Weibo censorship in the Chen Guangcheng case

Alice Xin Liu

The twists and turns of the fate of blind lawyer and dissident Chen Guangcheng has had much of China’s online community in its thrall.

wo images featuring blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng are seen during a protest in front of the Chinese central government's liaison in Hong Kong (AP/Vincent Yu))

On April 27 Chen arrived in the US embassy from his native Shandong, where he had escaped from house arrest.  Despite news of the event being censored, Chinese internet users quickly became aware of his situation. This was especially true on Weibo – the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. To bypass the censors, netizens used nicknames concocted for Chen Guangcheng, including “Shawshank” and “Sunglasses.” But even these terms were soon blocked.

On May 2 things took a dramatic turn when he left the embassy under the guidance of U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke to seek medical treatment at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital. It was said that he had left of “his own volition”.

Charles Custer, who runs blog site ChinaGeeks, explored in the post “Sina’s Softer Censorhip” how “on your own volition” had become a online meme by that evening. In the post, he says that instead of blocking the term, Sina Weibo simply stopped indexing any new posts that used the term. Custer said the maneuver created what he calls “an artificial silence”, where users may think no one is talking about the issue even though there were many posts discussing the matter.

The China Media Project, a media monitoring website set up by Hong Kong University, covered government editorials that ran in Beijing Daily, a State-owned paper that condemned the Chen Guangcheng case. In the editorials, Gary Locke was especially targeted.

David Bandurski, the website’s editor, recently wrote:

“That editorial, which accused U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke of playing “little tricks”, said that blind activist Chen Guangcheng represented not ordinary Chinese but only his “backstage boss, namely the interests of the hostile forces of the West.” It said Chen had become “a tool and pawn by which politicians in the United States blacken China.”

Bandurski tells VOA “The Beijing editorials last week were what I would characterize as a monumental failure. They were panned on Chinese social media as heavy-handed and backwards, until things escalated to the point that Beijing Daily itself became a restricted term on Sina Weibo.”

Blocking on Weibo has been systematic for the Chen Guangcheng case. For example, the term “Chaoyang Hospital” is now an unusable term. When you search for it, Weibo tells you that “according to the relevant regulations, search results cannot be shown.” The same goes for “CGC,” “blind man” and “Linyi”, the town where Chen Guangcheng had been under house arrest.

Bandurski says “China has been in the midst of a progressive tightening of media controls since the February [of] this year. One catalyzing incident, of course, was the Wang Lijun incident in early February, which put party infighting in the spotlight just as the leadership was negotiating the sensitive issue of succession ahead of the 18th party congress later this year.”

Some bloggers attitudes remain similarly pessimistic. “I don’t think much has changed,” said well-known Chinese blogger Michael Anti. “Reports [on sensitive issues] weren’t allowed before, and they’re not allowed now.”

By the way, if you’re interested, you can find a list of blocked terms related to Chen Guangcheng here. But rest assured, this list will only continue to grow.

Examining the Obama Administration’s Proposed Privacy Bill of Rights

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

There aren’t many things the world’s three largest web browsers – Microsoft’s Explorer, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox – can agree on. This week saw the unveiling of one of them.

The Obama administration is putting forward a new set of Internet privacy “principles” that it says balance privacy protection with economic growth. The proposal, dubbed a “Privacy Bill of Rights” by the White House, is earning plaudits from major players in the Internet industry, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, for choosing voluntary guidelines over strict regulation. Not surprisingly, some privacy advocates are less than convinced.

“Privacy and trust online has never been more important to both businesses and consumers as it is now,” said Secretary of Commerce John Bryson at a Thursday news conference. Bryson notes that 2011 online retail sales in the United States alone neared $200 billion – an economic engine the White House is eager to keep revving. To that end, government and industry officials crafted a voluntary set of guidelines which industry leaders like Mozilla and Google say they will agree to follow.

The 60+ page white paper spells out seven principles aimed at protecting web users’ online privacy, starting with the first principle of Individual Control. “Companies should offer consumers clear and simple choices,” reads the White House white paper. “Companies should offer consumers means to withdraw or limit consent that are as accessible and easily used as the methods for granting consent in the first place.”

The other principles are a mix of consumer-oriented, such as “#2 Transparency,” and business-minded, such as “#3 Respect for Context,” meaning that individuals browsing online should be expected to understand that firms such as Google and others make money through targeted online advertising, and the only thing that can generate that is private information.

The proposal is little more than a statement of values. Rather than take a regulatory approach, requiring Congressional action, the White House has created a voluntary framework where individuals take responsibility for safeguarding their privacy while the industry will police itself against infractions. Gene Sperling, director of the White House economic council, calls it a “we can’t wait” approach; that is, waiting for the lengthy, contentious congressional hearings needed to craft regulations. It sounds good on paper, but in practice some worry these principles are unenforceable, precisely because they’re voluntary.

A central initiative of this proposal is what is called a “Do Not Track” or DNT system. In essence, large Internet firms such as Yahoo or Google collect and store a great deal of data on individuals who use its services. That information is used to tailor online ads for specific services or offerings the firms believe consumers will be more likely to click on. And this is all accomplished by placing bits of code – called tracking cookies – on user’s web browsers.

In announcing their support of the proposal, the large Internet firms and the Digital Advertising Alliance, or DAA, say they will soon voluntarily begin offering users a “Do Not Track” option in the form of a button on their browsers or their web pages. Individuals concerned about information being collected on them can simply click the button, and the firms won’t track a user’s browsing history or personal data. Some firms, such as Mozilla, already provide a Do Not Track option; others say they soon will.

