Posts Tagged ‘china’

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Twitter grapples with censorship issues

January 29th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Microblogging giant Twitter recently announced plans to begin censoring some content in response to restrictions and/or laws in place within individual countries. The six-year-old Internet company has gained prominence as a tool for change in recent years as users employed tweets to reach a global audience during post-election protests in Iran, in the wake of the Haiti earthquake and throughout the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Some Twitter users and observers have blasted the censoring plans as social suicide, but the company has chosen to publicly address and engage on an issue that has plagued other Internet content related companies.

In a post on January 26, Twitter stated, “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.”

In the past, Twitter has deleted content, but was only able to do so on a global scale by deleting the tweet entirely. The company has thus far limited itself to snuffing out content related to things such as child pornography or pro-Nazi sentiment, but it could also include tweets from protesters in specific countries like Egypt, Iran, and Syria if given the right opportunity. With its new technology, the site will be able to determine if a tweet is breaking a law in a specific country and remove the tweet from that region while still leaving it visible for the rest of the world to see. If a tweet is removed, the site “will post a censorship notice” for users in that country, much in the same way Google Inc. practices in countries “where its service operates requires a search result to be removed.” Twitter, like Google, will use Chillingeffects.org to share the removal requests it “receives from governments, companies and individuals.” The site “sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or “tweets,” remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world.” The company will also have the ability to censor individual accounts as well, given their location within a country where a law has been broken.

Alexander Macgillivray, general counsel to Twitter, helped draw up the censorship policy for the site, just as he did for Google when he worked for them, which explains the similarity Twitter’s new policy has to Google’s. “The critics are jumping to the wrong conclusions,” Mr. Macgillivray said. “This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability. This launch is about us keeping content up whenever we can and to be extremely transparent with the world when we don’t. I would hope people realize our philosophy hasn’t changed.”

But, Twitter may have suffered a backlash as users protested on January 28 in a boycott, organizing the event by using the hashtag #TwitterBlackout. In a similar fashion to the Internet blackout protest two weeks ago, which included websites such as Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit in response to the controversial anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, many Twitter users planned to “turn off the tweets” for a day.

What seems to be forgotten is that Twitter has always had the ability to remove content when necessary, but the company does stand for freedom of speech, as it signed the letter to Congress about SOPA along with several other Internet companies like Google and Facebook.

“One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice,” Thursday’s Twitter post said. “We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The tweets must continue to flow.”

One thing protesters failed to notice was the bypass Twitter makes very easy to find in its Help Center so that content can’t be censored or deleted, and all it requires is changing the country in which one resides. The tweets can’t be censored if they’re being tweeted from a country where the law isn’t being broken.

ICT companies and their stakeholders broadly agree on the transformative power of the Internet and efforts to promote universal access. The reality that companies find themselves operating in environments governed by repressive or restrictive regimes that will attempt to limit access is one that all parties have to recognize and manage—and Twitter has shown it is prepared to do just that.

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China labor condition concerns continue

January 9th, 2012

Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

While China’s labor conditions have remained a mainstay of activist stakeholders’ campaigns and been featured in the international media for years—notably following allegations in 2004-05 about labor practices in manufacturing plants producing products sold in Wal-Mart stores, and reigniting after 10 Foxconn employees committed suicide in May 2010 at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant—some recent stakeholder assessments have found a slow pace of improvement.

Foxconn, one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, employs nearly one million people throughout China and builds products for corporations like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Motorola, and Dell. Mike Daisey, a monologist who performs an Off Broadway show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” in Manhattan’s Public Theater, decided to visit the Foxconn plant recently for a little research to see for himself what the safety and working conditions were, and “what he found surprised him beyond belief.”

“What I was really shocked by was institutionalized dehumanization,” he said. “The systems that are put in place are working and the objective of them working is to work people, basically, to death.”

While most Americans don’t routinely consider the human cost associated with the production of popular consumer electronics products, Daisey firmly believes that Steve Jobs knew of the conditions in which his products were built at Foxconn, as does Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook. “Apple is a company that believes in micromanagement. They pay attention to details,” Daisey said. “There is no question in my mind that they know what conditions are like on the ground.”

