about protecting “sources and methods” for intelligence gathering. Intelligence gathering is harder if specific sources and methods are compromised, because defensive action can be taken to prevent the use of those particular sources and methods to gain access to specific information. This is very true, and very relevant. But, intelligence gathering that relies entirely on having the upper-hand yielded by surprise attack is not really all that effective.

The state of any art develops, and as it does, methods and techniques are engineered and reverse engineered and re-engineered. Everyone is trying to achieve the same set of goals with more or less the same tactical limitations (except where technology and/or size make a difference). It is not true that all ideas about how to gather intelligence or specific results emerging from specific intelligence gathering techniques need to be kept secret in order to protect the usefulness of specific sources or even the secret existence of specific methods.

If intelligence works, it should be understood to have worked. If official release of documents is in some ways counterproductive (leaking sources to harm individuals or leaking information to achieve a performative difference in some component of the story), the unauthorized acquisition of leaked documents by non official sources (journalists) can be highly constructive. Exposing methods, ideas or biases, that might be embarrassing can lead to improved methods, ideas and perspectives that replace outmoded or inefficient precursors.

We cannot, in good conscience, as citizens of a free country, accept the excuse from policy-makers that only in an atmosphere of official secrecy can they do the difficult work of maintaining good strategic relations and of keeping our nation and our allies safe. The only real grounds for that argument is the proposition that they are not equipped to do it any other way. We should demand, however optimistic it may seem, that our public servants actually achieve the standards we expect of them, so that their work is not an embarrassment so much as a demonstration of heroic devotion to a mind-bendingly difficult art.

There are reports online that suggest the US Dept. of State may be seeking to suppress the use of data and information emerging from WikiLeaks document releases, telling possible recruits that all such information remains “classified”, i.e. secret, and that any use of such data, including reposting of links to the leaks themselves or to WikiLeaks generally, will disqualify them from serving at the Dept. of State. Critics say this is an attempt to avoid facing reality and an undemocratic demand against the the right to free and open debate.

The argument for not prosecuting government officials who careful and strategically leak secret information that has been approved, if unofficially, for release is that once released, the information pertains to the public domain and the impact has been calculated to be of use to those in office or to official policy aims. That the debate and contemplation of new information now widely disseminated throughout the public domain, across the world, should be considered tantamount to a prohibited act flies in the face of basic reason.

Whether or not those in power want to admit it, the information is out there. The substance of private conversations is now known, back-channel diplomacy has been released into public view, and people are, rightly, embarrassed by some of what was said. But it really is not too far fetched to imagine that what citizens want of their government, given these details, is for those in positions of influence to address the problem, not to try to suppress free and open debate of the substance of policy revelations.

The leaks have been generated, the information is out there. There may be a feeling there is a need to shut down the publication making the information available, before what has not yet been released is released, but there are serious legal impediments to doing that, and WikiLeaks has famously build itself an “insurance policy”. The insurance, against aggressive action to shut down the site or imprison its founder, Julian Assange, is reportedly an encrypted file, already downloaded to computers across the world, that allegedly contains ultra sensitive information, which would be released if certain lines are crossed.

Tactically, this makes real action to suppress debate at least very problematic. But beyond that, there’s the issue of democracy itself: the United States government exists within a strict Constitutional framework that, in theory, requires it to honor the work of journalists who seek to uncover information that would otherwise be kept secret, whether inside the halls of power or out among the people or in foreign lands. The freedom of the press is primordial to the institutions of a true democratic system of government, and the United States cannot simultaneously serve that interest and take action to silence a media outlet.

The Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), whose students were allegedly the targets of one State Dept. official’s apparently rogue gag order, has apparently refined its position on the WikiLeaks blackout. The dean of SIPA has said that students “have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena … without fear of adverse consequences”.

The initial warning reportedly came from a SIPA alumnus, employed by the State Dept., by way of the Career Services office at SIPA. The school has since retracted the warning, saying that it does not seek to silence debate or to control what information students research or discuss in their pursuit of a thorough education in global politics.

John Coatsworth, dean of SIPA, issued an email, obtained by Wired, which called the Career Services warning “guidance”, and which reads in part:

Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.  The WikiLeaks documents are accessible to SIPA students (and everyone else) from a wide variety of respected sources, as are multiple means of discussion and debate both in and outside of the classroom.

Columbia appears to have put to rest the issue of whether it would censor its students at the direction of one State Dept. official, but it remains unclear, despite State Dept. objections, what motivated the alleged lone censor to seek to suppress debate at one of the nation’s most prestigious schools of international politics.

MSNBC anchor and news analyst Keith Olbermann will be back on the air on Tuesday evening, after being indefinitely suspended, and thus missing his Friday and Monday programming. MSNBC president Phil Griffin had suspended Olbermann, alleging that three campaign donations violated the ethics rules for journalists employed by NBC News. The suspension had appeared to many to be politically motivated, given Comcast’s plans to take over the network, and the likely incoming president’s staunchly pro-Bush views and past fundraising activity.

The suspension of Olbermann —in a media climate where MSNBC rival FOX News has literally and very explicitly set itself up as an arm of the Republican electoral campaign, inviting candidates to come on air to fundraise and actively promoting those candidates it interviews, while news anchors attend fundraisers to draw donors and actively donate themselves, and where MSNBC has permitted various Republican commentators to be both employed by the network and actively involved in GOP politics and fundraising— raised the suspicion and the ire of progressives across the country.

A nationwide grassroots campaign to demand Olbermann’s reinstatement began almost immediately, and as of this morning, the news had broken that Olbermann would be back on the air by Tuesday evening. It is clear the outpouring of criticism and the intensifying accusations of political motivations put pressure on MSNBC to end the suspension. Almost overnight, the network lost its credibility as an open and critical political voice where progressives could be heard to one where this seemed to be some kind of fluke whose days were doomed as a corporate takeover approached.

The damage may be done, considering how difficult it has been for progressive press and civil rights groups to get clear information from NBC/Universal about the nature of the decision to suspend Olbermann. There have been sporadic calls for investigations into the motivations of the executives involved in the decision to suspend the journalist, even as the network alleges there were clear violations of the company’s journalistic ethics rules.

There has been a clamoring from the right and from corporate front groups that lobby to oppose pro-consumer and public-health reforms to steer the mainstream media toward a kind of corporate-right doctrine, where markets are sacrosanct and criticism of corporate institutions is considered counterproductive and un-American. FOX News has modeled itself after this doctrine, and has actively sought ad dollars (donations?) from the very entities that push this doctrine of media bias.

In the wake of the Republican victory in the midterm elections, conservative politicians have been crying foul that there remain any dissent or any opposition to their views, in politics, in the mainstream media, or across the nation. There is mounting controversy over the leadership push by right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who once promised she would use a leadership role in the House of Representatives to investigate members of Congress for holding “un-American” views, essentially a bludgeon designed to stamp out dissent and persecute anyone who opposes the Republican agenda.

The media are struggling to understand the meaning of a “wave” election that comes just two years after the historic landslide victory and Pres. Obama’s record vote numbers (Obama won fully 60% more votes in 2008 than Ronald Reagan in 1980). In fact, the story is very simple: in 2008, Pres. Obama won nearly 70 million votes, more than 26 million more than Ronald Reagain in 1980, and by far the most ever received by any candidate for president. In 2010, most of the presidential electorate of 2008 did not participate, making the electorate demographically more conservative and more Republican.

The majority of Democratic candidates who lost were “conservative Democrats” or DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) who actively opposed Pres. Obama and helped the Republicans spread unsubstantiated smears of the president’s major reform agenda. They did not, however, lose because they were conservative or because they criticized the president; they lost because they had put the political maneuvering for their own re-election above the truth and above the interests of the people: neither Democrats nor Republicans have any reason to support such people, and of course, the devil who betrays you is worse than the devil who hasn’t yet turned on his or her principles for cheap political advantage.

Will the Olbermann suspension be the first in a wave of corporate attempts to manipulate the media, dampen criticism of Congressional Republicans or undermine the free press in the United States? First things first: it is not the first case. The real question is: can the media, made up of actual people, whose profession is journalism, do the research and privilege the facts, and be relentlessly critical of those who seek to mislead, so that the press remains a powerful defender of American freedoms and political and corporate interests cannot take over?

Olbermann will likely be emboldened by this attack on his character and on his freedom to make decisions of conscience in how he carries out his duties as a journalist and as a citizen. He will likely have tough words for anyone in politics or in the media who opposes the free press, and he should, we can expect, continue to push the idea that ending net neutrality is a threat to our democracy and a violation of the First Amendment (he reported on this the very week he was suspended, by the way). Maybe the suspension will raise the profile of the issue of press freedom, and cause more citizens to stand up and be counted as favoring the First Amendment over the corporate echo-chamber.

On 4 June 1989, the Chinese military moved into Tiananmen Square to disperse a long-running student and citizen protest in favor of democratic reforms. The military were reportedly ordered to use deadly force and opened fire, killing an unknown number of unarmed civilians. The anonymous man in the above photo became known around the world as an icon of human rights, when he stopped a column of tanks by standing in their way, a moral and human challenge to the military crackdown.

In Hong Kong yesterday, thousands joined a candlelight vigil to honor those who died at Tiananmen Square. The annual commemorative ceremony is a reminder of the special political freedoms enjoyed by residents of the former British colony. Communications between Hong Kong and mainland China, however, were constricted, and surveillance of the whereabouts and activities of foreign visitors was reported to be intensified, as the government sought to keep information about the massacre from filtering through to the population.

China has fought hard to avoid entering the open media environment of the 21st century: the current president Hu Jintao notoriously launched a “smokeless war” against press and dissidents in the first Central Committee meeting after taking power. Regional protest movements have been suppressed in national media; the outbreak of SARS was suppressed, raising the ire of public health officials who accused the political elements of the government of endangering the population and the wider world.

The special freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong are not widely known inside China, or at least not publicly discussed. Journalists, government critics, bloggers and even internet cafe owners, have been or are presently jailed, for violating censorship laws. Google and other major western firms were forced to agree to blanket censorship regarding certain search terms like “democracy” or “Tiananmen Square”.

But earlier this year, when it was revealed that someone inside China had hacked into Google’s corporate email and internal communications, Google announced it would no longer filter its searches, challenging China’s government to deal with the problem of an open web. Again this year, websites have been blocked or shut down, traffic redirected, and service disrupted, as China’s government sought to suppress information about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Google has recently announced it will no longer use Microsoft software, as it was discovered the Chinese hack of Google’s corporate communications was linked to a weakness in Microsoft’s web browser software. China’s government has also had access to Microsoft code, raising fears that access could make computers around the world vulnerable to illegal and possibly harmful surveillance and hacking.

The broader issue for China is how it can fully open its economic system when the central government so forcefully retains control over the flow of information inside China. Google has refused to allow the censored site to remain under Beijing’s control and is now redirecting search traffic to an uncensored site outside of China, but the conflict has only made the matter more urgent: how can China continue to advance if its government cannot allow Chinese people to know what their government does or has done?

