Add The United Nations To The List Of Entities Helping The Chinese Government Oppress Its Minority Uighur Population

from the can-you-not???!!!! dept

It's no secret the Chinese government wants to control its population through pervasive surveillance. It's also no secret the government wants very badly to eliminate a certain sector of its population with (in every sense of the words) extreme prejudice.

China's minority Uighur Muslim population presents an existential threat to a government that is tasked with controlling the hearts and minds of billions of residents. The Uighurs don't buy into the government narrative or whatever passes for a national religion in a country where almost every religious expression has been suppressed.

The Chinese government claims to have no national religion. This may be true. But it will only tolerate so many, and Islam isn't one of them. The government has engaged in the mass disappearance of this minority. And it has done so with an alarming amount of assistance from non-Chinese entities, ranging from American tech companies to foreign government officials.

It's not like anyone's having trouble divining the Chinese government's intent when it comes to its Uighur population. But even multinational entities charged with keeping the (worldwide) peace and preventing large-scale human rights abuses are giving China what it wants.

Enter the United Nations, which has apparently become Nations United Against Uighurs, according to this report for Newsweek by Josh Feldman:

The United Nations, the very institution created to "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights," is assisting China in its violent efforts to wipe out the Uyghurs by helping the CCP cover its tracks. These were the findings of a recent report in Le Monde about the efforts of UN human rights officer-turned whistleblower Emma Reilly. Reilly claims that prior to every UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in recent years, China has requested the names of Uyghur and other Chinese dissidents who were scheduled to speak. And despite this being explicitly forbidden by the UN's own rules, the UN, according to Reilly, has made it a practice to share this information with Chinese authorities, who use it to harass the dissidents' families who are still based in China.

True? False? Unconfirmed? Gentlepersons, place your bets. But me personally? I'm siding with confirmed. These complaints about the UN's willingness to aid and abet at least indirect harassment of Uighur residents seem to have a pretty solid basis. This isn't a recent development. The Chinese government has wanted Uighurs regulated to the background of their own genocide for years.

Reilly says she first discovered the practice in 2013, when China's Geneva delegation requested confirmation that certain "anti-government Chinese separatists" were set to speak at the Human Rights Council. Listed individuals included, among others, Dolkun Isa, current president of the World Uyghur Congress.

Emma Reilly, of course, is now faring worse than either the UN or the Chinese government atrocities the UN is helping enable. Despite official confirmation of her allegations by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), she was fired from her position the day after French newspaper Le Monde reported on her accusations.

Meanwhile, the UN tries to have it both ways.

The UN in fact confirmed Reilly's allegations in 2017, when the OHCHR acknowledged that it confirms attendees' names with Chinese authorities who "regularly ask the UN Human Rights Office... whether particular NGO delegates are attending the forthcoming session." So too, did a 2019 UN tribunal confirm "the practice of providing names of human rights defenders to the Chinese delegation."

Despite confirming the Chinese government's abuse of UN processes, the UN Secretary-General claimed it blew the Chinese government off when it determined it had no basis to request these names. This assertion was rejected by a UN judge, who said the OHCHR had lied about its actual responses to the Chinese government's demands for names of speakers it wished to silence.

But this declaration hasn't changed the math much for the censorial and violent Chinese government. It still gets to participate in worldwide discussions about governance and demand information on UN speakers it doesn't agree with for the apparent purpose of engaging in witness intimidation. It's not that no one can see what's going on in China. It's that, for the most part, those with the power to attempt to force positive change have decided they're outmatched and outgunned by a government whose bark has proven so efficient it never needs to bite. Someone needs to call China's bluff. But those who can not only refuse to challenge the international bully, but actively participate in actions that consolidate its power.

Filed Under: china, surveillance, uighurs, un

Russia Disconnects Itself From The Internet, Asks UN To Let It Have More Control Of Internet Usage Around The World

from the hey-if-it's-good-enough-for-state-sponsored-cybercriminals... dept

The Russian government has successfully disconnected itself from the world. "Internet sovereignty" is the term the government prefers. That's what the Russian government actually calls the law signed into effect in May.

