Japan a leader in global plastic recycling

February 21st, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Japan has been one of the top leaders in the world over the past 10 years when it comes to recycling plastics. In 2010, 77 percent of plastic waste was recycled, a gain of 4 percent from 2006, putting Japan far ahead the United Kingdom’s 38 percent and a 20 percent recycling rate for the United States, according to data from the country’s Plastic Waste Management Institute (PWMI). Japan’s experience may hold vital lessons for other countries and industries struggling to meet stakeholder demands for broad recycling programs.

In 1997, Japan passed several recycling laws obliging both businesses and individuals to separate plastic waste. A lack of landfill space has been a major drive for the country to put these laws into effect as the country’s large population (127 million) continues to expand within its increasingly crowded urban areas.

PWMI reported that in 2006, “Japan recycled 2.1 million tons of plastic waste, while 4.8 million tons undergoes so-called ‘thermal recycling’, which includes conversion into useful chemicals and burning to generate energy.”

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles have to be separated from other plastic wraps and containers in most households, and the PET bottle must have its label removed and discarded before it is recycled. In 2010, 72 percent of PET bottles were recycled in Japan, compared to 29 percent in the US and 48 percent in Europe.

Japan uses the recycled materials in “textiles, sheeting, industrial materials and household items” like egg boxes. Japan also exports significant amounts of recycled plastics to China, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia, where the waste is refabricated for use in toys and games.

“Japan has been able to make progress in plastic recycling because waste-processing agencies have won the support of manufacturers,” Takushi Kamiya said, a PWMI spokesman.

“We are looking at ways to deal with what’s left over, but it’s difficult to imagine at this stage that we’ll get the recycling rate to 100%,” he said. “But I think we do very well compared with other countries.”

Kevin Carroll, the representative director of EA International, explains part of the issue with Japan’s substantial plastic waste.

“Japan differs from other countries in that it tends to overwrap,” he said. “You buy a bento boxed lunch and it comes in a plastic box with a lid, and then it’s put into a plastic bag. Lots of other foodstuffs are the same.

“There’s a tremendous amount of plastic around. The real problem is with household plastic, a lot of which gets burned or buried. The amounts involved are phenomenal.”

Japan has gone to great lengths to ensure recycling happens, working to involve everyone from manufacturers to consumers through legislation like the Home Appliance Law. It has also sparked the creation of innovative companies. Food company Ajinomoto, for example, has revealed a plastic bottle made entirely from recycled PET, which it anticipates using 4,500 tons of in its drink bottles annually.

In Yashiro, resource recovery plant Panasonic Eco Technology Center (PETEC) recycles air conditioning units, washing machines, refrigerators and television sets daily. Beginning operations in 2001, PETEC has recycled more than 1.4 billion appliances, “producing enough materials to manufacture 95 jumbo jets, the equivalent of 81 of the Great Buddha statue at Nara and 158,000 cars from reclaimed aluminium [sic], copper and steel.” PETEC has a system to also capture noxious gases, and recover resins such as polypropylene and polystyrene.

When a consumer drops off used appliances they have to pay a small recycling fee and purchase a ticket that shows collectors the fee has been paid.

Product managers and engineers who work for the manufacturers that build the appliances visit PETEC regularly “so they can pick apart the very products they design,” thereby finding flaws in their designs and creating better products that potentially create less waste. As an example, “on a line of air conditioning units, product designers realized that if they laser printed the company logo instead of embedding and pasting a small tablet sized piece of plastic, the recycling rates of such components would increase dramatically.”

PETEC holds an 85 percent recycling rate and receives approximately a 10 percent ROI. The company believes their efforts are a prime example of ways to create new revenue opportunities while working to minimize the impact of appliances and consumer purchasing on the environment.

Hundreds of millions tons of consumer electronics and home appliances are discarded globally each year, resulting in heaping mountains of electronic waste, or e-waste, that have long been a focus of environmental stakeholders such as the Basel Action Network and Greenpeace.  Efforts to create recycling programs to counter e-waste have had mixed success in the EU, U.S. and elsewhere.

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India grapples with social media censorship concerns

February 19th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

India’s IT minister Kapil Sibal has stated that India will not censor any social media websites . . . as long as those websites obey India’s laws when it comes to “blasphemous material” appearing on the Internet. But rather than ending discussion, as Sibal obviously intended, the statement is likely to add heat to a debate already raging. India, the world’s largest democracy, has been struggling to strike a balance between national security and personal freedoms—drawing fierce criticism in recent months over legislative efforts to limit web content.

