Female activists face particularly severe online threats. Yet there has been little concerted study of how these threats affect those living in the Global South. Cyber Stewards Network (CSN) partners Colnodo, based in Bogota, Colombia and Sulá Batsú, based in San José, Costa Rica addressed this gap in the research by examining the threats that women activists face as they use digital technology. Colnodo studied national groups working to advance female politicians and journalists in Colombia, while Sulá Batsú’s research followed two rural land rights activists groups focused on the negative impact of pineapple monoculture in Costa Rica.

Both Colnodo and Sulá Batsú embraced a participatory research model in which activist groups were active partners in a process of knowledge exchange. The research followed a mixed methods approach, combining in-depth interviews, surveys, social media analysis, and a virtual ethnography of the activists’ online networks to examine how these groups use information technologies in their activism and the risks that they are then exposed to.

Findings from this study underscore that online and offline threats should not be viewed as separate phenomena, but rather as overlapping and mutually reinforcing. For example, a worker who appears in Facebook photos of an activist meeting may lose his or her job. Equally, economic hardship can reduce the time and resources available to practice basic online security. Digital surveillance can also lead to physical violence or intimidation.

Despite differences between the two countries, both case studies found that female activists face multiple risks. Their activism brings the ire of powerful interests, while their public leadership roles violate prevailing gender norms. In addition, their economic conditions (e.g., poverty) and regional or ethnic origin (e.g., as members of religious or ethnic minority groups) also further heightened their vulnerability.

Building on the knowledge gleaned from the study, Colnodo and Sulá Batsú then designed and delivered online safety training materials tailored to the needs of activists in their respective countries. These resources—combined with other advocacy activities that Colnodo and Sulá Batsú are undertaking on the fundamentals of digital security—aim to increase the online safety awareness and capacity of activists.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica has seen an aggressive expansion of pineapple plantations in recent decades, which have occupied vast amounts of land and polluted local water sources. Some communities have had to rely on water deliveries by truck for nearly 15 years. Activists have worked to document the effects of pineapple production on local communities and push for better environmental and labour practices.

Sulá Batsú’s research focused on women activists playing leading roles in the movement against pineapple companies. Their work involved organising communities, sharing information, and collecting evidence for legal complaints against pineapple companies. Smartphones were commonly used for all these activities, along with social networks such as Facebook.

Rights activists in Costa Rica operate in a dangerous environment and Sulá Batsú has documented some of these threats. For instance, conservation groups have recorded dozens of attacks on activists in the last two decades, including murders, robberies, and assaults. Many more have received threats, both online and offline. Lawsuits have been brought against activists, frequently for alleged defamation of pineapple companies. Economic pressure has also been applied to activists, including firing them, blacklisting them and their families from future employment, and attempting to block them from obtaining land for agriculture.

While the women activists involved in the study reported being concerned about digital security, Sulá Batsú found a low level of familiarity with digital security practices, such as using complex passphrases for password protection and backing up important information. Posts about group meetings often revealed members’ identities, photos, and contact information, as well as the location of upcoming events, in an environment where such disclosures could put people at risk.

To encourage conversation and learning on improving online safety, Sulá Batsú developed a board game (in Spanish). The game board features an illustration of a typical street scene in which 14 potentially risky behaviours are hidden. Once participants spot the risk, they are challenged to select the threats that might arise from a deck of ‘threat cards’ and practices that might reduce those threats from a deck of ‘practice cards’. The format enables players to explore multiple valid approaches to every scenario in order to encourage a participatory approach to learning in a positive environment.

Colombia

Colnodo describes Colombia as a country where structural violence and discrimination against women persist, where women are underrepresented in government, and where women’s rights issues still struggle to advance. In their research, Colnodo partnered with a group whose mandate is to advance women’s representation in media and politics, and to fight violence against women. These groups used the Internet extensively to gather information, coordinate their members, and communicate.

