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Olivier Basille,
Reporters Without Borders: Reverse Twitter Geolocation Censorship
January 30, 2012
 Reporters
Without Borders has written to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey
voicing deep concern about yesterday’s announcement that Twitter will
introduce geolocated censorship – censorship varying according to the
social network user’s country location – and urging him to reverse a
policy that violates freedom of expression.
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Mr. James Dorsey
Executive chairman
Twitter, Inc.
795 Folsom St., Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94107
USA
Paris, 27 January 2012
Dear Mr. Dorsey,
Reporters Without Borders, an organization that defends freedom of
information worldwide, would like to share with you its deep concern
about yesterday’s announcement on the official Twitter blog of a new
policy under which tweets may be censored in some countries, according
to each country’s different criteria.
We urge you to reverse this decision, which restricts freedom of
expression and runs counter to the movements opposed to censorship that
have been linked to the Arab Spring, in which Twitter served as a
sounding board. By finally choosing to align itself with the censors,
Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a
crucial tool for information and organization.
We are very disturbed by this decision, which is nothing other than
local level censorship carried out in cooperation with local authorities
and in accordance with local legislation, which often violates
international free speech standards. Twitter’s position that freedom of
expression is interpreted differently from country to country is
inacceptable. This fundamental principle is enshrined in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
We call on you to be transparent about the way you propose to carry out
this censorship. Posting the removal requests you receive from
governments on the Chilling Effects website will not suffice to offset
the harm done by denying access to content. Twitter has said that, if it
receives “a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized
entity,” it may respond by withholding access to certain content in a
particular country, while notifying the content’s author.
The way this is defined is too vague and leaves the door open to all
kinds of abuse. Are you going to act in response to a court decision?
Or, as is the case in China, will just a phone call from a government
official or a local police station suffice to justify denying access to
content? Are you going to limit yourselves to censoring tweets after
they have been posted or, if faced with a flood of official requests,
will you establish a system of prior censorship based on subjects or
keyword defined by censors?
You also announced that access to the accounts of some Twitter users
could be blocked altogether in certain countries. Are you going to block
the accounts of Syrian cyberdissidents if the Syrian authorities tell
you to do so? Does this mean that Twitter could render the Reporters
Without Borders Twitter account (@RSF_RWB) inaccessible in countries
where we often denounce repressive practices and freedom of information
violations, and where the authorities are ready to do anything to
silence us?
Does your new policy mean that references on Twitter to Arab revolutions
and demonstrations in Manama will no longer be accessible in Bahrain?
Will Vietnamese using your social network from their country no longer
be able to tweet about bauxite mining’s harmful impact on the
environment? Are you going to block tweets about the demands of Turkey’s
Kurdish minority? Will Russian Internet users see their criticisms of
the government censored?
The list of debates and issues that could disappear from your network at
the local level is long. The fact that these messages would continue to
be available to the rest of the world, and to Internet users in the
affected countries who know how to use censorship circumvention tools,
does not offset the harm done by censoring and blocking information.
Was your decision motivated by the desire to penetrate the Chinese
market at all costs? You recently visited China and voiced the hope that
Twitter would one day be permitted. You cannot be unaware of the success
of Chinese micro-blogging platforms such as Sina Weibo, which are forced
to cooperate with the authorities and impose permanent censorship.
 While
it is obviously regrettable that the Chinese authorities block access to
Twitter and Facebook, what would Twitter’s added value be if it also had
to purge itself of forbidden content in order to establish itself in
China? Is it possible that one day there will be a sanitized Chinese
version of Twitter that has been rid of any reference to the Chinese
Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo?
This decision runs counter to the tendency to reject censorship demands
from governments such as China’s, a trend started by Google and GoDaddy.
At the same time, Internet companies are increasingly being held to
account about the export of equipment that could be used to reinforce
the surveillance and harassment of dissidents.
We praised your Speak2Tweet initiative in February 2011 in Egypt, which
enabled dissidents to continue tweeting after the Internet was
disconnected, but we are very disappointed by this U-turn now. We urge
you to think again about this new policy’s implications both for freedom
of expression and your company’s development strategy. The commercial
advantages in the Chinese market are not the only criteria to be
considered. Twitter’s image in the eyes of its users is also at stake.
We thank you for the attention you give to this request and we look
forward to a favourable response.
Sincerely,
Olivier Basille Reporters Without Borders director |