At an IT summit in Mumbai, Mr. Sibal was quoted saying, “I want to say once and for all, without any obfuscation, no government in India will ever censor social media. I never wanted to censor social media and no government wants to do so. But like the print and electronic media, they have to obey the laws of the country.”

When enhanced photos of India’s Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared on the Internet depicting “images of pigs in Islam’s holy city of Mecca,” the photos angered Mr. Sibal. He said in December 2011 that his goal would be to ensure the “insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue.” Sibal also indicated a strong desire to mandate Internet companies provide authorities information on users posting objectionable content and where images are uploaded.

In recent months Indian authorities have faced growing criticism over how new legislative requirements that prohibit web sites and service providers from disseminating any material that might be harmful, blasphemous or insulting are affecting Internet freedoms. New parameters also require them to remove any such content within 36 hours of a complaint registration, while compelling Internet cafés to increase current security measures – including the installation of surveillance cameras and obtaining identification from all customers that must be turned over to authorities. Human rights activists acknowledge the government’s struggle to prevent illegal activity on the Internet that may contribute to communal violence or militant activity, but decry the changes as infringing upon individual privacy and expression rights.

Now the dispute has landed in the Indian courts.

A total of 21 Internet firms face a civil suit in Delhi alleging they have hosted content that may contribute to communal unrest. The proceedings prompted the Delhi High Court to threaten a crackdown on sites that do not take sufficient steps to protect religious sensibilities. Mufti Aizaz Arshad Kazmi filed a petition, alleging that “the companies were hosting material intolerant to religious sentiment.”

Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Orkut are among the companies named in the suit. Facebook and Google have both stated that they have complied with court directives and have argued they should be subject to no further action. The Delhi High Court judge has asked the companies to provide a written reply demonstrating removal of the content and would like Facebook and Google India to develop mechanisms to prevent and remove objectionable content or face potential blockage of their sites in India.

In response the firms have argued it is simply not possible to pre-monitor material being posted by 100 million Indian users, and billions of users around the world, with Google legal team members also relating the issue to human rights as a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression that cannot be suppressed in democratic countries.

“We cannot control a billion minds. Some are conservative, some are liberal and some write all the defamatory and obnoxious articles on web pages. There is a procedure for getting them removed,” said Mukul Rohatgi, attorney for Google India. “No human interference is possible and, moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents. Billions of people across the globe post their articles on the website.”

Facebook claims that “policies are in place that enable people to report abusive content.” Both Facebook and Google have removed objectionable material when they have received complaints.

There are 28 million users on Facebook in India, and the company stated in January 2012 “that it recognized the ‘government’s interest in minimizing the amount of abusive content available online’.”

Microsoft said it “filed an application for rejection of the suit on the grounds that it disclosed no cause of action against Microsoft.”

Next month, a criminal case with similar allegations will be heard, brought by Hindu journalist Vinay Rai. Leading executives from the Internet companies have been summoned to appear.

India is not alone. Around the globe the struggle to protect intellectual property rights and national security interests is intertwined with battles to ensure personal freedoms and speak out against repressive governments.

Democratic countries—including the U.S., EU and India—have been looking at legislative options but have yet to land on safeguards acceptable to rights defenders and Netizens. While the need for action is immediate and the process has been plagued by public protests—those very expressions of concern may help democratic governments develop standards that can be applied internationally and prevent the limitations activists fear.

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ACTA protests take Europe by storm

February 16th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Battles to protect against Internet censorship and safeguard individual rights are heating up around the globe with Europe bearing witness to multi-country protests against proposed legislation Net-activists see as potentially damaging.  While supporters see the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as meant to standardize copyright protection efforts, opponents have taken to the Internet—and the streets—to criticize it in a similar fashion as the recent Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) protests in the United States. Authorities in several countries—including Germany, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia—have now said they will delay signing on to the treaty.

The scope of the ACTA treaty is what concerns its opponents. Within its legal framework, the treaty would “deal with issues of counterfeiting, piracy and other crimes” through the creation of a new governing body that exists outside the framework of existing United Nations or other international organizations. Participating countries would be able to legally process alleged crimes via the new governing body and under ACTA terms, rather than be limited to national laws. Opponents fear that ACTA could be abused to promote censorship and prosecute common Internet activity.

Opponents hope that the world’s governments will reject the treaty, and “protesters have been galvanized in their efforts [thanks to] recent developments that suggest the treaty may be losing international support just three weeks after 22 European Union member states signed it.” Protesters have voiced their concerns on the streets and in cyberspace, gaining traction “with the international leaders that are tasked with negotiating the treaty, which its supporters hope to have in place by June.”

