All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And our next guest on the show today is Delphine Haugand.
She is the Washington, D.C.
Director for Reporters Without Borders.
She runs the U.S. activities for the organization and advocates for journalists, bloggers, and media rights worldwide.
And they have this brand new report there at Reporters Without Borders.
Beset by online surveillance and constant filtering, netizens fight on.
And it's an entire report, Enemies of the Internet 2012.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Fine.
Thank you for having me.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And I'll admit to you right off the bat that I did not read the entire report, Enemies of the Internet, although I did try to look at it a little bit.
But I did read the entire introductory article here, which is pretty comprehensive itself, I think, and kind of taking us on a tour around the world and giving us a brief look at the form of Internet censorship as it exists in those countries.
And the only thing is I wanted to start, if it's OK with you, by focusing on the plank in our own eye here in the United States before we go picking on poor little Burma in North Korea, because the state of the Internet here in the United States is a bit under threat from our own national government, is it not?
Yeah, it's true that our report is like more than 70 pages.
And we comment that countries were released as enemies of the Internet, and the U.S. are not listed as an enemy of the Internet.
But it's true that many democracies are actually far to be perfect in regards of Internet freedom.
And like actually in the countries under surveillance, we have France and Australia, and maybe if it continues in this direction, the U.S. will appear.
But in most of the case, we are very concerned in democracies like France, Australia or the U.S., we're very concerned by, of course, by the extreme measure that the government seems able to take to protect copyright.
I'm thinking and what happened in the U.S. and what we saw with SOPA and PIPA legislation, which were attempts to implement a really tough measure to protect copyrights.
Actually, it's already in place in France.
So that's why France is one of the countries under surveillance in our report.
We'll talk a little bit more about that.
Yeah.
The extent of the surveillance in France.
It's not because we blame our own country, because Reporters Without Borders is a French organization, but we are very concerned about what France is doing, because there are many things we can explain why France is one of the countries under surveillance.
It's like last year, many online journalists were threatened, actually, because of what they were investigated on.
But also, there's actually an extreme, extreme legislation in France to protect copyright.
And the final step is that if you are condemned because you don't know too much illegal things on Internet, you can your access to Internet could be cut.
You will be banned from Internet.
And now, is that seen by y'all as a tool for political repression, or it's really just the copyright thing taken to an absurdity?
Is it a pretext?
Copyright is, you know, we agree that we have to protect the copyright, but it's just it's not the government are just not using the right tool.
And it has extreme consequences.
And if democracies like France or the U.S. want to apply these tools, then the repressive regimes like Syria, Iran or China, of course, they will continue to use these censorship tools if the democracy do.
Why?
Why?
They should.
They should not say things like that all the time, too, don't they?
Yeah, it's like, of course, in the U.S. and France are the first countries to say to to blame on censorship in other countries.
But Internet is a challenge for our democracies now because we are trying to find the good tools to protect copyright and to avoid censorship.
It's a really complicated issue.
But you're right.
One thing that you bring up about the United States in here is the way they went after Julian Assange.
Yeah, yeah.
I wanted to go to you, too.
Yeah, they're all the attacks or the the risk that whistleblowers take in the U.S. and the fact that, you know, even it's not broader than Internet, but the Obama administration has initiated five prosecution of alleged leakers, which is the highest number of under any administration.
So there is a real and of course, most of the leak could happen on Internet.
So it's it's really one of our concern, too, that we have to defend access to information and we have to be very careful that people could be able to to publish information and not risking to be prosecuted.
Well, and in fact, you know, if they the way I understand it is the way they got to MasterCard and PayPal and Visa and other other companies was they didn't have a judge ordered them to halt payments to WikiLeaks or anything like that.
They just sort of, you know, leaned on them.
The executive branch just kind of leaned on them through back channels and just sort of demanded that they stop doing business with WikiLeaks.
Do I have that right?
Yeah, I think so.
And it's just that by cutting off Visa and MasterCard, they cut all the financial sources to to WikiLeaks.
And we are also asking for the fair trial of Bradley Manning, which is the most suspected leakers in the WikiLeaks affairs.
Mm hmm.
Well, now, and you point out in this article, of course, it's of great importance.
Sort of the background of this whole discussion, obviously, is social media and Web 2.0 and Facebook and Twitter and all of these things, the next generation of Internet communication and the role that it's played in the political changes around the world and particularly in the Middle East over just the last year, for example, and how that has really encouraged other governments around the world to panic or really made them panic and clamp down even further on their own populations in an attempt to preempt that kind of challenge to their own authority.
Yeah, right.
You read well.
So it's true that no Internet is really a tool for protest, campaigning and circulating information.
And we saw it mostly in the Arab Spring.
But the result was actually that the repressive regime and not only in the Middle East responded with tougher measure of Internet filtering or even tracking cyber dissident.
I'm thinking, by example, of Vietnam, which is much more tougher with its citizens.
But this year was really the result of, in a sense, a victory for Internet and for the freedom that people can find on Internet, because we saw that it was a really useful tool during the protest in the Arab Spring and that even when countries want to block and filter Internet, information is no kind of always able to go through even the worst filtering system.
Even in China, information are able to go through when really people are using Internet.
OK, and that'll be a great place to pick up this conversation.
On the other side of this break, it's Delphine Haugand from Reporters Without Borders.
We'll be right back after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And I am talking with Delphine Haugand from Reporters Without Borders.
And they have this new report just out, I think, brand new out, Enemies of the Internet, Internet Enemies Report 2012, Reporters Without Borders, en.rsf.org.
And you can also find this article is called Beset by Online Surveillance and Content Filtering Netizens Fight On.
