Last week a State Department official responded to the NY Times article on the “Internet Suitcases,” defending the main goal of the U.S.’s investment on the innovative technology as upholding the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

The Times article cited that the U.S. government is investing in individualized mesh networks, which are networks connected through individual nodes that do not have to rely on a central server to capture and disseminate information.

It was contested that this type of technology is ideal, and being provided by the U.S., for dissidents living in oppressive regimes to subvert censorship and avoid Internet shutdowns.

Acknowledging this, the official maintains, “…to fight against regimes is not the main aim, but rather, leveraging modern communication to uphold the freedom of expression of opinion is.”

Arguably, governments that respect the rights of civil society have nothing to fear in freedom of speech and opinion, further, they have no reason to fear freedom of the Internet.

The official admits that the Internet is not a one-size-fits-all solution and recent grants have been given to developing technology itself along with raining, and have been used on mobile innovation, citing mobile causing a, “pocket phenomenon.”

According to the official, “…the need is not one particular piece of technology or one silver bullet. The need is to be responsive to the ongoing challenges of people who are trying to call out the problems in their societies and give voice to their own future.”

The official referenced a Sudanese blogger writing about a YouTube video of a ballot box being stuffed, commenting that the National Election Commission would not investigate any evidence that was posted on the Internet. Instead, he/she cited, people posting the video were the ones being targeted and investigated.

In cases like these, the official recounted, it is the State Department’s obligation to help aid these freedoms by re-crafting the current model.

“And it hasn’t worked for Mubarak, and it hasn’t worked for Qadhafi, and it’s unlikely to work for Asad, and there are others who eventually will have to deal with either the stark choice of giving people the space to have a role in crafting their own futures or the lack of sustainability of their present model,” the official stated.

However, when asked by reporters which countries or groups this type of technology was being developed for, the official deferred questions about China, only stating that the Great Chinese Firewall and their type of censorship is a “different kind of freedom threat.”

…our goal is to make sure that we are doing what we can to amplify the voices and create the space for free expression and freedom of association and assembly online regardless of who the group is

The State Department’s recent statements are in light of the recent U.N. report declaring Internet access as a basic human right. The mesh networking innovation has the potential to leapfrog connectivity barriers and deliver freedom of expression to the oppressed.

 

 

Ghana, West Africa’s emerging ICT hub, inaugurated two more Rural Technology Facilities (RTFs) last week. RTFs form part of Ghana’s thrust “to enhance and build a strong and vibrant rural economy to reduce unemployment, poverty and ruraL-urban migration.”

The new RTFs at Goaso and Bechem, which cost US$637, 636, brings the complement to 15; and Hanna Tetteh, Ghana’s Minister of Trade and Industry, says seven more are in the pipeline.

Tetteh says Ghana will continue to establish RTFs country-wide to support the transfer of technologies to farmers, agroprocessors, artisans, unemployed youth and micro and small enterprises.

According to government estimates, the existing RTFs have enabled the establishment of over 21, 000 businesses and 52, 000 jobs across Ghana’s 10 geopolitical regions.

The RTF drive, which is funded by Ghana, in collaboration with, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the African Development Bank (ADB), house technical workshops with modern equipment and trained technical personnel. RTFs are capable of providing technical training, promotion and dissemination of technology to boost the capacity of micro and small-scale enterprises.

To find out more about Ghana’s efforts to cement its position as a West African hub for ICTs, go here.

 

Today on Twitter @ZiaGe, or “Patricia G”, posted a picture of herself behind the wheel of a Lexus dressed in her hijab in act of defiance. Saudi Arabia is a country where women are banned from driving.

She is one of the hundreds of Saudi women using the hash tag #women2drive to mobilize a campaign in an attempt to get a green light on paving the way to this new freedom.

Saudi Arabia is the only Muslim country that does not allow women to drive, and although it is not an official law, it is culturally unacceptable. Religious rulings typically enforced by police have the same effect as a ban, and women must rely on chauffeurs or male relatives for transportation.

