As a global organization committed to supporting communities to use video and technology for justice, WITNESS aligns with the central ethos of this conference. This year, we continue to build on our history of participating in this space as presenters, facilitators, and attendees. 

RightsCon is taking place online from June 7th to 11th. Those who have registered can catch the WITNESS team presenting in the following panels, community labs, and strategy sessions: 

TUESDAY, JUNE 8TH

Authenticity Infrastructure against mis/disinformation: What’s that? Who’s it for? What are the risks and benefits?

Time: 2:45-3:45 PM EST 

Type: Panel

WITNESS Team: Sam Gregory (Program Director)

On social media, shallowfaked images and videos with false captions or simple edits frequently deceive us. Deepfakes threaten to make discerning visual truth from falsehood even harder. Now proposals for ‘authenticity infrastructure’ are proliferating. These promise more robust ways to help us understand the media content we consume, and whether images, video and audio have been manipulated, mis-contextualized or edited, and when and by who. 

Featuring leading civil society experts and advocates in this area with experience in trust technology, verification, OSINT, press freedom, digital security and human rights as well as private sector pioneers this panel will highlight the initiatives in this emerging area, the key human rights questions, how to understand this in a global context, and how we balance critical trade-offs. You’ll come away with a much stronger understanding of the baseline of this emerging area of content tracking and its relevance to the mis/disinformation discussion as well as fundamental human rights questions.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9TH

“Hey you, stop filming! Defending smartphone witnessing and the Right to Record globally. What do we need to do?

Time: 7:45-8:45 AM EST

Type: Community Lab/Strategy Session

WITNESS Team: Adebayo Okeowo (Program Manager- Africa), Jackie Zammuto (Program Manager – United States), Victor Ribeiro (Senior Program Manager – Latin America and Caribbean),  Arul Prakkash (Senior Program Manager- Asia), Sam Gregory (Program Director)

As more and more people globally take out their phones to film state violence, authorities resist.  Our Right to Record is key. This right to film people with power has become even more critical during COVID and the many uprisings for social and racial justice globally.  Yet in every country worldwide, whether there are legal protections or not, the right to record is undermined and ignored in practice and witnesses threatened or harmed.

Learning from each other, we’ll identify how the right to record is exercised and suppressed, and how it relates to other struggles we currently face. Connecting the dots, we’ll identify concrete priorities for moving the right to record forward practically at national and global levels!

FRIDAY, JUNE 11TH

Manipulated Media, manipulated realities: Confronting deepfakes and shallowfakes in a global context 

Time: 9:45-10:45 AM EST 

Type: Community Lab/Strategy Session

WITNESS Team:  Indira Cornelio (Communications Coordinator – Latin America), Mahmoud Saber (Communications Consultant- Middle East and North Africa) Adebayo Okeowo (Program Manager- Africa), Jackie Zammuto (Program Manager – United States), Victor Ribeiro (Senior Program Manager – Latin America and Caribbean),  Arul Prakkash (Senior Program Manager- Asia), Sam Gregory (Program Director)

AI-manipulated videos and memes are now being normalised in politics, culture, and social media sharing. Authoritarian governments are already taking advantage of this, either by discrediting the content they do not like or, in some cases, creating manipulated media to devalue or to distract. 

Building from this we will ask the question: what are human rights defenders and journalists concerned about? With a particular focus on the MENA region but not exclusively, this session will also build on the work WITNESS has done in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia, and the United States focused on understanding manipulated media trends and emerging threats like deepfakes in existing contexts of gender-based violence, misinformation and disinformation and closing civil society space. We will explore from non-US/European perspectives and non-majority voices how deepfakes and shallowfakes are being handled, manipulated, or used by governments, the public and platforms amid COVID and growing state repression.  

Copyright: the ‘Double-Edged Sword’ for Human Rights

Time: 12:15-1:15 PM EST 

Type: Panel

WITNESS Team: Yvonne Ng (Archives Program Manager) 

Copyright regulation can have benefits, as well as unintended consequences, for free expression and human rights around the world. Propelled by copyright that calls for sharing of source code, open source technology can support human rights investigations. At the same time, open source projects are subject to copyright regulations that may not adequately protect non-infringing uses and can affect rights to free expression when they are the subject of a content takedown notice. Copyright regulations are also used to infringe on human rights when people seeking to suppress journalism they find objectionable pose as copyright holders and submit takedown notices.  