Over 100 protests were scheduled on Saturday, February 11, 2012 across Europe, according to the activism website stoppacta-protest.info, to include protests in Munich, Paris, and London.

Jim Killock from the Open Right Group told the BBC, “Three member states in Europe are now looking like they don’t want to sign. That shows that politicians are only really starting to look at this now. All of a sudden, the whole thing is breaking down.”

Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenian Ambassador to Japan, admitted that she was careless in signing the treaty and apologized. “I did not pay enough attention,” said Ms. Zorko. “Quite simply, I did not clearly connect the agreement I had been instructed to sign with the agreement that, according to my own civic conviction, limits and withholds the freedom of engagement on the largest and most significant network in human history, and thus limits particularly the future of our children.” Ms. Zorko spearheaded Slovenian protests, asking the protesters to do so in her name, where approximately 2,000 people marched in Ljubljana on Saturday.

Any official websites that have shown support for the treaty have been attacked by “hacktivists” claiming to work on Anonymous’ behalf. Around the same time Saturday’s protests took place, “NLB, Slovenia’s largest bank, was temporarily taken offline by hackers.”

As the European Parliament considers ratification, Big Brother Watch, a UK-based privacy campaigner, is calling for a “parliamentary debate on ACTA, arguing that the treaty had been signed in ’secret’.”

“It would be wholly wrong for the solution to avoid public scrutiny,” Nick Pickles, the campaign’s director, said to Vince Cable, Business Secretary, in a recent letter. “I hope you would share my concern that the legislative process must be open for it to have any legitimacy.”

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, said in a statement to the BBC, “The UK continually pushed for greater transparency in negotiations as we believed that it was a valuable aid to public understanding of the agreement.

“We were able to achieve some victories, such as publishing of the draft text in April 2010, but we were limited in what we could do as this was an international negotiation.”

The nations to sign the treaty last year included the US, Australia, New Zealand, Morocco, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, and while the EU and most EU member states became signatories in January, not all EU countries have agreed to sign on. Slovakia and Germany “have now expressed reservations about signing the agreement without further consideration, while the Czech Republic, who did sign last month, are also said to be reconsidering their involvement in the treaty.”

The UK has remained committed to the treaty, and Judith Wilcox, IP Minister, told reporters, “It was important for the UK to be a signatory of ACTA as it will set an international standard for tackling large-scale infringements of [intellectual property rights], through the creation of common enforcement standards and more effective international cooperation. During the negotiations, we continually pushed for greater transparency as we believed that this would have led to a better understanding of the agreement by the public.”

A petition calling for the rejection of the ACTA treaty that has gained 1.75 million signatures and aims for two million “will be delivered to the decision-makers in Brussels in the coming days.

The issue is not one of protecting of copyrights—that is something stakeholders view almost unanimously. But in the Internet age when individuals and groups are working to leverage the Internet to progress human rights and economic development, while facing off restrictions from repressive regimes around the world, any legislative effort that opens the door for possible censorship is going to elicit vociferous opposition from Netizens.

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EU moves to restrict Syria surveillance technology sales

February 12th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

The European Union (EU) has cracked down on the sale of surveillance technology to Syria that would enable the Syrian government to intercept text messages and peruse e-mail content of any of its citizens. Syria has been in the grips of severe crisis since mid-2011 after President Bashar al-Assad launched a bloody crackdown in response to pro-reform protests, and the EU fears Syrian authorities could use technology transfers to intensify abuse or to provide evidence for prosecutions.

In the EU regulation No. 36/2012, dated 18 January 2012, the ban on surveillance technology covers the “sale, maintenance and updates of systems for ‘deep-packet inspection’ of e-mail contents, remote infection of computers, speaker recognition, ‘tactical’ interception of text messages,” and many more technologies.

The regulation is meant to stop human rights violations “during a crackdown that’s killed more than 5,000 people.”

The EU regulation states: “In view of the continued brutal repression and violation of human rights by the Government of Syria, Council Decision 2011/782/CFSP provides for additional measures, namely a prohibition on the export of tele­communications monitoring equipment for use by the Syrian regime, a prohibition on the participation in certain infrastructure projects and investment in such projects, and additional restrictions on the transfers of funds and the provision of financial services.”

In Chapter II of the EU regulation, Article 4 for export and import restrictions, paragraph 3, prohibitions include the “equipment, technology or software which may be used for the monitoring or interception of internet or telephone communications.”

It was reported in early November by Bloomberg News that Italian company Area SpA built a “surveillance system that would have given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime the power to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail” that traversed cyberspace in Syria. After the report aired, Area SpA exited the deal and said that the system, which was slated to include components originating from German, French and American companies, would not be completed.

