How Human Rights Groups and "Hacktivists" Are Using Internet Technology to Buck State Censors

A woman walks into an Internet café in Beijing, knowing what she is about to do is illegal. But by using a proxy server -- connecting her computer to another one abroad -- she hopes to evade the state censors. She has done this many times before. It takes longer this way, but it's free and easy to use, and she has plenty of time.

The young man at the computer next to her is using a more sophisticated method -- a VPN or virtual private network. It creates a private, encrypted channel that runs along with the regular Internet. Through his VPN, he is connecting with another server overseas. It's much faster than a proxy server, but it costs roughly $40 a year.

This sounds like the stuff of spy movies and suspense novels, but in China, it's fairly commonplace to evade government censorship -- breaching the Great Firewall -- to access forbidden websites, send information out and do it without any of China's army of censors being any the wiser. (Official figures aren't available, but the number of censors is said to be in the tens of thousands.)

Now, thanks to the efforts of human rights groups, forward-thinking news organizations and "hacktivists," more and more voices from around the globe are finding a place on the Internet -- even in countries where Web filters and censorship are the norm.

"Now you can't say you didn't know," says Sameer Padania. "Human rights abuses have fewer and fewer places to hide." Padania was discussing the website he runs, The Hub, following a panel discussion at the recent 2008 PEN conference in New York. According to its website, The Hub is "the world's first participatory media site for human rights." A kind of human rights version of YouTube, it allows users from all over the world to upload audio, video and photographs, provide written context for them, or simply watch and listen. Users can connect with other groups, post an event, and, perhaps most importantly, decide how much other visitors to the site can see about them. The Hub doesn't even log IP addresses, which means it can't track how many individuals use the website every day, or where they come from. The videos on the site range from cell phone camera footage of protests to slideshows with voiceovers and more sophisticated, edited mini-documentaries and public service announcements (PSAs). The Hub is a project of the human rights group Witness, which was founded by musician Peter Gabriel in 1992. It's mission was to give cameras away to the world.

The story of Witness is a lesson in the power of video as a medium. Suvasini Patel, communications and outreach manager at Witness, recounts its history:

"Peter Gabriel had gone on this tour organized by Amnesty International. He came face-to-face with survivors of human rights abuses, and he began filming them. He was carrying a first generation video camera, and he found there was something cathartic in them being able to tell their story, to have a platform, and not have anyone be able to deny it."

At first, Witness had fundraising problems. Then came the the Rodney King episode in Los Angeles in 1991, when a black motorist was viciously beaten by four white LA police officers. The assault was captured by amateur photographer George Holliday; as the images made their way around the world, they put the issue of racial profiling both inside and outside the black community, on the map. Still, Patel says, "I don't know whether it was a success or not, because the video was used as evidence both by the prosecution and the defense. Perspective is important."

Witness soon realized that cameras alone weren't enough. So it began doing training in the use of video, providing strategic support of the distribution of video, and envisioning The Hub.

"The Hub is just a different platform," Patel explains. "People don't necessarily need cameras, but they need a platform, a community to engage with, and strategic guidance on how to use video to create change."