“The White House is arguing that commercial and consumer interests are aligned here,” says Justin Bookman, director of Consumer Privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Bookman calls the proposal a positive development, but says privacy rights groups like his argue that to be meaningful, a voluntary framework needs to be backed up by law:

“To the White House’s credit, the new version of the report does call for a law. But they also recognize that 2012 is going to be a difficult year to get anything passed, so they’re going to use the bully pulpit to get industry to come to the table to agree to negotiate binding rules with regulators and consumer groups.”

The White House’s Gene Sperling agrees that laws to ensure privacy are “appropriate, needed and fitting.” But until those laws can be created, the new “Bill of Rights” moves web users closer to the end goal of protecting their privacy.

Critics remain: David Gerwitz, writing for ZDNet this week, calls the proposal more of a public relations ploy than an actual solution:

“I’m far less concerned if Google knows I went to yet another muscle car web site than I am that my doctor’s office insists on keeping copies of my drivers’ license in a manila folder along with an image of my credit card, my social security number, my home address, my various phone numbers, and my health records.”

Vietnam Cracks Down On The Internet And Free Expression

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Dieu Cay knows the risks and rewards of being a blogger in Vietnam. On the risk side, he’s been tossed in and out of prison cells over the last five years, today finding himself detained once more.

His reward? He’s still among the most popular online figures in his nation.

‘Điếu cày‘ is a pen name meaning “peasant’s water pipe” in Vietnamese. The real person is Nguyen Van Hai, and he started blogging in 2007, just about the moment the Internet began spreading rapidly across the country. Unhappy about China’s policies in Tibet and the Spratly Islands, Nguyen started using his blog (now no longer viewable) to organize protests of the Beijing Olympics torch relay.

“BlogDieuCay” began quietly, but soon drew a lot of attention. Other Vietnamese citizens, unhappy with various Chinese policies, also began protesting the torch relay. Still others began speaking out online, inspired to start writing about Vietnam’s religious discrimination, land rights issues, or general corruption. In just a few months Nguyen was joined by fellow bloggers ‘AnhBa SG‘ (real name Phan Thanh Hai)  and former Communist Party member Ta Phong Tan to start the “Club for Free Journalists.” Weekly viewership of their blogs skyrocketed.

That’s when authorities stepped in. In late April 2009, Nguyen was arrested on tax fraud, a charge many considered trumped up. (Phan and Ta were also arrested on unrelated crimes.) He was subsequently released and began blogging again, only to be repeatedly harassed by police. In October 2010 he was again detained by police, and has not been seen by anyone since. Officially, he’s charged with violating Article 88: “Conducting Propaganda Against the State.” Unofficially, many more call it simply “Blogging While Vietnamese.”

“Abusing Democratic Freedoms”

Nguyen isn’t alone. In just the last few months, as many as nine journalists and 33 bloggers have been jailed in what has become Vietnam’s largest ever crackdown on free speech online.

“It’s bad…it’s very bad,” says U.S. Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia. “The American ambassador (there) is a failure, the American embassy is no longer an island of freedom,” says an unsparing Wolf, condemning what he sees as an Obama administration that’s weak on human rights and freedom issues. “This administration has not done a very good job of speaking out,” says the long time rights advocate, “so these countries don’t believe that the Obama administration cares about these issues, and they feel they can do whatever they want.”

Former Communist Party member Ta Phong Tan, in better days

Others see a different reason for the crackdown: a government motivated less by opportunism and more by fear.

“The government is threatened by the increasing use of the Internet by Vietnamese citizens,” says Human Rights Watch’s Phil Robertson.  “With the expansion of the Vietnamese language Internet, their ability to control what people are reading and seeing has definitely diminished.”

Whatever the reason, there’s no doubting that Vietnamese are moving online in droves. In 2000, less than one percent of Vietnam’s population had access to the web. Ten years later, that number had bolted to 27 percent, and it’s likely higher today. Young Vietnamese crowd into Internet cafes and snatch up the latest smart phones (over 111 million mobile phones are registered in a nation with a population of 86 million). All those eyeballs online make for a declining consumption of state-controlled newspapers and broadcasts, and that, says Robertson, has Hanoi nervous:

“When you roll in what has happened in the Arab world, that has caused a great deal of concern by the Vietnamese government. They’re worried if they don’t try to correct the problem, try to control what is going out and control some of the more prominent bloggers or people sharing information, that this situation may somehow get out of control.  That’s the core of the increasing crackdown we see by the government trying to go after the more prominent people making their views known, and harassing bloggers and harassing activists; not only trying to firewall their blogs or websites, but also the more traditional harassment: police going by, inviting people out to coffees or “chats,” going in and confiscating computers or cutting people off from the Internet by terminating their phone service.”

Nervous or not, Vietnamese authorities have clearly dropped the hammer recently on the nation’s most prominent bloggers and online activists. In addition to those detained, countless more are being monitored, forced offline or have had their computers seized.

The state has a grab bag of statutes that it can charge bloggers with violating. Most popular is Article 88, but there are many others, including Article 79 – “Subversion of the People’s Administration” – or the ironically termed Article 258:  “Abusing Democratic Freedoms to Infringe the Interests of the State.” Whatever allegation is used, the punishments are tough: prison sentences of five to eight years.

“Playing an Easy and Hard Game.”

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 32 years old, is a mother in the central coastal city of Nha Trang. She was concerned about a controversial bauxite mining project nearby, and the Chinese partner on the project Chinalco. So in 2009 she began blogging about it, sharing news items or rumors she’d heard, her objections to the project, and what others were saying about similar projects.

Nguyen knew the dangers of blogging in Vietnam, and so adopted the pen name “Me Nam” – or “Mother Mushroom” in Vietnamese. People signed an online petition, and she printed shirts reading “Stop Bauxite – No China – Keep the country safe and clean.” Her blog became a smash success. That is, until the night of September 2, 2009, when 15 police agents smashed through her door and took her under arrest.