For further discussion on these issues see our recent post: Truth, Lies and Social Media Accountability in 2021: A WITNESS Perspective on Key Priorities

Summary

WITNESS, an international human rights organization helping people use video and technology notes:

*All of our comments are in the light of the fact that the powers to push Facebook on policy change, on product/technical infrastructure change, on global resourcing and on Facebook’s response to extralegal political pressures globally have not been granted to Oversight Board. 

*Public figures need greater scrutiny, not less. Account suspension was correct.

*Public interest exceptions should apply to vulnerable speakers, not those in power with speech options

*Preservation of critical speech and content can be achieved via evidence lockers

*Off-platform context and dangerous speech principles are critical to making decision, not optional

*Facebook’s rules are not clear to ordinary people:  they suffer from inconsistency in application, bias and lack of appeal. 

*Global enforcement requires: far greater contextual understanding, including beyond majority elites as well as resourcing to moderation/for civil society globally and support to content moderation workers. It requires insulation from domestic extralegal pressures that compromise Facebook in countries around world.

Our Submission

WITNESS (witness.org) is an international human rights organization that helps people use video and technology to promote and defend human rights notes. We work with human rights organizations, social movements and individual witnesses in over 100 countries who engage in human rights-based activity on Facebook’s platforms, and who face threats from abuse of Facebook’s platforms. 

Below we address questions raised by the Oversight Board.

However we first emphasize that to create an equitable, transparent and human rights-centered approach to content moderation requires power that has not been granted to the Oversight Board. To fully confront these questions requires from Facebook: a) A commitment to changes in overall policy b) Direct input from this decision-making into both product development and underlying technical infrastructure including algorithms c) A far more significant human and technical resourcing of/and attention to countries outside the US and Europe and to the needs, demands and harms to vulnerable populations in those countries and the US and Europe d) A concerted effort to insulate country-level Facebook staff and country-level decision-making from political influence and illegitimate government pressure.

 The OB asks: If Facebook’s decision to suspend President Trump’s accounts for an indefinite period complied with the company’s responsibilities to respect freedom of expression and human rights, if alternative measures should have been taken, and what measures should be taken for these accounts going forward:  More often than not, world leaders who incite violence and hatred online (and share harmful misinformation and disinformation) get away with it for too long. Human rights activists have consistently documented this in a range of global contexts, noting situations involving leaders in the USA, Brazil, India, and the Philippines. A decision to suspend former President Trump’s account is too late, not too early, as it was with other world leaders – e.g  Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Myanmar.  However, a clear, consistent, transparent process for providing warnings, for appropriately applying earlier temporary account suspensions or content removals, and ultimately for permanently suspending accounts — all with right of appeal — is important.  

The OB asks: How Facebook should treat the expression of political candidates, office holders, and former office holders, considering their varying positions of power, the importance of political opposition, and the public’s right to information: Facebook’s explicit provision of a newsworthiness for all politicians’ speech has provided cover for leaders to share false information or incite hate and for Facebook to act inconsistently. When it comes to incitement to hate, or sharing of harmful misinformation (for example on COVID-19), leaders should be subject to greater scrutiny when they push boundaries on platforms, not less.  Newsworthiness exceptions and related public interest protections for posts or speakers do have a place… in protecting critical evidence of rights violations and vulnerable speakers within the public sphere rather than leaders who have other options for public speech, and who have generally been given ‘the benefit of the doubt’. Considerations of protecting important information from an archival perspective can be fulfilled by preserving content that has been shared on the platform but not making it public via evidence lockers. 

The OB asks: How Facebook should assess off-Facebook context in enforcing its Community Standards, particularly where Facebook seeks to determine whether content may incite violence: Facebook should assess off-platform context if the genuine purpose of intervention is to prevent violence rather than provide policy loopholes for politicians to jump through, and  if the company is legitimately trying to enforce standards in accordance with human rights standards. This off-platform context provides information to help ascertain and be clear on the real-world impact of online speech, and whether this impact justifies curtailing that speech. This must be complemented with real-world resourcing and responsiveness to civil society globally, particularly of groups vulnerable to dangerous speech from a politician. The Dangerous Speech project provides excellent guidance on this approach.