Member states will have “authority to permit exceptions to export” equipment, but if it would be used by the “Syrian government for monitoring or intercepting communications,” they would be banned from doing so. The regulation states that member states have to inform the EU of exceptions within four weeks of granting them.

Some companies have already encountered stakeholder resistance to their business dealings with Syria.

According to online activist group Telecomix, Blue Coat Systems, Inc. (BCSI), a US company, filtered websites inside Syria in early 2011. In December 2011, BCSI stated on its website that it reviewed its data and agreed that the potential for some of its’ appliances could be in Syria, thereby prompting the company to perform an internal review of shipments to see if they were illegally diverted to the country. BCSI provided the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) with the information for review. BIS announced that the appliances were “transshipped” and “have been the subject of recent press reporting related to their potential use by the Syrian government to block pro-democracy websites and identify pro-democracy activists as part of Syria’s brutal crackdown.”

“Blue Coat is lying to everyone about Syria,” said Jacob Applebaum, a Tor researcher. “They know exactly where serial numbers are being used because of a phone home process.” The process doesn’t allow Blue Coat devices to be in use without the company’s knowledge.

Blue Coat has stated that it will continue is “cooperation with appropriate government agencies to develop evidence on the unlawful diversion of any” of its products.

Area SpA defines itself as the leading Italian provider of “technology solutions to support Law Enforcement Agencies in interception activities.” The Italian firm reportedly has an agreement with the Syrian government to help the Syrians track and analyze data on mobile phones, traditional landline telephones and the Internet as well as providing training for government agents. Concerns that the company’s activities may be contributing to human rights abuses have yet to result in any serious legal questioning. Area SpA uses equipment from Germany’s Utimaco Safeware AG and France’s Qosmos SA, as well as NetApp, Inc., a US company.

This is not the first time sales of technology to repressive governments have drawn the ire of human rights stakeholders. When post-election protests erupted in Iran during the summer of 2009 and authorities were able to monitor calls and text messages, and again in 2011 when Bahraini authorities reportedly used information gleaned via technology purchased from Western companies to coerce confessions from pro-reform demonstrators, human rights stakeholders cried foul.

The issue, according to Rebecca McKinnon, is one of “amoral technology being used for immoral purposes has been exacerbated in the Internet age. As long as engineers and companies claim to have no responsibility for the political context in which their inventions and products are used, the problem is going to grow worse.”

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Leaders emerge on deployment of AFV fleets

February 9th, 2012

Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Major multinationals including AT&T, FedEx, PepsiCo, UPS and Verizon have opted in to the National Clean Fleets partnership, a White House initiative with the Department of Energy (DOE), as charter members to help decrease petroleum use worldwide by placing alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) on the road. By adding vehicles that use electricity, natural gas, ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen and propane, the partnership’s goal is to cut 2.5 billion gallons of petroleum use by 2020.

According to the DOE, as the five charter members deploy more than “20,000 advanced technology vehicles” it will result in the decrease of over 7 million gallons of petroleum annually. The five corporations operate five of the ten largest fleets in the U.S. made up of over 275,000 vehicles. In response to their efforts, the “initiative will offer companies technical assistance and purchasing help to encourage” them to adopt more AFVs into their fleets.

In 2009, AT&T announced that it would deploy 15,000 AFVs by 2019, and the company hit the milestone of deploying its 5,000th AFV in late January 2012, a CNG van serving the Palmdale, CA market. After deploying 1,000 green fleet vehicles in its first year, the deployment of its 5,000th AFV brings the company one-third closer to its goal in only three years. With seven years remaining, it looks as though AT&T will reach the 15,000-AFV mark. The company said it would spend $565 million to implement the program and reach its goal over the decade.

“In a short period of time, with the support of community leaders all over the country, we’ve invested in the deployment of thousands of advanced technology vehicles that promote cleaner air, use less fuel and help AT&T lower its operating costs,” said Jerome Webber, vice president, AT&T Global Fleet Operations. “While some may see just another car or truck on the road, we think these vehicles represent the shared values of the communities where we live, work and play.”

AT&T has a strong record in its vehicle maintenance department, as its “garages recycle 180,000 pounds of oil filters, 200,000 gallons of oil, and 23,000 gallons of antifreeze” every year. The company also recycles approximately 60,000 old tires each year through a program “that transforms the rubber into fuel and new consumer products,” furthering its commitment to green motoring.

