How Activists in the West Can Help the Middle East Communicate Securely
The global organization Access has helped draft a new document designed to educate citizens in the Middle East and North Africa about how to communicate online and via mobile devices, while still protecting their identity.
As civil unrest continues to sweep across the Middle East and North Africa, citizens are turning to social media and the Internet to communicate, assemble and rally support. But this is riskier than it may seem, and has landed users in jail.
Access, which bills itself as a “new global movement for digital freedom,” wants to help educate citizens in the Middle East and North Africa about the realities and risks involved with online communication. We spoke with Brett Solomon, executive director at Access, about the new document and the organization’s goals.
The Mission: Educate
“Citizens are evolving into activists,” says Solomon. Technology is driving that evolution, but has “a double edge. It offers extreme freedom for communication amongst activists, but it is also an extremely powerful tool for oppressors. Governments are being forced to recognize the extraordinary democratic power of new technologies and the threat their existence has on the leadership.”
Because of this growing recognition, Solomon says that “governments are increasing resources dedicated to online censorship and security.” For citizens turned activists, understanding this reality becomes vital.
“In the heightened moments of political crisis, the focus is on the goal instead of the process,” says Solomon. That means activists become more focused on getting the message and living in the moment rather than taking risks into account. Access aims to keep the process intact even at these heightened moments.
A Guide for Us All
The relative lack of anonymity and privacy online — be it on public Wi-Fi networks or social networks — is starting to resonate with regular users. Firesheep was a wake-up call for lots of western Internet users. It underscored just how easy it can be for someone to gain access to private information.
This recognition has led to more education about best practices in keeping communications more secure and more private online. Sites including Twitter, Facebook and Google have introduced options to let users login via HTTPS. This encrypts the data stream and can protect what interlopers are able to access.
The guide that Access helped put together is available in both English and Arabic, and the organization has received offers to translate it into eight other languages. The target audience may be in the Middle East and North Africa, but the document is also a good primer for general web users who want the most secure experience.
I asked Solomon about the risks involved in helping to spread the document. While Access and its contributors took great pains to make sure the document is educational and apolitical — it is not written with the stated goal of furthering a revolutionary ideology — dictators are hardly going to be pleased that this sort of education is getting out.
Solomon says that he doesn’t know of any place where mere possession of such a document is a punishable offense. Of course, that doesn’t mean possessing it is necessarily a good idea. So Access is using social media, mirrors and other back channels to disseminate the document to as many people as possible.
The Documents
Access.org has the English and Arabic versions of the documents hosted on its site and on other mirrors across the web. We’re going to do our part by embedding both versions of the PDF below.