In Iran it is reported that the government are building a national intranet that adheres to Islamic values and is isolated from the World Wide Web, in the UK the government is proposing a communications bill that will see an increase in monitoring of emails and social media by the police and intelligence agencies’.

Authoritarian states have long seen the freedom of the internet as a threat and have tried to restrict it, but recent develops suggest a move towards increased tracking and control of what the public do and see online across the world.

With companies’ interests lying in the commercial gains of data and governments’ in the ability to monitor populations, join us as we ask to whose hands internet governance should be entrusted.

Chaired by Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – an international freedom of expression non-governmental organisation. Previously she has worked at Chatham House, IPPR, the European Commission and most recently she was head of Global Public Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam and Senior Associate Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. Twitter: @IndexCensorship

With:

Birgitta Jónsdóttir MP, a member of the Icelandic Parliament for The Movement and chairperson of the International Modern Media Institution. She has worked as a volunteer for various organisations including WikiLeaks, Saving Iceland and Friends of Tibet in Iceland. Prior to becoming an MP she has been an activist, writer, first icelandic woman to work as web developer and publisher. Twitter: @birgittaj

Jacob Appelbaum, an accomplished photographer, software hacker and world traveler. He works as a developer for The Tor Project and trains interested parties globally on how to effectively use and contribute to the Tor network. He is a founding member of the hacklab Noisebridge in San Francisco where he indulges his interests in magnetics, cryptography and consensus based governance. He was a driving force in the team behind the creation of the Cold Boot Attacks; winning both the Pwnie for Most Innovative Research award and the Usenix Security best student paper award in 2008. Additionally, he was part of the MD5 Collisions Inc. team that created a rogue CA certificate by using a cluster of 200 PlayStations funded by the Swiss taxpayers. The “MD5 considered harmful today” research was awarded the best paper award at CRYPTO 2009. Twitter: @ioerror

Karl Kathuria, an independent media technology consultant, specialising in Internet distribution and streaming media. Prior to this, he spent over 10 years at the BBC, managing the distribution of World Service Internet content to a global audience. In this role, he faced the challenge of delivering news content into countries where censorship is prevalent. As a result of these efforts, he was invited to the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto to work with the Citizen Lab team in 2011 on an independent research project. During this period, he studied the effects of the BBC’s content distribution strategies in China and Iran, and made recommendations for the propagation of circumvention software into these markets. His current projects include working with Psiphon Inc., the Canadian provider of network software aimed at preserving security, privacy, and access to content that may otherwise be blocked.

Dr Ian Brown, associate Director at the Cyber Security Centre and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Internet Institute (OII). His work focuses on public policy issues around information and the Internet, particularly privacy, copyright and e-democracy. He also works in the more technical fields of information security, networking and healthcare informatics. He has consulted for the US Department of Homeland Security, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Allianz, McAfee, BT, the BBC, the European Commission, the Cabinet Office, Ofcom, the National Audit Office and the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Social media. Free speech. Democracy. These were the buzzwords of 2011, where international movements like the Arab Spring were said to have been fuelled by the power to communicate with one another without hindrance. 

The year of unrest has put the spotlight on the role of the internet and social media in challenging power elites and their capacity to control what the outside world sees. But while the West praises ‘pro-democracy’ movements in Arab countries and their use of social media, Westerners face greater surveillance in the name of security, including threats of increased controls in the wake of the London riots. 

“We’re becoming neighbours with each other,” said Timothy Garton Ash, director of the Free Speech Debate, a multi-lingual online platform for discussing freedom of expression which was launched in January 2012:

“The old ways of thinking about free speech – when in Rome, do as the Romans do – breaks down. But China and Iran do try to reassert their control over the internet, over the control of ideas." 

“We have to have a global conversation about what should be the norms for freedom of expression.”

He was joined by Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology at The Open University and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change; Khaled Fahmy, professor and chair of the American University in Cairo’s Department of History; Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of freedom of expression NGO Index on Censorship; to discuss what the historian and commentator has set out as the first principle of free speech: That all human beings must be free and able to express themselves, and to receive and impart information and ideas, regardless of frontiers: 

“In this brave new world, private powers are at least as important as public powers. Facebook as a country would be the third largest country in the world. What Google does is more important than what Germany does.