In early 2011, Verizon had implemented 2,000 AFVs into its national fleet and intends to increase that number to total “15 percent of its fleet operating with alternative fuels by 2015.” Along with its AFVs, the company has also “implemented other environmentally friendly programs in its fleet operations, including an energy-saving initiative that requires drivers to turn off vehicles instead of letting them idle.” The program reduced gasoline consumption by 1.7 million gallons in one year—equal to 33 million pounds of CO2, according to the company. To further minimize fuel consumption and speeding, the company has integrated “fleet GPS and onboard diagnostic data to monitor . . . poor driver habits that contribute to energy waste.”

Delivery giant UPS, which operates one of the largest ground and air fleets, and delivers approximately “16 million packages around the world each day,” has an AFV fleet that the company has been working on for several years. Since 2000, the company has deployed over “2,500 compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG), propane, hydrogen fuel cell, electric and hybrid electric vehicles” worldwide.

UPS uses a number of different AFVs, ranging from hydraulic hybrids, hybrid electric, and electric vehicles to propane-powered engines, CNG, LNG, and ethanol. The company worked closely with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as Eaton, the US Army National Automotive Center, and International Truck and Engine in 2006 to help build a “unique UPS truck with a full-series hydraulic hybrid drive train.” Since 1998, the company has “researched and tested hybrid electric technology, and in 2000, it deployed its first hybrid electric vehicle in Huntsville, Ala. on a 31-mile route, making 150 pickups and deliveries each day.”

The National Clean Fleets Partnership, according to the DOE, “would promote a peer-to-peer information exchange, and would allow small and large companies to work together to get the benefits of buying vehicles in bulk” for their fleets. Through the partnership, access to cost calculators, customizable database searches, interactive maps, and “mobile applications to compile and analyze essential data” would be available to the companies. The initiative “will complement the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smartway Transport partnership program,” which was designed to reduce emissions in the freight industry, the DOE said.

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Internet companies, stakeholders back energy efficiency

January 31st, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

When Internet giants such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter and Google leave a large carbon footprint, activist stakeholders like Greenpeace are going to notice. Greenpeace has been campaigning on increased energy efficiency in the sector and in 2011 released its report—How dirty is your data?—on the pollution cloud the IT sector was generating.

Greenpeace has “argued that IT companies, by increasing their electricity consumption while avoiding increasing demand for coal, could become a strong force in helping move countries to low-carbon economies”—a position also supported by a variety of multinationals within the ICT realm like AT&T and stakeholders such as the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Taken from “published figures for data-center power consumption and electricity utilities’ reports of their energy sources,” Greenpeace estimated that “Facebook’s reliance on coal” was at 53.2 percent use in its data centers, just below Apple’s 54.5 percent, but “higher than Google’s 34.7 percent.” Twitter’s coal reliance was at 42.5 percent, while Yahoo!’s reliance was at 18.3 percent, the report stated.

Greenpeace launched a massive campaign two year ago to “Unfriend Facebook,” garnering 700,000 supporters, “to lobby the company to change its energy policies,” especially after the social networking giant announced it would open a new data center in Oregon in February 2010. Though the facility was intended to be energy efficient, PacifiCorp was its source of power, which uses coal as its main source of energy.

In October 2011, Facebook announced that it would build a new data center in Lulea, Sweden, “using hydroelectric power for the servers and relying on the local climate to cool the data center for free.”

Facebook has also announced that it will “develop its platform to work more closely with Greenpeace to ‘promote environmental awareness and action’,” and move away from coal, powering its data centers “with clean and renewable energy.” The two organizations came together to publish a joint statement regarding the effort.

“[Facebook] looks forward to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer,” said Marcy Scott Lynn, of Facebook’s sustainability program. “As an important step, our data center siting policy now states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy.”

For the company’s existing data centers, it will “engage in a dialogue with our utility providers about increasing the supply of clean energy that power Facebook data centers,” in order to make the company less coal-reliant. Through the Open Compute Project, an organization promoting “low-cost, low-energy computing infrastructure,” Facebook, along with Greenpeace, will distribute and promote the results of its “research into energy efficiency.”

“This move sets an example for the industry to follow,” Tzeporah Berman, co-director of Greenpeace’s international climate and energy program, said. “This shift to clean, safe energy choices will help fight global warming and ensure a stronger economy and healthier communities.”

Using Facebook was “particularly effective” for Greenpeace, added Ms. Lynn. “We are excited to work with them to explore new ways in which people can use Facebook to engage and connect on the range of energy issues that matter most to them—from their own energy efficiency to access to cleaner sources of energy.”