Several of the women surveyed by Colnodo reported having experienced online threats, including harassment, defamation, and theft of information. Many more identified online safety as an important concern, and reported feeling unsure of their digital safety skills. Colnodo also observed risky online behaviour, including postings of personal information and locations of potentially vulnerable activists, and failing to encrypt or password protect devices.

Based on their research findings, Colnodo developed a range of training materials to meet the needs of activists in Colombia. First, they created a four-week online digital safety course, which 43 students from across Latin America completed. They also organised an intensive in-person workshop for 12 Colombian activists at an annual women’s rights conference. Finally, they incorporated the curriculum from these sessions into a training manual, which was offered in print, USB, and mobile formats.

About Sulá Batsú

Sulá Batsú is a cooperative, formed in 2005, with the goal of strengthening social organisations, community networks, movements, and companies. It uses a variety of methods and processes to promote social learning and knowledge exchange between groups.

About Colnodo

Colnodo is an NGO, founded in 1994, which works to improve people’s quality of life and strengthen communities through the strategic use of digital technology. Its main areas of work are free software, sustainable development, and gender and communications technology.

About this research

This research project by Colnodo and Sulá Batsú was made possible due to support provided by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Taking place on February 28 at 11:30 am EST, the hearing is titled “Digital Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Freedom of Expression in America”. The topics to be addressed in the hearing include: procedural guarantees in investigations involving digital evidence, surveillance, online violence against women, cybercrime, and security researchers’ rights.

Joining ADC in the session will be fellow Cyber Stewards Network organization Derechos Digitales, as well as Electronic Frontier Foundation, Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales, and Fundacion Karisma.

Watch the livestream of the hearing here.

EQUALS in Tech honours efforts to bring greater digital opportunities to women and girls.

Read more about this year’s winners here.

The award is used to highlight and celebrate young people from around the world who are using the Internet to enact substantive positive change.

From Internet Society’s website:

“Through her own experience, Linda realised that Internet users may not know how to react to digital violence. This resulted in her passion for using ICTs to promote gender equality, Internet safety, freedom of opinion, and democratisation of knowledge.

In her work for the social organisation Colnodo, she created digital strategies to reach and engage with key audiences, including women, youth, and social activists.  Linda also supported the Take Back the Tech campaign in Colombia, for which she developed a social media strategy to support an intense 16 days of activism. The campaign earned nearly two million impressions on Twitter and reached 500,000 people on Facebook.

Through the Internet, Linda seeks to have even bigger impact for social causes and digital rights by disseminating information and creating interaction with people regardless of distance.”

The APrIGF brought together over 500 participants to directly address the unique issues facing the Asia Pacific region.

The event is “…a multi-stakeholder platform for public policy on Internet and its impact on society. For almost a decade, the forum draws in discussions and incubates collaborations for the developments of universally affordable, accessible, non-discriminated, secure and sustainable internet across the region.”

Citizen Lab Senior Researcher Irene Poetranto attended the forum and participated in a number of events. “The forum directly tackled many pressing issues in Internet governance today, including online harassment, LGBTQ2+ expression and censorship, cybersecurity training, and youth-driven Internet governance initiatives,” she said.

Ucciferri, who works with the Cyber Stewards partner Asociacion por los Derechos Civiles in Argentina and will be a visiting fellow at The Citizen Lab in Toronto this summer, investigates the intimate nature of biometrics in our everyday lives. Biometrics– the process of using biological, morphological or behavioural characteristics to identify an individual– has increasingly become integral in the modern world, including phones that open by recognizing an owner’s fingerprint. As Ucciferri points out: “Without realizing, our biometric personal identity has become fused with our most personal electronic device.”

He also seeks to delve into the nature of policy for both businesses and nations to ensure that the rights of citizens are protected:

“Biometric data is not used solely by private companies in order to make a profit. States are one of the main actors in biometrics, with large scale biometric databases of their citizens. In light of this, what are the safeguards in place to avoid manipulation and adulteration of such stored data? What type of guarantees should be established to ensure the integrity of the data obtained?”