The web is democratizing business and innovation the world over, but Tiananmen Square continues to be a measure of how unwilling the Chinese authorities have been to allow true informational freedom to the Chinese people. 2008 saw the Charter ’08 movement demanding the People’s Republic reform politically to allow more personal, organizational and media freedom in mainland China. The leaders have been prosecuted and jailed, and some are in hiding.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is now looking at ways to use legislation that grants the power to regulate traditional phone networks in order to establish a regulatory paradigm of ‘net neutrality’, meaning internet service providers (ISP) who provide connectivity cannot block or slow traffic to some sites while privileging traffic to others. Bandwidth itself is an important limiting factor in the physical environment, and so efforts to expand bandwidth may be crucial to making real net neutrality work.

Legally, it would be difficult for the United States Congress to pass any law that undermines net neutrality, because under the current legal infrastructure, such online access discrimination is illegal, and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States explicitly warns that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…” Each of those rights would be abridged if a law overriding the current net neutral standard were enacted.

But for bandwidth to be expanded, hardware needs to be put in place, all legal nuance aside. So bandwidth multipliers could be the optimal way forward. This would entail a complex array of advanced technological enhancements to existing networks, to allow all wires, cables and transmitters to maximize the bandwidth usage at any given time, without impeding the access of any one household or location to the broader network. If such a smart-connective network could be built, it would require perhaps unprecedented collaboration from ISPs.

To achieve genuine bandwidth multiplier effects, that could benefit remote or underprivileged communities, businesses, and low-budget organizations and publishers, we would need to see the following:

1. More open sharing of traffic flows and traffic-flow data between ISPs;
2. A regulatory framework that allows for this kind of information sharing, but prevents collusion and price-fixing;
3. Technological advances that optimize data flow, minimize energy seepage, and cross-relay traffic across distinct types of network (cable, wire, fiber-optic, wavelength);
4. More powerful, adaptive, remote-hosting servers;
5. A more secure, more easily manipulated cloud-computing environment;
6. Microprocessors able to calculate likely processing time and likely bandwidth time, then compress and decompress files at ‘invisible’ speed, to optimize bandwidth usage.

It is likely that the kind of advances needed to achieve genuine expansion of bandwidth to remote locations will have to do with spontaneous wireless hotspot placement, and physical technical innovations that allow for such solutions, but practice and software can do much of the work to get us started.

Share your ideas here about how best to increase bandwidth and reduce the likelihood of a campaign against comprehensive network neutrality…

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In what could be a landmark ruling, a federal court has blocked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from imposing a network neutrality constraint on internet service providers who own the network they administer. There are serious issues of Constitutionality involved in the ruling, and net neutrality advocates say any move away from absolute neutrality would be a violation of the First Amendment protection of press freedom, and possibly of the freedom to assemble.

According to the Huffington Post:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC’s authority to impose such “network neutrality” obligations on broadband providers.

Supporters of network neutrality, including the FCC chairman, have argued that the policy is necessary to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain Web sites and online services, such as Internet phone programs or software that runs in a Web browser. Advocates contend there is precedent: Nondiscrimination rules have traditionally applied to so-called “common carrier” networks that serve the public, from roads and highways to electrical grids and telephone lines.

It is not yet clear whether the ruling will mean that Comcast or other ISPs could in fact create stratified internet service, with tiered download speeds and/or priority bandwidth for paying content providers, but the ruling does suggest the FCC will not be able to intervene to stop such activity, if a provider does so.

At risk is the right of access of internet end-users to the content they seek, and of content creators to be able to capitalize on the global information-distribution platform of the world wide web.

Google has announced it will stop censoring search results for users in China. This radically reverses the dynamic of its relationship with the Chinese government, which had demanded as a condition of being searchable in China that the internet giant systematically bar certain content from appearing in lists of search results. Google had agreed to enter the Chinese market filtering out search results related to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of June 1989, even to the word “democracy”, but a cyber-spying attack that originated in China caused Google to rethink the validity of the initial agreement.

It is presumed the Chinese government will eventually shut down Google altogether in mainland China, should the search giant not revert to filtering certain key words from searches generated by users inside China. But as of Tuesday, full blockage had not gone into effect. The San Jose Mercury News, however, is reporting that “One day after Google stopped complying with China’s censorship rules, state-sponsored media ratcheted up verbal attacks on the search giant, and several of Google’s key business relationships in the country appeared to be in serious jeopardy.”

According to Wired:

The recent hack attack on Google, Adobe and other companies occurred through exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability that affects many versions of Internet Explorer, according to Microsoft and a security researcher with a leading anti-virus firm.

Microsoft learned about the vulnerability only Wednesday evening, said the researcher, who asked not to be identified because he’s not authorized to speak with the press.

Over 30 firms were hacked, in what appears to be a state-corporate espionage operation, though it is still unclear what sort of information was compromised, or if any documents were deleted, altered or accessed. At least 34 companies were attacked, and reports suggest the hack was designed to access the companies’ secret proprietary source code, possibly to allow further future hacks, censorship operations or blanket espionage linked to specific software.

Wired has also reported that:

Anti-virus firm McAfee has published a blog post confirming that a previously undisclosed vulnerability in IE was used to hack into several of the targeted companies. The attacks have been dubbed “Operation Aurora,” believed to be the name the hackers gave their attack. A McAfee spokesman told Threat Level that the company’s researchers had been working with a number of companies that were targeted in the attack since last week, prior to Google’s announcement.

There has been a “bumper crop” of malware, in recent months, meaning a build-up of malicious software that would allow hackers to remotely access private, proprietary information, if anti-virus software is not yet attuned to the specific technical functionality of the attack.

Google’s announcement that it will no long participate in China’s “voluntary” censorship/filtering program is, clearly, a direct accusation against the Chinese government, and a sign the software and search company does not believe it can reasonably defend its interests, or the interests of informational freedom, by agreeing to a pact which it says Beijing has refused to honor.

Google is now redirecting search users inside mainland China to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong. According to the New York Times:

Just over two months after threatening to leave China because of censorship and intrusions from hackers, Google on Monday closed its Internet search service there and began directing users in that country to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong.

While the decision to route mainland Chinese users to Hong Kong is an attempt by Google to skirt censorship requirements without running afoul of Chinese laws, it appears to have angered officials in China, setting the stage for a possible escalation of the conflict, which may include blocking the Hong Kong search service in mainland China.

Google says China’s government was involved in the attack, and has violated the terms of the agreement Google made, which allowed certain search terms to be blocked inside mainland China, in exchange for a largely open operating policy. Somewhat surprisingly, China’s government has said through the state-run Xinhua news agency that Google’s move is a violation of its agreement with Beijing, which the government alleges included a ban on accusing the government of illegal hacking.

Clearly, the media environment is too constrained and authoritarian to allow for Google to operate freely as an open information media enterprise. Google’s challenge to Beijing, it is thought, will most likely result in Google’s search engine pages being banned outright in mainland China, and a more intense censorship clampdown on other search engines and social networking websites.

China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.

Hong Kong, once a British protectorate, has been granted special political freedoms —as part of the conditions for its return to Chinese rule, and not without significant amounts of public protest from locals demanding them—, including electoral representation and the right to demonstrate. It is a divergent political model within the still largely totalitarian system planned and managed from Beijing, and it may serve as a credible model for how to democratize Chinese institutions of government and enterprise.

In order to meet the social and political demands of coming decades, China will have to grapple with the very real problem of what impact the information revolution will have on Chinese society, which has allowed for a privileged class of central control to impose a strict authoritarian order for thousands of years. Chinese society is already democratizing in terms of information, in that the government has had to admit mistakes in attempts to reorganize and filter information of vital public interest.

The scandal surrounding attempts to cover up the outbreak of SARS in China angered governments and international bodies, and spurred a wave of dissent in China that gave more power to journalists in the state media who sought to put informational value ahead of Beijing politics. Pres. Hu’s “smokeless war” against the press and dissidents has been a questionable enterprise throughout, with limited practical success in promoting Beijing’s projection of power and apparently sparking a surge in dissent.

Authoritarian urges inherent in Beijing’s use of power, both within China and beyond, have generated a notable backlash. In March 2008, an effort to ‘Sino-ize’ the Tibetan economy and consolidate Beijing’s hold on the region led to an outbreak of violence, with ethnic clashes, street demonstrations and security forces attacking civilians in the streets. The demonstrations spread to other regions of China and to neighboring Nepal. As we reported on 31 March 2008:

Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet turned violent in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, yesterday, as police wielded bamboo clubs and beat demonstrators, including Buddhist monks and nuns. The UN has said Nepal’s harsh clampdown on Tibetan demonstrators violates international human rights law, including the right to peaceful assembly, as embodied in treaties signed by Nepal.

Demonstrations that began in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, more nearly 3 weeks ago have now spread to neighboring provinces in China, and into Nepal and India. The Kathmandu clashes came as large crowds accusing China of human rights abuses in Tibet tried to approach the Chinese embassy grounds.

A similar outbreak of ethnic violence broke out in the western province of Xinjiang, when efforts to centralize political control of the region and marginalize the local ethnic majority led to violent street battles. The government accused Uighur separatists of stoking the violence, while Uighur muslims from the region accused ethnic Han immigrants of undermining the economic opportunity available to the locals.

For the occasion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, dissidents organized a high-profile petition for political reform, calling the document itself Charter ’08. The document, far from being an outright repudiation of China’s political establishment, calls for an incremental liberalization of the political process, and diversification of the one-party system. It opens with an explanation of the historical moment and the socio-political imperatives the regime will have to face, one way or another:

This year is the 100th year of China’s Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A “modernization” bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a “modernization” under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.

The government’s response has been to suppress the very idea of a need for liberalization and to prosecute those responsible for the petition. Liu Xiaobo, a moderate dissident and respected literary figure, was detained this summer on charges linked to the Charter ’08 movement and has now been sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power”, a charge the very name of which is a virtual admission of China’s need to democratize. The trial was just two hours long and has been decried across the world as an unfair prosecution without adequate defense or due process for the accused.

Instead of recognizing the constructive role that responsible political reformists can play in crafting a viable future for China —in line with the international system to which China has signed up but whose values it consistently rejects—, those in power in Beijing are treating the very idea of broader political freedoms for the Chinese people as a threat to national security. As the LA Times has reported:

In the last two years, the Chinese government has cracked down on Internet sites, lawyers, consumer advocates and human rights activists, particularly after the collapse of poorly constructed schools in the Sichuan earthquake and the tainted milk scandal in 2008. Liu is a brave democracy advocate and no stranger to jail; he was sent to prison for 21 months after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and to a labor camp in 1996 after demanding clemency for others still imprisoned.

This attack on universal values and persecution of the very dissident voices that could most ably and responsibly shepherd China through a period of needed democratic progress is dangerous in the extreme. Beijing’s hard-line tactics have radicalized and even popularized separatist movements across a number of regions, and efforts to disallow protests and even individual complaints about corruption has sown the seeds of deeper dissent across the country, at a time when tens of millions have lost work due to the global economic crisis.

China has also sought, along with its persecution of dissidents and its use of military force to impose political control over satellite regions, to create a hermetically controlled Chinese-language internet, where information can only be posted if approved by state censors. Instead of seizing the Olympics as an opportunity to plan, test and exhibit meaningful democratic liberalization, the government in Beijing has sought to block websites critical of its policies and control the flow of information across all communications networks in China.