In post on January 19, 2012, Google announced that it “has been working on a project to bring” its facilities to “higher standards for environmental management” and that its data centers had “received ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification.” The company claims it is “the first major Internet services company to gain external certification” for its US data centers. Google set some challenging goals for itself and followed through on meeting the key elements required to reach its goals. Some of the improvements Google has implemented are minimizing the “run time and need for maintenance” of its generators, and extending “the lifetime between oil changes” for them. In the process, the company has reduced its oil consumption by 67 percent.

Google has also implemented a system to “handle, package, ship and recycle every single battery” it uses for its servers’ power supply in each data center, ensuring “the safety of the environment” and its workers.

The company states that its decision to be more responsible when it comes to the environment and safety of its workers, it wants “to be the gold standard in environmental and workforce safety, and because we care about the communities where we live and work.”

The Google data centers that have received the dual certification are:

  • The Dalles, Oregon
  • Council Bluffs, Iowa
  • Mayes County, Oklahoma
  • Lenoir, North Carolina
  • Monck’s Corner, South Carolina
  • Douglas County, Georgia

Google intends to pursue certification for its European data centers as well.

As prominent companies within the sector Facebook and Google are setting powerful examples on how technology and sustainability can be paired to move the world toward a less-fossil fuel intense economy.

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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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Struggle against conflict minerals continues

January 27th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Despite the recent departure of a main stakeholder from the Kimberley Process—a standard-setting multistakeholder effort to curb the trade in blood diamonds—similar efforts continue to gain traction on the issue of conflict minerals. The European Union is considering action after the U.S. passed legislation to curb the trade, while the private sector and activist stakeholders simultaneously seek ways to sever the connections between mineral trade, warfare and human rights abuses.

But what happens when implementation of legislation and certification schemes at the local levels is stymied by a lack of infrastructure, corruption and political interests? What is to keep multinational corporations from turning to alternative sourcing to avoid the pitfalls of a lack of local capacity? How do these efforts affect local populations and development? And how long do various stakeholders stay engaged in a process when progress is limited?

Almost a decade after the Kimberley Process came into being to curb the trade in diamonds sold to support deadly conflict, stakeholders are still grappling with such questions. Global Witness, which helped drive the creation of the KP, withdrew from the process in December 2011 in frustration over chronic corruption and the continued ability of human rights abusers to bring their product to market through the KP.

As efforts to stem the flow of conflict minerals move towards systemic shifts in the way the trade is managed, the challenges of the KP may seem all too familiar.

Some American companies like Apple, Inc. are looking to stop the sourcing of any minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to prevent conflict minerals from reaching its products—the opposite effect U.S. legislators intended with the Dodd-Frank Act. As much as 90 percent of the previous level of DRC exports have ceased as multinationals back away for to avoid running afoul of pending reporting rule associated with the Act. Hewlett-Packard, Inc. has also joined Apple, Inc. in stopping the flow of potential conflict minerals from reaching its products.

The Dodd-Frank Act, which came into being July 2010, requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to force companies to report all minerals, such as tin, gold, and tungsten, used in their products—cell phones, computers, GPS systems—and where those minerals come from, even trace amounts, to prove such minerals were derived from a “conflict free” area of the DRC. Legislators hoped this would pressure DRC rebel groups and other combatants that profit from the trade but has shaken up the international mineral markets.

“If you go from compliance on through, this starts to set up not only nightmare scenarios, but also costly scenarios that make it difficult for companies to ensure an adequate supply of raw materials,” Tom Quaadman, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, said.

AT&T has criticized the Dodd-Frank as too broad and raising concerns the new requirements “could trip up companies who contract with manufacturers and have little, if any, control or knowledge about the origins of minor amounts of minerals that end up in their products.”

The United Nation’s (UN) Group of Experts stated in a report that the situation has helped further entrench corruption and made the situation worse by leaving many DRC exporters “bereft of their main, or only customers, and therefore incomes.”

In late December 2011, a UN report confirmed that the “crackdown” on conflict minerals has pushed “trade deeper into the hands of criminals and smugglers “including former rebel officials who are now in the Congolese army. The report warns, “(It) appears to have increased the need for fraudulent operators to seek or accept military assistance in their mineral smuggling operations” and suggests a rise in the smuggling of conflict minerals into Rwanda because Rwanda’s reported production is much higher than what industry analysts deem realistically possible.

Several groups, companies and attorneys “have urged the SEC to phase in the new rules over time to help make it easier to comply,” as well as “narrow the scope of the rule” so the corporation won’t have to “track trace amounts of minerals.” However, human rights groups oppose a “phase-in” period and state that the “SEC needs to follow the Dodd-Frank mandate and implement the rule without delay.” Since the rule is a legal requirement, the SEC can’t stray from its intent.

