[governance] Human Rights Watch press release

[Narine Khachatryan]

Human Rights Watch issued a press release today


Turkey: Internet Freedom, Rights in Sharp Decline
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/02/turkey-internet-freedom-rights-sharp-decline>

Human Rights Watch



SEPTEMBER 2, 2014

Press release


Turkey’s ruling party has responded to criticism of its policies by
escalating Internet censorship and prosecuting social media users.
Delegations at the Internet Government Forum shouldn’t turn a blind eye to
the Turkish government’s increasingly regressive approach to rights online.


by Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher


(Istanbul) – Turkey <http://www.hrw.org/europecentral-asia/turkey>, the
host of a UN-sponsored Internet forum September 2-5, 2014 in Istanbul, has
an abysmal record of protecting free expression online. In recent months,
the Turkish government has expanded its powers to censor online content and
to monitor Internet activity without independent oversight.

The Internet Government Forum (IGF), an annual meeting convened by the
United Nations secretary-general, brings together governments, civil
society, and others as equal partners to discuss public policy issues
related to the Internet.

“Turkey’s ruling party has responded to criticism of its policies by
escalating Internet censorship and prosecuting social media users,”
said Cynthia
Wong <http://www.hrw.org/bios/cynthia-m-wong>, senior Internet researcher
at Human Rights Watch. “Delegations at the Internet Government Forum
shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the Turkish government’s increasingly
regressive approach to rights online.”

The Turkish government should cease blocking websites and prosecuting
social media users and the Constitutional Court should overrule abusive
provisions in a new surveillance law, Human Rights Watch said.

Turkish authorities have blocked tens of thousands of websites under the
country’s draconian Internet Law 5651 over the last few years. The exact
number remains unclear since the judicial and administrative procedures for
Internet blocking are not transparent. In February, the government passed
amendments to the law that expand censorship powers, enabling authorities
to block access to web pages within hours, based on a mere allegation that
a posting violates private life, without a prior court order.

The government has also tried to stifle social media. In the period before
the March 30 municipal elections, authorities blocked
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/27/turkey-youtube-block-violates-free-expression>
access
to Twitter and YouTube, which have been used to organize protests
<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/these-charts-show-how-crucial-twitter-is-for-the-turkey-protesters/276798/>
and
call for reform. These actions followed a corruption scandal that erupted
when multiple
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/leaked-tapes-calls-erdogan-resign-turkish-pm>
wiretaps
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/03/27/by-banning-youtube-has-turkey-revealed-just-how-damning-todays-leaked-recording-is/>
of
conversations among top officials were leaked via social media.

The blanket blocking drew widespread international criticism, including
from the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, the European
Union, and the United States government. But President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who was then the prime minister, vowed to “eradicate Twitter
<http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-twitter-after-erdogan-vowed-eradication.aspx?pageID=238&nID=63884&NewsCatID=338>”
and other social media
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/21/turkey-bans-twitter-and-twitter-explodes/>,
no matter what the international community might say.

Access to Twitter and YouTube were restored in April and June respectively
by order of the Constitutional Court, which called the blanket block on
Twitter “illegal, arbitrary and a serious restriction on the right to
obtain information.” However, YouTube
<http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1407106800000&ced=1408316400000>
and
other social media sites have sometimes been blocked for prolonged periods
since 2007.

The right to privacy online and offline has also been under threat. In
April, Turkey passed a new law that greatly expanded the surveillance
powers of the National Intelligence Agency, known by its Turkish acronym
MİT (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı). The law gives the agency sweeping powers
to amass private data, documents, and personal information in all forms
without a court order.

The new law fundamentally undermines the right to privacy by permitting the
agency unfettered access to personal data without judicial oversight or
review, Human Rights Watch said. Nor does it have any clear limits on the
scope of data retention or government access to private data. The law also
punishes journalists who might expose abuses by the agency and grants MİT
personnel effective immunity from prosecution.

The expanded surveillance powers may feed further abusive prosecutions and
erode the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said. The Constitutional Court is
examining the law in response to a challenge by the main opposition party.

