free speech

news analysis When the history of early 21st century Internet politicking is written, the meltdown of a United Nations summit last week will mark the date a virtual Cold War began.

In retrospect, the implosion of the Dubai summit was all but foreordained: it pitted nations with little tolerance for human rights against Western democracies which, at least in theory, uphold those principles. And it capped nearly a decade of behind-the-scenes jockeying by a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, created in 1865 to coordinate telegraph connectivity, to gain more authority over how the Internet is managed.

It … Read more

A United Nations summit suddenly ran aground today after China, Algeria, and Iran objected to a U.S.-backed proposal that would include a mention of "human rights obligations" in a proposed telecommunications treaty.

Algeria's delegate warned at the U.N. summit in Dubai that there were many other nations -- calling them "silent member states" -- that also opposed the human rights language and forced a temporary adjournment of the proceedings.

China criticized the human rights language as well, saying "we also have a very serious question about the necessity of the existence … Read more

Delegates to a United Nations summit agreed today that a U.N. body should take a more "active" role in shaping the future of the Internet, a move that had been opposed by the United States and its allies that had warned of greater government control.

The agreement by delegates from the International Telecommunication Union's 192 member nations, a majority of whom raised their placards in support of the language, took place after 1:30 a.m. local time in Dubai. It came after the head of the ITU, a U.N. agency, had promised not to … Read more

A United Nations agency has used a summit in Dubai to renew its efforts to gain more control over how the Internet is managed.

The International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency, has circulated draft language, which was leaked today, that would let the organization take what it describes as a more "active" Internet role in the future.

It shows that the ITU would become involved in "Internet-related technical, development and public policy issues" -- a broad phrase that sweeps in hot-button areas including cybersecurity, spam, surveillance, and censorship.

The draft document (PDF) was disclosed the … Read more

The inner workings of United Nations telecommunications agencies aren't usually headline news. But then again, most U.N. confabs don't grapple with topics as slippery as Internet censorship, taxation, and privacy.

A U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union has kicked off what has become a highly controversial summit this week in Dubai, capping over a year of closed-door negotiations over an international communications treaty that could have a direct impact on the Internet. The summit continues through the end of next week.

It's true, of course, that U.N. meetings often yield more rhetoric than … Read more

The Internet is back up in most parts of Syria, which had been experiencing what some say was a state-orchestrated outage presumably designed to hamper rebel forces.

The BBC reported today that the country's capital city of Damascus again had Net access, and Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data, said in a blog post today that it had confirmed a "largely complete restoration of the Syrian Internet."

Renesys and other companies that offer back-end Net services detected a sharp cutoff in traffic to Syria on Thursday. According to Reuters, Syria's minister of information blamed the outage on terrorists, … Read more

Shaheen Dhada wasn't sure what to expect when police called her house Sunday night. The 21-year-old medical student who lives in Mumbai, India, had just posted a political statement on Facebook and her friend Renu Srinivasan "liked" the post.

Within hours, the two young women were arrested and charged with using speech that was offensive and hateful, according to the New York Times.

Now, just days later, Dhada and Srinivasan have come to symbolize India's intolerance of free speech. Tens of thousands of people have taken to social networks criticizing the government's arrests of the … Read more

When you "like" something on Facebook, that expression is indeed covered by the First Amendment, Facebook is arguing in a new court document.

The friend-of-the-court brief, filed last night, also urges an appeals court to vacate a recent ruling by a judge in Virginia that Facebook "likes" are not protected speech.

In that ruling in the spring, U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson had said, essentially, that just clicking a Facebook button differs materially from the kinds of statements traditionally protected by the First Amendment. As a result, the judge dismissed a claim by six employees … Read more

Twitter has decided to appeal a recent ruling in the legal battle between the social network and New York State over the tweet records of an Occupy Wall Street protester. According to All Things D, Twitter announced today that it's not giving up protecting the rights of its users.

The melee began in May when New York County Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. subpoenaed Twitter to hand over three months of basic user information and tweets from one of its users, Malcolm Harris. Harris is currently being prosecuted for disorderly conduct at an Occupy Wall Street protest on … Read more