“The police arrested and kept  me at prison for 10 days,” Nguyen tells VOA in an email interview. “Their reason for my temporary imprison(ment) is ‘abusing democratic  freedom infringe upon national benefits.’”

After 10 days and no charges filed, Nguyen was released, but warned about continuing her blog. Despite that, she kept writing – posting her discontents with the government and its land policies. Since then she’s had police stationed outside her home, her landlord and employer have been pressured to fire her, she’s seen her family and friends harassed, and spent more time in jail.

Mother Mushroom says she, too, has noticed a marked increase in the level of harassment directed at her and her online colleagues. “Beside Dieu Cay and AnhBa SG, many young Catholic bloggers  are still in jail,” she writes.

“I think that they are warning the others have to be careful when using blog to speak out the idea about the Communist Party’s policy. Being a Vietnamese blogger, it looks like playing an easy and hard game. It will be fine if you just write about the daily simple life. However, you should be arrested at any time if you step over the ‘sensitive areas.’ I still keep writing because it made me feel free in my mind, at least. And the most important thing, we do not feel human if we don’t have the right to speak our mind.”

Nguyen is free at the moment, but acknowledges, amid the current crackdown, that she might be next to be imprisoned. Asked why “Mother Mushroom” keeps writing, she writes simply “Who will speak if you don’t?”

Fighting a Losing Battle?

“Clearly the activists recognize that they’re pushing the edge and they’re potentially facing long prison terms if they push too hard,” says Human Rights Watch’s Phil Robertson:

“But when you talk to them, they’ll say very clearly ‘Look, I’ve done nothing wrong. This is my right to speak out.’ And in fact, they’re right. Vietnam has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which clearly contains an Article 19 guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression. So by saying ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ they’re not backing off on this, and the government is just forced to continue to tilt after these activists, to chase them and harass them, and ultimately is continuing to imprison them.”

Early in her term at the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called freedom of online expression a basic human right, and pledged the Obama administration would do everything possible to lift the new “digital Iron Curtain” that was falling on various nations around the world. But critics say that since then, little has been done to help, while the situation in countries like Vietnam has grown only worse.

“In the old days…everyone was singing from the same page, and that’s that we were going to advocate for human rights and religious freedom around the world no matter where it would be,” laments Congressman Wolf. “That’s really what has to be done now, but that’s the exact opposite of what’s being done today.”

With all the other foreign policy issues at stake in the U.S. presidential election this year, online freedom of speech and the persecution of Vietnamese bloggers isn’t likely to rate very high. But that’s not to say there isn’t hope.

Columbia University professor Anne Nelson recently traveled to Vietnam, and wrote of her impressions:

“We can’t underestimate the suffering — to say nothing of the nuisance — inflicted by Vietnam’s cyber-cop crackdowns. But at the same time, it appears they’re fighting a losing battle. Vietnam’s media audience is moving online rapidly, partly because they are constantly learning new techniques for outmaneuvering the authorities — and partly because the Communist Party’s traditional news media have failed to hold on to their audience and advertising base.”

As in neighboring China, Vietnam is seeking to have it both ways: expanding access to the web and wiring the nation for the future while limiting what its citizens can do and say online. It’s a tricky balance, and one technology is constantly shifting.

In the meantime, somewhere in Vietnam, Dieu Cay sits in a prison cell, awaiting his fate.

What The Search Engine Giant Knows About You

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Perhaps they should have expected this. Years ago, the founders of Google adopted as their semi-official motto the phrase “Don’t Be Evil.” And that, for Google’s critics, has been the gift that keeps on giving.

Every time Google announces something different -unveiling Google+, tweaking its search algorithms, quietly adding location tracking on Android phones – writers sharpen their knives and roll out the “evil” motto.

“Maybe it’s time for Google to rethink its ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto,” wrote the Washington Post‘s Joshua Topolsky this week. “Google Inc. is evil,” began Matt Hartley in Thursday’s Financial Post; “or maybe it isn’t.” We could go on, but you get the idea.

What spurred this most recent flurry of “evil” headlines?  A sweeping series of privacy changes that Google is soon putting into place, changes that will potentially affect millions of users.

“Our new policy covers multiple products and features,” begins Google’s announcement on its “Policies” page, “reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.”

In simplest terms, starting March 1, Google will begin combining all the personal and private information it collects on individual users across its many products into one data set. And that data set will personally tailor search responses and customize any Google product into an individual “experience.”

Let’s take that apart a bit.

Staying Inside The Googleverse

Google has dozens of products that each collect personal data on users. Its famous search engine, for example, puts tracking cookies on your computer (or phone or tablet) that allows it to remember all the searches you’ve conducted in the past, and shape new queries based on that history. That means if you’ve searched for restaurants in London recently, new search terms are more likely to be steered first toward London even before you hit enter, through Google’s “Instant” predictive search function.

Its YouTube service similarly tracks videos watched, while Gmail stores hundreds (if not more) of names and addresses of people you’ve written to. Google Docs holds documents, some of them possibly very private, in one lockbox, while Google Calendar keeps your scheduled appointments in another, recording where and with whom. And Google+,  its social network challenge to Facebook, holds information not just on you and your likes, but for all your friends as well.

Separately, all these applications potentially hold gigabytes of data on any one user.Together, Google will have intimate profiles of users that it says will give users a seamless experience across all of Google. Search for “Tom’s Restaurant” and it may remind you of your last appointment with Dr. Tom Scrapebone, offer a review of a local eatery your friend Tom Eatslots liked, recommend a music video by the group “Tom Tom Club” based on your stored music files, and suggest purchasing a book by your favorite author Thomas Inkstain by using your Google Wallet.