The full report can be read here.

Their winning project, “Internet Sehat” (Internet Healthy) Towards Indonesian Information Society, provides high-quality Indonesian online content. The project included a variety of approaches to fostering strong digital literacy skills, such as creating social movement documentaries, producing print literature, and running in-person workshops to develop the capacity of various stakeholders. Partners on the project included the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the Alliance of Independence Journalists, and the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network.

WSIS projects must demonstrate how they help to work towards ICT sustainable development by showing how they meet a series of 17 goals. The ICT Watch Indonesia project gained recognition by showcasing:

• Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
• Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
• Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies

The World Summit on the Information Society Forum is the world’s largest annual gathering of ICT experts and advocates that work towards sustainable development. Read more about WSIS here.

Chileans go online more than any nationality in Latin America, while their data goes through just a handful of ISPs, making defending their information largely the task of these companies. The report examines, among other indicators, things like whether the companies notify users when complying with judicial requests for access to their account data, or whether companies challenge surveillance laws or individual demands for user data. The report also incorporates questionnaires and private interviews conducted with the ISPs, along with a relative ranking for the privacy protections these companies offer.

Read the full report or a Spanish summary of the report.

Read the post in Arabic

Imagine a museum for the Internet; this is the closest description of the website “Internet Archive”. Of the tens of thousands of books available on the website free of charge, we found more than 127 thousand books in Arabic, most of which were original manuscripts. Books of Islamic jurisprudence and interpretation digitized by libraries of American and Canadian universities were also made available through Internet Archive. The website satiates a nostalgia that infects us from time to time to revisit coverage of Arabic websites of big events such as the coverage of the assassination of Rafiq Al-Harari in 2004, or to return to forums that vanished from the face of the internet such as Abu Mahjoob forum.

In October of last year, the non-profit foundation Internet Archive, along with the wider world, celebrated the 20 year anniversary of the founding of the website which aims to preserve memories of the internet and prevent digitally generated content from disappearing.

The only ones who did not celebrate this occasion were internet users in Jordan.

Since the beginning of the year 2016, internet browsers would simply display a message confirming the unavailability of the site, seconds after typing  its address www.archive.org , regardless of the service provider or method used.

The website became available once again in February of the year, according to a statement received by 7iber from Chris Butler, the Office Manager of Internet Archive. In the meantime, during the four-month-long period from September 2016 to January 2017, the team at 7iber attempted to uncover the technical or legal causes which made a global website like this one unavailable to internet users in Jordan. There were two scenarios to explain the phenomenon: Firstly, there were technical issues within the website itself which impeded us, and other users across the world from accessing it. As for the second possibility, it was that the website had been blocked by the Media Commission in Jordan, as we’ve grown to expect, practicing its powers granted by the 2012 amendments to the Press and Publications Law.

However, a third scenario was awaiting us.

How can we technically  prove that the website was blocked?

For us to begin research into the second scenario, we had to first confirm that there were indeed no technical issues within the website itself (scenario 1). We needed to find technical evidence of the block after succeeding to get on the website using Tor browser or a VPN. In collaboration with Citizen Lab and the Jordan Open Source Association, we ran a number of tests starting on November 17th 2016 on the network using the application WireShark. The application records all the traffic sent and received by a device when it connects to the internet. The results of the test revealed that devices which attempted to connect to the website Internet Archive were failing to complete the operation known as a “TCP handshake”, which is normally completed whenever a connection is created between two devices. This is something which can be taken as a clear indication that the website had been deliberately blocked. (For more technical details on this test please refer to the attached file).

The test results matched what Chris Butler, Office Manager at Internet Archive, had previously told 7iber in a statement: “reports reached us from two different users, the first of them in February 2016 and the second in March of the same year, both regarding the users’ inability to access the website from Jordan. The complainants had tried to access the website from a range of telecom company networks (Umniah, Zain, and Orange) only to find they were still unable to access the site”. Butler continues that after Internet Archive pursued the issue and were in touch with the Commission in December of last year, the website became available once again in the last days of January of this year.