For the past two decades, multinational corporations have shipped thousands of jobs to companies like Foxconn in China, taking advantage of cheap labor in developing countries. “Unfortunately in doing so, Corporate America chose to ignore its Western values and high labor standards,” Daisey said. Several of the workers Daisey met had been doing the same tedious job over and over for so long that the “joints in their hands have disintegrated from doing that work…. [Hands] literally swollen, literally deformed [and] permanently warped.”

But the days of the docile worker in China are coming to an end, and the Chinese corporations know it. Workers like Lan Yimin, 22, represent “the new generation of Chinese factory workers,” who are unwilling to settle for low wages and long hours. Lan, who works in a factory in Shajing, China, doesn’t want to “eat bitterness—as the Chinese call it.” With more information at their fingertips, and as China’s economy booms, Lan’s generation knows more about their rights than their parents before them did. “The young generation has a wider social circle; we talk more about factory conditions and we know more about our legal rights,” Lan said.

As Chinese workers fight for higher wages and labor standards by going on strike, the Chinese government isn’t sitting idly by. In recent years China has moved legislatively to mandate better salaries and working conditions “and is now trying to maintain a delicate balance of improving income levels for workers while not scaring away foreign corporations with higher labor costs.”

“If the [Chinese] government does not treat the workers’ struggle for collective bargaining seriously, if it decides to treat these demands as political, then this will turn into a political struggle,” says Han Dongfang, a labor activist who, for his role in the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, was deported to Hong Kong.

Microsoft has also come under scrutiny for China-related labors concerns with conditions at the KYE Systems factory where Microsoft hardware is assembled for export to the United States, Europe and Japan. Labor rights advocates have raised questions over 15-hour work days and 65 cents-per-hour pay rates affecting thousands of teenage and young adult workers. Employees are prohibited from listening to music or talking. One worker told the National Labor Committee, “We are like prisoners. It seems like we live only to work. We do not work to live.” Microsoft accounts for approximately 30 percent of the work performed at the KYE Systems factory. Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Acer, Logitech and Foxconn also outsource their production to KYE Systems.

Workers at both the Foxconn and KYE Systems factories sleep in dormitories, work long hours and do not get bathroom breaks during shifts.

“And in what must be the best of both worlds for U.S. companies like Microsoft, the workers give the U.S. companies a pass,” the NLC’s report states. “The young workers never think or talk about the foreign companies and put all the blame on the factory. No one has told them how wealthy and powerful Microsoft and the other companies really are.

“Since the young Chinese workers would never dream of making demands against Microsoft or the other corporations, this permits the corporations to tout their codes of conduct while knowing full well that they will never be implemented. It’s all just part of the game.”

Microsoft responded to the NLC report’s allegations of its knowledge of workers’ treatment expressing the company’s commitment to fair labors standards. “Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors. Microsoft has invested heavily in a vendor accountability program and robust independent third-party auditing program to ensure conformance to the Microsoft Vendor Code of Conduct.

“Actions for non-compliance with our requirements may include corrective action plans, remedial training, certification requirements, cessation of further business awards until corrective actions are instituted, and termination of the business relationship. We unequivocally support taking immediate actions to address non compliant activities.”

Foxconn Technology Group has announced plans to replace its human workers with one million robots, a feat that doesn’t sound easy, but it would certainly cut down on worker abuse and remove some concerns about low labor standards. While such a strategy may help get rid of the bad publicity associated with the past two years’ suicides, it doesn’t represent the kind of systemic shift in attitudes on labor conditions and rights that the majority of stakeholders want to see from Chinese companies.

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Human Rights and Information Technology, Doing Well and Doing Good

December 8th, 2011
By Erik Wohlgemuth COO, The Future 500

Historically, telephony has been highly regulated while the Internet has not.  With the convergence of mobile telephony and the Internet, a host of regulatory and legal frameworks that manage spectrum and protect individual rights are being challenged for inadequacy.  In the developed world, governments fighting the war on terror want access to individual mobile phone and internet data.  In the developing world, oppressive governments from the Arab world to China, seek to aggressively suppress dissent by monitoring individual mobile phone and internet activity.  Human rights advocates worldwide are vigorously resisting governmental attempts to access individual data and often vilify the companies that comply with governmental requests, calling on companies to increase individual security and anonymity on mobile devices and resist government law enforcement requests.