But efforts to impose a blanket censorship-enabling spyware technology on all computers in the country were complicated this summer, when complaints about the substantial security risks and negative impact on business and foreign investment forced the government to back down. In July, we reported:

Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”

The technology may still take effect, under the guise of an effort to block pornography in order to protect young people, but there is intense resistance from the international community, and from media and business interests in China. There are concerns that aside from a gross violation of fundamental rights to open information, the software could actually destroy intellectual property, impede the functioning of computer hardware altogether, and even subject users to added security risks.

According to the OpenNet Initiative:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

Features that allow for intimate monitoring of keystrokes and usage logs could permit attacks either from within government monitoring or from non-government criminal enterprises, to access personal information, create extensive archives of data regarding individual lives and networks of people, and subject individuals to identity theft, harassment, and other kinds of computer-enabled endangerment. Such intrusive harvesting of personal data could even put children at far greater risk of exploitation via the Internet.

One of the most fundamental dangers inherent in this type of digital data-based persecution of dissent at all levels is that it first of all assists in the coverup of abusive or corrupt activity and secondly does nothing to reform areas of the political system itself that are causing anger and the spread of hostility to government policies. While the Green Dam spyware project may allow Beijing to conceal or disrupt the communication of dissent, it will do nothing to prevent the dissent-inducing abuses or systemic inadequacies from occurring.

The only practical way to ensure that government services meet the needs of real people, and thus fashion a more harmonious system, is for a freer flow of information among people and between the people and their government. Failing that, even the best-intentioned government programs will run into trouble and be a source of unrest or opposition. Persecution of dissent is an ancient tool of underdeveloped power structures; China has the wealth and technology to democratize peacefully, and can do so by liberalizing the process for selecting and evaluating party leaders, policy-makers and administrative bureaucrats.

The Hong Kong model is complicated, and has many critics, but for a nation as vast and diverse as China, facing all of the crises, political, economic and environmental, it now faces, the Hong Kong model provides a worthy example for how to usher in more permissive political processes, without giving up the integrity of the existing system or the territorial integrity of the nation.

There will need to be practical solutions that help keep long-simmering tensions in check, if China is to avoid further flare-ups of ethnic violence or the aggressive ramping up of separatist activity. Change is emerging organically, across China, and the current government will eventually have to choose between working with or against the driving forces of change. Addressing economic concerns —like quality of life, education, transport and energy— will be key to being able to shepherd the nation through the coming period of political transformation. The following are a few areas that may help ensure stability throughout:

1. Re-evaluate prosecutions like that of Liu Xiaobo, which cripple the political dynamism of the Chinese system and help ensure a sclerotic policy apparatus, unaware of the best competing ideas going forward;
2. Free political prisoners like Liu Xiaobo and other responsible dissenters, who use no methods of sabotage or violence, only words and ideas, to convey their message of liberalization;
3. Reward local officials who find creative ways to integrate citizens into the process of making and administering policy;
4. Encourage freer expression of critical views, in part to show tolerance of dissent, in part to allow for the discovery of sound ideas for making a better way for the nation;
5. Encourage local political organizing, even where dissenting views are more popular than Beijing policy: a system of competing views need not override established policy, but can allow for competing views to filter in and serve the public good;
6. Liberalize selection process for Communist party officials, as a first step toward general elections;
7. Recognize cultural and political autonomy of regional states, like Tibet and Xinjiang: a Spanish approach may work better than the militaristic all-or-nothing conquest-based approach favored until now;
8. Reform the justice system, so that low-level corruption cases and judgments benefitting ordinary citizens can gain prominence and foster a new respect for judicial process: this helps guarantee order, but also prevents corruption and abuse;
9. Take a leading role in championing fundamental political and civil rights in other nations: doing so does not violate anyone’s sovereignty, but failing to do so shows a reduced hold on domestic support for the exercise of it;
10. Prepare for an issue-based divergence of factions within the Communist party, and a credible legal process by which those factions can establish competing parties loyal to a central constitution.

Long-term stability is often cited by China’s authorities as the reason behind extremely hard-line actions. But as we are now seeing in Iran, and as we have seen in eastern Europe and the Philippines, hard-line oppression often sows unrest and brings about far more radical kinds of political change. China is too closely linked to the information technology revolution to not be affected by it, and its censoring-technology approach to manufacturing consensus is not viable; it will collapse under the weight of the challenge.

Planning for the period of liberalization that will follow is the only responsible way for the government in Beijing to move forward with long-term Chinese development and political planning. It is the only policy response that will build confidence among foreign investors and major enterprises, including banks, that wish to locate offices or factories in the country, and it will prove to be the only practical way to prevent sectarian conflict and the disintegration of political ties with the satellite states where unrest is already brewing.

Iran’s government has temporarily banned foreign media from operating in the capital, Tehran, in anticipation of student rallies on Monday, marking Iran’s Student Day commemoration. The government has warned against any “illegal rallies”, suggesting it fears the student rallies could turn into a new round of protests against the alleged rigging of the June presidential vote and the subsequent violent crackdown against dissent.

According to Reuters:

Police and elite Revolutionary Guards have warned that any “illegal” rally will be fiercely confronted on Monday when the country marks Student Day, commemorating the killing of three students in 1953 under the former Shah.

“All permits issued for foreign media to cover news in Tehran have been revoked from December 7 to December 9,” the Culture Ministry’s foreign press department said on Saturday in an SMS text message sent to journalists, photographers and cameramen working for foreign media in Iran.

Throughout the weekend internet connections have been deliberately slowed or disabled and cellphone networks have been interrupted. It appears the authorities are testing a series of measures designed to interfere with person to person communications, to stop people from organizing and from reporting on abuses that may be committed by security forces.

Reuters also reports that “An official at Iran’s telecommunications ministry told Reuters that Internet access and cellphone lines would be disabled on Monday.” Police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam warns that any “illegal gathering” near the universities will be “strongly confronted”, raising fears of more bloodshed and political disappearances, like those that the government used to respond to the anti-government protests this summer.

The watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is warning that the situation for journalists in Iran is worsening. Over 100 reporters and bloggers were detained during the summer demonstrations; 23 are still being held. Many are treated like foreign spies, especially photographers, whom the government feels it has a fundamental right to control.

In the case of Maziar Bahari, a journalist working for Newsweek magazine, he was detained and held without charge, was interrogated and severely beaten. He was accused of espionage, was told that his magazine was in fact an intelligence agency, and was told that video of himself doing a comic sketch on Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show’ in which a comedian pretends to be a CIA agent was proof he was a spy.

The situation in Iran is also getting more difficult for foreign journalists. There are increasing restrictions on what they are allowed to report, and when, and by what medium. Foreign journalists are now routinely barred from reporting on public gatherings or meeting with any member of the opposition. The media clampdown is a sign the hardline government continues to find itself under pressure from internal opposition.

It is also clear that there is a connection between the government’s treatment of journalists and its plans for a potentially violent crackdown. It wants to avoid images getting out like those that showed the bloody death of Neda Agha Soltan, an innocent bystander gunned down in cold blood, in the middle of a crowded street, allegedly by a member of the Basij militia.

The government has failed to provide any democratic channel by which the opposition could address its grievances regarding the vote of 12 June 2009, which most observers, even some conservative clerics inside Iran, believe was rigged to give Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the supreme leader’s preferred candidate, a second term as president.

It is expected that Monday will bring the beginning of a new series of protest rallies, initiated by students in observance of Student Day, but supported by the Green Path of Hope movement of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and possibly winning popular support from ordinary citizens still outraged over the violence used by government forces to end the summer’s post-election demonstrations. If such rallies do emerge, the government is expected to take action to interfere.

GE, the parent company of NBC Universal, has agreed to a deal that would give Comcast a controlling interest in the media giant. NBC Universal is one of the leading producers of feature films, network television and TV news. Its flagship news services, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC, could see their budgets affected by the sale, and there are concerns over conflict of interest for a cable TV and internet service provider owning a controlling stake in such a vast media enterprise. Congressional hearings and federal communications regulatory investigations are considered likely to ensue, before the deal can be implemented.

There is also concern that Comcast may use its new leverage over mainstream American media to oppose efforts to establish strong net neutrality regulations that would prevent it from using its position in web access to manipulate the content available to web users. It is clear the acquisition will strengthen Comcast’s media business and help to position the cable provider as one of the leading communications conglomerates, but media watchdogs are already ramping up campaigns of vigilance against abuses or attempts to manipulate content or access. Some seek to oppose the deal outright as a direct threat to the freedom of information and net neutrality.

The deal has Comcast paying $30 billion for 51% of NBC Universal. Comcast has pledged to make substantive efforts to preserve and reinforce the local news programming and other public interest programming at stations across the NBC O&O (owned and operated) family of media outlets. There are federal broadcast licensing agreements that will now transition with NBC Universal, requiring Comcast to take those substantive steps to guarantee funding for and access to local news programming.

Some of the commitments Comcast says it will honor, as per today’s press release, are as follows (bold type set by Robert MacMillan, for Reuters MediaFile):

• NBC has a proud history in broadcasting with both NBC and Telemundo. Notwithstanding the turbulence in the current media marketplace and the ongoing threats to the business model of a national broadcast network, the combined company remains committed to continuing to provide free over-the-air television through its 0&0 stations and through local broadcast affiliates across the nation. As we negotiate and renew agreements with our broadcast affiliates, we will continue our cooperative dialogue with our affiliates toward a business model to sustain free over-the-air service that can be workable in the evolving economic and technological environment.
• The NBC owned-and-operated broadcast stations (”0&OS “) have a demonstrated record of quality local programming in major markets around the country. Comcast also has demonstrated its commitment to local programming, including sports and public affairs, and in providing support for public, educational, and government (PEG) access programming. We want to use the combined resources of NBC and Comcast to strengthen localism
• We intend to preserve and enrich the output of local news, local public affairs, and other public interest programming on NBC 0&0 stations.
• Since NBCU was acquired by GE in 1986, the owners have abided by a policy (summarized in a filing with the FCC) of ensuring that the content ofNBC’s news and public affairs programming would not be influenced by the non-media interests of General Electric. The combined company will continue these policies with respect to the news programming organizations of all NBCU networks and stations, and will extend these policies to the potential influence of each of the owners. To ensure such independence, the combined companies will continue in effect the position and authority of the NBC News ombudsman to address any issues that may arise.
• Comcast and NBCU have strong track records in children’s programming and children’s issues. The combined company will make an expanded commitment to meeting the viewing needs of children, and the needs of parents to better control their family’s viewing.
• We reaffirm our commitment to provide clear and understandable on-screen TV Ratings information for all covered programming across all networks (broadcast and cable) of the combined company.
• We intend to expand the availability of over-the-air programming to the Hispanic community utilizing a portion of the digital broadcast spectrum of the Telemundo O&O’s (as well as offering it to Telemundo affiliates) to enhance the current programming of Telemundo and Mun2.
• As a cable operator, Comcast is committed to dealing fairly with all non-affiliated video programmers with whom we do business, and to promoting program diversity. Nearly six out of every seven channels carried by Comcast Cable systems will still be networks unaffiliated with Comcast upon the completion of this transaction.
• We plan to honor all of NBCU’s collective bargaining agreements. We respect NBCU’s existing labor-management relationships and expect them to continue following the closing of this transaction.