The OB asks: The accessibility of Facebook’s rules for account-level enforcement (e.g. disabling accounts or account functions) and appeals against that enforcement: Facebook’s rules are not clear for ordinary people. For a decade WITNESS’s partners and human rights defenders around the world have complained about take-downs of accounts and content without clarity or with apparent bias. Facebook should be transparent about how decisions are made for both for leaders and ordinary users, and hew to human rights principles of proportionality, legitimacy and specificity rather than over-broad, inconsistent deplatforming. The Santa Clara Principles for content moderation and the recommendations of Professor David Kaye, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion in 2018 provide clear roadmaps, generally accepted within the human rights community for how to do this.

The OB asks: Considerations for the consistent global enforcement of Facebook’s content policies against political leaders, whether at the content-level (e.g. content removal) or account-level (e.g. disabling account functions), including the relevance of Facebook’s “newsworthiness” exemption and Facebook’s human rights responsibilities:  Consistent global enforcement is essential. This must be adequately resourced and with worker protections for vulnerable content moderation workers subject to trauma (see work of Professor Sarah Roberts). It must be done with a clear understanding of language and cultural context that is informed not only by majority elites in countries, but also by diversity and representation of historically marginalized communities in particular countries. Facebook must quickly act when policy decisions in particular countries are impacted by domestic political pressures outside of law or platform rules. Facebook must invest more money in content moderation and more resources in supporting global civil society advocates and entities who act as watchdogs. Otherwise rules will be applied consistently and reinforce trends to US and European exceptionalism in terms of content policy.

A newsworthiness exception should be far more applicable to protecting critical evidence of rights violations and vulnerable speakers within the public sphere, rather than leaders who have other options for public speech, and who have generally been given ‘benefit of the doubt’. Considerations of protecting important information from an archival perspective can be fulfilled by preserving content that has been shared on the platform but not making it public; these “evidence lockers” provide access to critical information for accountability purposes under privacy-preserving conditions. 

We are keenly aware that neither our mission nor the bearing out of that mission in our daily work insulates WITNESS from the moral and ethical blights of systemic racism, white supremacy, and neo-colonialism. As an institution and as individuals within that institution, we recognize that we have a pressing obligation to examine this truth with earnestness and rigor, in order to make reparative, restorative, forward-looking amendments to both our personal behaviors and our infrastructure. 

As a global network of activists with strengths in both the Global North and the Global South, we must continue to fight for, build, and support equitable power within a human rights framework, and continue to do the internal work necessary to do better. This includes re-evaluating dynamics of power within the organization. To date, we have worked to carefully monitor how we practice the critical human rights that are at the heart of our mission and live our policies, both internally among colleagues and externally in our partnerships with activists worldwide. 

Our work around the world is to create spaces where people feel empowered, supported and affirmed. We are fully committed to doing more toward necessary institutional reform—including structural and policy changes around power and equity—and we welcome ongoing constructive feedback with that end in mind. We must do amongst ourselves the work we ask others to do. 

A group of human rights activists and organisations from Southeast Asia are calling to stop the attacks on democracy and media activists, as well as other individuals-at-risk, for their expression online. In the increasingly authoritarian region, we stand witness to bloggers, protestors, human rights defenders, journalists and everyday internet users being harassed, threatened, beaten, prosecuted and imprisoned for their legitimate use of online spaces.

The many brave individuals people fighting discrimination, hostility and violence include Nguyen Van Hoa (Vietnam), Le Dinh Luong (Vietnam) and Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi (Myanmar), who are currently in prison for expressing dissent and exercising their rights online. Their detention violates their guaranteed constitutional and international human rights. They are sentenced to lengthy prison terms and we fear for their physical and psychological integrity.

We stand in solidarity with Fahmi Reza (Malaysia) who was convicted; and Maria Ressa (Philippines), Margarita Valle (Philippines), Dandhy Laksono (Indonesia), Karn Pongpraphapan (Thailand) and Michael Do Nam Trung (Vietnam), who were recently released from detention, while Veronica Koman (Indonesia) and Lookate Chonthicha (Thailand) face threats of arrest and legal harassment for exercising their rights through digital tools. Authorities have often confiscated digital devices of activists, violating their privacy and hindering their work.

The harassment has also been extended to civil society organisations including Sisters in Islam (Malaysia) against whom a fatwa was issued banning all their publications including content on social media. AlterMidya (Philippines) on the other hand is facing a defamation suit demanding exorbitant amounts for exposing the role of corporates in cyber attacks. We view these as deliberate attacks on the right to freedom of expression and information.