We ran a second test on the network once the website was available again, and the results now showed the successful completion of the TCP handshake, and the possibility of sending and receiving packets between the site’s server and testing device. This all confirmed that the website had been blocked before and that now the block had been lifted.

The website was blocked centrally, but who blocked it and why?

In November of 2016, at the time the website was still blocked, we directed a number of questions to the three entities through which a website blocking process normally has to pass: The Media Commission, which sends the decision to block the website to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), which in return disseminates it to telecom companies to enact it.

Assuming that telecom companies have the most knowledge of their networks and are careful to carry out blocking decisions to avoid legal liability, we thought that they are the most capable of explaining the unavailability of the website on their networks. We got in touch with two companies (Zain and Orange) last November. The public relations employees in both companies seemed happy to cooperate with the media. After formally sending them our questions, Orange stopped replying to the numerous attempts made by 7iber to receive an explanation.  As for Zain, their response after several attempts to get an answer was that “the employee responsible for the block is on a family holiday, and there is not anybody else able to take his place and answer this question”. The public relations employee then dismissed our subsequent inquiry: “What if you were to receive an order to block a website whilst the relevant employee was on holiday?”

The reasons behind the telecom companies’ delays in replying to our questions may well have been purely bureaucratic through which inquiries from non-advertising media simply gets lost. However we were not the only ones being ignored in this way. Butler told us that Internet Archive had also repeatedly tried to contact Orange, Zain, and Umniah throughout April 2016 in order to clear up the complaints which he had received,  without a single reply. The website also tried to contact the Ministry of Communications and the National Centre of Information Technology only to find the same level of disregard.

As for the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), despite their efficiency in communicating with 7iber, their responses to us seemed to answer another question, one we weren’t asking: “The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission is not the entity which issues the decisions but rather it is the entity which enforces the decisions the block sites as issued by the Media Commission, furthermore the Commission does not receive reasons behind the blocking of any website, and this is the same in the context of Internet Archive”.

When we tried to return to the original question: “Did the TRC carry out the dissemination of the decision to block the website Internet Archive?” the TRC responded with the same answer. We then asked the TRC whether it would be possible to supply us with all blocking decisions that they passed in year 2016, and their reply was that “the TRC is unable to disclose that given that these decisions are temporary and not fixed”.

The only place left to look for an answer was the Media Commission, the sole entity legally authorised to issue decisions to block websites as according to the amendments of the Press and Publications Law of 2012. The director of the Media Commission, Mohammad Quteishat, confirmed to us that at the end of last November, and after looking at all the blocking decisions in 2016, “there was not one which pertained to the website Internet Archive”.

Why did the website become available?

In February 2017, after the website was available, we contacted Chris Butler again. According to Butler, Internet Archive communicated with the Media Commission in January of this year to try again to inquire about the reason for the site’s blocking following all the previous failed attempts to contact telecom companies. The response from the Media Commission was that they would look into this issue, stressing that the blocking decision had not been issued by the Commission. Butler says that the commission got in touch with him at the end of January announcing that the website was “now” available in Jordan according to the following email:

Again, we asked the director of the Media Commission, Mohammad Quteishat, about the reason for the site’s return to Jordan after being blocked for almost a year. However, Quteishat assured us that “the website was not blocked on the Commission’s network, at least as provided by the National Centre for Information Technology [gov ISP]”

And as for what the Commission wrote in its message, that the website “Is now available”, it did not insinuate for Qutaishat that “that the website was blocked,” according to what he told 7iber. As for our request for an explanation of the technical reports proving the blocking of the website, and the coincidence of the availability of the website shortly after Internet Archive contacted the Media Commision, he said: “I cannot answer. We did not have any hand in the blocking or the unblocking of the website, the website was not ever blocked according to a report from the follow-up committee.”