The Turkish authorities have also adopted an increasingly restrictive
approach to social media users’ online postings with repeated prosecutions
that contravene Turkey’s obligations to uphold freedom of expression.

In February, for example, 29 people were indicted for inciting riots via
Twitter during the May 2013 demonstrations over government plans for
construction in the park in Taksim Square. Evidence described in the
indictment included tweets that merely relayed information about the Gezi
park protests or called for emergency services or other medical aid for
protesters.

“The IGF embraces robust debate and participation by independent voices in
Internet governance,” Wong said. “Yet, the Internet forum’s host this year
seems determined to shut down criticism of government policy online.”

Turkey’s Efforts to Muzzle the Internet

Internet Censorship
Internet Law 5651 was enacted in 2007 to regulate Internet and online
service providers. Under the law, foreign-hosted websites are subject to
blocking if they are suspected to contain eight categories of prohibited
content, including child abuse images, content that facilitates drug use,
provision of substances dangerous to health, obscenity, prostitution sites,
gambling sites, encouragement of suicide, and crimes committed against
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Blocking orders can be issued by courts, public prosecutors as a
precautionary injunction, or the Telecommunications Communication
Presidency (“TIB”), an administrative entity in the Telecommunications
Authority. The TIB is responsible for executing blocking orders and
surveillance warrants and monitoring Internet content.

In the years since, the law has been used to block LGBT community forums
(later unblocked without explanation), independent media websites, and news
sites with a pro-Kurdish political line. Several global websites that host
large volumes of user-generated content, including YouTube, Twitter,
Blogspot, Wordpress, Vimeo, and Google Groups, have been occasionally
blocked wholesale, even if only a fraction of the content was deemed
subject to blocking.

These practices have faced repeated international criticism, including by
the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s representative
on media freedom, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, and
the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. In its 2012
Progress Report for Turkey’s Accession to the European Union, the European
Commission stated that, “Frequent website bans are a cause for serious
concern and there is a need to revise the law on the Internet.”

Individuals have filed five separate applications to the European Court of
Human Rights to challenge the government’s blocking of YouTube, website
creation and hosting service Google Sites, and music website Last.fm. In
December 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Ahmet Yıldırım
v. Turkey
<http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng-press/pages/search.aspx?i=001-115705#{"itemid":["001-115705"]}>
that
the blanket blocking of Google Sites violated the right to freedom of
expression. The court found
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/12/21/turkey-end-overly-broad-website-blocking>
that
Internet Law 5651 did not adequately protect against arbitrary or abusive
blocking measures.

The government has largely ignored the court’s ruling. According to
Engelliweb <http://engelliweb.com/>, a nongovernmental website that tracks
websites reportedly blocked in Turkey, as of August 2014 over 50,000
websites have been blocked, over twice the number it listed as reportedly
blocked in 2012.

The February 2014, amendments to the internet law expand the TIB’s powers
by allowing the agency to issue administrative blocking orders if any
individual or legal entity alleges a privacy violation or if the content is
considered “discriminatory or insulting to certain members of society.”
Internet service providers have to block access to specific URLs within
four hours of receiving an order. Although such blocking orders must be
reviewed by a court within 48 hours, the grounds for blocking are so
broadly and vaguely defined that they allow discretion for abusive
application and interpretation.

In addition, although blocking a URL is more targeted than blocking an
entire social media site, such blocking may prompt increased use of “deep
packet inspection” – that is, to examine the content of Internet traffic
transmitted over an Internet network. Such capabilities, which are
necessary for URL blocking, also raise serious privacy concerns because
they enable mass monitoring and possible tampering with Internet traffic. Media
reports
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626304579505912518706936>
have
suggested that deep packet inspection is already in use in Turkey.

Finally, requests from Turkish authorities to Google
<http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government/TR/> and
Twitter <https://transparency.twitter.com/removal-requests/2014/jan-jun> to
take down content deemed objectionable by the government have surged in
recent years. According to Twitter’s publicly reported numbers, Twitter
received 186 such requests, specifying 304 accounts, to remove content in
the first half of 2014, up from seven requests specifying 30 accounts from
the same period in 2013. Twitter complied with 30 percent of these
requests, in part or in whole.