The idea is to isolate the Russian internet from the internet the rest of the world uses. It's not to protect Russia or Russian internet users. It's to force all Russian internet traffic through Roskomnadzor servers, which will allow the government to surveil its citizens' internet use, presumably to facilitate censorship efforts and prosecutions.

Lots of experts doubted the plan was feasible. At best, it would subject all Russian internet traffic to government surveillance. At worst, it would cause critical systems to fail. The plan was to pull the plug in April. It didn't happen until December. According to the Russian government, this extreme Balkanization of the internet went off without a hitch.

"It turned out that, in general, that both authorities and telecom operators are ready to effectively respond to possible risks and threats and ensure the functioning of the Internet and the unified telecommunication network in Russia," said Alexei Sokolov, deputy head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, as cited by multiple Russian news agencies [1, 2, 3, 4].

That's the only source we have, so trusting this narrative means trusting the Russian government -- a government that is claiming it's essential to seal off its internet to protect it from threats when all it really wants to do is control narratives, perform mass censorship, and hunt down citizens who color outside the lines.

Russia wants to make its policy an everywhere policy. Its proposal -- currently being considered by the United Nations -- pushes for more internet sovereignty everywhere. Again, this tool of censorship and control is being portrayed as an anti-cybercrime tool meant to secure nations, rather than censor citizens.

It seems harmless enough in Newspeak:

The representative of the Russian Federation, presenting the draft, said cybercrime threatens entire sectors and is a crucial national security priority. Despite the importance of the issue, there is a lack of an instrument to tackle it, and until last year’s resolution 73/187, the General Assembly had not addressed the need for a unified conceptual framework. While inclusive international dialogue has commenced, its geographic scope is “limited”, and there is a clear need to bolster international cooperation, he said. Stating that the draft complements similar initiatives — including the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime — he said it must also take on board work done by the Expert Group to Conduct a Comprehensive Study on Cybercrime in Vienna. He pointed out that the draft resolution “does not cost much, at less than $200,000”, and fosters a more just, balanced world order in the digital sphere by ending “club-based” agreements.

A draft of this proposal [PDF] has already been approved by the UN. Maybe the UN should have looked a little closer at the parties behind the proposal -- all of which already engage in strict control of internet services and engage in mass censorship.

Belarus, Cambodia, China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Russian Federation and Venezuela

The proposal says things about "cooperation," but the only cooperation being asked for is assistance in making it easier to run country-specific versions of the internet.

The resolution -- Countering The Use Of Information And Communications Technologies For Criminal Purposes -- would create a new cybercrime treaty written by Russia, a country analysts have said is cracking down on Internet freedom at home to stifle opposition to the Kremlin.

“The Russians clearly are interested in pushing their vision of what the Internet should look like in the future, and that’s conflating this idea of cybercrime with cybersecurity and cyber controls,” a State Department official told media on December 19.

Russia wants “a form of lockdown on information” over the Internet and a “curtailment of those freedoms” that the United States stands for, the State Department official said.

There's also the attendant irony of Russia leading the fight against misinformation and the use of the internet for criminal purposes. The countries in agreement on this proposal routinely engage in state-sponsored attacks on foreign government entities and Russia is internationally infamous for its interference in the last US presidential election. Russia wants all the best foxes to guard the internet hen house. That the draft passed with plenty of support indicates the world is loaded with foxes who see only an upside to taking control of the internet their citizens have access to.

Filed Under: censorship, control, internet, russia, splinternet, surveillance, un

WIPO Now Gets Into The Extrajudicial, Zero Due Process, Censorship Act Over Sites It Declares 'Infringing'

from the not-this-again dept

Every few years this kind of thing pops up. Some ignorant organization or policymaker thinks "oh, hey, the easy way to 'solve' piracy is just to create a giant blacklist." This sounds like a simple solution... if you have no idea how any of this works. Remember, advertising giant GroupM tried just such an approach a decade ago, working with Universal Music to put together a list of "pirate sites" for which it would block all advertising. Of course, who ended up on that list? A bunch of hip hop news sites and blogs. And even the personal site of one of Universal Music's own stars was suddenly deemed an "infringing site."

These kinds of mistakes highlight just how fraught such a process is -- especially when it's done behind the scenes by organizations that face no penalty for overblocking. In such cases you always get widespread overblocking based on innuendo, speculation, and rumor, rather than any legitimate due process or court adjudication concerning infringement. Even worse, if there was actual infringement going on, one possible legal remedy would involve getting a site to take down that content. Under a "list" approach, it's just basically a death penalty for the entire site.