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Internet controls still a global battle

November 1st, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Internet censorship in China has gained the spotlight again recently in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings. China’s ability to forestall the use of Internet-based tools to drive public protests, and to successfully block searches for events like the Egyptian protests in January 2011 that dominated the global airwaves are both a demonstration of the government’s continued strength and an admission by authorities that the potential power of technology worries them.

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Cisco encounters more China repression concerns

September 14th, 2011
Posted by Juliette Terzieff

Western technology companies continue to become embroiled in scandals involving the efforts of repressive governments to track and squash dissent through the use of ICT tools. While human rights activists have repeatedly raised the alarm over potential abuses associated with the sale or operation of technology since the early 2000s, the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011 – and the role of ICT tools within it – has thrown the issues firmly into the spotlight.

In protests across the Arab world, cellular telephones and social media have been used by activists to organize locally and spread a message globally. Governments have tried with varying success to limit protesters’ access to the Internet and wireless network systems, moves that surprised few within the global human rights community. The Internet, and social media in particular, proved themselves as popular and potent tools in the hands of pro-reform movements, lending further evidence to the potential of ICT tools to be a powerful force for good.

But in several cases over the last decade Western companies have been accused of selling and/or tailoring technology to aid government repression. Perhaps nowhere have allegations been more persistent than involving operations in China, and now Cisco Systems Inc. finds itself challenged in the U.S. courts.

Cisco has been targeted in a law suit filed on behalf of the Falun Gong by the Human Rights Law Foundation on charges the company customized its products to help Chinese authorities to track members of the movement. Cisco, which has been battling criticism of its operations in China for several years, responded the charges have no basis and the company does not customize “products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression.”

The Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that combines tenets of Buddhism and Taoist tradition, has long been a target of Chinese authorities. The suit claims Cisco products were used to identify and monitor group members who were then detained and tortured by Chinese security forces, and that the company specifically marketed the products to Chinese officials with an emphasis on how they could be used to manage dissident groups. The Human Rights Law Foundation says it has evidence Cisco executives helped train Chinese officials on net surveillance having knowledge of the persecutory campaign against the Falun Gong.

Cisco also faces a second suit, filed by U.S. law firm Ward & Ward on behalf of 13 Chinese political prisoners, on claims the company provided technology and training that contributed to their incarceration. “Cisco has, for years now, knowingly aided and abetted the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing efforts to stifle the free speech and discourse of its citizenry,” Daniel Ward charges.

Across the stakeholder spectrum there is broad agreement around the benefits associated with the ICT sector related to promoting sustainability, individual freedoms and development. And while many within the stakeholder community raise questions over sales of monitoring technology to Iran and Bahrain or government requests in places like China, few would want to see the spread of technology limited.

“The Internet is potentially a force for tremendous good from a business perspective, and democracy and sustainability perspectives, so on balance it is good to expand penetration in China,” says Adam Kanzer, Managing Director and General Counsel at Domini Social Investments.

Cisco has encountered concern from stakeholders such as Domini for failing to clearly articulate a human rights policy or provide reporting on rights issues. The case against the company, says Kanzer points to a problem that is not unique to Cisco, that for large companies “even where there is policy or strict guidelines from senior executives, what is happening on the ground may be significantly different.”

Stakeholders advocate clearly articulated policies and worker trainings on human rights issues as ways for companies to promote the issues internally, even in operating environments where there may be significant external challenges. When conducting business in conflict or repression-plagued environments stakeholders expect multinationals to follow the principle of doing no harm.

The suits against Cisco comes amid reports that Cisco and other major companies including Hewlett-Packard and Intergraph are bidding to have their products used as part of China’s “Peaceful Chongqing” surveillance system, according to the Wall Street Journal. The project envisages the deployment of as many as 500,000 cameras over a 400 square mile area in the Chongqing municipality as a crime deterrent. Human rights activists have raised concerns the system will be used to target dissent.

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India Internet law draws fire

August 9th, 2011
Posted by Juliette Terzieff

Indian Internet users have begun to discover the limits imposed by a new law on web content, encountering interruptions in their surfing in the form of screens displaying a message that content has been blocked under instruction from the Ministry of Telecom.