The deal has risks of all kinds that analysts in the fields of media, economics, stock-trading, and regulatory law, will be reviewing in excruciating detail. Congress may also be asked to hold hearings, and anti-trust lawyers at the Justice Department may also be brought in to evaluate the risks to competition in the media marketplace.

If, however, Comcast can demonstrate that it will not only honor NBC Universal’s commitments to public interest news programming and local media access, but can “strengthen localism” as it suggests and make the business profitable, the deal could wind up being of benefit to the cause of net neutrality, because an access provider would be benefitting from a media enterprise without having to stratify connection speeds in order to do so. Such an outcome could remove the perceived commercial incentive for access providers to manipulate web access in order to promote content in exchange for additional fees to content providers.

John McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran against Barack Obama in last year’s presidential election, today introduced in the Senate the “Internet Freedom Act”, in a brazen bid to make the internet far less free for the average web surfer. The bill would bar the FCC from enacting regulations that would prevent internet service providers from interfering with users’ preferred content choices, penalizing small content producers and slowing the internet down broadly in order to collect fees for higher-speed services, which the providers would select.

The concept of net neutrality is not new; in fact, McCain introduced his bill on the same day as the FCC actually moved forward on a plan to establish net neutrality in the United States. McCain argues that net neutrality regulations will hamper “innovation” in the internet services marketplace and therefore slow job creation. But a vast and very impassioned movement, both among businesses and users, has fought long and hard for net neutrality regulations, because without them, the free press in the United States may literally disappear.

Major ISPs have sought to persuade policy-makers that they should be able to technically manage and interfere with specific travel routes for specific data online, privileging services that pay them for access to a wider audience and marginalizing anyone who does not. McCain is making the specific pitch the ISPs have used repeatedly in their arguments that they should be allowed to seize control of the Internet —which they did not build— in order to better control users’ browsing habits.

McCain’s proposed legislation, while posing as a defense of “internet freedom” may actually be a legal assault on the First Amendment, which mandates that:

Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble [...]

That specific prohibition on Congressional interference in the “press” is being turned on its head by Sen. McCain. He alleges the ISPs are entitled to total “freedom” to control and manipulate the information that others create and which paying customers are seeking to access. McCain confuses the paper-mill for the writer or editor who actually takes the risk of speaking truth to power or expressing an untested view.

McCain’s bill would be a very deliberate attempt by Congress to abridge the freedom of the American citizenry to speak freely in the public square, to produce or to access the press they personally seek and/or to “assemble” in online communities, should those communities not pay the fees ISPs would demand for better quality connectivity.

If the bill McCain is proposing passes the Congress and becomes law, it would be the end of the Internet as we know it, because it would remove any effective obstacle to major connectivity providers using their networks to select among users’ content choices, leading to a kind of profit-based censorship of online content. Content creators, the journalists, media outlets and network and website designers of today, would find themselves severely restricted in their ability to employ the Internet’s resources freely.

Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.

After a summer of hullaballoo and expectation, and the hopes that the device would be introduced along with the new iPods at a September event, it now looks like the Apple tablet will be introduced sometime in early 2010. Reports suggest Steve Jobs has “reset” the tablet project multiple times, out of concern the projects presented were not offering consumers a distinct enough field of uses to warrant an entirely new field of computing and device manufacture.

Now, Gizmodo reports it has confirmed that Apple has initiated negotiations with major print publishers, including not only McGraw-Hill —a major publisher of educational materials—, but also The New York Times and others, with the aim of securing content distribution rights and format collaboration to deliver textual content to readers via iTunes.

Such a system would allow publications to secure subscription payments from readers who want a full-access pass to content that more closely resembles a printed page than the way web pages work now. McGraw-Hill and Oberlin Press are said to be working with Apple to make textbooks available through iTunes, with the aim of allowing them to be published and viewed on the touchscreen tablet device.

The new Apple device would allow for full-color digital publishing, unlike the Amazon Kindle, which uses a grayscale eInk e-paper display. E-paper may be evolving, and it should eventually be capable of rich color displays, but at present, Amazon insists the grayscale look is meant to mimic the simple black-and-white pages of paperback novels and newsprint.

Textbooks are an important area of market innovation for the touchscreen tablet project. As Gizmodo notes:

The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM’d one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential. (If that device were a tablet, the savings on books could pay for the device, and save students a lot of back pain.)

There is also a feeling that the touchscreen tablet might be something like Apple’s way of proposing a head-on rival for the burgeoning “netbooks”, micro-laptops that are cheap, small, lightweight, and focused on using web-based services and applications. It’s an important move to make, because while MacBooks sales are strong, Apple has had to reduce the cost of its cheapest MacBook already by $100 to $150, in order to keep its market share among students.

Steve Jobs has said netbooks are “junk”, and while some have proposed that the iPhone is really Apple’s response to that market, it has the drawback of requiring an AT&T monthly contract and not really being a strong word-processing platform. There are hopes, however, that the tablet might be cheap enough, maybe $500 or $600 at the high end, to undercut the appeal of the much less technologically advanced netbooks.

Jobs has been particularly demanding that a device with as much potential to revolutionize user interface standards not turn into another Newton, the Palm-like device that came just a little before its time. AppleInsider reports:

It seems like a long time coming. Nearly two years have passed since AppleInsiderexclusively reported in September of 2007 that Apple’s next big product initiative would be a modern day reincarnation of its beloved-but-defunct Newton MessagePad. And it’s believed the device had been slowly evolving as an R&D project for at least a year prior.

The 10-inch, 3G-enabled tablet, akin to a jumbo iPod touch, is the latest brainchild of chief executive Steve Jobs. That distinction, as insiders will tell you, carries its share of baggage. Under the critical eye of Jobs, contours must be precise, each pixel of the interface has to match a particular vision, and there can be no fault — no matter how slight — or it’s back to the drawing board.

The Apple tablet will be a vital step forward in the evolution of edgeless electronic reading devices, because right now, there is no e-reading device that is equipped with a fully functional graphic-user interface (GUI) or laptop-style operating system. A touchscreen tablet computer that runs an advanced full-service version of Mac OS X will push the envelope of digital media manipulation, and allow Apple to take the lead in setting standards for the next generation of on-screen “print” content.

DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.

When DVR allows one to rewind only that which is being viewed (because the program in question was not pre-recorded), then cuts off the rewind and saved material if the channel is switched, deliberately or accidentally, the viewer experiences this feature of DVR technology as punitive. The viewer is punished for not correctly interfacing with the efficiency-oriented technology, which is provided by entities that prefer the programming be viewed in the allotted time-slot and not recorded or viewed later.

This type of control flies in the face of what consumers expect to get from such digitally enhanced technologies. There are competing views on the salient function of digital content delivery: that it is designed to liberate content, and thus the end-user’s access to informatioon, or to control it, and thus dictate or pre-determine the end-user’s freedom of access.

Even now, late as they are catching on, ebooks are being treated by some as a means by which to charge per chapter, per page, per word, or even per viewing “session”. Major multinational corporations, like Google, are digitizing massive amounts of text, from throughout history, in the hopes of being able to build a business model around access to digital text. Google wants to deliver a free service, but it wants to profit from that service as well, likely by advertising or by commercial tie-ins — online books sales and the like.

Microsoft was beginning to initiate its approach to digitized text, ebooks, and digital text-reading devices, before the year 2000, and its plans counted on being able to “own” or “control”, with full licensing rights, 90% of all text ever produced throughout history, within 50 years. It foresaw a world in which hot new content might be worth hundreds of dollars, or where one would pay a penny per word, or pay a unit-cost every time a given portion of text was called up and accessed.

Google’s digitalization plans and licensing agreements may preclude that dystopian world of wholly owned and controlled textual content… or it may help bring it into being. So, there is an effort to prevent Google’s gaining too vast an influence over textual content. The web, we know, operates on the principle that content is free, and netizens are passionate and quick to form flash protest movements, beyond borders, when such freedoms are threatened.

But the tension between access and control is not going away. The Associated Press (AP) —which exists in part to foster the free flow of reliable information around the world, to counter repressive environments of censorship, public or private, and to make sure reporters doing that work have a viable means of professional empowerment, that they are rewarded— has declared it will charge for content to the extreme of banning unpaid quoting.

The policy will likely find its way into the federal court system in the United States, as copyright laws allow for the use of information from news sources, once the information is published. The rule of thumb in digital publishing has normally been that if words are quoted for informational purposes, the quote is justifiable, so long as the original source is cited. In most cases, digital publishers and reporters go as far as to link back to the original source.

The AP has been criticized by freedom of information advocates for hypocrisy. Its online business has grown exponentially through viral quotes and linking, but it now demands that no one, anywhere on earth, not even for educational purposes, quote five or more words without paying the AP for the right to do so.

The problem of protecting the earning rights of AP reporters is understandable. The news organization has to be able to profit from publishing its material, which is harder to do if whole stories are quoted and reposted free of charge. But the AP’s response to this problem might pose the most serious threat to the free flow of information seen since the Internet went global.

The problem with such attempts to clamp down on and control the user’s access to information is that, although digital technology enables such efforts, the overarching trend, and the real purpose of digital technology, is to liberate content and grant increased access to the end-user.

Digital text should not be harder to pick up and put down, free of punitive charges and pop-up ads (including “display ads”) than would be printed text… any such blockages run counter to the liberational logic of digital technology.

Similarly, digital video might be constrained by ads that block access to viewing, but should move ever more in the direction of the freedom of return access afforded by the printed word or printed still images. The problem facing digital content providers, then, is how to secure a revenue stream in connection with allowing that enhanced access to information, the way newspaper and book publishers do.

This is not a small problem, but the quality of the answer will determine the resilience of any digital content enterprise and the level of freedom of access enjoyed by the end-user broadly, across the landscape of digital publishing. Is there an ethical obligation not to set back the progress toward increased freedom of access? Maybe. But failure to participate in that logic of liberation will set back a business’ prospects over the long term.

The Internet Archive is joining with major internet-related firms, such as Yahoo and Amazon, to fight Google’s settlement with the Authors’ Guild, allowing Google Books to publish copyright-protected materials online, if they are out of print, and to compensate authors according to the sales generated by the display of the copyrighted text (possibly 70% going to publishers or copyright holders, including a cut of ad revenues). The Coalition plans to fight the legal settlement on anti-trust grounds.

According to CNET:

Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are joining with a few library associations to oppose the settlement, Peter Brantley, the Internet Archive’s director, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. The coalition, which is expected to be announced in a couple of weeks, will be co-led by antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Brantley said.

The settlement treated authors as a class in a class action suit to prevent the unauthorized use of their material by Google, and was reached by the Authors’ Guild. It should be the case that only those authors represented by the Guild —some 8,000— are part of the pertinent class, but publishers and some Google competitors argue the settlement flies in the face of copyright law and gives Google far too much control over textual content online.

Google has also reached settlement with the Association of American Publishers, and would take 30% royalties from any revenues generated by its Google Books search site. Some authors view the process as a threat to their own control of their material, while the Authors’ Guild and the AAP view the settlement as an opportunity to make sure they 1) set a precedent for payment and 2) expand the basic revenue stream they can access via online media.