The increasing number of arbitrary arrests, detentions and prosecutions of individuals exercising their right to freedom of expression online highlights the failure of governments to respect human rights and damages the region’s reputation on the international stage. Southeast Asian governments must stop repressing free expression online, as this ultimately discourages civic participation.

With this statement, we express our collective voice in support for all people to exercise their rights online and call on all Southeast Asian governments to immediately and unconditionally release all detained activists, drop charges and refrain from harassing digital rights activists, advocates and media-makers. The governments in the region must STOP the ATTACKS on our rights and democracy.

Endorsed by:

Organizations:

Association for Progressive Communications
Body & Data (Nepal)
Cambodia Center for Human Rights (Cambodia)
EMPOWER (Malaysia)
EngageMedia
Internet Policy Observatory (Pakistan)
KRYSS Network (Malaysia)
Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan)
Pelangi Campaign (Malaysia)
PERIN+1S (Indonesia)
PurpleCode Collective (Indonesia)
Radio Rakambia (East Timor)
SAFEnet (Indonesia)
Sindikasi (Indonesia)
Storycycle (Nepal)
Stop the Attacks (Philippines)
Thai Netizen Network (Thailand )
Viet Tan (Vietnam)
West Papua Updates
WITNESS

Individuals:

Pavitra Ramanujam
Gayatri Khandhadai
Nancy Yu
Laura Summers
Somphop Krittayaworagul
Jason Liu
Khon Danaeth
Buth Vanndy
Hein Min Oo
Satt (Tharthi Myay)
Ry Kruy
Dionisio
Nontarat Phaich
Lainie Yeoh
Shubha Kayastha
Farhanah Zevonia
Christiana X Belo
Christopher Burdett
Thina Lopez
Dr. Adam Fish
Sanjib Chaudhary
Azreen Madzlan
Aghniadi
Pitra
Harun
Rezwan
Ry Kruy
Buth Vanndy
San Chey
Irine Wardhanie

For more on WITNESS’ programmatic work in Asia, follow WITNESS Asia on Facebook and Twitter.

Since we began working with the All Eyes on the Amazon (AEA) project, we have lost three from our community. This rivals the pace at which we lost friends from our work on Syria and illustrates the threat level that environmental human rights defenders face.

All of the defenders harassed and killed have stories similar to Paulo Paulino Guajajara: they are ordinary people who have been living on their land for generations, and when they stand up to protect their homes, they come up against companies’ private security, state forces, contract killers, or teams of aggressive lawyers. It is the same everywhere WITNESS works to support land defenders.

Environmental health is the umbrella human rights issue. If we fail to protect our land, air, water and atmosphere, not only will we prevent solutions to human rights abuses, we will exacerbate them. And the rainforest is at the heart of this. Deeply respected conservation biologists believe that once 25% of the Brazilian rainforest has been destroyed, the rainforest will disappear.

It’s already 20% deforested, and logging is spiking under Bolsonaro. Paulino is not only protecting the Brazilian forest, he is protecting New York City from deadly hurricanes like Sandy (coming in at over $70 billion in damages), California from destructive wildfires, and coastal regions from massive floods.

The loss of Paulino is not only a tremendous loss for the Brazilian and AEA communities, it is a loss for the global community because when defenders like Paulino stand up, they stand up for each and every one of us.

Add your name to this petition to tell Bolsonaro’s government to save the Amazon Rainforest and protect the lands of indigenous and traditional communities.

Trust is more important now than ever before. This spring 2019, WITNESS is changing the story. We will highlight the people and communities that fuel our movement, and show that without trust, in our partnerships and for human rights content, there can be no justice.

Cheryl Morris, Community Team @ VIMEO and WITNESS volunteer, reflected on “who can we trust?” As noted in Cheryl’s blog post:

“I am a young, black, first generation American woman from New York City. Following the indictment of George Zimmerman and the murders of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Akai Gurley by the police, I began to feel extremely weary of authority figures and fearful of any potential interactions between my family and friends with the police. When walking through the city, I found myself anxiously crossing the street whenever I saw an officer, my heart racing and palms sweating. It seemed as if anything people of color did could be construed by the police as dangerous…

My growing anxiety over the documented cases of police violence however, led me to become more involved with the community of grassroots activists here in New York. I found local rallies and demonstrations through the Black Lives Matter movement to take part in, in hopes of effecting some change within our country. I began to speak candidly with friends and acquaintances about the fears that myself and many people who look like me feel on a regular basis. I wanted to make sure that future generations of black and brown people would not have to worry about their safety in the way that my generation and generations before me had. Through these activities, I learned that I had people around me that I could lean on when I felt overwhelmed. Through my community I learned that I didn’t have to live in fear every day. Over the past few years, I’ve grown to learn that I could trust the community that I had built around myself — friends, progressive-thinking people of color, and allies.”

