UNOSAT steps up its data-in-hand strategy

CLICK HERE FOR THIS @ UNITAR

12 August 2011, Geneva, Switzerland – UNOSAT announced today the completion of one essential step forward in its plan to secure long-term efficient and rapid access to satellite imagery to derive accurate and timely information in support of humanitarian relief and human security. The acquisition of DigitalGlobe’s FirstLook Service by UNOSAT will reduce substantially the time it takes to expert analysis to produce accurate information in rush mode and marks another step forward not only for UNOSAT but for the entire UN community of users.

When UNOSAT started operations in 2001 access to appropriate satellite imagery was far too slow, difficult and uncertain compared to today. Yet nowadays quick and easy access to accurate, up-to-date satellite scenes is still far from being optimal especially taking into account the long UN procurement procedures. UNOSAT data-in-hand is an initiative combining commercial and partner sources to consolidate and concentrate access to valuable data for all types of emergency response and human security monitoring developed at UNOSAT.

DigitalGlobe's FirstLook is an online subscription service for emergency management that provides fast web-based access to pre- and post-event imagery of crisis areas in the world. High-resolution satellite imagery provides the best available basis to generate through analysis essential information required for emergency planning, risk assessment, monitoring, emergency response, damage assessment, and recovery. The service just purchased by UNOSAT after an initial trial between 2010 and 2011 is operational since 12 August 2011. It is supported at DigitalGlobe by a team that continuously monitors world situations using sources such as GDACS, the Global Disaster and Coordination System, an open channel of liaison with UNOSAT operations management in Geneva, and information from the International Space Charter. Once an event has been identified, DigitalGlobe establishes high priority collection sites over the event. Post-event imagery of affected areas are acquired as soon as access allows, typically within 24 hours to 48 hours. UNOSAT experts can then view and download the imagery straight from their desktops in Geneva.

Francesco Pisano says: “We are continuing to equip the Programme with what it takes to do this job effectively and professionally. But this is done also to bring a distinct advantage to the entire UN family. After the partnership with Google to share crowd generated data with UNOSAT and the rest of the UN, this is a second main achievement by UNOSAT which will change the way we do things and the overall technology level of the UN. I hope this can be of help to the entire UN”. UNOSAT in fact has added to the purchase order the funds necessary to endow 3 other UN bodies with a free license each. “Normally this would take months and months of discussions in working groups and committees to then find out that there are insufficient funds to implement decisions. At UNITAR we value our responsiveness and action once we determine the best way forward. We are proud of this but we are and remain committed to sharing the benefits, it is part of the UNOSAT concept”.

Image: very-high resolution imagery is an essential tool for analysis today. UNOSAT is trying to help in concrete terms to make access easier for the UN (image from WorldView satellite, courtesy of Digitalglobe)

Google, ITU Address Policies Of Global Internet Freedom

By Kaitlin Mara @ 10:03 pm

A representative of Google and of the United Nations International Telecommunication Union today spoke of internet freedom in repressive regimes and censorship in Western democracies.

The same tools that allow democratic participation and the opportunity to bear witness to atrocity can be used for spam or surveillance, such as the tracking of Iranian dissidents through cell phones, said Robert Boorstin, director of public policy at Google.

Boorstin and Alexander Ntoko, head of corporate strategy at the ITU, spoke today at the 8-9 March Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy.

The Geneva Summit today announced a “Declaration on Internet Freedom” whichcan be read here.

Censorship in Western Democracies

Those worried about human rights should be careful about focussing too much on the censorship of “ugly regimes” said Boorstin, as in doing so they can be blinded to other worrying developments. The Open Net Initiative, he added, demonstrates the range of different forms of censorship taking place online.

One such development was the recent sentencing of three Italian Google officials for violating privacy laws, he said. The charge followed the posting to Google video of a clip of an autistic teenager being abused by several other teens. Google was alerted to the video two months after it had been posted and then took “about two and a half hours to take it down,” Boorstin said.