TG Daily reports:

Hundreds of writers, the National Writers Union, libraries and a group of professors from the University of California have already expressed concern over the deal, mainly in terms of the freedom Google would have to set prices and fears over whether Google would protect the privacy of users.

According to Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, Google’s intent is nothing less than to dominate or replace the entire library system in the US. “If this deal goes ahead, they’re making a real shot at being ‘the’ library and the only library”, he has told the BBC. The BBC reports that “Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923.”

Meanwhile, the US Dept. of Justice has opened an investigation into the potential anti-trust issues the settlement could raise. Kahle warns that “The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways — all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach.” Opponents fear Google’s control of so much textual material will lead to a profit-driven standard for access to most books, sidelining the system of free libraries and tradeable hard-copies in print.

The coalition announcement comes at a crucial time: in April, a judge ruled that authors should have four more months to decide whether they wanted to opt out of the Google Books settlement with the Authors’ Guild. The deadline for that process is now approaching —4 September 2009—, and Google is preparing to take full advantage of its rights under the settlement. A final hearing on the fairness of the agreement is scheduled for 7 October, and it will likely be there that the coalition first brings serious weight to bear on the process.

• NOTE: Cafe Sentido’s publisher, Casavaria, has agreed, on a case by case basis, to permit Google Books to show a “limited preview” of books it currently has in print and which are available for purchase. These are promotional agreements, aimed at driving online sales of the print book itself, and are not the same sort of online publishing involved in the Authors’ Guild case.

Rights policies and copyright laws have always been controversial, providing legal “ownership” over information (text, mechanical processes, ingredient formulae) to individuals or organizations, despite that information being of use to others. They are designed to provide a commercial value to the production of new types of information (creative new directions in language usage, technical inventions, medical research and innovation), but they can also impede the free flow of information where it is most needed.

The “fair use” doctrine was brought into copyright law as a response to this problem. Where the use of copyrighted material is of inherent value to society, it need not be considered an infringement of the commercial rights or interests of the copyright holder: these uses tend to related to educational uses of fragments of text, informational reproductions of copyright-protected materials that either provide context or background for a review or report relating to that content or a field discussed by it.

But digital technologies, which allow the easy, speedy reproduction of huge amounts of copyrighted material (whole books, detailed technical documents, musical recordings and feature films), have raised entirely new ethical questions about fair use and strict licensing policies. “Viral” marketing and content distribution has helped organizations large and small spread their message and their commercial reach across a global network of content-seekers, but has also threatened to erode the royalty-generating potential of some content.

Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.

And efforts by media giants to control the distribution and use of content through strict licensing policies, some of which propose or implement by-the-word fee schedules, now threaten to undermine the very concept of a free and independent press whose job description includes speeding reliable information to the public without legal or technical impediments, wherever possible.

How can major content providers, including trade guilds and press cooperatives like the Associated Press or the AFP, protect their revenue stream and funding portfolio, without actively countering the free flow of information among free people?

• Join the discussion on The Hot Spring Network

The Associated Press perceives the routine standard for online journalism, blogging and social networking, which involves quoting, citing and linking to sources, as injurious to its revenue stream. It is now seeking to institute a blanket global policy, whereby quoting even 5 words by the AP would cost the quoting publication $12.50. Quoting 251 words or more would cost $100. Critics say the AP, like other online news producers, benefits immensely from the incoming links posted across the web by readers and journalists referring back to its news material.

Fair use doctrine is a fuzzy area of copyright law. Competing interests often seek to define fair use more liberally or more conservatively, depending on their particular interest in any given piece of content. The AP has aggressively defended its right to control all media produced through or in relation to the agency, but even some of its members say the AP has gone too far afield in claiming copyright control authority. One famous case involves a photo of Barack Obama which was used as a template for the now globally famous artistic rendering, produced by artist Shepard Fairey.

The AP considers the image to be part of its library of copyrighted materials, due to a similarity between the Obama portrait and a photographic image produced by an AP-employed photographer. The photographer says the particular image is not part of the AP’s catalogue and he has not requested its action on his behalf. He even said that as a journalist, there is a multiple interest in producing work for professional compensation, producing information for news consumption, and producing an iconic image that is, by the nature of its effect, part of the commons.

The AP’s new licensing policy means that publications across the web will have to abandon the AP altogether. It is, whether intended to be or not, a death blow to potentially millions of small publishers (individuals, in many cases) whose work could serve as a viral distribution platform for the news agency. Critics hope an online backlash could elevate other news agencies with more liberal quoting policies, to rival the AP and serve as opposition to this licensing policy, which threatens to undermine the free flow of information around the globe.

The AP’s aim is to profit from a 100% command and control licensing strategy, requiring registered use rights for all publications everywhere that seek to quote the AP or refer to their reporting. That command and control strategy will have an immediate chilling effect on the flow of information around the world. It will assist authoritarian regimes in controlling the information available to the public, both within and beyond their borders, as web reporters see themselves shackled and unable to relay AP content virally.

The AP has no plans to compensate online publishers to provide free links to their content and has announced no plans to provide royalty compensation to Twitter posters who direct web traffic to AP content. It is possible, even, to see the AP’s new licensing strategy to be an attempt to “double-dip”, charging multiple times for the same content. Publishers already pay the AP to republish their stories in full, meaning that anyone linking back to those stories may also find themselves charged for re-use or for announcing the content put out by those paying AP partners.

The principle of net neutrality is also under threat from policies like what the AP is now proposing. While fair compensation for work produced is a laudable goal in content creation, the AP seeks to guarantee that no mention of its work be made without some compensation being provided. This is a radical expansion of copyright with extraordinarily high proposed fees ($2.50 per word) that would serve to impede global information flows and reduce the informational value of an open internet.

In fact, the AP appears to be establishing an effective end to the doctrine of fair use, even charging $7.50 to educational institutions that want to use 5 words of AP content for any reason. The policy page falsely claims that this fee is necessary to obtain “permission to legally post”, when in fact, educational use is considered to be the most expansive area where fair use applies.

If the legal viability of such a policy is upheld, the AP would have undue control of global information flows. Giving one institution such veto power over the creation of new content (barring even uses which are designed to be contextual, informational, and which cite the AP as source and link back to the full content, thus adding to the commercial value of the material produced) would amount to an internet culture effectively censored by one commercially-interested institution.

Incredibly, the AP provides RSS feeds that can be used to embed AP content on websites, including not only headlines, but excerpts from articles that range in length from 10 words to 50 words. Not only is this a direct subscription to the standard of viral posting across the internet, where third parties publish or quote excerpts and link back to the original content, it is an attempt to piggyback on the uncompensated work of other publishers.

The use of RSS essentially belies the very idea that the AP has an implicit need or right to control, license and gain from every parcel of 5 words its writers produce. The AP is a cooperative designed to guarantee the free flow of reliable information from around the world and to ensure that journalists are compensated for their work. Its best interests would be served by barring the full republication of its articles, or the unauthorized use of its images, while allowing for clearly innocuous or even beneficial postings of citations with links and other short mentions of its content.

In fact, the US Copyright Office specifically states that “summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report” is considered standard fair use by the 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law. News organizations have to grapple with a very special sort of copyright problem: their work is intended to expand the depth and range of the commons of information and ideas: information and ideas cannot be patented or copyrighted, and so while they produce copyrighted materials, they are not necessarily entitled to 100% total control of that material, where the public interest might be served by reference to or quoting of that content.

The proposed system of licensing fees by the word, or by the 5 word set, poses a very dangerous, very extreme threat to the foundations of a free press and the functioning of an open internet. Aggressive legal action by the AP, as seen elsewhere, could hamper innovation and slow people’s access to needed information, while reducing the AP’s own reach and undermining the total value of its products.

This publication will no longer quote the AP and will make a consistent effort to use other sources wherever possible, to avoid linking to AP-produced content or risk in any way (from the news of this policy arriving on 3 August 2009 onward) falling prey to the totalizing license structure proposed by the AP for its content’s spread across the web.

It is our contention that the AP (RSS is evidence) has knowingly sought to benefit from a symbiotic relationship with small publishers and that its change of position, to now seek to extract prohibitive rates of payment for the continuation of that practice, is unethical and highly irresponsible in light of its likely adverse impact on press freedom and the free flow of information. It is furthermore our contention that enforcing this policy will have the effect of enhancing authoritarian rulers’ grip on power and their ability to manipulate information and control what information reaches the public within their borders.

Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.

Socio-economic barriers to such free flow of information are just another kind of information control that establishes dangerous demographic stratification into privileged and marginalized groups. Governments across the world are using web filtering technologies to censor the information available to their citizens and crack down on dissent.

In China, in Iran, in Cuba, aggressive web filtering measures and electronic spying technology have been used to prevent the spread of information unfavorable to the government leadership, to obscure corruption, and to hunt and persecute members of a would-be democratic opposition. In China, web filtering censorship has perhaps reached its zenith, with major multinationals collaborating in the “Great Firewall of China”.

Web searches routinely rule out links that contain information banned by the government, and the government has explored barring any website not entirely in Mandarin from being viewed inside China. Talk of the parallel Chinese internet has given way to concerns the government has opted for a technologically more realistic total filtering program.

“Cyber dissidents” are now an entirely new area of press targeted by government censors and security forces. In China and Iran, cyber dissidents are jailed simply for linking to materials that the government has sought to keep away from the public eye. Iran’s government has repeatedly shut down opposition websites in order to prevent democratic assembly, to cover up violence against civilians or to obscure challenges to official diktat.

China recently delayed plans to implement a draconian filtering system based on a new “green dam” software platform. The government is believed to have been taken aback by the broad-based and persistent expressions of anger over the plans, as the nation’s population continues to move into contact with the online medium and is demanding more transparency.

But Pres. Hu Jintao came to office promising a “smokeless war” against the press and cyber dissidents, and China has been criticized across the world for efforts to manipulate the information made available to its citizens, including distortions of the unrest a year ago in Tibet and Sichuan and now in Xinjiang, which many say could foment violence against people of Tibetan or Uighur ethnicity, depending on the case.

Efforts to use internet filtering to cover up the massacre of unarmed civilians at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 are part of that ongoing war against the free press. The Beijing government fears acknowledging what took place there could delegitimize the current regime and sow political unrest. Pro-democracy advocates say that like any government in a free democracy, China’s government could acknowledge its mistakes, promote electoral reform, and liberalize its political process, without destabilizing the country.

In remote regions like Darfur in western Sudan or North Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, conditions of extreme danger for aid workers and violence against journalists means information filters very slowly through the population, worsening already catastrophic situations of persistent conflict and human suffering.

Violence against women in Darfur is persistent in part owing to the fact that Darfuri women have virtually no access to information distribution systems. They are almost never able to report crimes against them to any public authority or international group. And medical service workers are often unable to locate people in need of help, as the remote region is plagued by lack of communicative media.

There is also concern about the effects of internet usage on the development of human cognitive abilities. Social cognitive structures are thought to be directly affected by use of communicative media, and the internet as achieved fundamental alterations in the communicative structure of society; facing that reality, it must be a universal right of all people to participate in the direction and development of that medium in reference to their own daily lives.