It may sound creepy, but frankly Google’s aim is no different than those of rivals Facebook, Apple, or even Amazon: to retain users within the universe of Google products and applications for as long as possible. In short, keeping everyone inside the “Googleverse.”  However, combine this with the growing reach of Google’s Chrome browser, and the popularity of its Android mobile platform, and you’re suddenly talking really creepy.

Resistance May Be Futile

Google’s announcement of these changes gives users few options. “If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service,” it reads flatly. Which means if you want to use Google or any of its products, you have to agree to the changes.

There are options, of a sort. Users with various Google accounts can simply not log in; Google won’t be able to combine the private data pools, but of course users won’t have access to any of the services or documents they’ve used in the past. People can also leave Google, opting for other computing services, leaving them only with the struggle of moving all their data from Google to someplace else. Or Internet users can simply not use Google, choosing Yahoo! for searches, Hotmail for messages and Facebook for networking. Each of these options, however, present their own unique privacy challenges.

As Google says in its announcement, “this stuff matters.” And it’s all part of a longer, larger trend that increasingly pits individual privacy against the online experience.

Just What, If Anything, Did Wednesday’s Protest Achieve?

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

UPDATE: Friday, January 20, 2012: Not content to leave the battle un-joined, the hacker group Anonymous stepped into the SOPA fray Thursday evening by launching a massive denial of service attack on several SOPA supporters, including Universal Music, the RIAA and MPAA. Also targeted was the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Copyright Office; although those attacks are likely to have been prompted more by Thursday’s shutdown of the website “MegaUpload” by Justice officials. AnonOps claims that 5,635 individual machines were used to launch the coordinated attacks, the largest single effort yet by Anonymous.  As we’ve noted before, when there’s a big story that has anything to do with the Internet, expect Anonymous to step in.

Whether the protests and hacks changed minds isn’t clear; however it has changed the bills’ fortunes on Capitol Hill. Friday Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced he would shelve SOPA for the moment, while in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) cancelled a vote on PIPA.

It had been building for days. “Twitter, join the protest,” tweeted Ben Huh, founder and CEO of the mega-successful “I Can Has Cheezburger” websites. “Go Google for blacking out logo!” read another.

For weeks Huh had been using his Twitter account and other means to encourage Internet companies of all stripes to join in a one day protest against two pieces of legislation currently before Congress. “SOPA”, for Stop Online Piracy Act, and “PIPA”, the “Protect IP Act” were designed, say its authors, to crack down on overseas copyright piracy by strengthening the U.S. government’s hand in who they could prosecute and remove from the web.

Introduced more than a year ago, the legislation has the strong support of major entertainment companies such as Sony or the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA. But it has equally strong opposition, centered mostly among civil libertarians, online freedom activists and Internet-based firms like Google and Wikipedia.

This back and forth has put the bills into a sort of legislative limbo – not scheduled for floor or committee markup, but not officially dead, either. So beginning early January, Huh and others proposed a protest that would grab headlines, and perhaps knock SOPA’s advocates back on their heels. Their Internet sites would go dark for 24-hours, replacing their usual content with a stark message warning about the dangers of the bills, and urging users to contact their members of Congress.

One of Ben Huh's many tweets about the dangers of SOPA

So what happened? To start, Wikipedia went dark – kind of. The online compendium of facts large to obscure was unavailable for 24 hours, offering instead a shadowy black-and-white message on why PIPA and SOPA would censor services like theirs. It was billed as a total blackout, but as mobile phone and tablet users quickly found out, there was a still a back door open for full access from mobile devices.  Ben Huh’s “I Can Haz Cheezburger?” family of 54 websites of lolcats and goofy pranks all featured a large shield that could only be removed by clicking through to a site warning about the bills, and urging users to sign letters of protest. (Once clicked, however, all the lolcats were again available.) Google slapped a large black box over its logo, although its search function continued to work, and online magazine Wired blacked out all the text on its site, which, however, became visible when you moused-over it.

“Boing Boing”, “Firefox”, “Tumblr”; these and many more sites limited services and featured ominous warnings about the bills. But many other sites did not participate. Twitter refused to join the protest, calling such a single-issue stoppage of a global company “foolish.” Amazon.com didn’t make mention of the bills either – but this perhaps was less surprising as retailers, in general, would not be as threatened under PIPA and SOPA than over content-rich sites. Even some editors of Wikipedia complained that the blackout could threaten Wikipedia’s reputation as a non-biased source of information. “My main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy,” editor Robert Lawton told the Associated Press.  “Before we know it, we’re blacked out because we want to save the whales.”

Screen grab from Wired's front page featuring SOPA-inspired blackouts

In the end, the protest garnered headlines but changed few minds. Ebay, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Twitter and others still oppose SOPA, while NBC Universal, Comcast, 3M, Walmart, the RIAA and others still support it. And the larger question now is: what will opponents do if and when the bills actually start moving again in Congress? A one day blackout is one thing; shutting access for an indefinite period of time will be a much harder, and costlier, sell.

For his part, SOPA author Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced a “manager’s amendment” – which you can read here – which represents a modification of the original bill, and one that, for parliamentary reasons, Rep. Smith may begin to move through committee as early as February. In the meantime, SOPA & PIPA proponents, such as the Creative Alliance, have announced they will soon launch an advertising campaign about the benefits of the bills.

And Ben Huh isn’t the only one taking his campaign to Twitter. SOPA supporter Rupert Murdoch tweeted yesterday: “Seems blogosphere has succeeding in terrorizing many senators and congressmen who previously committed. Politicians all the same.”

Stay tuned.

Why Are So Many Teens Spilling Their Secrets on YouTube?

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

They go by titles like “Secrets and Confessions.” “If You Really Knew Me.” “Notecard Confessions.”

Their form, by now, is fairly standard. A young person sits silently in front of their computer webcam, cards in hand. Music plays in the background: maybe a pensive solo guitar, or a bittersweet song about love and loss. One by one they flip their cards down, each with a sentence, an idea or just a few words and a sketch, all while staring soulfully into the camera.