Al Jazeera English Stream explains the situation:

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world in which women cannot drive. Additional prohibitions against taking buses, riding bikes, and appearing in public alone essentially rule out independent travel for women

In 1990, 47 women took to the streets to challenge this ban by taking their families’ cars out for a drive. They were placed in jail for a day and their passports were taken.

32-year-old Manal al-Sherif, a key figure in Women2Drive movement, faced a similar fate last month.

Ms. Sharif was arrested for nine days after she drove two times and they were highly publicized on Youtube; she also highlighted them on the Facebook and Twitter campaigns she helped organize.

In the video featured at the end of this article, Al Sharif says women need to learn how to drive in order to protect themselves and their families. Additionally, not all women can afford to hire private drivers, she says.

This all comes in light of the recent Arab Spring uprisings, where social media is a popular tool to help mobilize campaigns and movements.

The Women2Drive campaign encourages Saudi women all across Saudi Arabia to participate in a collective protest scheduled for June 17.

Arab Studies Institute Jadaliyya has some more information regarding campaign plans, which included:

• Encouraging women with international driver’s licenses (or those from other countries) to drive their cars on June 17.
• Taking photographs and videos to be posted on Facebook in support of the cause.
• Adhering to the dress code (hijab) while driving.▪ We will obey the traffic laws and will not challenge the authorities if we are stopped for questioning.
• If we are pulled over we will firmly demand to be informed of which laws have been violated. Until now there is not one traffic law that prohibits a woman from driving her own vehicle herself.

The campaigns, which had attracted thousands of supporters — more than 12,000 on the Facebook page —have been blocked in the kingdom. In spite this, a few Youtube videos that have been posted, along with gaining national and international support.

There has been an online petition addressed to King Abdullah, asking him to grant women the right to drive, which gathered signatures from more than 600 men and women; and today, Princess Ameerah al stated in an interview that she herself wants to drive and promises a women’s revolution.

Alternatively, the Saudi Women for Driving, the coalition of Saudi women’s rights activists, bloggers and academics campaigning for the right to drive, sent a letter to Clinton and to her European Union counterpart, Catherine Ashton.

“Where are you when we need you most?” they asked 
in the letter which the State Department told reporters Monday it had just received, it continues: “In the context of the Arab Spring and U.S. commitments to support women’s rights, is this not something the United States’ top diplomat would want to publicly support?”

One reporter questioned that the Secretary is more concerned about not estranging relations with Saudi Arabia when the U.S. needs help on Yemen and Bahrain, more than about defending women’s rights. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland defended Clinton, saying the Secretary “has been engaged in quiet diplomacy.”

More importantly, Saudi women are taking this movement, and their empowerment, into their own hands by coordinating their grassroots campaign using online tools.

Aggregating and collecting data from cell phones is one of the best ways to ensure resources used to help fight poverty are efficiently being allocated, while gaining insight on what policies work the best.

According to Marcelo Giugale, the World Bank’s Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reductions Programs for Africa, digital data collection is entirely transforming international development and bringing on, “revenge of the statistician”.

This transformation, he cites, have created two separate but interrelated effects in evaluating development projects.

Primarily, digital data collection allows funding from multilateral institutions, like the World Bank,  to be more effective.

Goals set for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are quantified to see if the results are reached. Such as: how many children were treated for malaria, or what proportion of women use contraceptives?

This increased accuracy in household surveys can precisely identify who benefits from each dollar the government spends, also known as “benefit incidence analysis,” then structural adjustments can then be made to funnel funds to the appropriate recipient. Giugale elucidates by providing an example:

Most developing countries spend more bankrolling free public universities than building primary schools. But the main beneficiaries of that subsidized college education are the rich (who could pay tuition) not the poor (who could not)…Statistics lets you quantify these aberrations—and argue that the money should be redirected to those who really need it

Secondarily, he observed that surveys conducted on cell phones provide data to assess human capabilities so future policies and projects can be altered to fit the needs of those living in poverty and make outcomes more useful.