For Mother’s Day 2019, we also created a fundraising campaign to encourage individuals to donate $25 in their mother’s name. With a small donation of $25, WITNESS can help many more activists, human rights defenders, and vulnerable people to defend their human rights online and on the ground. 

WITNESS is building a movement based on trust, truth, and transparency – will you join us? Learn more about and donate to the campaign here.

Getting Real is a biennial conference on documentary media. The three-day conference attracts over 800 participants and is the only gathering of its kind in North America. Palika participated in a panel titled, Journalists Under Threat and spoke about best practices for being safe while reporting on critical human rights abuses.

Today, Palika will be moderating a panel titled, Duty of Care – Protecting Vulnerable Sources, which will focus on protecting sources who report on human rights abuses from the frontlines.

You can follow Palika on Twitter here.

Our Program Director Sam Gregory was recently interviewed by VICE News about why is it so hard to care about humanitarian causes.

Click here to see what Sam, and other human rights leaders had to say about what it takes to care for justice in the world.

We at WITNESS think that this is a violation of basic human and digital rights and strongly oppose it. We along with 25 other human rights and digital rights organizations around the world signed a letter today to oppose this ridiculous law because filming for human rights—and posting it online—must not be criminalized.

More here.

Open letter to Google on reported plans to launch a censored search engine in China

To: Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer, Google Inc
cc: Ben Gomes, Vice President of Search; Kent Walker, Senior Vice President of Global Affairs

Dear Mr Pichai,

Like many of Google’s own employees, we are extremely concerned by reports that Google is developing a new censored search engine app for the Chinese market. The project, codenamed “Dragonfly”, would represent an alarming capitulation by Google on human rights. The Chinese government extensively violates the rights to freedom of expression and privacy; by accommodating the Chinese authorities’ repression of dissent, Google would be actively participating in those violations for millions of internet users in China.

We support the brave efforts of Google employees who have alerted the public to the existence of Dragonfly, and voiced their concerns about the project and Google’s transparency and oversight processes.

In contrast, company leadership has failed to respond publicly to concerns over Project Dragonfly, stating that it does not comment on “speculation about future plans”. Executives have also refused to answer basic questions about how the company will safeguard the rights of users in China as it seeks to expand its business in the country.

Since Google publicly exited the search market in China in 2010, citing restrictions to freedom of expression online, the Chinese government has strengthened its controls over the internet and intensified its crackdown on freedom of expression. We are therefore calling on Google to:

• Reaffirm the company’s 2010 commitment not to provide censored search engine services in China;
• Disclose its position on censorship in China and what steps, if any, Google is taking to safeguard against human rights violations linked to Project Dragonfly and its other Chinese mobile app offerings;
• Guarantee protections for whistle-blowers and other employees speaking out where they see the company is failing its commitments to human rights.

Our concerns about Dragonfly are set out in detail below.

Freedom of expression and privacy in China and Google’s human rights commitments

It is difficult to see how Google would currently be able to relaunch a search engine service in China in a way that would be compatible with the company’s human rights responsibilities under international standards, or its own commitments. Were it to do so, in other words, there is a high risk that the company would be directly contributing to, or complicit in, human rights violations.

The Chinese government runs one of the world’s most repressive internet censorship and surveillance regimes. Human rights defenders and journalists are routinely arrested and imprisoned solely for expressing their views online. Under the Cybersecurity Law,[1] internet companies operating in China are obliged to censor users’ content in a way that runs counter to international obligations to safeguard the rights of access to information, freedom of expression and privacy. Thousands of websites and social media services in the country remain blocked, and many phrases deemed to be politically sensitive are censored.[2] Chinese law also requires companies to store Chinese users’ data within the country and facilitate surveillance by abusive security agencies.