“But they set rules without any democratic process. The internet also allows for new self-governing communities” said Garton Ash.

The highly academic debate – which some members of the audience dubbed “far too academic” and “Western” to be applied in actuality across the world – explored the pros and cons of Garton Ash’s ideal, outlined in ten draft principles supposed to be the ‘rules of thumb’ of free speech.

But Fahmy emphasised that the Egyptian revolution had “open access to information” at its core:

“It definitely isn’t a revolution of the poor and hungry – that might be just one dimension,” he said. “The need to inform was central in the revolution. We are in the middle of it.”

“It is not Islamists that pose the most serious threats to freedom of information. It is the military and all that is attached to it. It is the military we are fighting and the national security we are trying to challenge.” 

But the ideals of equality and freedom of expression were brought into question by Gillespie, whose research suggested that structures of inequality found in reality are replicated in the media:

“Are we really all neighbours? The structure of inequalities that exist in the world are replicated and intensified online. It is important to think about who is talking and who, most importantly, is listening.”

Another blow to Garton Ash’s project was dealt by Hughes, who said that a global code as is outlined in the Free Speech Debate project could open up freedom of expression to government interference and top down control – which would undermine the idea completely:

“Do we need a global code? No, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Codes open up government interference and topdown control. It can lead to self-censorship.”

“But we still need to fight for freedom of expression,” she added. “Let’s have a conversation but not a code.”

Diverse voices explored and expressed the pros and cons of working towards such an ideal – and so in a sense, demonstrated Garton Ash’s project in action.

“We have to move from purely western universalism to a more universal universalism,” said Garton Ash:

“The only way to do that is to put your own propositions on the table and be genuinely open to what someone in China, or Egypt, would say in response.”

In a year of unrest that began with the Arab spring and spread to Russia and the Ukraine, the spotlight has been on the role of the internet and social media in challenging power elites and their capacity to control what the outside world sees.

But as with China, the use of social media also raised questions about the relationship between the big global companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google with not only the activists who used them, but also with the regimes they were challenging.

We saw too that decisions made in the US and Europe about mobile phone security levels and government access to social media sites had consequences for those who were tracked down and imprisoned not only in Egypt but also in Iran.

As westerners face greater surveillance in the name of security, including threats of increased controls in the wake of the August 2011 riots, we will be joined by Timothy Garton Ash and a respected panel of experts to discuss what the historian and commentator has set out as the first principle of free speech: That all human beings must be free and able to express themselves, and to receive and impart information and ideas, regardless of frontiers.

Is it time to create a new global code that governs freedom of speech? We will be discussing this vital issue and examining what such a code would include.

Chaired by Sina Motalebi, editor of Persian Online and Interactive at the BBC World Service. He has worked for BBC since 2004 in various capacities including an online editor and director of Iran projects for World Service Trust (now known as Global Media Action), editor of interactivity and Head of Output on BBC Persian TV.

With:

Timothy Garton Ash, the director of Free Speech Debate, a multi-lingual online platform for discussing freedom of expression. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and he writes a weekly column in the Guardian.

Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology at The Open University and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change. She researches transnationalism and diaspora cultures comparatively and historically. Recent projects include an exploration of the new politics of security via a collaborative ethnography of transnational news cultures in eight UK cities, a national survey with the BBC on the changing face of British humour and a large-scale study of the BBC World Service as a multi-diasporic institution. She was recently awarded an AHRC Public Policy Fellowship to assess the potential of social media for opening up transnational political debate, specifically in relation to the BBC Arabic Services.

Khaled Fahmy, professor and chair of American University in Cairo’s Department of History. He is author of several publications including Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali Pasha, His Army and the Founding of Modern Egypt and The Body and Modernity: Essays in the History of Medicine and Law in Modern Egypt.

Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – an international freedom of expression non-governmental organisation. She is a commentator on European and international affairs and has worked at Chatham House and written for Friends of Europe and the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.  She contributes to international and European media including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post and others.