That's why it's especially ridiculous that WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, a part of the UN, has decided to leap gleefully into the space with one of these "blacklists" of evil piratey sites.

WIPO, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its ‘BRIP’ Database, short for “Building Respect for Intellectual Property.”

So, uh, what's the process to get on the list? Surely it must involve a court of law determining that a site is engaged in copyright infringement, right? Oh, of course not.

The goal of the project is simple: allow stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share this list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. This will result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit.

"Stakeholders"?

“The BRIP Database is now open for the acceptance of Authorized Contributors from WIPO Member States and Authorized Users from the advertising sector,” WIPO writes.

“It comprises a secure, access-controlled online platform, to which authorized agencies in WIPO Member States may upload lists of websites which deliberately facilitate the infringement of copyright.”

Ah. So, it's "Authorized Contributors" and "Authorized Users from the advertising sector" and the entire list is secret. It's "secure, access controlled." I'm sure that won't be abused at all.

Not answered:

• What is the process to make sure sites on the list are actually engaged in ongoing infringement?
• Are sites notified?
• Do sites have any due process by which they get to plead their own case?
• Is there any appeals process?
• How are "authorized contributors" vetted and approved?
• Will an authorized contributor lose their authorization if it is found that they have nominated sites incorrectly?
• Is there any way for the public or NGOs to review the list for accuracy?

I've sent these questions to WIPO, which has not yet responded at the time of publication.

What's fairly stunning about all of this is that anyone who knows anything about these issues and how they've been treated over the last few decades would recognize the pitfalls of WIPO's approach with BRIP. And yet... no one at WIPO even seemed to bother to care about some fairly fundamental issues regarding due process and proper adjudication of accusations of infringement. Honestly, it raises significant questions about WIPO's own understanding of copyright law.

Filed Under: advertising, blacklist, censorship, due process, transparency, un, wipo

UN Says Facebook Is Complicit In The Spread Of Anti-Muslim Hate In Myanmar

from the sort-of-right,-but-approaching-the-problem-the-wrong-way dept

The UN has decided it's possibly Facebook's fault things are going so badly in Myanmar. Muslims have been fleeing the country in droves thanks to Myanmar security forces engaging in widespread acts of violence (including rape) against them, urged on by hardline nationalist monks.

For all intents and purposes, Facebook is Myanmar's internet. Loosening of restrictions on social media access has resulted in a large portion of the population getting all their news (along with all the hate speech the UN is complaining about) via the social media giant. The UN is looking into genocide accusations but has decided to speak up against Facebook first.

Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters that social media had played a “determining role” in Myanmar.

“It has … substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” he said.

The UN Myanmar investigator Yanghee Lee said Facebook was a huge part of public, civil and private life, and the government used it to disseminate information to the public.

When there's only one main pipeline of info, everything flows through it, whether it's the official government narrative or government-supported hate speech targeting Myanmar Muslims. The UN feels Facebook has contributed to the violence by not doing enough to remove hate speech.

If these are the UN's conclusions, it's severely late to the party. Last fall, The Daily Beast reported Facebook was instrumental in removing reports of anti-Muslim violence the Myanmar government didn't approve of.

Rohingya activists—in Burma and in Western countries—tell The Daily Beast that Facebook has been removing their posts documenting the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people in Burma (also known as Myanmar). They said their accounts are frequently suspended or taken down.

The Rohingya people are a Muslim ethnic minority group in Burma. They face extraordinary persecution and violence from the Burmese military; military personnel torch villages, murder refugees, and force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Facebook promised to do better after being confronted with this evidence. But it offered no good reason why activists' posts detailing government atrocities were frequently removed and the accounts posting them locked or suspended. The company did not specifically say whether or not it was responding to government requests for content removal, but its transparency report shows almost no activity related to Myanmar's government. If this was solely the result of horrendous judgment calls by Facebook moderators, the end result of its moderation efforts has been the loss of human lives.

