Lat/Am Daily » freedom of expression

Bank tweeters arrested

Peter Krupa — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:19:45 +0000

In an interesting development in Venezuela, the CICPC (equivalent, I think, to the FBI) has made its first arrest of Twitter users: Two people who the agency says tweeted rumors with the intent to destabilize the banking sector by causing a run on banks.

According to a press release, CICPC director Wilmer Flores said:

False rumors on social networks are clearly punished in Article 448 of the banking law. This means that anyone who spreads malevolent rumors via any means, e-mail, text messages from cellular phones, through Twitter, Facebook, or any other technological tool, with their own voice or through any other means of communication is committing a crime and must answer to the relevant authorities.

Noticias24 ran down one of the allegedly felonious tweets, from one Luis Enrique Acosta Oxford, which said, “People, so you can’t say I didn’t warn you, pull your money out of BANESCO today, there aren’t many days left.”

I know, rumors on Twitter. Can you believe it?

This tweet was from June 30, a couple weeks after the government took over (deservedly) Banco Federal, intensifying an already tense situation after the take-over of about a dozen other small and medium-sized banks late last year.

Malicious speech isn’t protected anywhere in the world, and people should learn that applies to Twitter as well. But if you need a special law to protect your banking system’s solvency from the effects of rumors, perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere.

Another Google product still in beta

Peter Krupa — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:21:42 +0000

Google appears to be rather proud of its new-found freedom of expression spine. It just released a snazzy new product mapping out the countries in the world whose governments have requested information be removed from one of the company’s products (Blogger, YouTube, etc.).

Unfortunately, in order for numbers to be useful, you need some sort of baseline, and Google’s map doesn’t give us one. Maybe if you combine it with data on the number of people in each country who use the internet?

For example, Argentina has a population of about 40 million, only 28% of whom are connected to the internet. Google in Argentina has received 42 requests to remove information from one of its products, which breaks down to about 0.38 complaints per 100,000 internet users.

Though the raw numbers make it look worse, Brazil is about the same as Argentina, with 0.40 complaints per 100,000 internet users. But Germany beats everyone, with 3.1 removal requests per 100,000 users.

In the end, I’m not really clear on what Google’s trying to tell us. That Germany has greater internet restrictions than Cuba? Or that Brazil’s government is the only one in the world that gives enough of a damn about Google to file legal challenges against it?

The power of interactive mappy-thingies for promoting human rights causes is indeed great, but this is where the engineers should have maybe consulted with a social scientist.

And still they won’t shut up

Peter Krupa — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:41:11 +0000

Botero.

In addition to being placed on the IACHR’s blacklist of the region’s worst human rights violators (a nice ideologically-diverse group that also includes Venezuela, Honduras, Haiti, and Cuba), Colombia is a place where “you can barely say that there is freedom of expression,” according to the IACHR’s free speech rapporteur, Catalina Botero:

It is difficult to to say that there is freedom of expression in a country where the state intelligence agency has a few officials who systematically conduct espionage, stigmatization, and issue death threats against the people who are performing the heroic labor of informing the public what is going on in the country.

And with new revelations indicating that Uribe himself was in on the illegal wiretapping of Supreme Court judges, journalists, and human rights defenders, the creepy feeling intensifies.

That said, I am pretty consistently amazed at the kinds of things the Colombian press pulls off. It’s damn good journalism, even by U.S. standards, and even if some of it is tainted by politics (what journalism isn’t?).

Maybe facing down decades of terrorism and violence breeds a particularly hard-bitten variety of journalist.

Crackdown

Peter Krupa — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:10:39 +0000

A few months out from legislative elections, the Chávez administration today intensified its crackdown on opposition media by arresting Guillermo Zuloaga, the owner of Venezuela’s only remaining opposition television station, Globovisión.

He was arrested by military intelligence police. Supposedly he is being investigated for criticizing the Chávez administration’s record of attacks on freedom of speech. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Ironic. The AP is also reporting that opposition politician Wilmer Azuaje was also arrested for comments he made linking Chávez’ family to corruption. The charges against Azuaje have not been specified.

In the last 12 months, the Venezuelan government has shut down 34 radio stations, removed RCTV from the airwaves a second time, threatened to hold Web portals responsible for their commenters, and arrested politician Oswaldo Álvarez Paz for statements he made about Chávez and drug traffickers.