By Thomas Lowe

International disagreement on the aims of the Iranian government was well represented on the discussion’s panel. Does Iran seek regional hegemony? Are its motivations aggressive or defensive? And the pointed question at the heart of the debate – what will Israel do next?

Martin Fletcher, associate editor of The Times took the reigns.

Author and contributor to a number of leading newspapers, Christopher de Bellaigue says we need a little more empathy.

“We wilfully misunderstood Iran then and we are in the process of wilfully misunderstanding Iran now. We have to make that leap of imagination – put ourselves in the shoes of our opponents… If we say that they are bent on Israel’s destruction then frankly I’m not convinced. If we think that they want to shore up their authority – I find that much more convincing.”

Ran Gidor of the Israeli embassy in London accepts that if Iran developed a nuclear weapon it would be unlikely to drop it on Israel tomorrow. His immediate concerns are different.

“A nuclear Iran would be better placed to destabilise the entire region. It’s not about hegemony… It’s putting together the trajectory of Iranian behaviour since 1979 plus give the Ayatollah weapons of mass destruction… the formula is a catastrophic one.”

In this Gidor found a sympathetic, if nuanced, ear. Former Italian Ambassador to Iran, Roberto Toscano seeks the middle ground. How should Israeli fears that Iran would be able to exert its influence differently with a nuclear weapon be addressed?

“Iranian regional hegemony is not acceptable but Iranian exclusion is not possible. Can you have some politically enlightened diplomatic tool to exclude hegemony and to allow for inclusion? This is the name of the game.”

And Iranian economic exclusion, says Iranian-American writer Azadeh Moaveni is allowing the government to push the narrative that Iran is being humbled by the West.

“I think that the actual reality of sanctions is being felt so acutely in almost every Iranian’s daily life and… that resentment is now being squarely directed at the West… there’s a feeling that Iran is being persecuted in a way."

One member of the audience asked a simple question completely passed over in the first half of the discussion: Would a strike against Iran be legal anyway? Yes, says Gidor.

“According to the acceptable definitions of self-defence under international law that would include, sometime a pre-emptive strike if and when the threat were considered to be imminent… This is why familiarising ourselves with the technicalities is so important… to determine first of all how imminent is the threat and secondly what should be done about it.”

Finally, and unsurprisingly, the elephant-in-the-room question of Israel’s own weapons capacity would not budge.

Ran Gidor I’m sure you don’t want me to talk about Israeli’s WMD capability tonight because I want to keep my pension #FCBBCA

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 16, 2012

Another blog post about this event written by Richard Nield can be found here.

Recent months have seen increased tension between Iran, its neighbours and the West.

Israel’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, the storming of the UK embassy in Tehran and the closure of the Tehran embassy have all played a part in ratcheting up tensions across the region.

Sanctions on the trade of its oil provoked warnings from Iran that they will close vital access to the strait of Hormuz.

As President Barack Obama warned against the “loose talk of war” Iran’s political elite is also focused on internal power struggles between the spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Join us as we bring together a prominent panel to discuss the growing tensions between Iran, its neighbours and the West, the impact of the power struggles at the heart of government and what role the pro-democracy movement still might play in the country’s future.

Chaired by Martin Fletcher, associate editor and former foreign editor of The Times.

With:

Ran Gidor, the Minister-Counsellor for Political Affairs at the Embassy of Israel in London. Prior to this he worked as the Head of the UK & Ireland Desk at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. From 2000 to 2003 he served as the Cultural & Academic Attaché at the Embassy of Israel in Beijing, China. From 1997 to 2000, he served as the deputy Ambassador at the Embassy of Israel in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Azadeh Moaveni, Iranian-American writer, journalist and former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine. She is author of Lipstick Jihad and co-author, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening.

Roberto Toscano, Italian Ambassador to Iran for five years (2003-2008). As a career diplomat, he has served in a number of other posts (India, Chile, USSR, Spain, United States, as well as at Italy’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations at Geneva). He is the author of books and articles on human rights, peacekeeping, conflict prevention, ethics and international relations.

Christopher de Bellaigue, a leading expert on modern Iran. Between 1996 and 2007, he lived and worked as a journalist in south Asia and the Middle East, writing for The Economist, the Financial Times, the Independent and the New York Review of Books. He is author of many books including most recently Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup.