Even as Muslims are being silenced, the Myanmar government has used Facebook to push its own narrative to a largely captive audience. Shuna Mia, a Rohingya man who spoke to reporters about government-backed rape and murder was found floating headless in a nearby river the following day. According to this Guardian report, the Myanmar government immediately began rewriting history using Facebook as its soapbox.

The day after Shuna was found dead, someone representing the state counsellor of Myanmar (Aung San Suu Kyi’s official title) posted a photo of a headless body on the office’s Facebook page, stamped with the words “Truth teller BEHEADED”. The post claimed Shuna had told the media that security forces had not committed rape or arson, and suggested he was killed by “Muslim insurgents” in retaliation. That directly contradicted local reports, activists and Shuna’s family, who believe he was abducted and beheaded by security forces for speaking to journalists.

This was just part of the government’s efforts to discredit Rohingya people. On the same day, the same Facebook account posted photos of Rohingya women who said they had been raped by security forces. The label “FAKE RAPE” dismissed the countless reports of sexual violence.

Facebook has always had issues with moderation. Its policies may seem internally consistent, but the way they play out in the messiness of everyday life leaves a lot to be desired. The content it removed may have somehow violated policies or local laws, but posts are apparently viewed in vacuum, removed from political and social context. This isn't necessarily an oversight by Facebook. It's merely reflective of the reality the company deals with: more than a billion users scattered across the globe, operating under a patchwork of speech laws that cannot be applied across all posts from all people.

But the end result of this impossible task is Facebook's inadvertent participation in the spread of anti-Muslim hate that is linked to suspected ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately, the UN's public criticism of Facebook isn't going to help. If Facebook sees more regulation or international pressure headed its way, it's likely to double-down on moderation, resulting in even more suppression of anti-government sentiment. It will get worse for Myanmar Muslims, thanks to Facebook's inadvertent stranglehold on news distribution.

This isn't to say no one should be speaking up about Facebook's contribution to an international problem. It's just that they shouldn't expect things to get better just because they're loudly complaining about it. The problem is the Myanmar government and that's where the UN should focus its efforts. Facebook's contribution is a symptom of the underlying problem, not a root cause.

Filed Under: hate speech, intermediary liability, myanmar, un, violence
Companies: facebook

UN Independent Expert On Promotion Of Democracy Calls On Governments To Stop Persecuting Whistleblowers

from the take-that dept

Alfred de Zayas, who is the UN's "Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and international order" has put out quite a statement in support of President Obama's decision to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence. But de Zayas didn't stop there. He went on to point out that the US government and other governments have been persecuting many other whistleblowers around the world, including Ed Snowden and Julian Assange, and that should stop:

I welcome the commutation of sentence of Chelsea Manning and her forthcoming release in May. There are, however, many whistleblowers who have served the cause of human rights and who are still in prison in many countries throughout the world. It is time to recognize the contribution of whistleblowers to democracy and the rule of law and to stop persecuting them.

I call on Governments worldwide to put an end to multiple campaigns of defamation, mobbing and even prosecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, the Luxleakers Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet and the tax corruption leaker Rafi Rotem, who have acted in good faith and who have given meaning to article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on freedom of expression. Whistleblowers who are serving prison sentence in many countries should be pardoned.

Whistleblowers are human rights defenders whose contribution to democracy and the rule of law cannot be overestimated. They serve democracy and human rights by revealing information that all persons are entitled to receive. A culture of secrecy is frequently also a culture of impunity. Because the right to know proclaimed in article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is absolutely crucial to every democracy, whistleblowers should be protected, not persecuted.

The statement goes on for a few more paragraphs and concludes:

It is time for this abnormal and inhuman situation to end.

Of course, this kind of statement will mostly be ignored by those in power -- and where not ignored, it will likely be mocked or attacked. But it is an important and useful statement. In the hype and buzz around these individuals, the underlying facts often get buried. But it remains the case that the individuals de Zayas named have focused on revealing to the public important information that powerful people have tried to keep secret, often exposing massive government overreach or outright lies.