In May, I reported on this for The Hot Spring Network:

“Cognitive science has revealed a human brain notable for its plasticity. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the Internet not only shapes itself to the mind but shapes the mind to itself”, writes Ana Menéndez in this month’s Poets & Writers magazine.

What can we do to impede the erosion of some of our most prized social-intellectual habits of mind, rooted in organic brain structure and in social networking (from campfire to empire, parliament to newsprint, to Twitter and The Hot Spring Network), while taking advantage of the power of the web?

The internet and attendant communications technologies have a visible decentralizing effect that enhances the democratic influence average people can exert in the public sphere. In the US election of 2008, that was evident in online information sharing and organizing. In the Spanish election of 2004, it was evident in the popular outcry that was so ably communicated by sms, that helped uncover a government disinformation campaign.

Clay Sharky, of the TED initiative, explains in a video address how social networking services and a new generation of web applications and smart phones, are coming together to empower individuals across the world and bring about the end of “top-down” controls in the political sphere. This effect is operating even in authoritarian societies, where in some cases the best information available comes from individuals posting anecdotal reports online.

Perhaps the world’s most developed and advanced campaign for net neutrality, or legal constraints on internet service providers’ (ISP) ability to plan or carry out systematic filtering of content, has taken root in the US. Motivated by a fierce defense of First Amendment rights and an understanding of the democratizing effects of open flows of information, the net neutrality movement has won important victories both in Congress and among federal regulators.

In March 2008, I reported for Cafe Sentido that “We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society.” But that moment is being met with stepped up efforts by governments and businesses to control the freedom of ordinary people to access and control information.

Such efforts are a direct assault on democratic freedoms, and measurably impede the ability of people to gather information related to risks to their health or safety or to orchestrate the dissemination of information that may favor their social, economic or ideological interests. As the US Bill of Rights‘ commitment to a first-order freedom of the press shows, all other democratic rights are built on the foundation of a free and independent media culture. So access to the web must begin to be treated as a basic measure of human rights everywhere.

Follow these links for more information on:

• Press Freedom & Persecution of Journalists
• Net Neutrality & Internet Freedoms
• Human Rights & Democratic Freedoms

Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”

The Green Dam censorship software was planned for installation on every new computer sold in China, allowing the government to monitor and control all internet traffic at the individual level. There appears to have been debate in the government as a result of passionate and even hostile criticism across China’s tightly controlled online community. 

An estimated 300 million people in China are able to access the internet, driving an increasingly sophisticated “arms race” between Chinese government censors and the increasingly tech savvy and independently minded online population. Several incidents in recent years have brought the government’s aggressive censorship operation to the forefront of Chinese public awareness. 

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An attempt to conceal information about the SARS outbreak led to accusations the government had endangered public health around the world, exacerbated the risk of the disease spreading and embarrassed the nation out of an overzealous reflex to avoid the embarrassment of SARS itself. The earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Sichuan led to a spontaneous nationwide online volunteer networking drive, that enabled citizens to contribute aid remotely or by traveling to the hardest hit areas to volunteer. 

Increasingly, Chinese citizens are seeing the internet as a source of information, and censorship as a barrier to being well informed. Chinese businesses and universities have pressured officials to loosen aggressive controls on the flow of information, and there is increasing pressure from the international community to open China journalistically and informationally, for the benefit of its own people and to legitimize 

• Liu Xiaobo Arrested for Suggesting Reform to China’s One-party System
• AP Reports Repression Marks 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre
• China Still Seeks to Hide What Happened at Tiananmen Square 20 Years Ago (video)
• ‘A Tragedy to Shock the World’: Secret Zhao Memoirs Acknowledge Tiananmen Massacre
• Lin Zhao, Poet Executed for Dissent, Remembered as Tiananmen Anniv. Nears
• ‘Ghost Net’: Cyber-spying Probe Reveals Vast Network of Cyber-espionage Based in China
• China Blocking Websites in Effort to Crack Down on Press Freedom
• 3rd Day of Clashes in Tibet Without Independent Media Being Permitted to Verify Death Tolls
• China frees NY Times reporter it jailed for 3 years; 35 journalists, 51 ‘cyber-dissidents’ still in prison in China… 
• China Detaining, Intimidating Journalists in Effort to Control Public Image Abroad
• China Plans ‘Smokeless War’ Against Press, Dissidents

Open letter from Mir Hossein Mousavi to expatriate Iranians, as released by Payvand Iran News

In the Name of the God, The Compassionate, The Merciful

Dear compatriots,
Honorable Iranians living abroad,

Your widespread and energetic presence in this year’s 22 Khordad elections is indicative of your ties to our beloved Iran, and your admirable worries about the future of your country, and as I mentioned to you in my election message, Iran belongs to all Iranians and all layers of the populous are responsible for its future, and enjoy the same rights in it.

I feel obliged to thank you for your epic presence in determining the future of your country. Your widespread welcoming of these elections and your green and energetic presence at the ballot boxes was so large that it even forced the government and the organizers of the elections to admit to a 300% increase in the participation of Iranians in the tenth presidential elections outside of the country.

Your trust in this insignificant civil servant and your decisive vote for me in most of the voting stations outside of the country has placed a heavy burden on my shoulders. I would like to give you my assurance that I remain true to my existing pact with you and all layers of the great people of Iran, and using all legal avenues will demand your deserved rights that have been violated at the ballot boxes.

Unfortunately, as you witness in the international media, contrary to the letter of the constitution, and the stated freedoms in the Islamic Republic, all my communication with the people and you has been cut off, and people’s peaceful objections are being crushed. The national media which is being financed with public funds, with a revolting misrepresentation is changing the truth, and labels the peaceful march of close to three million people as anarchist, and the media that are being controlled by the government have become the mouthpiece of those who have stolen the people’s votes.

I’d like to thank you again for your peaceful objections which have received widespread coverage across the world, and would like to ask you that by using all legal channels, and by remaining faithful to the sacred system of the Islamic Republic, to make sure that your objections are heard by the authorities in the country. I am fully aware that your justified demands have nothing to do with groups who do not believe in the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran’s system. It is up to you to distance yourself from them, and do not allow them to misuse the current situation.

Mir Hossein Mousavi
1388/4/3 (June 24, 2009)

Café Sentido’s full range of coverage of the Iran election and opposition protests:

• Kalemeh, Mousavi’s Web Site, Shut Down by Iranian Authorities
• Iran Arrests 8 Employees of UK Embassy, Alleging Subversion
• Detained Reformists Reportedly Tortured to Induce Testimony About ‘Foreign Plot’
• Doctor Who Tended to Neda Soltan Tells BBC What He Observed
• Language of Resistance Intensifies Amid New Reports of Demonstrators Attacked
• Full Obama Press Conference on Iran, Economic Recovery, Healthcare (video + transcript)
• What Happened at Baharestan Square?
• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Pres. Obama’s Remarks on Iran (video + transcript, English + Farsi)
• Guardian Council Opposed to Throwing Out Election Results
• Iran Using Western Technology to Spy on its Citizens, Suppress Dissent
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Pres. Obama’s Statement on Iran (transcript)
• Larijani Says Majority Suspect Election Fraud; Rafsanjani Relative Detained
• Iran Says ‘Terrorists’ Caused Saturday Clashes; New Evidence of State Violence (UPDATED)
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• UN Rights Chief Warns Iran not to Use Violence
• Iranian Dissident Leader Detained in Hospital ICU, Jailed without Charge
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Iran Government Targets Press as More Demonstrations Planned (video)
• Rafsanjani Calls for Emergency Meeting of Assembly of Experts
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election
• Iranian Polls Kept Open Several Hours Longer than Planned
• Iran Votes, with Popular Reformist Challenging Hardline Ahmedinejad

Iranian authorities have reportedly shut down Kalemeh, the official website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. Kalemeh was considered to be Mousavi’s only remaining independent means of communicating directly with supporters or with the world beyond Iran’s borders. The development is an escalation of the government’s efforts to disrupt opposition channels of communication and organizing capacity.

Mousavi has released an official statement to Iranians living abroad, expressing gratitude for their support and pledging to continue seeking all legal remedies available to challenge the official results of the presidential election, which he maintains was stolen. In that statement, Mousavi noted the weight of the expatriate voting community’s role in the balloting:

Your widespread welcoming of these elections and your green and energetic presence at the ballot boxes was so large that it even forced the government and the organizers of the elections to admit to a 300% increase in the participation of Iranians in the tenth presidential elections outside of the country.

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He pledged, “I remain true to my existing pact with you and all layers of the great people of Iran, and using all legal avenues will demand your deserved rights that have been violated at the ballot boxes.” He criticizes the government for using means “contrary to the letter of the constitution, and the stated freedoms in the Islamic Republic” to block communications with his supporters and with the Iranian people broadly.

Mousavi assails the national media for collaborating in the theft of the election, writing “The national media which is being financed with public funds, with a revolting misrepresentation is changing the truth, and labels the peaceful march of close to three million people as anarchist”.

Mousavi also takes care to note that his understanding is that Iranians abroad who have concerns about the legality of the official count are not being manipulated or funded by people “who do not believe in the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran’s system”. He urges expats to distance themselves from such groups and to join him in calling for means that follow the constitution to be used to seek justice for the will of the people.

Juan Cole reports that some 5,000 people marched silently today in Tehran, “ostensibly in honor of cleric Mohammad Beheshti, who was killed in a bombing by the terrorist organization Mojahedin-e Khalq (Holy Warriors of the People) in 1981″. Cole reports that in fact the march was a silent public demonstration against the government’s handling of the election and its aftermath, framing the government’s actions as a “betrayal of the ideals for which Beheshti died”.

UPDATE, 23:54 GMT: Video from today’s street demonstrations in Iran. Estimates from a wide array of online sources range from 3,000 to 750,000 people participating in marches.

Shortly before 23:00 GMT, an Iran-watch Twitter thread posted an unconfirmed rumor that Mousavi had been detained, according to the account of his neighbors. The account was reportedly given in a video commenting on events of the day in Iran, and the allegation has not been independently confirmed.

UPDATE, 2:32 GMT, 29 June: With new rounds of detentions, including some under cover of darkness, reports of mass political arrests suggest Iran is undergoing the most widespread such effort since the 1979 revolution. The arrests have targeted political figures, journalists, foreign nationals, and even family members of at least one leading cleric. The apparent purpose of the mass arrests is to reinforce a campaign of censorship and intimidation aimed at blocking opposition leaders’ ability to communicate with and/or organize their supporters.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

Trita Parsi and Reza Aslan, two academics who focus on Iran, said in a report on Friday for Foreign Policy magazine, that the regime is apparently achieving its short-term goal of choking off the ability of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to communicate with protesters – and perhaps emerge as a stronger leader for change.

“A source close to Mousavi says that the first and second circle of people around Mousavi have all been arrested or put under house arrest,” they write. “Mousavi himself has limited ability to communicate with his team and his followers. The lack of leadership is visible on the streets, where demonstrators exhibit unparalleled will and courage, but lack direction and guidance.”

Last Friday, a cleric aligned with the views of both Ahmedinejad and Khamene’i, Ahmad Khatami called the pro-democracy demonstrators “enemies of God”, a label that could mean government insiders are considering the idea of using accusations of capital crimes to crush the opposition movement. With at least 5 relatives of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Assembly of Experts —the clerics empowered to install or remove the supreme leader— having been detained, the scope of the campaign of political arrests is unprecedented in post-revolutionary Iran.