Human rights activists, bloggers and Internet users are lashing out at the new on the grounds that its provisions constitute infringements on the rights to privacy, free speech and expression. Indian authorities have characterized the new law as a balance between individual freedoms and collective security, but critics say the restrictive provisions rival Chinese attempts to censor web access.

The new law prohibits web sites and service providers from disseminating any material that might be harmful, blasphemous or insulting – and requires them to remove any such content within 36 hours of a complaint registration. Internet café will have to increase current security measures – which include installing surveillance cameras and obtaining identification from all customers – to keep a detailed record of each individual’s surfing activities. Owners are required to turn over the records to government authorities at the end of each month.

India has suffered two large-scale terrorist attacks in recent years and is contending with armed conflict in Kashmir. In November 2008 terrorists unleashed a four-day long attack on hospitals, cafes, community centers and educational institutions in Mumbai that left 164 people dead and over 300 injured. Earlier this year 18 people died and 81 were wounded when assailants detonated bombs in three Mumbai neighborhoods. In both cases, investigators have reported traces of Internet activity as central to building their cases.

While rights advocates express sympathy for the government’s efforts to address security concerns associated with the Internet, critics charge the vague wording of the law potentially leaves it open to wide interpretation by authorities.

“With this kind of blanket surveillance regime, we are on a very slippery slope,” Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society told the Washington Post. “The language is so vague that it is open to arbitrary interpretation. . . . In comparison with other democracies in North America and Europe, the Indian rules appear to be on the China end of the spectrum.”

India is home to the world’s third largest number of Internet users behind China and the United States, even though less than 10 percent of the population has regular access. But growth over the last decade has been spectacular – rising from 5 million to 100 million between the year 200 and now.

In many countries the increase of Internet penetration has led to social and political upheaval as dissenters are able to reach a global audience to expose abuses and push for reform. In countries with repressive regimes and state-controlled media, individuals have been able to sidestep official controls to reach like-minded countrymen and help launch protest movements.

It’s a reality that has triggered censorship battles between governments and civil society, the private sector and rights advocates around the world over the last decade. In many countries, such as Egypt and Vietnam, bloggers have been specifically targeted for harassment or arrest for their online activities. In other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and China, authorities have moved to censor Internet access more broadly.

The advance of Internet access around the world has also provided militant groups and terrorist organizations with more advanced tools to both accelerate internal communications and reach a broader audience. As a result of these and other criminal activities, such as pedophilia, governments in even the most democratic and open countries have moved to place some restrictions on the Internet.

“While there are legitimate security concerns to deal with, repressive governments that cite such issues for broad restrictions often have domestic political concerns in mind,” says Islamabad-based defense analyst Mohammad Bokhari. “Ultimately it comes down to those dedicated individuals and groups that are being targeted for dissenting activities being willing to keep taking the risk that are the best hope for pushing change.”

While unrestricted and universal Internet access has the broad support of the United Nations, human rights groups and most Western governments, there is no real mechanism at the international level to compel a government to ease restrictions on the Internet.  With little chance an enforceable mechanism will come into force anytime soon, the combined pressure of stakeholders from across the spectrum to wield the power of the Internet as a building block for the future.

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Censorship fallout from the Arab Spring?

June 29th, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

The use of Internet-based and other ICT tools to drive reform protest movements captured the imaginations of tech-savvy individuals across North Africa and the Middle East over the last year. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter helped drive street demonstrations in a dozen countries and secure international support for reform efforts around the world. But the trend has also drawn the attention of repressive governments and some within the ICT sector fear censorship battles may heat up in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says his company fully expects to be the focus of disagreements with repressive regimes and fears Google employees may be at risk from detention and torture in some countries.

“I think this problem is going to get worse. The reason is that as the technology becomes more pervasive and as the citizenry becomes completely wired and the content gets localized to the language of the country, it becomes an issue like television,” Schmidt said at the Google-organized Dublin summit on militant violence this week.

“If you look at television in most of these countries, television is highly regulated because the leaders, partial dictators, half dictators or whatever you want to call them understand the power of television imagery to keep their citizenry in some bucket,” he continued.