Filed Under: alfred de zayas, chelsea manning, democracy, ed snowden, julian assange, un, whistleblowers

Ted Cruz Still Blatantly Misrepresenting Internet Governance Transition

from the let-it-go,-ted dept

Just a few months ago, we wrote up a decently long post explaining why the upcoming "transition" of a piece of internet governance away from the US government was both a good thing and not a big deal. You can read those two posts on it, but the really short version is twofold: (1) the Commerce Department's "control" over ICANN's IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) was always pretty much non-existent in the first place; and (2) even having that little connection to the US government, though, only provided tremendous fodder for foreign governments (mainly: Russia & China) to push to take control of the internet themselves. That's what that whole disastrous UN/ITU/WCIT mess was a few years back. Relinquishing the (non-existent) control, with clear parameters that internet governance wouldn't then be allowed to jump into the ITU's lap, helps on basically every point. It takes away a key reason that other countries have used to claim they need more control, and it makes it clear that internet governance needs to remain out of any particular government's control.

As we noted, this is all a good thing.

But for unclear reasons, Senator Ted Cruz keeps insisting that this "transfer" is about the US giving control over the internet to the UN. He's ramped up this rhetoric lately as the transition gets closer:

"Today our country faces a threat to the internet as we know it. In 22 short days, if Congress fails to act, the Obama administration intends to give away the internet to an international body akin to the United Nations," Cruz said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. "I rise today to discuss the significant, irreparable damage this proposed internet giveaway could wreak not only on our nation but on free speech across the world."

Except that's hogwash. The plan does exactly the opposite. We've made this point over and over again, and thankfully others are doing so as well. Fusion has a long and detailed article that highlights that Cruz's claims are a fantasy and have no basis in reality. It goes through the whole history of IANA (if you don't know the story of Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds, and how the two of them basically kept the internet running in their spare time for a few decades, you should...), but then points out that Cruz is just wrong:

To be clear: ICANN has about as much control over the internet as Ted Cruz has a grasp on how DNS actually works–which is to say, very little. But the perpetuation of the fiction that ICANN controls the internet is representative of the completely understandable human impulse to try and assign control of the internet to someone or something, particularly in a time where the systems that shape most users’ experience of the internet are increasingly opaque and unaccountable to users.

Saying any one group controls the internet is as absurd as saying who “controls” capitalism or globalization itself. But everyone has their version of control. Silicon Valley billionaires may insist we surrender to the invisible hand of the network, which simply chooses disruption and convenience over accountability and ethics. For the federal government, it’s far easier to accuse the private sector of being in control and thwarting national security than admit that mass surveillance is an expensive and incompetent tactic. For critics (or those who’d prefer that control be in their hands), it would be far simpler to point at a single oligarch or Bohemian Club or ICANN that needs to be overthrown; it might redeem what today at times seems like a fractal trainwreck of an internet, and somehow bring us back to John Perry Barlow’s never-realized promise of an independent cyberspace.

And it also points out that the biggest "threat" to how internet governance is handled is if Cruz actually succeeds in blocking the transition:

Mostly, when I asked people at ICANN about worst-case scenarios with the transition, they pointed to Ted Cruz’s efforts. The transition not going through–either through a blocking action from this current Congress through some legislative action or Congress just delaying until the next president comes into office–would not only undermine the work that a lot of people have already put into the transition plan, it also would create even further mistrust and frustration among countries like Brazil that continue to be frustrated by US control. Maybe that would be enough to justify a fragmentation of the root zone. Or it could just make it harder for the multistakeholder model to function by undermining trust in the community as a whole, making consensus harder to achieve. Which is kind of to say it could start to look a lot more like the US Congress.

In other words, as we've explained before, Ted Cruz's concerns over the internet here are completely backwards. Up is down, black is white, night is day kind of stuff. Keeping the IANA connection to the US government is the kind of thing that opens up the possibility for Russia/China to exert more control over internet governance by routing around ICANN and its flawed, but better than the alternative, "multistakeholder" setup. Moving ICANN away from the US government, with strict rules in place that basically keep it operating as is, takes away one of the key arguments that foreign countries have been using to try to seize control over key governance aspects of the internet.

If Cruz fears foreign governments taking control of internet governance, he should do the exact opposite of what he's doing now. Let the Commerce Dept. sever the almost entirely imaginary leash it has on ICANN. Otherwise, other countries' frustration with the US's roles is a much bigger actual threat to how the internet is managed.

Filed Under: commerce dept., iana, internet, internet governance, ted cruz, transition, un, wcit
Companies: icann