| HRF'S E-NEWSLETTER | May 20, 2010 | EMAIL TO A FRIEND» | DONATE» |
 The attempted bombing in Times Square intensified the debate about how to treat terrorism suspects and where they should be prosecuted. Now Obama administration officials are saying they may ask Congress to weaken the Miranda rule, a central principle of our justice system designed to ensure that evidence presented at trial is reliable.Miranda plays an important role in our criminal justice system--a system that has proven more effective than military commissions at prosecuting terrorism suspects. Human Rights First is working with professional interrogators and law enforcement experts who know that we can get the intelligence we need to combat terrorism by working within the law and through our institutions. Let President Obama know that you stand with experienced law enforcement professionals in supporting our Constitution and our criminal justice system. Send him a letter today!
Thanks to those who participated in our web chat last week. If you missed it, you can download the audio recording or the transcript, on our blog. 
We sent over 5,600 emails to the State Department and 2,400 to the Colombian Prosecutor General calling for due process in this and other cases. We shared the messages with Agamez himself, who is grateful for the support he has from all of you! We'll keep you posted with updates on his appeal. Just this week we submitted testimony at a congressional hearing concerning Colombia and the rule of law. We'll continue to push for reform wherever we can.
This month, we're focusing our attention on the newly elected Hungarian government in an effort to address the alarming rise in antisemitic and anti-Roma violence there. HRF staff worked in the Middle East last month, tackling issues from the protection of refugees to support for human rights defenders' use of the Internet for activism. Members of our Refugee Protection team interviewed Iraqi refugees in Jordan as part of our work to make sure these refugees--victims of war and violence in their home country--are resettled. Stay tuned for our report and recommendations but, for a sneak preview, check out Jesse Bernstein's Huffington Post article. International Policy Advisor Neil Hicks traveled to Egypt to meet with human rights defenders and other stakeholders about the changing face of activism there--including the growth of Internet advocacy. As Egypt begins to plan for elections, HRF will be focusing on U.S. policy toward this strategic partner. HRF In the News The Guatemalan government made a big step toward accountability in a genocide case last month when it opened a critical military archive documenting the responsibility of top military commanders for mass atrocities in the 1980s. HRF's Andrew Hudson commented to Reuters, which got picked up in major newspaper outlets, and he followed up in a later Christian Science Monitor article.Google promoted transparency when it disclosed countries that censor--including the United States and Australia. Read Elisa Massimino's commentary in the Huffington Post. GOOGLE CENSORSHIP DISCLOSURE HELPS QUANTIFY A TROUBLING TREND AND UNDERSCORES THE NEED FOR ACTION 22APR10 What do Australia, Brazil, India, the United States and Britain have in common? This week, Google named each of these nations among the list of countries that most often contact it with requests for content removal and user data. Google's disclosure is a bold step towards quantifying this trend. Whether it leads to greater protection of user privacy and free expression on the Internet will depend on the policies that guide the companies' responses to these government requests. But for now this move should prompt other companies to consider how to be more transparent about the censorship restrictions they face. Google's decision to release this information reveals with greater granularity what internet service providers have been saying for years - that governments are increasingly demanding censorship of Internet content and information about users. As its new interactive map illustrates, this trend is global and affects users from nations with diverse political and socio-economic landscapes. Google's new tool also reveals that for some governments - notably China - mere disclosure of the requests is also subject to censorship. Most importantly, this information illustrates the need for collaborative approaches to the growing problem of Internet censorship. It is a problem that affects us all. As Secretary of State Clinton observed in her landmark speech on Internet freedom, this is about the kind of world we live in and whether all its citizens will have equal, unfettered access to information. Google's censorship disclosure tool is far from perfect, as the company makes clear. The data is one dimensional and incomplete. There is no context provided and requests are aggregated rather than sourced to the relevant authority. That makes it difficult to compare countries or to draw useful conclusions, including about why Google has complied with such requests in the majority of instances. In addition, the data for some governments is either unavailable or subject to national legal restrictions on disclosure. Even so, Google deserves praise for its willingness to release the data that it has and to help all of us understand the kinds of challenges the company is facing every day. The burning question - the one most everyone wants to know - is which governments make the most intrusive demands on Internet freedom and what that means for its citizens. We also want to know how companies assess these requests and respond and what those responses mean for users. It is this challenge that has led Human Rights First to join with Google and other companies to work toward greater transparency and shared solutions to Internet censorship and surveillance. The Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multistakeholder effort to address threats to Internet freedom, exists to help companies move from information gathering to assessment and action. Though the GNI is at the beginning stages of implementation, it's headed in the right direction. We urge other companies in this sector to join this crucial effort to help defend Internet freedom. This is a fight we intend to win and it's one that requires each of us to take a stand now. |
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