Governments ramping up their efforts to shut down the information highway is something Internet service providers have been grappling with on and off for the last decade. Experience with China’s censorship efforts in particular has drawn significant attention. Yahoo! Inc. faced serious public backlash after its 2002 provision of user information led to the arrest, abuse and imprisonment of Wang Xiaoning.

Since then ICT sector players have clashed on and off with authorities in China, and elsewhere, as the tide of support for universal access has gained prominence. Both Google and Yahoo! are members of the multi-stakeholder Global Network Initiative, an effort to promote freedom of expression and privacy, and like other major ICT companies have initiated efforts to increase access to services in developing countries.

Earlier this month the United Nations affirmed its support of access to the Internet as a human right, with Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue issuing a report making the case for Internet access to enjoy the same legal protections under international standards as other methods of mass communications.

But the practical truth is that as long as authorities maintain control over networks and infrastructure, fully unhindered access to the Internet, its tools and information is still just dream for hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

The U.S. State Department confirmed shortly after the release of La Rue’s report that American authorities are investing millions to fund efforts to bypass government censorship through the use of “shadow” voice and digital communications networks that allow users to send information, according to the New York Times and other media. The benefit, say proponents of alternative networks, is that even in cases where dissidents can use circumvention technologies to sidestep censors, if authorities have slowed down network speeds users may still be unable to post most content.

A variety of innovative options are being considered – some of which sound like they could have come right out from Q’s workshop in a James Bond movie. Consider the following examples cited by the New York Times and other reports:

  • The suitcase project uses small wireless antennas and base stations disguised as suitcases, boxes or bags to help transform electronic devices like cellular telephones or laptop computers and build a wireless Internet network that is outside official control. If authorities seize a unit once a core network is established in an area the other stations will compensate.
  • U.S authorities are helping develop cellular telephone applications, or apps, such as the “panic button” which will erase a cellular telephone’s contact lists and emit an emergency signal to alert other activists.
  • Another idea seeks to build on the use of Bluetooth headsets, which Iranian dissidents have used to transmit data outside authorities’ control. Developers are looking to create a system that allows users to mark data so that when other trusted individuals come into range their mobile devices automatically get the transfer.

Until governments around the world cease efforts to restrict Internet access and the international community develops a legally enforceable mechanism to compel countries to comply, censorship circumvention efforts will remain at the forefront of the battle for fair, equitable universal global access.

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UN highlights Internet access as basic right

June 7th, 2011

Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff

 
Access to the Internet is a basic human right associated with the rights to a free opinion and expression, and any government entity that seeks to block or restrict use is committing a violation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue says in a new report.

La Rue, who heads the office on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, believes the Internet possesses transformative power that not only enables individuals to exercise their rights but contributes to the progress of society over all. As a broad-based communication medium, the special rapporteur argues, the Internet enjoys the same protections provided through standard international norms, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, as other forms of mass communication and media.

“The Internet is one of the most powerful instruments of the 21st century for increasing transparency in the conduct of the powerful, access to information, and for facilitating active citizen participation in building democratic societies. Indeed, the recent wave of demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and North African region has shown the key role that the Internet can play in mobilizing the population to call for justice, equality, accountability and better respect for human rights,” La Rue said in a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council. “As such, facilitating access to the Internet for all individuals, with as little restriction to online content as possible, should be a priority for all States.”

While governments may legitimately restrict the dissemination of some kinds of information –like child pornography or data that encourages violence or genocide –many governments have been censoring the Internet or blocking access illegally. In some cases, like China, authorities have set up a sophisticated, permanent system to censor available Internet content, while in other places such as Egypt authorities have sought to restrict access as pivotal political moments.

The Center for Democracy & Technology released the latest version of its report “Regardless of Frontiers” as a multi-stakeholder discussion draft in April 2011 looking at increased efforts by governments to control the Internet and putting forth arguments based in international agreements to support access as a guaranteed right. CDT sees the Internet as simultaneously creating great opportunities for individual expression and for governments to seek greater control over the populations.

