There is no law against women driving in Saudi Arabia. That doesn't keep women who drive from being arrested, though, as the case of Manal Al-Sharif proves. Instead of laws, the kingdom's women are forbidden from driving due to fatwas, or religious opinions, rendered by ultra-conservative clerics of the influential Wahhabi sect.
Today, those fatwas were challenged by women across Saudi Arabia in a campaign called Women2Drive; challenged and, thanks to social media, witnessed in real time.
The Arab Spring - the Jasmine Revolution - the hashtag revolts - the uprisings in the Arab World: whatever you call them, they're ongoing and as long as they go on, their proponents and opponents use, and misuse, technology. Technology played a great role in communications between protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and between those protesters and the global public; it was also the fulcrum for the efforts of the regimes to stay in power, such as shutting down their connections to the Internet. It retains both of those functions.
I asked people I know in the countries of the Arab Spring to tell us how they think things currently stand and what role technology continues to play there. This post is the first of three. Today we take a look at Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain. The next will cover Syria, Morocco and Yemen and the final post will examine the effects of the Arab Spring on a radically interconnected world.
The U.S. government has created what it is calling an "Internet in a suitcase" to cheat the switches on the filtering regimes of repressive countries. A kit of hardware, the suitcase creates a "shadow Internet" within a country that allows users to communicate with each other and the outside world despite electronic censorship.
The suitcase was funded by a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of State, according to the New York Times.
The Arab Spring has seemed to have inspired a death bed confession in favor of free speech on the part of the United Nations. After introducing and passing a resolution condemning blasphemous speech, the U.N. recently reversed that decision.
Now, the United Nations has proclaimed that Internet access itself is a human right.
UN seal photo by Julian Rotela Rosow
Sources indicate the Nigerian government shut off the country's Internet and mobile communications networks in the capital of Abuja for 12 hours during May 29th's presidential inauguration. OpenNet Initiative outlined the incident.
The election saw interim president Goodluck Jonathan elected for a full-term. Nigeria is not noteworthy for its repressive attitude to the Internet. In fact, Jonathan was the first presidential candidate anywhere to announce his candidacy on Facebook.
Update after the jump.
At the same time as the U.S. military is preparing to release a policy qualifying cyberattacks as acts of war, the military of the United Kingdom is engaging in a large-scale recruitment drive. Called "Operation Cupcake"
Following from last year's "National Cyber Security Programme," this recruiting initiative will attempt to attract hundreds of computer experts to the British armed forces. Part of a £650,000 cyber-security budget will be devoted to the program.
Last week I attended the e-G8 in Paris, France. I arrived with many questions as to the eventual value of the event, some of which I shared in a previous post. Beyond that post my cynicism had grown somewhat, as frankly I was concerned that the event was going to amount to little more than thinly veiled theater intended to push a predetermined agenda at the G8 Summit. I was right to be concerned because it appears this is exactly what it was.
While the event itself was of the highest quality - held in the Jardin des Tuileries near the Musée du Louvre with great food and wines at each break - it was not the "discussion" it was positioned as in the run-up to the event. Very little time was allocated for attendees to engage in a dialog with the speakers and it lacked any semblance of a workshop or forum.
Egypt's January revolution was not caused by tech but tech played a role, as a cursory glance at ReadWriteWeb's stories on the country show. Internally and externally, geeks came to the fore. Now that the country has rid itself of its former rulers, there is still a lot of work to do.
On May 14, a group of 75 Silicon Valley technologists, computer science students and others met at Stanford for a Cloud to Street hackathon designed to create tools Egyptian activists have requested.
At the eG8, 20th century ideas clashed with the 21st century economy. The inaugural eG8 forum, held in Paris before the G-8 summit of global leaders, showed that online innovation and freedom of expression still need strong defenders. As Nancy Scola reported at techPresident, at the eG8, civil society groups re-staked their claim to the 'Net.
Prior to the forum, organizations concerned with human rights, liberties and civil society released a statement to the eG8 and G8 that advocated "expanding Internet access for all, combating digital censorship and surveillance, limiting online intermediary liability, and upholding principles of net neutrality."
Using rape as a weapon in war and other violent conflicts is unfortunately nothing new. Ivory Coast recently experienced an epidemic of it during a conflict for the contested presidency there. But in Libya, the proliferation of mobile tech has resulted in a surprising amount of direct video evidence of this revolting practice, evidence which may result in the punishment of those responsible.
According to Libyan rebels, the troops of the country's nominal leader, Moammar Qaddafi, have been using rape on civilians. This isn't an accident, they say, but a policy, at times directly enforced by officers of the Libyan army. According to the Sunday Times' Marie Colvin, there is evidence for this assertion: mobile phone video, taken by the criminal soldiers and officers themselves.