Take, for instance, NatashaMarrie‘s video titled “a confession.” Seated in what looks like her bedroom, she smiles shyly, waves at the camera, and begins turning over cards one after the other. “I’m truly a happy person…” reads one as she nods, “even with all the hardships I’ve been through…” reads the next, her sad expression suggesting what’s to come.

We quickly learn that her parents’ divorce has left her lonely, that her grandmother didn’t think she was “2 good”, and that she says she has been abused “physically and emotionally.” With each new card she tells us something very personal about her life, all while the singer in the background croons “I’m wearin’ my heart on my sleeve, ’cause girl I need you desperately…” Three minutes and forty seconds later her cards are gone, her secrets laid bare, and NatashaMarrie smiles and waves a sweet goodbye. Fade to black.

Welcome to the Note Card Confessional.

Blame Bob Dylan

In 1965, film maker D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary of singer Bob Dylan’s tour through England. To open the movie, Pennebaker and Dylan cooked up an idea. Shot in black and white in the alley behind London’s Savoy hotel (and featuring a confusing cameo by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg) Dylan silently shuffles through a stack of large cards with words or phrases from his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” while the music plays in the audio track.

It was an instant hit, becoming what some call the first modern music video. And it established a visual language that was appealing, easy to reproduce, and highly adaptable. Enter YouTube, cheap video processing, and a culture that’s more accepting of individuals sharing personal secrets and troubles, and you get the note card confessional.

But where Dylan’s video was lightly amusing, these note card confessions draw from deeper, and sometimes darker, wells of human emotion. They hold little back, and watching such earnest young faces silently recount traumas isn’t always easy.

One curious aspect of these flip card confessions is the consistency between videos. Never do the confessors speak their transgressions aloud, instead letting the cards do their talking for them. Emoticons – like  : (  for a frowny face – and doodles of flowers or hearts punctuate emotional peaks of the story, with the music underlining it with an overall mood or message. Through it all, we the audience look the confessor directly in the eye, watching their face for all those human nonverbal cues that text alone can’t convey, while reading their secrets.

If the numbers are to be believed, these note card confessions are strangely watchable. And they are exploding in popularity, which has some professionals concerned.

A Different Approach

“Confessions are especially tied to feelings of guilt; feelings of guilt about a specific behavior,” says Dr. June Tangney, professor of clinical psychology at George Mason University. “And they’re especially unlikely in cases where people feel shame.”

Tangney’s research specialization is in what she calls “moral emotions,” notably shame and guilt. Often used interchangeably, they are, she says, very different emotions. In short, shame is something one feels about their entire being; guilt is something one feels about a particular act. “When people feel shame they’re inclined to want to hide, to escape the situation, to sink into the floorboards,” says Tangney. “It’s feelings of guilt about a particular behavior that’s likely to motivate confessions, apologies and attempts to repair.”

Psychologists have long known these emotions don’t only come from what one does (or fails to do) but from what happens to others close by. A war veteran may feel guilt about comrades who died; a victim of abuse may experience debilitating shame. Confessing – documenting those things you regret – can be a powerful tool in healing a bruised psyche.

But should such confessions be public, especially from those so young? “I would counsel a different approach,” says Tangney:

“You have to wonder, particularly about young people who are in distress who are looking for some relief to that distress, whether they’re able to make good decisions about who and how they share this information, and how there are ways it may be harmful to them.  I’d be concerned about people…finding out about this and using it in a way that could be perceived as bullying or stigmatizing. I don’t think young people can fully grasp just how public these confessions are likely to be.”

“I Just Wanted To Tell My Story.”

There are literally thousands of these videos online. If you’ve never seen one, just go to the video share site of your choice, such as YouTube, and search for “note card confession.” Nina, Dwight, Ashlee, Jayce; they’re all there and many more, note cards lined up, just waiting for you to click on their video and learn of their secret heartaches and longings.

Among them is Emmanuel Perron. A high school student in Rockland, just outside Ottawa, Canada, Perron initially seems happy enough, flashing a broad smile as he sits at a kitchen table.  But it becomes clear that the French-Canadian senior is also wiping tears from his eyes as he flips through his cards, recounting stories of being bullied and his response.  “I’ve cut (mutilated)” reads one card; “I’ve wanted to (commit) suicide” the next.

“I was sick and tired, and got the motivation to post the video on my story,” Emmanuel tells us from his home. “It’s seeing reality of the effects that bullying has on others. They would see what bullying causes to its victims. It impacted me very badly; caused me anxiety and depression, which led to suicidal thoughts and cutting.” (Cutting is slang referring to intentional acts of self harm, such as cutting the skin, often in response to extreme anxiety and stress.)

The morning his parents first saw the video, he says they cried for an hour. “My father was actually kind of shocked it was affecting me that  bad, and it kind of opened his eyes to how bullying had affected me.” In a way, says Perron, his father never heard him as clearly as when he sat silent on YouTube. “I just wanted to tell my story,” he says.

His story now has over 19,000 thousand views, and Perron says he’s heard from hundreds of people from around the world, offering support, good wishes, and sometimes looking for a little help. “One girl in particular, she was kind of feeling depressed one night and I was able to convince her to go to the hospital because she was thinking of committing suicide. She said I was the only person she would listen to.”

Since changing schools, Perron says he’s still taunted by bullies, although now mostly online via Facebook or other networking sites. But he’s also heard from old and new friends who say they’re inspired by his story, and hopes his confession continues to go viral. “I’m definitely much happier now,” he says, adding that he hopes to study photography once he graduates. It’s an encouraging story: young person overcomes adversity and finds happiness. Unfortunately, these note card confessions don’t always have a happy ending.

“I Believe Jonah.”