In 2010, Reports Without Borders noted the growing trend of government attempts to control Internet access with authorities in 60 countries –twice the number of 2009 –imposing some form of censorship. Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam were named by the group as “Enemies of the Internet.” The explosion of the use of ICT tools by the general public, and not just long-time campaigning dissidents, was one of the prime reasons behind the increase, according to the group –a trend that is unlikely to have dissipated given events over the last year in the Middle East and North Africa.

As Reporters Without Borders noted, while some countries like Finland and Estonia have passed legislation guaranteeing Internet access as a basic right, others –such as North Korea, Vietnam and Iran –either block the Internet or routinely harass netizens.

The UN rapporteur’s report broadly commends the private sector for facilitating the transfer of information over networks, continuously developing ICT tools that enable users to access the Internet and for helping to protect the integrity of their services from State interference. The Rapporteur does warn that private companies do, in some cases, face extreme pressure from national authorities and may in the interest of business operations find themselves complicit in violations. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are recognized in the report for their participation in the multi-stakeholder Global Network Initiative.

In addition to access as a right, the UN also sees the Internet and ICT tools as pivotal elements in economic and social development. As we discussed previously,  the world body is supporting multi-stakeholder efforts to achieve universal broadband access for youth around the world to drive positive change and meet education, poverty, health and human rights goals.

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ITU boosts e-waste, climate battle efforts

May 14th, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Stakeholders across the spectrum are responding to predictions of massive growth in e-waste and the detrimental effects discarded electronic devices have in the developing world. Major national and international telecommunications firms, for example, committed to developing the first industry standard universal charger to promote efficiency and aid in the battle against climate change, the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Industry (ITU) announced this week.

The new charger upgrades a 2009 universal battery charging system decision by the ITU that eliminates the need for individual chargers for products sold by different manufacturers. This will eliminate the need for manufacturers to sell chargers with each new phone.

With this week’s decision, the ITU expanded the reach of the universal charger to cover cameras, GPS systems, headphones and other lower-power devices. The new chargers will use faster charging currents to reduce charging tomes, and also feature a detachable cable with standardized connectors to allow data transfer. These additions will reduce the number of cords needed, decrease production energy consumption and ultimately impact the amount of waste generated by the industry. ITU officials expect manufacturers to roll out the chargers –which will be produced with eco-friendly materials – by the billions over the next few years.

“Other standards claim to be universal and energy efficient, but only ITU’s solution is truly universal and a real step forward in addressing environmental and climate change issues,” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said after the decision. “This updated standard will bring the benefits of the universal charger to a wider range of devices and consumers… The environmental impact of wide adoption will be enormous.”

Several major industry players have already committed to the new system, including AT&T, France Telecom-Orange, Swisscom, Telecom Italia and the China Academy of Telecommunication Research. The Geneva-based ITU works with 192 governments and over 700 private sector entities to set industry standards.

Buy-in from industry players operating or based in high usage growth regions like Asia and Africa is paramount for the broadest impact. In China, for example, the growth of the middle class over the last decade has catapulted demand for electronics while domestic energy consumption levels have risen dramatically.

The new standard meets requirements of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal –known more commonly as simply the Basel Convention –according to the ITU.

E-waste –the collective name for discarded or scrap electronics like television, cellular telephones, refrigerators and computers –remains a major campaign focal point for influential stakeholders such as Basel Action Network, Greenpeace International and the Campaign for Recycling.

The world produces around 40 billion metric tons of e-waste every year –with hundreds of millions of tons making their way to landfills in places like China, Nigeria and India. The components contain toxins and heavy metals like mercury and lead which leak into nearby soil and water supplies, and endanger the health of impoverished workers picking through landfills for components to sell.

In late 2010, the United Nations released a report with stark warnings about the growth rate of e-waste in developing countries. India will see a 500% growth in the amount of e-waste in its’ landfills over the next decade, while China and South Africa will see 400% increases over their 2007 levels in the next ten years. The bulk of the waste will not originate in those countries but come from abroad, predominantly the U.S.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives in the U.S. and internationally are looking to address the need for better recycling and waste processing. Companies including Samsung, Capital One, Bank of America and the Apollo Group have signed up as Basel Action Network e-Stewards committing to support the group’s rigorous certification process for responsible electronics recycling. In April 2011 the Consumer Electronics Association pledged to triple recycling rates in the U.S. for e-waste by 2016, to equal one billion pounds of electronics annually, through a combination of public education projects, infrastructure building and recycling enhancement. The industry group’s eCycling Leadership Initiative will look to build national recycling standards to enhance different state-level policies.