Amazingly, freshly-re-elected OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has immediately come out requesting the release of Zuloaga. Frankly, as if Venezuela’s recent track record of violations and oppression weren’t enough, these recent arrests are a flagrant violation of the OAS Democratic Charter.

If the OAS wants to maintain any kind of moral relevancy in the region, it’s time to either sanction Venezuela and order it to pay reparations, or kick it out of the democracy club.

The chilling effect

Peter Krupa — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:51:47 +0000

It started with a rumor posted on popular anti-Chávez site NoticieroDigital.com that several government ministers had been murdered. Now there is talk in Venezuela of “regulating the internet,” whatever that might mean. I’ll believe it when I see it (and when I do see it, I’m going into the web proxy business).

Frankly, the rumors that started the uproar deserve to be investigated. Veiled threats of violence against government officials (and actually, threats of violence against anyone) are not protected speech anywhere in the world. But the proper response in that case is to send some detectives to knock on doors. Instead, Chávez goes on a general televised rant against the media:

Around 3:45 he states, in reference to an analyst who spoke to television channel Globovisión:

Whoever makes a statement must present proof for what they’re saying, both the one who says it, and the one who lets it be said and spread. They know they’re committing a crime that is punished with prison anywhere in the world.

When journalists and editors are required to bear the burden of proof on pain of imprisonment, it silences speech. This is the reasoning behind New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Everyone has different libel laws and different standards for acceptable speech, but I would never practice journalism or publish information in a country where I could go to jail for making a mistake.

Neither would anyone else, and that’s just the point. Whether or not anyone ever actually goes to jail is irrelevant. Speech is silenced. The chilling effect is in, and not coincidentally, on another Venezuelan news site – Noticias24.com – comments have been turned off. Just in case.

A little help from Ortega’s friends

Peter Krupa — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:09 +0000

Venezuela just became the proud owner of a Nicaraguan television channel, Telenica (Canal 8 ). The Venezuelans themselves confirmed to El Nuevo Diario that the money for the purchase of the channel came from ALBA de Nicaragua S.A., a corporation founded to manage incoming Venezuelan petrodollar handouts that is, in point of fact, 51% owned by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA).

The purchase is just the latest addition to the swelling business holdings of President Daniel Ortega, according to an excellent round-up on the whole affair published in The Nica Times. The purchase also appears to be another step in the silencing of independent media outlets by ALBA countries. From the El Nuevo Diario article:

The change in the news and information profile of Channel 8 was evident just one week after orteguismo took control of the media. Now it broadcasts international reports from the Telesur network, of which the son of the presidential couple – Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo – is part owner. Government spokesman William Grisgby appeared with his program “Without Borders,” replacing “Tonight” with Carlos Fernando Chamorro. Several vignettes of Daniel Ortega talking during various activities appear during the commercials.

The article also points out that Nicaraguan law bans corporations majority owned by foreigners to own major media outlets, although that doesn’t appear to have made much of a difference.

Venezuela: Still on the brink

Peter Krupa — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:24:26 +0000

Nothing to see here.

The recent move by the Chávez administration to shut down cable TV channels has called down harsh criticism from basically everyone: Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the Organization of American States, hell, even France. What will happen as a result is approximately nothing. The international community (excepting the King of Spain) lacks the cojones to take on Chávez in the kind of international diplomatic games of chicken that he lives for.

Of course, Chávez still has plenty to worry about. Power and water rationing are angering basically everyone, a 50% devaluation of the bolivar is going to cause inflation to fly even higher (it’s already the highest in the region), soaring crime means Venezuela has the second highest murder rate in the world, and the price of oil has been falling all year even as Chávez continues to give the stuff away to buddy countries.

With legislative elections coming up in September, it’s no wonder Chávez is stepping up his efforts to silence the media. Even a perfectly objective reporter would have to write or speak some incredibly negative things about the performance of the Chávez administration. The last 10 years have been quite frankly disastrous, even though some of the country’s extreme poor are supposedly better off thanks to expanded social spending.

But while it’s good to see people getting angry about Chávez’ power grabs and mismanagement, student and popular protests have happened before with no result. Venezuela has seemed to be at the breaking point for years now. The smart money says that these protests will fade as well, and the international community will go back to standing around looking sheepish.