Seeing Ben Breedlove on his YouTube videos, you would never guess that the Texas teen had a bad heart. He seems healthy, happy and optimistic – everything you could want for someone starting their life. But Breedlove suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a serious heart condition, and by the age of 18 had already survived several close-call heart attacks. On December 18, 2011, he posted two note card confession videos in which he offered thoughts on his life and his flirtations with death, including most recently when his heart stopped for three minutes. Breedlove recalls being in a place of peace. “I didn’t want to leave that place” one card reads. One week later, on Christmas Day, Breedlove died in Austin, Texas.

Even if you didn”t know this, Breedlove’s note card confession videos are difficult to watch. Once you’re aware he was just a week away from dying…well, this writer, for one, can’t watch them. But others do, and of the nearly 7-million views (as of this writing) they’ve received, many have left thanks, thoughts, condolences, or personal stories of their own in the comments section.

Earlier last year, Jamey Rodemeyer, an openly gay teen living in Buffalo, posted a video where he discussed the incessant bullying he received at school. In it he’s candid – he doesn’t sugar-coat his experiences – but also encouraging, telling viewers that “it gets better – I promise.” Shortly after on September 18, at the age of 14, Rodemeyer hung himself; his lifeless body was found by his sister.

Jamey Rodemeyer

Then there’s the case of Jonah Mowry. To the strains of Sia’s “Breath Me”, Mowry holds his arms to the camera showing scars from his cutting. As he prepared to begin 8th grade, he put together his note card confession, tearfully recounting his struggles with suicide, mutilation, bullying and other painful travails. Millions saw his video, re-posting it on sites like Facebook and turning young Mowry into an Internet sensation. “A lot of people hate me” reads one card as tears stream down Mowry’s face. It’s a heartbreaking story…but is it true?

Shortly after, Mowry posted a second, non-confessional video. In it, he’s lying on a bed with a friend, and the two are talking animatedly, laughing with seemingly few cares (he’s since taken it down but others have re-posted it.) It didn’t take long before someone else posted “HAI DAIR Jonah Mowry admits he lied” on YouTube, igniting a fierce debate over whether Mowry’s first confessional video was true or not. Supporters and detractors began publishing their own note card replies, and “I Believe Jonah” became a rallying cry that attracted the support of celebrities like Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga. Much of the commentary was, frankly, ugly. Whether or not Mowry had challenges before posting his confessional, challenges found him soon after. For the record, Mowry has apologized for any confusion, but insists the first confessional was true.

Privacy? Who Needs Privacy?

So what would motivate someone taking to the Internet to spell out in detail their secret pains and private anguish for public view?  Why memorialize it on YouTube, with your own face and in your own words, where it will last forever?  And why do so many other people watch?

Emmanuel Perron says he was inspired by Jonah Mowry; he posted his video because he wanted to help people. Kaitlin Brand agrees with that sentiment, although the two have never met, and her story is very different from that of Perron.

A high school sophomore in Grand Rapids, Brand begins her note card confession in a style similar to many others: she’s seated by herself in what looks like a quiet room in her house. “My name’s Kait” reads one of her earliest cards as she smiles and waves. The only hint of what lies ahead comes from the title of the song by The Band Perry, playing in the background: “If I Die Young.”

At 1:17 into the video she pauses, breaths deep, and reveals her secret. On October 5 of this year, Brand’s mother committed suicide. It was, in fact, 16-year-old Kaitlin who first discovered her mother, hanging in the woods behind their home.

“Yeah, that was pretty shocking…” says Kaitlin’s father Pete Brand, understating the obvious. But just three weeks after this trauma, Kaitlin – without telling anyone in her family – posted her note card confession video on YouTube; a video that is surprisingly optimistic and free of bitterness. She smiles brightly as she kisses a picture of her late mother. “You’re probably wondering why I’m smiling instead of crying” reads one card. “It’s because my mom would want me to be Happy : D” reads the next. For father Pete Brand, that’s no surprise:

“I think what you see in the video is that she clearly understands life, and she knows how to put things in perspective. The video talked about the fact that a lot of her friends thought she was the strongest girl in the world, she doesn’t feel that way. But it also shows that she wants to smile even though she really wants to cry. And the reason she wants to keep a smile on her face is because she knows that her mom would have wanted her to be happy. And she doesn’t believe that she is alone. Even though her mom is gone, she believes she has a guardian angel looking over her shoulder. And she knows that her mom is in a better place, because she’s no longer suffering from anxiety and depression.”

Brand is proud of his daughter and what she put together. But the digital marketing executive also understands the Internet can be a dangerous place, especially for an emotionally vulnerable teen. “There’s good and there’s bad,” he says, noting that with thousands of people now contacting Kaitlin from around the world, he handles her electronic communications for the time being.

“The very act of putting that video together and out on the Internet – that act alone is strong enough, and it doesn’t have to continue. She had no idea it was going to go beyond maybe just a couple hundred views.  But once it really started to take off, at some point, she realized she was helping people. Then one day she said to me ‘Dad, I know what I want to do now; I want to help people.’  And she’s already doing that.”

Helping people, reclaiming the past, clearing your conscience; these are all reasons so many teens may be posting note card confessions. Another reason may simply be that so many before have done so, making it less of “a big deal” among their peer groups.

For Professor June Tangney, one of the principal benefits to the confessors may just be the feeling of fixing what feels broken. “People really benefit from writing about past traumas in their lives, that by telling their story they’re able to make better sense of it, they’re able to get more of a sense of control of it.”

Still, there’s a wide difference between writing something in a private journal, or telling those closest to you, and throwing it all out on the Internet where anybody can view it and respond to it. Tangney questions whether young people, in particular, can fully evaluate the potential risks of that along with the possible rewards:

“They’re not necessarily thinking about future employers or other important people in their lives having access to this kind of material. There are some things that are really important to share with other empathic individuals…   It certainly attests to their need for relief from distress and closure, but I think that maybe young people don’t think through how long things, and how broadly things, are posted on the Internet.”

