This is a call to governments from civil society. This call was presented during the Closing Ceremony of the Freedom Online Conference that took place in Tunis on 17 and 18 June 2013. This call captures the “sense of the room” at the Justice Tent that was organised at Nawaat on 17 June 2013. More
The Internet Democracy Project was part of a broad alliance of civil society organisations from across the world who delivered the following statement to US Representatives of Congress on 18 June 2013. Like our letter to the UN Human Rights Council, it expresses grave concerns regarding the human rights implications of revelations of widespread state surveillance by the USA government under its PRISM program. It addresses in particular the consequences of these revelations for those who are considered “foreigners” by the USA. If you would like to see the list of signatories, please click here. A hard copy of the statement was also delivered to representatives of the US Government during the Freedom Online Conference in Tunis, again on 18 June. More
The Internet Democracy Project was part of a broad alliance of civil society organisations from across the world who delivered the following statement to the UN Human Rights Council on 10 June 2013, to express grave concerns regarding the human rights implications of revelations of widespread state surveillance by the USA government under its PRISM program. Signatories to the statement at the time of delivering it can be found below. If you would like to see the current list of signatories, or add your own name, please click here. More
The Internet Democracy Project has worked with a global coalition of civil society organisations in requesting the ITU to open up its Council Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues. If you or your organisation would like to sign up to the statement, or if you would like to see the current list of signatories to the statement, you can do so here. The full text of the statement is below. More
During the recently concluded World Telecommunication Policy Forum, a small but tightly-knit group of civil society organisations followed the proceedings, either in-person or through remote participation. The Internet Democracy Project was one of them. Together, we wrote a statement to the meeting that was presented during the Closing Session by Matthew Shears from the Center for Democracy and Technology, USA, on behalf of all of us. The full text of that statement can be found below. More
This discussion paper – co-authored by Anja Kovacs from the Internet Democracy Project and Dixie Hawtin from Global Partners and Associates – was written on invitation for the Stockholm Internet Forum. The paper examines the main challenges that the cyber security arena currently poses for the promotion and protection of human rights – including a lack of definitional clarity; a consequent pervasive but often illegitimate sense of crisis; and costly yet frequently ineffective solutions. It then investigates what a human rights approach to cyber security entails, taking as its starting point a positive, rather than negative, approach to security that supports not only the right to privacy but, crucially, also the right to freedom of expression. More
The Internet Democracy Project is part of a coalition of national and international human rights organisations supporting a call by Bolo Bhi and the Digital Rights Foundation against espionage and surveillance in Pakistan. If you would like to add your signature, please contact sana@bolobhi.org or nighat@digitalrightsfoundation.pk. The full text of the call is below. More
Would you like to support this statement? If so, please email your name and any other information you would like to add (e.g. organisation, city) to Kamayani Bali Mahabal, at kamayni@gmail.com, by Sunday evening, 5 May, at the very latest. More
Over the past two years or so, news reports of people getting arrested for Facebook posts or tweets have managed to stir a public debate about laws governing the Internet in India. With the arrests of Ambikesh Mahapatra, Aseem Trivedi and Shaheen Dhada, the issue of criminalisation of online speech and expression has caught mainstream attention. But the shape and details of this phenomenon remain surprisingly underexamined. On which occasions does the application of criminal law stir controversies? Who are the actors involved in such cases? This study seeks to make a beginning to expanding our understanding of these under-researched issues in the Indian context, by examining in depth seven famous Indian cases in which criminal law has controversially been drawn on in an attempt to stifle free speech on the Internet. More
THIS REPORT WAS CO-AUTHORED BY DR. ANJA KOVACS, RICHA KAUL PADTE AND SHOBHA SV. Giving rise to new ways to exercise the right to freedom of expression, to the potential of fluid identities and to new ways to interact for those with limited offline opportunities, the democratisation of societies through the Internet is a phenomenon many have celebrated. But in reality, the hierarchies of the real world are all too often not effaced in the virtual world; instead, they are reborn and reconstructed in such a way that new mediums become the sites for old discriminations. Despite the Internet’s empowering potential, the gender-based hierarchies, violences, and manifestations of discrimination that women (or people who do not define their genders as singularly male) must face on a daily basis are also paralleled online, in India as elsewhere. This paper seeks to explore the different forms of verbal abuse that women who are publicly vocal on online platforms in India face; the non-legal and legal strategies that they use to deal with such abuse; and the relationship of both with offline contexts that have shaped women’s experiences for centuries. As we will see, whatever cyberspace’s purported characteristics, women’s bodies and sexuality, and the negotiation of the public and the private deeply affect their virtual existence as much as it does their offline being. To read the full report, please click on the download button. More