“No one would defend the content of that video,” he said, “but if you are criminally responsible for anything that appears on your website, that is going to have a chilling effect on what people are allowed to put up. And it’s going to encourage repressive regimes” that might want to criminalise or censor certain behaviour online. There are also practical considerations, as “every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.”

One promising development is that the United States Treasury on Monday lifted a long-time ban on companies licensing certain kinds of software to countries such as Iran and Sudan, he said.

“This is a great accomplishment, this is something that human rights groups and companies argued for together,” said Boorstin, saying it was a “small step down a long road ahead.”

Internet Freedom where Speech is Not Free

“While there are no borders in cyberspace, global culture does not exist yet,” said Ntoko. “Global companies need to take into account that the internet will not from one day to the next” make value, government, and religious differences disappear.

This means companies have to decide how they will act when faced with censorship.

Speaking of the censored Google.cn that the company runs in China, Boorstin said: “if and when we pull out of China, I feel we will be taking away from the Chinese people a tool they have come to value because it is not Baidu [the Chinese government-run search engine] and because we do not censor as much as Baidu does,” said Boorstin.

But, he said, in China the company does not offer services such as Gmail or Blogger that would have required them to store data in servers on Chinese soil, as this would have left them vulnerable to demands that they share personal information of users.

In Thailand, YouTube was blocked for a time following the posting of a video about the Thai king that violated the nation’s lèste majesté laws. Eventually, Google agreed to take down the offending videos so that the site would be unblocked, seeing it better to take that action than to have nothing there, said Boorstin.

A recently launched Global Network Initiative, a collaboration between Google and Microsoft and Yahoo, is trying to draw up a “code of conduct on how internet tech companies should operate in repressive regimes,” Boorstin said.

Everything Is Mobile

Internet freedom cannot be discussed without recognising the importance of mobile phone technology, especially in developing countries.

Mobile phones have been the fastest spread of a technology in human history, said Boorstin. About two-thirds of the world’s population has access to mobile phones (and this probably underestimates real access as one phone can be used by an entire village) and 80 percent of mobile phone queries on Google come from outside the United States, said Boorstin.

Ntoko encouraged African policy makers in particular to work on creating an enabling environment for business, saying “speaking as an African… we can no longer continue to expect Africa to develop by waiting for handouts… Africa has to put in place the necessary environment to attract business. When that happens, there will be development.” Google currently has bases in South Africa and Kenya, said Boorstin, and said that the company has scouts evaluating other countries for potential projects.

When Is Censorship Appropriate?

Telecommunications networks are bombarded with complaints over what is in the networks, said Ntoko.

Reasons for wanting to censor content online include: technical reasons; the content is illegal within a particular country (and online censorship is an extension of offline censorship); social, cultural or religious reasons (promoting or protecting existing values); the prohibition of politically sensitive material, such as that which critiques the government; and national security reasons. National security, said Ntoko, is recently the most oft-cited reason for censorship, said Ntoko.

It is difficult to prosecute a crime when the criminal, the victim, and the weapon are in three different locations, said Ntoko. UN agencies are working on common laws across countries.

What happened to Google in Italy will most likely not happen elsewhere, said Ntoko. But a better understanding is needed of the liabilities for online content across different countries.

Ntoko said in terms of treatment of content on the internet, the ITU has been working with its members to come up with a common understanding among their national differences. “We need to see if there is any common element,” he said, so that a global company can know what to expect in different countries.

The ITU started with child pornography, and protecting children online, as a focal point as every country can understand it, and it has a unifying element as likely all countries will agree on its negativity.

But “anybody who attempts to find a universal declaration, vision of what should not be allowed on the internet is doomed to failure outside of a very small number of topics,” such as child pornography and hate speech, said Boorstin. Though he also said that he thought instructions for committing suicide or building bombs should not be online though he was not sure how they could be removed.

William New contributed to this story.

Kaitlin Mara may be reached at kmara@ip-watch.ch.