• Iran Arrests 8 Employees of UK Embassy, Alleging Subversion
• Detained Reformists Reportedly Tortured to Induce Testimony About ‘Foreign Plot’
• Doctor Who Tended to Neda Soltan Tells BBC What He Observed
• Language of Resistance Intensifies Amid New Reports of Demonstrators Attacked
• Full Obama Press Conference on Iran, Economic Recovery, Healthcare (video + transcript)
• What Happened at Baharestan Square?
• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Pres. Obama’s Remarks on Iran (video + transcript, English + Farsi)
• Guardian Council Opposed to Throwing Out Election Results
• Iran Using Western Technology to Spy on its Citizens, Suppress Dissent
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Pres. Obama’s Statement on Iran (transcript)
• Larijani Says Majority Suspect Election Fraud; Rafsanjani Relative Detained
• Iran Says ‘Terrorists’ Caused Saturday Clashes; New Evidence of State Violence (UPDATED)
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• UN Rights Chief Warns Iran not to Use Violence
• Iranian Dissident Leader Detained in Hospital ICU, Jailed without Charge
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Iran Government Targets Press as More Demonstrations Planned (video)
• Rafsanjani Calls for Emergency Meeting of Assembly of Experts
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election
• Iranian Polls Kept Open Several Hours Longer than Planned
• Iran Votes, with Popular Reformist Challenging Hardline Ahmedinejad

Reports from Wednesday protests in Tehran include harrowing though unconfirmed accounts of axe-wielding thugs, brutal assaults against civilians and mass detentions. Baharestan Square was reportedly the scene of a messy attempt to stage a pro-opposition rally, but accounts of what took place are hard to verify. At least one victim’s family may have been taken into custody and bans on public mourning have been reported.

One post on Twitter, certain to anger authorities and as yet not independently confirmed, reads “in Baharestan we saw militia with axe chopping ppl like meat – blood everywhere – like butcher”. There is no third-party verification for what is alleged to have taken place there, but numerous accounts allege the Basij militia used brutal force to break up demonstrators who sought to gather and hold any ground in the square.

The intensification of Iran’s media blockade means nearly all reporting coming from Iran regarding ongoing demonstrations is coming from non-institutional sources, bystanders with cell-phones and anonymous online messages. There are news reports the family of Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old woman shot and killed by security forces, has been targeted by authorities.

Soltan’s family has reportedly been forced from their home and her body was never returned to them. Neighbors have reportedly said the funeral has been canceled and the family has been prohibited from making any public display of mourning for her.

The targeting of Soltan’s family appears to be part of a pre-emptive campaign by the leadership to smear Soltan, the demonstrators around her and foreign media, in an effort to prevent opposition groups from rallying around her. The Guardian newspaper reports that:

The government is also accusing protesters of killing Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia. Javan, a pro-government newspaper, has gone so far as to blame the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring “thugs” to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.

It also appears that while the family has either been “forced out” or disappeared by the authorities, neighbors have been receiving threatening phone calls. One neighbor reportedly expressed an atmosphere of deep fear and systematic intimidation:

We are trembling. We are still afraid. We haven’t had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can’t imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn’t let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda’s family were not even given a quite moment to grieve.

The “stranglehold on media”, as worded by Rachel Maddow, appears by all accounts to be intensifying. It is unclear whether individuals are shying away from online postings out of fear or whether the government has successfully shut down major international online communications. There are also some reports that foreign hackers have caused the website of Pres. Ahmedinejad to crash.

The government’s intensifying blocking of any and all non-official media reports appears to confirm allegations there is a deliberate and sustained attempt to coordinate harsh security actions with a cloak of secrecy. Press organizations and opposition supporters have called on the government to restore media freedoms if it wants to demonstrate it plans to honor the rule of law.

UPDATE, 15:30 GMT: According to the Times of London:

Relatives of several detained protesters have confirmed that the interrogation of prisoners is now being headed by Saaed Mortazavi, a figure known in Iran as “the butcher of the press”. He gained notoriety for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003.

“The leading role of Saeed Mortazavi in the crackdown in Tehran should set off alarm bells for anyone familiar with his record,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch.

Mortazavi appears to be an integral figure in the government’s crackdown on dissenters. It is reported he oversaw the arrest of close aides to top opposition figures like former president Mohammad Khatami. He has a history of being involved in religious persecution, detaining women for allegedly “immodest” clothing, and is said to have overseen the detention of Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist detained for purchasing wine, then charged with espionage and sentenced in a secret trial. (Saberi was eventually released.)

The notorious nature of Mortazavi’s reputation as an interrogator and torturer suggests the government plans to use the harshest means possible to crush what is now being called by some in the press “the uprising”. The increasingly hardline stance taken by officials also appears to lend credibility to reports of extreme violence in the streets, the kind “chaos and bloodshed” Ayatollah Khamene’i had promised.

More reporting on Iran crisis, from Cafe Sentido:

• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Pres. Obama’s Remarks on Iran (video + transcript, English + Farsi)
• Guardian Council Opposed to Throwing Out Election Results
• Iran Using Western Technology to Spy on its Citizens, Suppress Dissent
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Pres. Obama’s Statement on Iran (transcript)
• Larijani Says Majority Suspect Election Fraud; Rafsanjani Relative Detained
• Iran Says ‘Terrorists’ Caused Saturday Clashes; New Evidence of State Violence (UPDATED)
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• UN Rights Chief Warns Iran not to Use Violence
• Iranian Dissident Leader Detained in Hospital ICU, Jailed without Charge
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Iran Government Targets Press as More Demonstrations Planned (video)
• Rafsanjani Calls for Emergency Meeting of Assembly of Experts
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election
• Iranian Polls Kept Open Several Hours Longer than Planned
• Iran Votes, with Popular Reformist Challenging Hardline Ahmedinejad

As Iran’s presidential election has morphed into a massive international spectacle, with opposition protesters demanding justice and a full accounting of how votes were tallied, the regime has used every technological advantage at its disposal to obstruct online communications and mobile phone traffic. The government now has a wealth of powerful technologies, from western firms, it can use to spy, block communications, and even alter messages before they are delivered.

Attempts to ban the use of sms and online messaging sites like Twitter have been circumvented, incrementally, and by fits and starts, by an increasingly tech-savvy youthful electorate. And the use of proxy servers has allowed an evolving system of cat-and-mouse blocking and re-opening of channels to global web portals like Twitter and YouTube. This has allowed opposition supporters and ordinary Iranians to ‘broadcast’ anecdotal reporting to the world, ramping up pressure on the government to levels not seen since 1979.

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The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that:

… in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

Ben Roome, a spokesman for the Siemens-Nokia joint venture (Nokia Siemens Networks), reportedly said “If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them”. But Roome also said the Nokia Siemens project does not provide internet intercept capability that would aid the Iranian government in censoring or propagandizing their population.

The WSJ report suggested that Iran’s leadership may only have begun to fully apply the technology’s monitoring and control capabilities in efforts to obstruct opposition activities leading up to or following the election. It is unclear whether or not the NSN technology is being used to intercept and examine specific online messages or whether it might be used, as the venture’s spokesman suggested, to intercept or listen in on local telephone communications.

• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Pres. Obama’s Statement on Iran (transcript)
• Larijani Says Majority Suspect Election Fraud; Rafsanjani Relative Detained
• Iran Says ‘Terrorists’ Caused Saturday Clashes; New Evidence of State Violence (UPDATED)
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• UN Rights Chief Warns Iran not to Use Violence
• Iranian Dissident Leader Detained in Hospital ICU, Jailed without Charge
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Iran Government Targets Press as More Demonstrations Planned (video)
• Rafsanjani Calls for Emergency Meeting of Assembly of Experts
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election
• Iranian Polls Kept Open Several Hours Longer than Planned
• Iran Votes, with Popular Reformist Challenging Hardline Ahmedinejad

On Tuesday, as opposition demonstrations calling for a full accounting for all votes cast in Friday’s election spread, authorities revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and warned media not to report from the protest marches. Opposition leaders, protest organizers and some media staff have reportedly been rounded up and held in undisclosed locations.

The Ministry of Culture reportedly issued this warning to foreign journalists: “Hereby we inform all foreign media representatives to avoid any news coverage which has not been coordinated or authorised by this bureau”. The government has brazenly undertaken a nationwide crackdown to prevent the protests, and has promised to use any means necessary to block a “velvet revolution”.

There is mounting evidence of a power struggle between the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i and the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, once considered a candidate for the post Khamene’i now holds. One report suggests the choice of candidates for the election actually amounted to a “proxy war” between the two old rivals. And Rafsanjani now appears to have called for an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts, the panel of clerics who have the power to seat or unseat the supreme leader.

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The BBC has shown scenes from the Tehran metro where passengers “spontaneously break into anti-government chanting”. The regime has sought to block foreign media sources, including efforts to shut down websites like the BBC’s, or foreign newspapers and blogs, or the messaging service Twitter. With opposition leadership figures like former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi and Said Hajjarian (a Mousavi backer) reportedly detained, the effort to clamp down on organized opposition is clearly escalating.

Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for a national day of mourning on Thursday, in recognition of those killed by security forces during yesterday’s demonstrations. Saying “A number of our countrymen were wounded or martyred,” the opposition leader called on ”the people to express their solidarity with the families … by coming together in mosques or taking part in peaceful demonstrations”.

Last night, opposition demonstrators carried out a massive “silent march” in order to demonstrate the peaceful nature of the opposition and legitimate their calls for credible investigations of electoral fraud. Mousavi has stressed that Thursday’s rallies should remain non-violent and seek to honor those killed so far. With all non-state media barred from reporting from rally sites, only limited pictures are emerging from Tehran today, but some observers estimated another rally of 500,000 in central Tehran, in support of the opposition.

UPDATE, 15:54 GMT: A new report suggests thousands of Revolutionary Guard troops are being deployed in Tehran, entering the capital from three sides, to expand the government’s crackdown on the opposition movement. While Mousavi is calling for nationwide peaceful demonstrations to honor those killed by security forces since the election, fear is growing that the government is contemplating a military solution.

UPDATE, 18:04 GMT: An image is now circulating that alleges to include two video captures of Iranian state-run television, reporting the election results on Friday. In the image, it appears that one of the opposition candidates, Mohsen Rezai, is listed as having amassed a total of 587,913 votes as of 13:53.

That total is 45,135 votes fewer than Rezai was reported to have four hours earlier, at 9:47, when he had 633,048, suggesting the numbers had been manipulated in the intervening time. Bloggers are suggesting the image is “proof” of vote-rigging, but the authenticity of the video captures has not been independently verified, nor has any official reason been given for the apparent modification in vote tallies.

UPDATE, 19:47 GMT: The sourcing of this video is not independently confirmed, but it alleges to show the shooting of an unarmed opposition supporter. The images are graphic, and some viewers may find them disturbing (posted to YouTube on the 15th):

Online discussions are suggesting Ahmedinejad “supporters”, possibly plainclothes security agents, took to the streets openly assaulting unarmed civilians and breaking into buildings. It has been repeatedly alleged today that the authorities want to “provoke” Mousavi supporters, in order to justifiy a brutal military crackdown, but unconfirmed online sources are saying it is pro-Ahmedinejad elements that are engaging in street violence.