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ICT tools and the push for refoms

April 18th, 2011

Posted by Senior Director Juliette Terzieff:

When Egyptians took to the streets en masse to demand reform in early 2011 an outpouring of global support erupted on the Internet. Popular social media outlets Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were lauded by the international media for their role in galvanizing international support and helping protesters sidestep government efforts to stop the protests.

The work in Egypt is hardly done. Yes, Mubarak is gone from power, but many political, judicial and economic reform challenges remain. And despite the recent conviction of a blogger to three years in prison for criticizing the powerful military, it‘s a safe bet Egyptians will continue to use ICT tools in the quest to push lasting reform.

But what of reform campaigns in other countries with repressive governments? How successful have anti-government protesters in places like Syria, Libya and Bahrain been? And to what extent are they leveraging technology to deliver their messages?

Tech-savvy, education, infrastructure and access all play a role in determining how much citizens of these countries use ICT tools to broadcast their message.

In the case of Bahrain, protesters set up public on-the-spot communications platforms to broadcast their efforts. Authorities mounted a heavy-handed violent response, physically dismantling protesters encampments. But has it silenced the debate? Has it stopped the protests? While the government’s response and events elsewhere in the region may have driven Bahrain off the top of the nightly news broadcasts activists continue to use Facebook, Twitter and other tools to push for the change they seek.

“By being one digital step behind their people (and the rest of the world) the authorities unwittingly ignited the exact national upheaval they sought to quell,” says Arran Dall, managing editor of FACT Bahrain Magazine,

Pro-reform forces in Syria continue to successfully get some information out via video and blog posts – data that has been picked up by the mainstream media – despite restrictions on Internet access. While the amount of information has been significantly less than what the world witnessed in Egypt’s case earlier this year, observers still see the power of modern communication systems playing a significant role.

Where current President Bashar Al-Assad’s father, Hafez, was able to order a violent and successful crackdown against an uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982 without fear of an immediate international response, the Internet, satellite television broadcasts and other modern capabilities make such an undertaking nearly impossible. In 1982, it was weeks before news of the crackdown publicly hit the international radar and thousands had already perished.

“That can’t happen today with videos being posted online all the time and al-Jazeera covering things. This limits Assad’s weapons, and the people know it,” Mordechai Kedar, a professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University told the Globe & Mail.

Assad has sought to placate protesters with a limited number of reforms in recent weeks, including the reshuffling of political powerbrokers within the ruling structure and plans to repeal emergency rule that has been in place since 1963. Few observers expect Assad’s moves will silence the protests.

In Libya, where there is relatively little access and infrastructure – and more immediate survival questions – to support the widespread use of Internet-based tools on the scale we witnessed over the last few months in other countries, there are Libyans and the diaspora keeping up a near continuous flow of information. Dozens of influential members of Twitter continue to tweet in support of #Libya, but in this case traditional media has dominated the chatter.

As we examined here shortly after Mubarak’s government fell, the Egyptian government’s attempt to shut down Internet access in a bid to sever communication lines and shield events from international observation was doomed to fail. In an increasingly interconnected world, where the possession of a cellular telephone potentially gives an individual an international platform, and both public and private actors are increasingly willing to help individuals side-step government controls, government-sanctioned censorship will ultimately prove to be a temporary measure. 

And at the end of the day, technological capabilities alone do not drive revolutionary change, people do. In the case of Egypt the massive outpouring of international support on the Internet buoyed protesters across Egypt. But it was on the ground activism and a broad determination for change that drove Mubarak from power, and will be behind whatever pressure is brought to bear on future leaders.

For despotic regimes the lesson seems pretty clear. Don’t allow Internet usage to permeate society and the strength of its power to push for change can be muted. However, unless repressive leadership is prepared to confiscate every cellular telephone, destroy a country’s entire communications infrastructure and ban all traditional media from operating, the message for change will get out.

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