When it comes to social media, are officials in the United States once again following a policy of ‘do as we say, not as we do’? La Stampa columnist Juan Carlos De Martin warns U.S. and British officials that shutting down cell phone service and social media to prevent protest is precisely what the Chinas and Irans of the world are hoping for.
For Italy’s La Stampa, Juan Carlos De Martin writes in part:
A rally against the killing of a homeless person by a Bay Area Rapid Transit company security agent last July 3rd had been planned. It was a rally that BART has been trying to prevent, apparently with success, since no such event has been held, and since the indiscriminate disabling of cell phone service began in areas considered hot zones.
Let us reflect for a moment: BART, by means of an exclusively internal decision-making process, decides without warning to terminate the capacity of private citizens to communicate (moreover, with modes of communication citizens pay for) by invoking generic security needs.
Not surprisingly, in addition to the indignation on the Net, the leading American civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have already strongly condemned BART’s actions and have launched legal battles. The restraint of free speech, particularly the right to free assembly, is indeed evident.
Yet it is stunning that precisely during the hours BART was preparing to disconnect the phones, British Prime Minister David Cameron was announcing that his government seriously consider the notion of suspending the services of Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry, in case of “credible threats of violence.”
The West, in other words, is running the risk of a great hypocrisy: that which is censorship in Tehran or Cairo, would be a reasonable security measure if applied in San Francisco or London. Authoritarian countries like Iran or China await nothing more than to return to sender any of our future criticisms – and perhaps with greater ease purchase our best surveillance technology.
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