Amol Mehra, coordinator of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, said, “Businesses should be held accountable for human rights issues, and investors find these concerns to be material in that they, at the end of the day, affect companies’ image and bottom line. All companies need to do…is simply tell us what is in their products.”

The challenges facing efforts to remove conflict minerals from the global supply chains of major multinationals are significant but doing nothing is simply no longer an option—and that is a point that stakeholders from across the spectrum continue to agree upon.

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ICT helps advance humanitarian goals

January 24th, 2012
Post by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Technology has emerged as an integral element of humanitarian response efforts around the world in recent years—put to use in both emergency situations and in efforts to address chronic issues. Almost gone are the days when aid groups and disaster responders operating in hostile or remote environments had to wait days or weeks for information transfers that could save lives. Not only are ICT tools and the Internet changing how aid organizations and the public respond to crises, but they are also helping the global humanitarian community better predict and pre-plan accelerated response efforts.

The potential reach of technology is near limitless and can be applied to any issue. Around the world development experts and organizations are using technology to drive initiatives on education, health care and poverty reduction. The information and capacity that these efforts create feeds directly into the humanitarian community’s ability to manage crises.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme is employing electronic vouchers to fight malnutrition in Zimbabwe for HIV-positive patients and their families. The electronic food voucher, introduced by the WFP, and implemented by Zimbabwean authorities and NGOs, identifies malnourished patients and gives them vouchers they can use to purchase food at designated shops. Zimbabwe’s economic woes of the last decade have left many HIV/AIDS patients undergoing antiretroviral treatment unable to feed themselves and their families, and the program has helped around 570,000 Zimbabweans since it began.

WFP is also using technology more broadly, expanding the organization’s 2005 video game Food Force to fight against hunger by teaming up with Konami Digital. Released 30 November 2011, the game’s most recent version can be found on the social networking website Facebook in both English and Japanese.

Global positioning systems (GPS) provide early weather warnings for areas like Nepal to map health facilities and plan disaster response in the event of a major earthquake. Mobile operator Airtel in Bangladesh “has teamed up with the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods,” as well as three other organizations—Oxfam, CARE, and the Center for Global Change—providing fisherman at sea with the early weather warnings using GPS.

In India, scientists are developing a handheld, battery-powered device that can take a sample of urine, blood, or sputum, process it, and alert a health worker whether a feverish child has malaria, dengue or a bacterial infection. Projects such as these can help eliminate some of the logistical challenges with accessing care for impoverish or rural communities.

Text messaging is being used to raise awareness on human rights issues. The Burkina Faso Red Cross, for example, uses text messages to remind government officials, employers, traditional leaders, business owners and others about rights abuses associated with the “exploitation of domestic workers.”

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Geographic Information System (GIS) software is used to “map artisanal mining sites, transportation routes, and mineral trading points” as part of efforts to reform the mining sector. Security and human rights issues on the ground are also monitored using the software. The DRC has been the center of a global battle against the trade in “conflict minerals”—tin, tantalum, gold and others—that has been used to finance massive human rights abuses and bloody conflict.

A major component of how technology is being adapted for humanitarian purposes efforts is ways in which it can be used to streamline information rapidly and unify the efforts of various organizations and individuals.

When the crisis broke in Libya, humanitarian workers and decision-makers realized they didn’t have real time information regarding the events happening within the country. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) teamed up with the Ushahidi initiative, a project that ultimately set new standards to map crises and aid response plans through the use of social and traditional media information. The effort, which relied on 150 volunteers skilled on crisis mapping to manage data coming from within Libya, resulted in the LibyaCrisisMap.net.

“Given that the UN had virtually no access to the country, we now had situational awareness,” Andrej Verity, information management officer at OCHA in Geneva, said. “And, within 48 hours, we had 100-plus response activities collected and compiled – the same amount of data [that] took about four weeks in the Philippines, two weeks in Haiti, and two weeks in Pakistan to be made available.”

Technology has also changed the way caring members of the public around the world are able to help when disaster strikes. As massive natural disasters struck with little warning in 2010 and 2011, aid groups and people around the world turned to social media and other technological tools to help people in Haiti, Pakistan and Japan find missing relatives, and to identify emergency needs and raise funds for relief efforts. In Kenya, an initiative using mobile phones to facilitate cash transfer services—“Kenyans for Kenya”—raised over US $7 million during a period of drought that affected northern and eastern parts of the country.

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Netizens get viral over SOPA/PIPA

January 20th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Anyone surfing the World Wide Web this Wednesday couldn’t help but notice an unusual amount of black as websites across cyberspace blocked out their banners or went completely dark in protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). Some sites participated in the protest for a few hours, while others like Wikipedia for a full 24 hours. The effort brought together stakeholders from a variety of disciplines united in the desire to express concern over Internet freedoms. The effect was almost immediate.

