Today is the World Day Against Cyber-Censorship. On this day, Reporters Without Borders releases its annual “Enemies of the Internet” report. To additionally increase awareness for Internet censorship and oppression, many websites use more black on their pages on this global day, like mine here. That is why today is also called Blackout Day. For the first time, the report by Reporters Without Borders does not only document governments, but also documents corporations, that threaten the rights of Internet users or netizens.

The special topic of this year is Internet surveillance: governments attacking the human right to privacy in the Internet, together with companies that build, sell, and service the intrusive software to that end. Often the targets of this worldwide human rights violation are journalists or democracy activists, for example in Bahrain or Syria. Some of these software companies operate out of Germany. Reporters Without Borders critizes these dangers of digital mercenaries. The companies listed as threats in the release by Reporters Without Borders today are Gamma (UK/Germany), Trovicor (Germany), Hacking Team, Amesys and Blue Coat.

The Pirate Party Germany joins in with Reporters Without Borders on the World Day Against Cyber-Censorship to support and strengthen the human right to privacy and data protection, and to fight Internet surveillance and censorship.

Being a member in both organisations, Pirate Party and Reporters Without Borders, I, too, like many others today, show solidarity with all activists, journalists and Internet users who are oppressed and whose rights are violated by surveillance and censorship.

Important links:

• Reporters Without Borders: Special report on Internet surveillance, focusing on five governments and five companies that are Enemies of the Internet
• Reporters Without Borders: The Enemies of the Internet: Special edition: Surveillance
• Reporters Without Borders: OECD complaints against surveillance software companies (German)
• Pirate Party Germany: Welttag gegen Internetzensur: Die Feinde des Internets (German)
• Pirate Party Germany: Piraten-Wiki: Welttag-gegen-Internetzensur-2013, Mitmachen (German)
• Pirate Party Germany: Press release against surveillance software (German)

How you can participate on Blackout Day:

To turn your blog posting (for example on WordPress) into black like my posting here, just copy and paste this simple code into the HTML editing window of your posting (in WordPress: use the “Text” instead of “Visual” editing mode):

Add this before your normal content:

<div style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff;padding:14px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:2px;font-weight:300;" width="100%">


Add this after your normal content:

</div>


See also:

My proposition for the Pirate Party election program to adopt a position against surveillance software and to demand laws to enforce full transparency about contractual partners using surveillance software and disclosure to the public of all source code of surveillance software.

Auf Deutsch lesen.

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