The third scenario: The invisible hand

The website Internet Archive was blocked quietly in Jordan, and then unblocked quietly. Despite the obscurity of the reasons behind the availability of the website, the story lay in discovering the extent of absurdity that the process of blocking websites in Jordan has reached. This absurdity is first structural. It began in the 2012 amendments of the Press and Publications Law, which the government is convinced has been effective in regulating online media. However, until now, the scope of the sites made subject to the Press and Publications Law remains controversial because it goes against the technical nature of network, that cannot define sites into “local” and “global”. The absurdity is also manifested through the administrative authority given by the law to the director of the Media Commission, allowing him to use his own discretion to identify which websites can be categorised under “electronic news website”. As for Internet Archive, it all points to the worst-case scenario: There is a parallel entity outside any radar, with influential central powers over the network, able to jump above the remit of the Media Commission and telecoms, and block or unblock websites centrally.

“We’re appreciative that the Commission appears to have helped get us back online in Jordan,” Chris Butler told 7iber.  But despite what the Commission wrote in their email to him, that the website was “currently” available, Butler was hoping “they would reply to our follow-up questions and that we could clearly understand why the website was blocked at the level of the backbone”.

“If the Government censored the site, they should say so,” he says. “If they claim to not have censored it, it would be helpful to have an explanation what the issue was and how it was resolved by the work that the Media Commission referred to.”

This story also reminds us of the absence of minimum transparency in the blocking process, even the legal and visible one. Telecom companies, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission and the Media Commission keep blocking decisions locked in their drawers, without feeling obliged to make them public to citizens.

According to Issa Mahasneh, president of the Jordan Open Source Association, the owner of a blocked website has the right to know which entity issued the decision to block that site, so that they may be able to challenge that decision. “So, for example, if a website was mistakenly blocked or blocked in a way which was illegal, then the owner would request compensation for losses from the entity which caused it this damage,” he says.

Neither we, nor Chris Butler, or the director of the Media Commision know who blocked the Internet Archive. However, what we know is that there is a parallel window for blocking websites, through which an “invisible hand” practices its authority and draws for us the Internet that it wants us to use, without any accountability.

Attached file explaining the technical tests:

We conducted network measurement tests on the ISP Orange, to determine if the website of Archive was blocked. In order to do this, we accessed http://www.archive.org in a web browser while collecting a packet capture using Wireshark. The page failed to load in the web browser, eventually returning a “The connection has timed out” error message.

In the packet capture, we can see in more detail why the page failed to load. The first step, the domain name resolution, completed normally. In response to our DNS query, we received the IP address 207.241.224.2, which is the correct IP address for Archive.  This is known because this IP address is in the ASN of Archive.

However, all traffic sent to this IP address did not receive a response. The testing client began the process of establishing a connection with the Archive server by initiating the 3-way TCP handshake. After sending the initial SYN packet, the testing client does not ever receive a response. The client tried sending this SYN packet repeatedly, and not receiving a response it eventually gave up.

These tests were repeated multiple times, and at no point did the testing client ever receive a response from the Archive server. This is highly suggestive of deliberate filtering.

ICT Watch was nominated for the award for their project entitled “Internet Sehat (Internet Healthy): Towards Indonesian Information Society.” The project description is as follows:

ICT Watch is committed to the online freedom of expression and aware of the emerging challenges to it, while continuing to combat online hoax and disinformation by delivering the Indonesian literacy digital, called “Internet Sehat”, to the public. Internet Sehat provides high-quality Indonesian online content under creative-common license, including a series of social media for social movement documentary videos for public screening and discussion. Also included is an updated presentation kit and how-to modules and leaflets for public education. Internet Sehat also delivered through offline activities, such as workshops, to schools, campuses and local communities, simultaneously facilitating multistakeholder engagement and developing capacity of local actors/communities.

ICT Watch has partnered with the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the Cyber Law Centre at Padjadjaran University, and other government and civil society organizations to facilitate the project.

Read information on the Internet Sehat project, a list of nominated projects, or vote for a winner for the WSIS prizes until April 30, 2017.