The Full Truth Is Hard To Know

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Five times a year, in cities as diverse as Prague, Washington, Brasilia, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, thousands of buyers and sellers of electronic gear gather for a series of events that have come to be known as “The Wiretapper’s Ball.”  On display are some of the most sophisticated electronic products available that allow for practically any kind of electronic surveillance, from monitoring and intercepting mobile phone calls to recording user’s web traffic and physically locating individuals to within a meter. The manufacturers are ready to sell, and the thousands of governments and other organizations that attend are eager to buy.

While many of the products are not for public discussion, their existence is hardly a secret. Writing in the Washington Post recently, reporters Sari Horwitz, Shyamantha Asokan and Julie Tate found over 35 U.S. government agencies registered to attend the Washington surveillance conference. They were only outnumbered by those peddling their high-tech wares:

“One German company, DigiTask, offers a suitcase-size device capable of monitoring Web use on public WiFi networks, such as those at cafes, airports and hotels. A lawyer representing the company, Winfried Seibert, declined to elaborate on its products. ‘They won’t answer questions about what is offered,’ he said. ‘That’s a secret. That’s a secret between the company and the customer.’”

But just who are those customers, and what kind of technology is being made available to governments around the world? Wiretapper Ball coordinator Jerry Lucas says clearly repressive governments such as Syria, Iran and North Korea are not allowed at the events, but that’s no guarantee these advanced technologies don’t wind up in those places.

There are no solid estimates for the size of the international surveillance industry.  However it involves hundreds of firms – many based in the United States, Germany, Britain and Israel – and thousands of clients, including corporations, police forces and governments. Tracking where all that technology flows is tricky, and that’s raising alarms among human rights organizations. For example, following the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments, rebels documented advanced surveillance equipment used by those governments to monitor and track rebels’ online activities.

More recently, Internet monitors have learned that surveillance equipment from two U.S. firms, NetApp and Blue Coat Systems, have been installed and are being used by Syrian officials to unknown ends; U.S. Senators Robert Casey and Mark Kirk have requested an investigation. And last month the Italian tech firm Area SpA announced it was halting development of a surveillance project in Syria that, if finished, would have given Damascus “…the power to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country.”

In a new document release this week, the group Wikileaks has compiled a public database it calls “The Spy Files.” Sorted by factors such as manufacturer, year of contract and products offered, the “Spy Files” document what Wikileaks founder Julian Assange calls the unregulated spread of the “mass surveillance industry”:

“International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass [sic] .. secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users’ physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on standby.”

160 firms in all are listed in the “Spy Files,” along with brief specs of their products and details of some of their customers. There’s also a searchable map for further research.

And while it is illegal to sell high-tech equipment to those nations hit with sanctions, such as Iran or Burma, those sanctions are often a nation-by-nation patchwork, and no guarantee that some middleman won’t legally buy surveillance equipment from one firm, and then transfer it to a banned nation.

But privacy advocates want more, including a comprehensive global agreement that would heavily regulate who can buy what sort of equipment. Until then, however, the global surveillance market will likely remain healthy, if shadowy.

You can read more on the Wikileaks “Spy Files” here at Technorati, and here at Forbes.  Also, the French media company OWNI has this deeper look at how Western-made surveillance equipment was used by the Gaddhafi government to spy on and track rebel activities.  It’s well worth the read.

Finally, although you can’t attend, you can view the “Wiretapper’s Ball” ISS Mideast conference agenda online here.

New Questions About Mobile Phone Privacy

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Trevor Eckhart, by his own account, is a 25-year-old “average Joe.” A digital developer based in Connecticut, Eckhart’s been quietly exploring the privacy and security aspects of the Android mobile operating system.

This week, the quiet ended.

Screen-grab from Eckhardt's video documenting IQAgent keystroke logging

First posted on his website “Android Security Test” a while back, Eckhart began exploring what applications developed by the firm Carrier IQ were doing while he was on his Android phone. Carrier IQ, based in Mountain View, California, markets a variety of mobile applications, or apps, that monitor and track mobile phone use, and then provide that information back to service providers and developers. Carrier IQ says this information is limited and protected, and is only used to improve mobile service and use. “We are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools,” reads in part a statement on the company website.

But Eckhart says his research suggests that’s not the case, and in documents on his site – and visually in a 17 minute video – he lays out the case that Carrier IQ products are doing much more than they say, all out of sight of the average user.

Using his own HTC Evo mobile phone, Eckhart demonstrates how apps such as “HTC IQAgent” run in near-hidden mode on his phone; even once he finds them, he’s unable to turn them off. He then runs his phone through its paces – turning it on and off, dialing numbers, sending SMS text messages and browsing websites. Alarmingly, it appears that the IQAgent app logs and transmits every keystroke he makes, all hidden from view. Eckhart dials a number, and IQAgent duly records and transmits every digit. He sends a text, and it notes who, how, when, and of course what the message actually said. There’s even a complete log of every website he visits and what he does there, even while using the security-enhanced “https” format. Remember – this is all in addition to the actual functions his phone is performing with the actual service provider.

Eckhart called IQAgent a “rootkit”, which in tech terms is a bit of software that is considered critical to function, loads and runs automatically, and is largely (or entirely) outside of the user’s control. That, apparently, was fighting words for the Carrier IQ. They responded swiftly, denying the claim, demanding he remove information about the company and threatening Eckhart with legal action. Late last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, stepped in to provide Eckhart assistance and legal help, and Carrier IQ pulled back.

The kerfuffle only drew more attention to Eckhart’s work, and to the largely un-noticed Carrier IQ firm.