According to confidential Google documents obtained by The Intercept, the new search app being developed under Project Dragonfly would comply with China’s draconian rules by automatically identifying and filtering websites blocked in China, and “blacklisting sensitive queries”. Offering services through mobile phone apps, including Google’s existing Chinese apps, raises additional concerns because apps enable access to extraordinarily sensitive data. Given the Cybersecurity Law’s data localization and other requirements, it is likely that the company would be enlisted in surveillance abuses and their users’ data would be much more vulnerable to government access.

Google has a responsibility to respect human rights that exists independently of a state’s ability or willingness to fulfil its own human rights obligations.[3] The company’s own Code of Conduct promises to advance users’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression globally. In Google’s AI Principles, published in June, the company pledged not to build “technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights”. The company also commits, through the Global Network Initiative, to conduct human rights due diligence when entering markets or developing new services. Project Dragonfly raises significant, unanswered questions about whether Google is meeting these commitments

Transparency and human rights due diligence

Google’s refusal to respond substantively to concerns over its reported plans for a Chinese search service falls short of the company’s commitment to accountability and transparency.[4]

In 2010, the human rights community welcomed Google’s announcement that it had “decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn”, citing cyber-attacks against the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and attempts by the Chinese government to “further limit free speech on the web”.

If Google’s position has indeed changed, then this must be stated publicly, together with a clear explanation of how Google considers it can square such a decision with its responsibilities under international human rights standards and its own corporate values. Without these clarifications, it is difficult not to conclude that Google is now willing to compromise its principles to gain access to the Chinese market.

There also appears to be a broader lack of transparency around due diligence processes at Google. In order to “know and show” that they respect human rights, companies are required under international standards to take steps to identify, prevent and mitigate against adverse impacts linked to their products – and communicate these efforts to key stakeholders and the public.[5] The letter from Google employees published on 16 August 2018 demonstrates that some employees do not feel Google’s processes for implementing its AI Principles and ethical commitments are sufficiently meaningful and transparent.[6]

Protection of whistle-blowers

Google has stated that it cannot respond to questions about Project Dragonfly because reports about the project are based on “leaks”.[7] However, the fact that the information has been publicly disclosed by employees does not lessen its relevance and rights impact.

In relation both to Project Dragonfly and to Google’s involvement in the US government’s drone programme, Project Maven, whistle-blowers have been crucial in bringing ethical concerns over Google’s operations to public attention. The protection of whistle-blowers who disclose information that is clearly in the public interest is grounded in the rights to freedom of expression and access to information.[8] The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises recommend that companies put in place “safeguards to protect bona fide whistle-blowing activities”.[9]

We are calling on Google to publicly commit to protect whistle-blowers in the company and to take immediate steps to address the concerns employees have raised about Project Dragonfly.

As it stands, Google risks becoming complicit in the Chinese government’s repression of freedom of speech and other human rights in China. Google should heed the concerns raised by human rights groups and its own employees and refrain from offering censored search services in China.

Signed, the following organizations:
Access Now
Amnesty International
Article 19
Center for Democracy and Technology
Committee to Protect Journalists
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Human Rights in China
Human Rights Watch
Independent Chinese PEN Centre
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Pen International
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
WITNESS

Signed in individual capacity (affiliations for identification purposes only):

Ronald Deibert
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab
University of Toronto

Rebecca MacKinnon
Director, Ranking Digital Rights

Xiao Qiang
Research Scientist
Founder and Director of the Counter-Power Lab
School of Information, University of California at Berkeley

Lokman Tsui
Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

[1] See Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China (2016), unofficial translation, https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/bilingual-2016-cybersecurity-law/?lang=en and Human Rights Watch, “China: Abusive Cybersecurity Law Set to be Passed,” November 6, 2016, https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/06/china-abusive-cybersecurity-law-set-be-passed.

[2] See GreatFire.org, Online Censorship In China, https://en.greatfire.org/analyzer.

[3] UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,  https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf.

[4] For example, the Global Network Initiative Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy, https://globalnetworkinitiative.org/gni-principles/.

[5] UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

[6] Kate Conger and Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China,” New York Times, August 16, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html.

[7] Amnesty International meeting with Google, August 2018.

[8] UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Report to the General Assembly on the Protection of Sources and Whistleblowers, September 2015, https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/freedomopinion/pages/protectionofsources.aspx.

[9] OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises, para 13, http://www.oecd.org/corporate/mne/