In March, Twitter filed court petitions
<https://blog.twitter.com/2014/challenging-the-access-ban-in-turkey> in
Turkey to challenge several of these orders and was successful in
overturning two, including one
<https://blog.twitter.com/2014/victory-for-free-expression-in-turkish-court>
that
instructed Twitter to take down an account with tweets that accused a
former government official of corruption.

Turkish officials have also demanded
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626304579505912518706936>
that
Twitter open an office inside the country to make it easier to compel the
firm to censor content or hand over information about users, as well as for
tax collection purposes. Twitter has stated
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304311204579505120408321090>
that
it has no current plans to open an office in Turkey.

Surveillance, Privacy, and Public Accountability
On April 17, parliament passed a new law that greatly increases the powers
of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency, while decreasing government
accountability, media freedom, and the right to privacy. The Law Amending
the Law on State Intelligence Services and the National Intelligence Agency
(Devlet İstihbarat Hizmetleri ve Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı Kanununda
Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Kanunu, no. 6532), which entered into force on
April 26, amends a 1983 law (no. 2937) defining the activities of MİT.

The new law gives the intelligence agency far-reaching powers to collect
private data, documents, and information about individuals in all forms
from public bodies, banks, archives, companies, and other legal entities,
as well as from organizations without legal status. No court order is
needed to compel disclosure of personal data or documents. The law makes
provision of all such information to MİT obligatory and overrides
provisions in any other laws or bylaws limiting the provision of such data.
Failure to comply with data requests from the agency could be punishable
with a prison sentence.

Furthermore, the new law permits the agency to “collect data relating to
external intelligence, national defense, terrorism, international crimes,
and cyber security passing via telecommunication channels” without
specifying the need for a court order. This provision could enable mass
interception of Internet traffic or mobile text messages. The law also
grants the agency head the authority to intercept calls overseas, and calls
by foreigners and on pay phones, and to analyze and store the data.

At the same time, the amendments criminalize exposure of abusive
surveillance and intelligence-gathering activities, as well as undermine
accountability of other agencies that may access data or communications
derived from surveillance. The law increases maximum sentences for
whistleblowers convicted of leaking information about intelligence
activities and MİT personnel. For the first time, it also sets prison
sentences – of three to nine years – for journalists and editors who
publish or broadcast leaked information or documents “by radio, television,
Internet, social media, newspapers, publications, books or all other media
and by means of all forms of written, visual, audio and electronic mass
communication tools.”

The law also makes it more difficult for judicial authorities to hold
officials accountable for misusing the law. If a complaint is filed that
involves intelligence personnel, the prosecutor would have to notify the
head of the intelligence agency. If the intelligence agency “states or
documents” that the allegations of wrongdoing were “connected to [MİT]
duties and activities,” the investigation would be blocked and the agency
employees involved would have immunity. The public prosecutor thus has no
authority to initiate direct criminal investigations or subject the
agency’s activities to judicial scrutiny in the event of allegations of
wrongdoing. Another provision largely prevents agency personnel from
testifying on matters related to MİT duties and activities.

Combined, these provisions effectively place the intelligence agency above
the law and thwart accountability if MİT personnel violate human rights.
The agency itself decides when its activities should be investigated or
prosecuted, and journalists and whistleblowers are penalized if they
publish information about intelligence activities that may be of legitimate
public interest.

Amendments to Internet law 5651 also raise privacy concerns by imposing a
new data retention mandate on hosting providers. Under the revised law,
hosting providers must store communications traffic data related to their
hosting activities and make it available to the TIB upon request. The
amendments do not require a court order or legal process for such requests.
Blanket data retention mandates interfere with the right to privacy of all
affected individuals, the vast majority of whom will not be suspected of
any crime or wrongdoing.

The Constitutional Court indicated in July that it would examine the
substance of the new National Intelligence Agency law. The court should
overrule the law’s abusive surveillance and data collection powers, as well
as other provisions granting immunity from prosecution to intelligence
personnel and providing for steep prison sentences for journalists
publishing leaked intelligence.


Regards,

-- 
Narine Khachatryan
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