Reporters started digging, and it quickly became clear how little was known about the company, its products and who uses them. How many apps are there, what are its clients, and just who are they transmitting all those keystrokes to?

Here’s what’s known. It’s estimated that Carrier IQ’s tracking apps run on 150 million hand-held devices, an astonishingly large number. This week AT&T, Apple, Sprint and T-Mobile all admitted to using Carrier IQ software on at least some of its devices. Sprint and AT&T also acknowledged they receive some transmitted data, but both firms insisted it was all anonymous, and for network diagnostics only.

For its part, Carrier IQ continues to state that its products don’t actually “record” all those keystrokes, meaning that its software may detect a large amount of keystrokes (or all of them) but that most of that information is not communicated back to the service providers. CNNMoney spoke with security analyst Dan Rosenberg, who said “People need to recognize that there’s a big difference between recording events like keystrokes … and actually collecting, storing, and transmitting this data to carriers, which doesn’t happen.”

But that’s cold comfort for digital privacy proponents, who note the firm originally denied even detecting all those keystrokes – a claim it has gingerly inched back  from since Eckhart posted his video. And the timing for Carrier IQ could hardly be worse, coming just a week after a flurry of reports – and Congressional denunciations – of mobile apps that track a shopper’s movements through stores and shopping centers. (The British firm, Path Intelligence, has backed off those plans, for now.)

For the moment, with a little help from the EFF, Trevor Eckhart says he’ll do what he can to continue his work. Only now, it’s likely he won’t be the only one.

Eckhart’s demonstration video:

Carrier IQ’s response:

And the Campaign Against “Breaking The Internet”

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: What’s With The “Weirdness” from China? There’s been a tremendous amount of web news coming from China lately. Perhaps the most eye-grabbing headlines have been regarding the online campaign to defend artist Ai Weiwei against possible charges of pornography. What to do when your favorite artist is investigated by the government for earlier nude photography he released? Release your own nude photography. Ai Weiwei’s supporters have flooded the web with unclothed pictures: some of them as infants, some with discreet obscuring images, and some just unclothed. So far, the artist has not been charged with any offense.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (AP)

However, submerged by the nude photos story are disturbing reports that some Chinese ISPs might be testing out new tools to shut off encrypted communications. Forbes’ Andy Greenberg has this item about curious data traffic coming from computers in China attempting to access encrypted “web tunnels” such as Tor, Freegate or UltraSurf; all commonly used by individuals to cloak their online activities:

“In recent months, administrators of services with encrypted connections designed to allow users secure remote access say they’ve seen strange activity coming from China: when a user from within the country attempts to reach a server abroad, a string of seemingly random data hits the destination computer before he or she can connect, sometimes followed by that user’s communication being mysteriously dropped.”

“We see weird things all the time,” Tor’s Andrew Lewman tells Greenberg. “But this is a semi-consistent weird thing, and it’s only coming from China.”  It is unclear if Chinese ISPs, or the government for that matter, are trying to probe encryption differences between traffic like that of financial transactions, and private networks like Tor.  What is certain is that developers at Tor and elsewhere are aware of this “weird thing” and are already responding. Full disclosure: VOA’s parent agency, the International Broadcasting Bureau, has working relationships with Tor and Freegate, among other encryption services.

#2: “Don’t Break the Internet” Members of the U.S. Congress are currently discussing several pieces of legislation that could significantly alter the web landscape in the United States, and potentially around the globe.

The two bills – the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (or SOPA) in the House, and the “Protect IP Act” in the Senate – both target copyright violators (i.e., “pirates”) in other nations by giving the U.S. government greater control over shutting down web access and traffic to specific cites, among other tools. Proponents such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America argue online pirates cost copyright holders billions of dollars each year, and that the bills’ provisions are balanced by protections for ISPs and website owners.

But that hasn’t stopped the swelling ranks of critics from arguing, with some effect, that media monopolies are trying to “break the Internet.” Groups advocating greater online freedoms, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, the Free Software Alliance and others were first in line calling for the bills’ defeat. Then came heavy-hitter Internet service companies like Google, Zynga, LinkedIn, Mozilla and more.  Now, this week, the influential Business Software Alliance, which represents giants such as Dell, Microsoft and Apple, has also weighed in opposing the measure.

As policy fights go, this one is a long way from over. Action on the bills isn’t expected until 2012, giving supporters and opponents plenty of time to build momentum and lobby members of Congress. We’ll detail the issues involved in the near future. In the meantime, Washington Post tech columnist Cecilia Kang offers “Five Things to Know About SOPA,” which provides a concise overview.

#3: Four Degrees of Facebook? In his 1929 fiction collection “Everything is Different,” Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy set two characters to wondering about our increasingly urbanized planet. The world was “shrinking” they said; people were getting closer not just physically but socially:

“One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.”

Thus was born “six degrees of separation” – the idea that any human is only six social connections away from any other human. For decades researchers like Stanley Milgram explored this idea and, despite its unlikeliness, found there’s actually considerable merit to Karthiny’s game. Despite obvious problems like isolated populations, it’s become something of a maxim among social scientists that as people’s social networks have grown, so have the connections between us. So, in fact, your humble author may in fact only be five or six hops from everyone reading this.

Or, would you believe, four? Researchers at the University of Milan, working with Facebook researchers, have been exploring the “six degrees” idea as well, and this week published new findings suggesting six may be too many:

“We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.”

Shockingly, those numbers are even smaller for same-country pairs; for example, any two U.S. Facebook users are only about 3 or so degrees from each other. Meaning that every one of Facebook’s 700+ million users, with a very high statistical likelihood, is only a small number of social connections away from everyone else. Small world, indeed.

Postscript: “Everything is Different” is long out of print, and a web search suggests that English translations of this book are simply lost.