• Rafsanjani Calls for Emergency Meeting of Assembly of Experts
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamene’i to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election
• Iranian Polls Kept Open Several Hours Longer than Planned
• Iran Votes, with Popular Reformist Challenging Hardline Ahmedinejad

The Associated Press is the most widely distributed news wire service in the world. Credible impartiality is vitally important to its reputation as an unbiased source of global reporting. However, that journalists might have opinions, perhaps informed opinions, on matters on which they are not reporting for pay should never be in and of itself cause for reprimand. The AP, like any reputable news agency, has a moral obligation to honor the inherent value of press freedom, and that includes the right of individuals to express their views in other venues.

The AP cannot safeguard its journalistic integrity or promote itself as a bastion of impartiality if it uses the hierarchy of agency governance to silence journalists who voice opinions. What’s more, Facebook is a private social network; the default privacy settings limit access to most content to whatever circle of friends the user chooses to grant access to. Some privacy advocates think social networks should be more rigorous in guaranteeing privacy, while free speech advocates say social networks should be treated like private conversations among friends, not cause for reprimand or firing on grounds of defaming an institution or its backers.

According to Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog:

Private-sector workers have little, if any, protection from being fired or reprimanded for what they say online or off, said Wendy Seltzer, a First Amendment lawyer at American University. “If you put it onto a Twitter stream or a Facebook page, if they get word of that, they can fire you,” Seltzer said. “Electronic communications are more persistent, and more likely to find their way into the boss’ hands.”

Federal employees, she said, generally have a First Amendment protection against being fired for their speech, unless it “impedes the ability to do the job,” Seltzer said.

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The AP, or McClatchy, might well file a federal lawsuit to demand the right to publish information, even if that information has not been 100% verified. It may also sue to protect the privacy of confidential sources, without which some key forms of investigative journalism could not be effectively practiced. But in the private social network posting of one of its own, the AP has sought to officially reprimand the reporter for violating its code of conduct.

The First Amendment protects news organizations in cases of confidentiality, and it protects individuals who exercise their right to free speech. Some argue that Facebook is also a case of the right to freely assemble, because people connect with friends and acquaintances to share their news, their photos, their comments and moods. That the site is designed for this makes it something very different than the kind of “publication” the AP ethics code would contemplate, though it is, admittedly, a “public forum”.

What’s worse, in this case, is that the comment is one that might embarrass one of the news organizations participating in the AP wire service. That makes the official reprimand a demonstration of the AP’s apparent willingness to ignore a grave conflict of interest and attack an individual for criticizing those in positions of influence within or related to the organization.

But the AP case is another in a long series of such cases where management have very directly abused the implicit trust of a personal social network relationship in order to punish someone who did nothing more than express a personal opinion to a closed group of friends. There is the case of the Philadelphia stadium employee who was fired after calling the Eagles “retarded” for making a trade he did not approve of, and two New Jersey restaurant workers who allege their boss logged into a MySpace account using a false identity in order to uncover their criticism of his management style, then fire them.

The Eagles case is obviously a completely unserious reason to fire someone. And the restaurant manager has obviously demonstrated the criticism of the two employees to be true, and should perhaps seek some help for obsessive tendencies. Is it wrong for us to make such assumptions based on the little information we have? Perhaps. But in both cases, the employers raised the specter of public outrage or backlash by taking such extreme actions for such harmless “offenses”. They made the cases a matter of public record by revoking someone’s livelihood in retaliation for a single comment.

The AP needs to very closely examine its policies and come to a more philosophical understanding of its position in all of this: the AP is irrelevant to that comment regarding McClatchy, and should stand aside. Its intervention demonstrates an extreme bias by management, and its authoritarian approach to employees private lives demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the principles that allow such a vibrant demonstration of the free press to exist at all.

Its employees are citizens as well, and they have a right to treat certain online activity as private-sphere activity. Not every media venue is a public forum in the strictest sense, anymore, because privacy protections have advanced to the point where in fact, yes, we can have some expectation of privacy when we use those services. Someone at the AP is out of line, and behind the times.

How can we reach the state of affairs in which online activity is entirely secure against identity theft? Hyper-convergence means media and services of all kinds will be increasingly integrated across a broad-spectrum multi-media fabric, where one’s actions and interests, private information and financial data, will be increasingly widespread.

It is possible to ensure that such information is always available strictly and only behind tough state-of-the-art software or hardware firewalls, but with the current standard, identity theft as such is difficult to prevent or correct. The first clear step must be to ensure that the individual has maximum control over his or her identifying information, as well as the vast matrix of data linked to their personal identity.

Granting the individual such control means the need for some degree of centralization of data, which is, potentially, another security risk. But, the individual must have the ability to act in good faith and with expeditious urgency to reverse any incidence of identity theft in the quickest, most comprehensive manner possible.

The floor is open to debate on how we can best achieve this…

• Join the discussion on The Hot Spring Network

The Chinese government, in Beijing, controlled by a Communist party that allows no dissent, and no opposition, continues to suppress public awareness, discussion or inquiry, regarding the events of June 1989, in which the Chinese military massacred hundreds of student demonstrators. The term Tiananmen produces filtered results in web searches, and the regime has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, the Huffington Post, LiveJournal, MSN’s Bing, and other sites, in an effort to prevent Chinese internauts from locating any reporting on the massacre of 4 June 1989.

Now, as we mark the 20th anniversary of that tragic day, the Chinese government seeks to prevent any amount of dissent or “unrest” that might stem from public recognition of the crimes committed by government forces on that day. We now know, however, that the decision to launch a violent military assault on the pro-democracy demonstrators, was a deliberate decision taken by the Central Committee of the ruling Communist party, over the objections of its then secretary general Zhao Ziyang. Zhao resigned in protest, tried to warn the demonstrators to disperse for their own safety, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest for his dissent.

In May, Café Sentido reported:

The private memoirs of former Chinese Communist party (CCP) leader Zhao Ziyang are to be published, as we near the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and the massacre that ended them. The diaries will be published this month, under the title Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang.

Zhao was secretary general of the central committee of the CCP from 1987 until he was deposed due to his opposition to the government’s hardline crackdown on student demonstrators gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in June 1989. Zhao was subjected to 16 years of house arrest, and died in 2005. But the journals were so secret, their existence has not been confirmed until now.

In those diaries, Zhao called the massacre of peaceful demonstrators at Tiananmen Square “a tragedy to shock the world”, and clearly stated it could have been averted, had any of the party leadership sided with his view that the demonstrators should be permitted to protest or otherwise be peacefully dispersed. The violent crackdown remains to this day one of the great signs that liberalization of China by trade and engagement has been a moral failure.

Fully 20 years on, the Tiananmen massacre remains a source of intense government censorship. Major internet firms like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! were permitted to operate within China only on condition that they would bar access to any sites that speak of the massacre. Those who criticize the government for such acts are still detained, held without trial, even “disappeared”.

In 2005, Sentido —now Café Sentido— reported that China’s president Hu Jintao had declared the launch of a “smokeless war” on press and dissidents. Hu’s goal was to impose a severe crackdown on the freedom of Chinese individuals and groups to voice criticism for the government’s policies, without leaving the obvious “smoke” that would signal a fire of intimidation or abuse. The closing of internet cafes across China —usually on false claims of public health hazard, fire hazard, or building code violations— ensued.

In 2007, China began implementing temporary rules for foreign journalists, relaxing the restrictions on their movements inside China, in an effort to win favor among the world’s media, in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. But Chinese journalists were being detained in increasing numbers, in an effort to control the nation’s public image by removing potentially offensive content those reporters might produce. The point was not lost on foreign media, who also complained they were banned from broadcasting live from Tiananamen Square.

Also in September 2007, a New York Times reporter, Zhao Yan, was released after being jailed for 3 years on allegations of publishing state secrets. At the time, at least 35 journalists and 51 cyber dissidents were known to be in Chinese jails. An unknown number of less visible critics or ordinary citizens who had sought redress for grievances against corrupt officials, or those close to them, was —and is now— also being held.

In December 2008, Reporters without Borders (RSF) condemned the Chinese government’s renewed constraints on media freedoms in a press release:

Reporters Without Borders condemns the Chinese government’s censorship of the websites of certain foreign news media such as Voice of America and the BBC and certain Chinese media based outside mainland China, which have been rendered inaccessible inside China since the start of December.

“Freedom of information is widely violated in China,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Right now, the authorities are gradually rolling back all the progress made in the run-up to this summer’s Olympic games, when even foreign websites in Mandarin were made accessible. The pretence of liberalisation is now over. The blocking of access to the websites of foreign news media speaks volumes about the government’s intolerance. We urge the authorities to unblock them again.”

Tensions are high, as reformists and critics of the government seek to recognize the anniversary and hold those responsible for the massacre accountable, at least in the court of public opinion and in the eyes of history. AFP reports:

China’s Communist leaders have made any discussion of the brutal quelling of the student-led demonstrations — in which hundreds, maybe thousands, were killed — taboo, but dissidents say the public could yet hold them accountable.

“People remember this date because they want the Communist Party to take responsibility for the crimes it committed,” said 53-year-old Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg after being shot by troops near Tiananmen Square.

The United States House of Representatives passed a resolution this week, by a margin of 396 to 1, calling on China to officially recognize the massacre, support a UN-backed independent investigation into the atrocities committed at Tiananmen Square, and free all political prisoners. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square, in 1991, critical of the government’s crackdown, but has chosen to make her demand for prisoner release in private in 2009.

Pelosi says she personally petitioned Pres. Hu for the release of 10 prisoners. She specifically named Hu Jia, a dissident the EU has awarded its Sakharov prize for freedom of thought. One California Congressman said on the House floor: “Twenty years ago this day, the government of China affirmed to the world that it is a criminal enterprise that is perfectly willing to murder unarmed people to stay in power”.

In the weeks leading up to the anniversary of the massacre, Chinese officials have gone as far as to remove specific pages from foreign news publications that make any reference to the crackdown or to efforts to suppress the free flow of information relating to the crackdown. Some fear the disapperance of critics and journalists could accelerate as the government seeks to bury the memory of the 1989 massacre of unarmed protesters.

To this day, the official story is that a violent network of plotters, seeking to overthrow the government, was successfully subdued in a responsible way. But even with that version of events, very little historical information is permitted to circulate in Chinese media, and it is expected the major media outlets in China will be officially barred from recognizing the anniversary at all.

Creative writing is part of the work of any writer. Finding the best way to put two words, then three, then four and ten, together, is the basic metabolic process of creating any text. And it requires a vision and an application of that vision.

Publishing models determine which texts are made available to a wide audience, and by what means. New media, like this social network, are providing new opportunities, but the crossover between print and digital media will provide bold new opportunities for making the best new ideas available to the people who can do the most with them.

Share your ideas on what you would like to see to make news media, research materials, conceptual innovations and basic statistical evidence, and/or writing that expresses new ways of thinking, available for your consumption.

• The Hot Spring Network’s Discussion on ‘New Publishing Models to Speed Ideas to Application’