Free Press Stifled at United Nations, Reporters Say

Fred Lucas
Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) - Reporters covering the United Nations complain that the organization, whose Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for freedom of the press, has been trying to stifle reporters covering the U.N. itself.

This month, for example, U.N. officials reportedly seized videotapes from journalists who recorded the site of a U.N. helicopter crash in Nepal.

In addition, the group Reporters Without Borders says the U.N. yielded to pressure from certain member countries in refusing to recognize "Freedom of Expression Day."

Earlier this year, the U.N. threatened to pull the credentials of Inner City Press reporter Matthew Russell Lee after he reported embarrassing stories about the U.N. Development Program (UNDP). Inner City Press also was delisted from Google News for a time, fueling speculation that the U.N. had played a role in that incident.

Critics of the U.N.'s treatment of the press say these are just a few recent examples of U.N. hostility toward, and intimidation of, journalists who ask questions that U.N. officials don't want to answer.

In recent years, the United Nations has come under fire for corruption scandals, including allegations of bribery in the oil-for-food program, sexual abuse by U.N. relief workers, and, more recently, U.N. money allegedly ending up in North Korea's missile development program.

The press has a harder time holding the U.N. accountable than it does U.S. government agencies because the U.N. has no equivalent to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, Lee told a forum at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Monday.

After media attention was focused on Lee's plight, Google put Inner City Press back on its list, and the U.N. did not pull his credentials. Still, Lee said he would like to see more coverage of the goings-on at the U.N.

"Many of the journalists there are great journalists, but they need access, whether it's to the U.N. high officials or the ambassadors on the Security Council," Lee said. "There is less investigative work. Oil-for-Food, there was some great work done. There are day-to-day misdeeds -- corruption and lack of accountability that doesn't get covered because the journalists there are mostly there to cover the Security Council or Iran sanctions, Gaza and Israel. How the U.N. functions is a wide open field."

Article 19 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on governments to promote freedom of the press, said William Davis, director of the United Nations Information Center.

"We live in an imperfect world," said Davis, who spoke at the Heritage gathering in defense of the U.N. "Every year when these principles are put to the test, there are going to be shortcomings from member states and ourselves."

Davis noted that the General Assembly commemorates May 3 of every year as World Press Freedom Day, and he said the U.N. has always been a strong advocate for freedom of the press. But he said accreditation is based on whether a reporter is "formally registered with a media organization in a country recognized by the U.N. General Assembly."

He stressed that the U.N. holds daily news briefings for reporters and puts an abundance of information on its Web site.

However, former Wall Street Journal reporter Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, scoffed at the notion that the U.N. is transparent.

Rosett was one of the leading journalists who helped break the oil-for-food scandal.

"The United Nations Information Center spends well over $100 million per year--much of that your tax money--on what they call public information," Rosett said. "It's important not to confuse that with honesty and frankness and revelatory disclosures to the press. It's largely propaganda. You will find nothing about the real scandals, dirt, and corruption."

Rosett said that when scandals arise at the U.N., there is a propensity to call for an investigation and then turn aside reporters and "not answer questions on the grounds that it's an ongoing investigation."

Often these investigations are not trustworthy because the U.N. is investigating itself and making its own rules, said Beatrice Edwards, international program director for the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group.

The U.N. has new whistleblower rules, but those often are handled internally, Edwards said.

"If they are subject to retaliation for disclosing fraud or corruption at the U.N., then they would go to a hearing to protest what has happened to them, (but the hearing) is presided over by the institution which they are disclosing perhaps embarrassing information about," Edwards said.

"So they face a forum where the institution itself is both the defendant and the judge. The record of whistleblowers being vindicated or prevailing in these kinds of forums or hearings is very, very poor."

Edwards noted that the U.N., World Bank and other international bodies have diplomatic immunity and are not subject to freedom of information laws.

"If they are able to shut down free press or free speech inside, to the extent that they often try to, then we are really talking about very powerful, very wealthy, lawless organizations," she said.

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