Picture credit: Daniella Zalcman

By Emily Wight 

Almost a year since the uprising began inSyria, 7000 people are estimated to have died at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The death this week of the revered journalist Marie Colvin – a founding member of the Frontline Club – has intensified the media spotlight on what has become a humanitarian crisis.

A panel of experts on the situation came to the Frontline Club on Friday for a #FCBBCA event exploring possible solutions to the situation.

Chaired by BBC Arabic presenter Rasha Qandeel, Crisis in Syria – what can be done? began with a tribute to Marie Colvin before Qandeel began the discussion.

The panel was nothing if not balanced. British-Iranian journalist Ramita Navai, a reporter for Channel 4’s documentary series Unreported World, focussed on the plight of Syrians; meanwhile Ammar Waqqaf, a member of the Syrian Social Club – which strives for regime reform rather than regime change – claimed that the killing of army members by rebels is commonplace.

Waqqaf also referred to a poll – the source of which he couldn’t say – showing that the majority of Syrians supported Assad. Navai found this hard to believe, recalling her time undercover with members of the opposition movement in October, when they found themselves under siege (“You couldn’t walk down the road to get bread”, she said).

Navai dismissed any speculation that the rebels weren’t simply ordinary people whose human rights had been trampled on by an oppressive regime:

“Who are the rebels? Who is the Free Syrian Army? They’ve taken to arming themselves to protect themselves and their families – it’s a natural progression. The activists are not terrorists.”

Navai also insisted that Assad has a stronger military than Gadaffi ever had inLibya.

Debate moved on to what can be done to stop further bloodshed. Scores of refugees have fled across the border toTurkey, but Qandeel spoke of latest BBC reports that the Syrian government has now lined their borders with landmines to kill anyone attempting to leave the country.

Should, then, the international community intervene? If so, how?

Dr Mouna Ghanem is a gender expert and vice-president of the political movement Building theSyrianState, which aims to unite Syrians with a variety of ideologies in forming a democratic and egalitarian state. She still has faith in diplomacy, saying:

“Only through international consensus among other countries – this is the only way for a safe exit strategy. We can stop the killing by creating an international consensus amongRussiaandChina.”

Others on the panel as well as audience members agreed that this is looking less and less likely.

The biggest controversy of the evening, however, came after Malik Al-Abdeh, Chief Editor of the Syrian opposition Barada TV, pointed towards the sectarian issue as the “elephant in the room”. The Syrian regime is dominated by Alawite Shiites; Al-bdeh claimed that “Sunni Arabs feel that the state doesn’t represent them.”

But Dr Ghanem insisted the situation was simply a question of pro- versus anti-Assad. Audience members spoke up; many had personal ties to theMiddle Eastand could shed light on their experiences. All were passionate about the humanitarian crisis unravelling in the country and hopeful that, somehow, it must come to an end.

Recent months have seen a rise in tension between Iran and the West; the storming of the UK embassy in Tehran in November led William Hague to order the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from the UK and the closure of the embassy in Tehran.

The latest flashpoint has been the strait of Hormuz, the narrowest point in the Gulf, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes. Iran has warned that if sanctions on the trade in Iranian oil come into effect they could respond by closing the strait. Recent Iranian and Israeli military activity in the region has only increased these tensions.

Internally 2011 saw ncreased tensions in the country’s political elite focusing on a power struggle between the spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There was a continued crackdown on dissidents, with a rise in arrests and executions and the suggestion that Iran might follow North Korea in creating a domestic intranet that could eventually close off the internet to millions of Iranians.

Join us at the Royal Institution of Great Britain where we will be discussing the growing tensions between Iran and the West, the impact of the power struggles at the heart of government and looking at the future of the pro-democracy Green Movement.

Picture credit: Daniella Zalcman

For the first #FCBBCA event of 2012 we will be marking one year since the beginning of what has become known as the "Arab Spring" by bringing together some of the leading digital activists and bloggers across the region.

For this special event we will be asking bloggers and digital activists to select a panel that they believe are the key voices of the uprisings across the Arab region.

Further details of this remarkable event will be available in December.