And when we left off in the discussion, you were talking about China.
And so it seems like that's probably a pretty good place to let you talk for a little bit about which are the worst offenders.
How is it that you talk about some states are considered, quote, enemies of the Internet?
Others are just under surveillance, slouching toward enemy status.
Maybe you can take us through some of the worst offenders here.
Yeah.
So according to a report that we just released in the Enemies of the Internet list, you can find countries like Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and this year we added Bahrain and Belarus.
And we have another category, which is the countries under surveillance, which we are very concerned about many issues in this country.
But in a sense, the content filtering or access restriction and tracking of cyber dissonance is not as systematic than in countries like China or Iran.
And if you want to me to tell you maybe some reality about what's going on in these countries.
Yeah, sure.
It's just like to give you an example so I can tell you, talk to you about China.
The last news, it's like that on the most popular microblogging website, no, the Chinese authorities forbid the people to use nicknames.
You will have to use your real name if you want to use this microblogging website.
So it's just every time there's a popular website that could allow people to express themselves, the Chinese authorities will try to control it as much as possible.
And when I'm talking about content filtering to give you what it's on reality in China, it's by example, the word Jasmine in reference to the Arab Spring Revolution was banned from the Chinese Internet.
Also, it was it's impossible to put the word Occupy plus the name of a city in China.
That's what it is when we talk about Internet filtering.
That's this kind of thing.
And to go maybe back to one of the Arab Spring country, I really want to highlight the situation in Bahrain that we add to our enemies of Internet at least this year.
And I want to explain you what is the reality there.
And actually, the kind of revolution is still going on.
And it's like in these countries, mostly that thanks to monitoring system that the Bahraini government implement, the government is able to track and arrest bloggers and netizens when they are, of course, opposite.
And actually, in Bahrain, one of the one of the citizens who was arrested because of what he published online died when he was in detention.
That's that's the kind of reason the kind of real story behind this list of countries.
And actually, to it's good maybe to to highlight also that last year will be one of the most violent year against citizen.
Five citizens using Internet were killed because of what they publish online.
It was in Bahrain, in Syria, of course, but also closer to us in Mexico.
And nearly 200 bloggers or netizens, as we call them, were arrested in 2011, which represents a 30 percent increase on 2010.
And unfortunately, we are kind of afraid that the situation in Syria will will make that the numbers in 2012 will be worse than than that.
So it's really when we're talking about Internet censorship, when we're talking about Internet monitoring, we're talking about people who are in danger.
We are arrested.
Hundreds of them are arrested and people who are killed for what they publish online.
And when I mentioned the case of Mexico, I'm thinking of of a blogger which was actually decapitated and we found his body with a word saying that that happens to me for what I wrote on social network.
And now was that those were local corrupt cops that kill them or those were the drug dealers or do you know?
Or is that the same thing?
In Mexico, it's mostly linked to drug culture.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, when it comes to China and Vietnam and I guess Iran and these other countries where they try so hard to control the Internet, I guess there's always, you know, a choke point if it's a matter of fiber optic cable or whatever.
If they want to control the switch, they can.
But then, you know, a very wise man once said he can't stop the signal.
And it seems like the hackers of China, Vietnam or anywhere else ought to be able to get around these controls.
And and don't they?
And isn't it really a losing battle of these oppressive states to try to control the information out there?
I think that when Internet when information has to circulate, it will always circulate.
It would always find a way to circulate on Internet.
But it also comes with a high price.
Yeah.
You know, China is the biggest jail in a sense in the world for all these blogger or just normal people were in jail for what they.
You know, just the other day, a young man in Britain posted, I guess, bad comments or something about soldiers, antiwar comments saying all the soldiers will go to hell for all the civilians they kill, something like that.
He was arrested.
They're calling it racist speech somehow as though it's, you know, the white who are the oppressed minority of England.
No, it's money.
It's like it's a it's a fight.
And I hope and I believe that information and freedom of information will win.
But I know that it will come with a high price and a lot of arrest and in some worst cases, people will die.
But we have many examples of even in China.
So China really is the country was implement the most sophisticated filtering and monitoring system.
But even in China, when something is happening somewhere in China, it goes in, it appears on Internet.
I'm thinking of villagers from the village of Buchan who were like protesting against the local government.
And of course, they were expressing themselves on Internet.
And of course, the government was wanted to block this information, but it succeeded to go through.
And and everybody in China heard about what was happening in this village.
So there's always a good sign that it comes with a high, high, high cost.
Well, now in the United States, we have, of course, the National Security Agency.
And the most sophisticated methods of vacuuming up all this digital data from all around the world all the time.
And I'm trying to remember where I just read the quote the other day.
James Bamford has a new piece out about the new NSA building out in Utah, and he's going to be on the show in a couple of days to talk about it.
But I think it was a former NSA officials described this to James Bamford as a turn key totalitarian state.
They basically have the ability to track everything, all of us, all the time and everything that we do and say and everyone we associate with, with all their at least, you know, computer version of network connections or whatever.
They're just waiting till the big clampdown.
But it's coming.
Yeah.
And actually, there's a good metaphor, which I think could explain well what's happening now on Internet.
It's like before security agents could torture someone to get access to his network.
No, they just want his Facebook password or his Twitter password or his Gmail password to.
And it's because we there's so much information online that, of course, repressive regime and of democracy monitor what's happening online.
Which means that what we're doing, your PDF file on my radio show, all this is really just using trying to use their weapon back against them a little bit, their network that they use to spy and track us to spread information about how they do it, which is a funny, ironic kind of a thing.
Thank you very much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Have a good day.
Delphine Halligan, everybody from Reporters Without Borders.