In response to the protests, two of PIPA’s co-sponsors, Florida’s Marco Rubio (R) and Missouri’s Roy Blunt (R) have backed away from supporting the bill. Mr. Rubio posted on Facebook that he and his fellow Senators “heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill [PIPA] could have on access to the Internet.”

While each bill covers specific agendas, both bills focus on online piracy and illegal copies/downloads of film and music, as well as other media and software. If the bills were to pass, they would not only outlaw those sites containing the pirated content, but they would also outlaw any websites that link to information on how to access the outlawed sites.

PIPA, a bill that looked like it would easily pass on January 24, 2012 now may be in trouble due to the protests.

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia service, and WordPress, a blog service, were two of the many high-profile websites to block their content. Wikipedia’s English-language website left a note, stating: “Imagine a world without free knowledge . . . The US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.” Google, one of the world’s most popular search engines, placed a black box over its name for the US version of the site, but users could still access the search engine. The search engine also posted on its blog that the bills wouldn’t stop online piracy. Craigslist, an online marketplace, like many others, had a note up asking its visitors to contact representatives in Congress before accessing the main website. According to the US news website Politico, approximately 7,000 sites were blacked out by Wednesday morning.

At the end of the protest—midnight EST—Wikipedia said: “Thank you for protecting Wikipedia.”

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Hollywood’s key supporter of SOPA, “branded the protests as ‘irresponsible’ and a ’stunt’” on Wednesday. While no one protesting is pro-piracy, as some supporters of the bills have claimed, they are pro-freedom of speech, and when proposed bills such as SOPA and PIPA have the potential to infringe on that freedom, American citizens are going to speak up.

Technology has helped small and medium-sized businesses increase their productivity by 10 percent, and the U.S. Internet’s contribution to the GDP is larger than energy, agriculture, communication, mining, and utilities combined. Unfettered access to the Internet for hundreds of millions of Americans remains a vital asset to the world community and U.S. economic growth and job creation.

SOPA and PIPA, in enacted, could hinder the economic possibilities.

WordPress’ co-founder, Matt Mullenweg summed the whole situation up by saying, “The authors of the legislation don’t seem to really understand how the internet works.”

If they did, they could see the potential disaster and consequences of such legislation on America’s Internet freedoms.

Supporters of SOPA and PIPA describe the protests as an “abuse of power.”

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information,” Chris Dodd, former Connecticut Democratic Senator and now Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, said. Perhaps Mr. Dodd didn’t check that some of the websites protesting were still accessible. Mr. Dodd also claimed that the high-profile websites’ actions were “yet another gimmick.” The US Chamber of Commerce agrees, adding that any “claims against the legislation had been overstated.”

But the bills are out there for everyone to read, and quite a few have done just that, as well as analyzed and broken down the language.

Chris Heald, a writer for Mashable.com, is one of many who has studied the bills and explained them in an article posted on Wednesday.

“Implementing censorship protocols and giving the keys to the government is a scary, scary thing, and SOPA should be opposed simply based on this provision alone,” Mr. Heald said, referencing China’s Internet censorship and Iran’s Internet firewalls. “Any site that allows users to post content is ‘primarily designed for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables copyright violation.’ The site doesn’t have to be clearly designed for the purpose of copyright violation; it only has to provide functionality that can be used to enable copyright violation.

“This means that YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox and millions of other sites would be ‘Internet sites . . . dedicated to theft of U.S. property,’ under SOPA’s definition. Simply providing a feature that would make it possible for someone to commit copyright infringement or circumvention is enough to get your entire site branded as an infringing site.”

There are three major supporters of SOPA—the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And it looks as though “Hollywood has outspent Silicon Valley by about tenfold on lobbyists in the last two years.” In total, SOPA has the support of more than 400 businesses. But Wednesday’s blackout protests and the numerous calls to representatives and Senators, which caused many servers to crash, may result in further significant changes to that list.

GoDaddy had to pull their support of the bills because customers protested, and in two days, pulled over 37,000 domain names from the site, transferring them elsewhere.

Spain recently approved similar legislation, creating a government body with the power “to force Internet service providers to block sites” within ten days. Though Spain’s legislation is also supported by the media industries, it is also facing stiff criticism from Netizens.

Congress may still approve both SOPA and PIPA, but President Barack Obama has expressed concerns and may veto them. In a statement issued at the weekend, the White House’s official response was, “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet.”

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