The following week we will be launching a series of discussions, screenings and workshops examining the risks faced by journalists around the world. 

The award-winning, genre-bending documentary filmmaker Mads Brügger launches our new masterclass series, and Tweets from Tahrir is the first of our Screenings from the Frontline with Al Jazeera.

February’s #FCBBCA will bring together a distinguished panel to discuss Iran’s internal power struggle and its turbulent relationship with the West. 

We will also be examining the rebuilding of Libya and Fawzia Koofi will be discussing why she wants to become President of Afghanistan, while Matt Frei will be joining us to look back on his career.

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.

ALL EVENTS ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The uprisings that shook the Middle East this year have been a focus of relentless debate. ‘Revolutionary Arab women’ – activists, bloggers and academics – took to the streets and fought both for their country and their rights, capturing the western media’s attention and begging the question ‘what does the future hold for these women of the Arab Spring?’ 

Last night’s Frontline Club event, #FCBBCA: Women of the revolution, in association with BBC Arabic, explored the roles women played in the revolutions and tried to shed light on what lies in store for them.

The panel consisted of three completely different women, united by their desire for change: Mervat Mhani, member of Libyan NGO The Free Generation Movement; Maryam Alkhawaja, Bahraini human rights activist and head of foreign relations at the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights; and Sussan Tahmasebi, a women’s rights and civil society activist from Iran, and founding member of the One Million Signatures Campaign.

The debate was chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News’ International Editor. Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkul Karman, Yemeni journalist and founder of Women Journalists Without Chains, was unable to attend the event. 

Although each of the panellist’s contributions to the uprisings were radically different, they were all adamant that women had a key role to play in the future of the Middle East, and were not going to stand back now.

Mhani, a Libyan mother of two who was dubbed an ‘accidental activist’ by Hilsum, described her experiences of wreaking civil disorder, which eventually led to her arrest by Gaddafi’s security forces. Sincere and softly spoken, she apologised to the audience for her nervousness while addressing them:

“I’ve faced Gaddafi’s brigades and interrogation, but this is a lot more difficult,”she joked. 

But despite her shy demeanour, her story demonstrated what a fierce fighter she is.

“Before the revolution I lived a normal life," she said. "When there were uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, I was following very closely. We were wondering whether it would happen in Libya. We had so much fear in us that we didn’t think it was going to happen – I never believed it would.”

But when the Libyan people began to mobilise on social networking sites to protest against the 42 year-long oppressive regime of Muammar Gaddafi, Mhani, like many others, grasped the opportunity to speak out: 

“No Libyan wanted to stay home. We didn’t want to stand for the killing, or the murders, or the regime any more.

“It was very difficult. They started shooting at protesters in Tripoli – there was indiscriminate killing. Protesting wasn’t an option any more – going out was basically suicide.”

The crackdown on protesters forced her and her family to think of alternative, nonviolent ways to do their bit for their country – from her brother returning to Libya from living in Cardiff and starting up The Free Generation Movement – an NGO working towards the development and progression of Libyan society – to committing acts of civil disobedience, and being sure that the world was aware of Gaddafi’s atrocities.

“I hung flags for independence, smuggled reporters from the Rixos hotel, and talked to the international community,”she said.

“The internet was cut, so my brothers and cousins stole a satellite from a government building and tweeted out to the rest of the world. We tried our best – we never carried guns, we were never armed.”

But she was arrested by Gaddafi’s security forces after she was interviewed by Reuters and BBC journalists .

“Someone must have seen the footage and could determine where our location was. Gaddafi’s platoons came to my parents’ house, stormed in, and turned it upside down," she said. “I was one of the lucky ones – I was released at midnight the same day. A lot of people we know just disappeared.”

Despite the relentless threats and attacks on her and her family – her 19 year old cousin was killed by Gaddafi’s forces in August – she remained determined to fight.

She knows there is a difficult road ahead, but Mhani is optimistic about the future of Libya and the role women have to play in it.

“With the NTC [National Transitional Council] having one woman, it’s still early days, I believe. But we’re not going to stand back and not take a role – no way.”

“We tried to do our best, and here we are – and thank God, we’re free.”