Human Rights Principles and Communications Surveillance

The International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance was cooperatively written by privacy organizations and advocates around the world.  I'm posting the full statement (for which the Electronic Frontier Foundation created a website) for itself but also, since we're a resource blog here, for the list of signatures on the document which gives a nice roundup of key groups active in this international concern. The hyperlinked list of  224 "Signatories" follows the fairly brief series of statements.

Publishing these principles is not the end of the conversation by any means. The site also collects news articles and essays from contributors worldwide about the Principles-- reactions to, discussions about, etc.

Internet as Public Commons

The current issue of Daedalus (Volume 140, Issue 4, Fall 2011) is titled: Protecting the Internet as a Public Commons. Explains editor David D. Clark, "This issue is concerned with the experience of using the Internet: how its character shapes the user experience and how our collective online participation raises larger societal and political questions."

Articles:

What are the Consequences of Being Disconnected in a Broadband-Connected World?

A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online

Online Trust, Trustworthiness, or Assurance?

Safety in Cyberspace

Doctrine for Cybersecurity

Reconceptualizing the Role of Security User

Resisting Political Fragmentation on the Internet

Who Speaks? Citizen Political Voice on the Internet Commons

Prosocial Behavior on the Net

WikiLeaks and the Protect-ip Act: A New Public-Private Threat to the Internet Commons

The issue is available from Penn Library e-resources

CyberOrient

It's a good time to be reading CyberOrient, a open access, peer-reviewed online journal of the virtual Middle East. Started in 2006, the journal is sponsored by the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and based at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. In the words of journal Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Martin Varisco:

The main purpose of this electronic journal is to provide a forum to explore cyberspace both as an imaginary forum in which only representation exists and as a technology that is fundamentally altering human interaction and communication. The next generation will take e-mail, websites and instant availability via cell-phones as basic human rights. Internet cafes may someday rival fast-food restaurants and no doubt will profitably merge together in due time. Yet, despite the advances in communication technology real people in the part of the world once called an “Orient” are still the victims of stereotypes and prejudicial reporting. Their world is getting more and more wired, so cyberspace becomes the latest battleground for the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

The current issue features: The Islam-Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies?; Overcoming the Digital Divide: The Internet and Political Mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia; Beyond the Traditional-Modern Binary: Faith and Identity in Muslim Women’s Online Matchmaking Profiles; New Media and Social-political Change in Iran; e-Islam: the Spanish Public Virtual Sphere, and a book review of Vit Sissler's Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Discourses in Cyberspace.