By assessing non-cognitive skills—such as reaction time and social interaction—educational programs can be designed to teach behaviors that will increase people’s productivity.

Giugale argues that digital data collection can also measure how personal circumstances affect human opportunity. “We all know that children have no control or responsibility over their gender, skin color, birthplace, or parents’ income,” he contends.

“And yet, those kind of circumstances are sure-shot predictors of a child’s access to vaccination, potable water, kindergarten, the internet and many other platforms without which her probability of success is close to nil.”  Giugale cites the Human Opportunity Index as being a large proponent of this initiative in shaping policy.

The use of cell phones to collect data has broken the once unconventional method of researching people in their communities. These randomized trials are useful in gauging what policies and projects work best, and which are seemingly wasteful.

“As the use of cellular telephony expands among the poor — at flash speed in places like Kenya –the possibility of turning them into data sources becomes real…” he concludes, “How ironic that, in the end, the war against poverty may be won when those who try to help the poor get to literally listen to them.”

In this video, Guigale explains the Human Development Opportunity Index and how it helps reduce poverty:

A year after the government imposed a ban on Short Message Services (SMS) in the Kashmir Valley for “security purposes,” the numbers of cell phones has decreased,  but the demand for Internet enabled phones to access Facebook continues to rise.

Kashmiris avidly use the social media site, and last Friday it was the catalyst for the arrest of London-based BBC Urdu Services senior journalist Naeema Ahmed Mehjoor by the state.

Compared to June last year when the SMS ban began, the number of cell phone users in Jammu and Kashmir has gone down from 5,155,363 to 4,974,400 in April this year—a decline of 3.5 per cent.

Those Kashmiris who do own cell phones, however, want to use them to exchange messages and access social media sites like Facebook.

“After the ban on SMS services, every customer wants to purchase Internet enabled mobiles so that they can exchange messages on the move. Therefore the demand for the same is on a rise in the Valley as the Internet enabled mobiles are available at very cheap rates now,” says Ajaz Ahmed, an executive at a mobile shop there.

According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company, nearly 30 million Indians are online where two-thirds spend time on social networking sites daily, more time than they do on personal email. 42 per cent of mobile users in India use their phones to go onto Facebook, according to the report.

A local, Jameel Bhat, says using Facebook on mobiles is a cheaper option. “I used to be in touch with my friend in Dubai through SMS but after the ban, I found making calls very expensive. Now, I chat through mobile as I cannot afford a computer and other Internet services,” he says.

Jasmine Kour, another avid Kashmiri Facebook user, also finds the social networking site a ‘good source of acquiring knowledge’ because it is easily accessible on her cell phone.

Access to Facebook on mobile phones has not always been easy though, as the state continually denies citizens access.

The cellular communication in Kashmir has been witnessing sharp ups and down since 2008. The most recent ban being in June 2010 when the government shut down the SMS service for the five month long agitation against killing of teenagers.

Incidentally, the BBC journalist, Naeema Ahmed Mehjoor kept the high response from the Kashmir people towards Facebook in view, using the social media platform as source for primary information.

This was until she was arrested by J-K police for “inciting violence and spreading disinformation,” on June 10th.

Mehjoor was booked under Section 66 of the Information Technology Act; using the IT for spreading dissatisfaction against the state.

She was taken in for her comment on Facebook, ‘Why did police kill this man in Lalchowk? Any reason?’ on June 6th. The comment was made the same day a man was killed in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk area by an unidentified gunman.

The man, police claim, was killed in a criminal conspiracy by three armed men and not police.

“As a journalist, I am working for peace,” she claimed.

Well-known broadcaster Mehjoor has been writing articles for local dailies about the 2010 unrest, where she would gain insight on Facebook to reflect the daily happenings. She also went public on her rejection to three-member Kashmir interlocutors’ invitation for a peace conference on the Kashmir problem.

This is another case where the combination of mobile and social media have helped to both push and pull information in civil society. Yet another example of how the oppressive states have attempted to circumvent citizens from accessing new technologies to control their freedom of expression and right to information.