This post should have been published last week, but I was very busy with preparations for the Election Day and the Ushahidi deployment I’m running with the journalist Paula Góes (Global Voices Online) to monitor the elections in Brazil and other tasks from my every-day-wonderful-job

The election day was very interesting and we received more than a hundred reports in Eleitor 2010, passing the mark of a thousand incidents being sent to our deployment during the last 6 months and more than 14 thousand pageviews during that weekend. From now on, we’re discussing new strategies to the second round of elections, that will decide the next president of the country on October 31st.

This post is a small testimony of the last Internet at Liberty conference that I attended in Budapest, Hungary.

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In late September I went to Budapest, Hungary, for the first time of my life. Not for tourism or sightseeing, but to meet some wonderful and fascinating people in the Internet at Liberty 2010: The promise and peril of online free expression conference by Google and the Central European University.

The event, held at the CEU campus from September 21-22, was anticipated by a workshop on the 20th and aimed to discuss how we address freedom of expression on the web, transparency, advocacy, digital activism and government censorship, in addition to other topics very related to what we work and do at Global Voices and in my job, such as citizen media and accountability tools.

I arrived in Budapest at the end of the afternoon on the 20th, and had to run to the event venue to see if I could get at least a glimpse of the workshops. I managed to attend one of them, where they were discussing how companies and governments address privacy issues, and what’s their role to be more open. But since I was very late and was already jetlagged, I couldn’t enjoy the workshops as I wished, but I managed at least to find and see friendly faces again.

All in all, the Internet at Liberty conference amazed me. I saw old friends and made new ones, and I learned a lot. I always get this feeling of being a global citizen every time I go to a gathering of different people from many parts of the world. And to be able to discuss common issues with them is such an experience! It’s so good to exchange views and perspectives in the corridors of these conferences with people from India, China, Thailand, the US and Canada, and from Hungary as well! Hungarians seemed pretty nice and friendly to me =) Thumbs up for them!

Specially because I get the chance to talk with these people, I also have a feeling that I’m very disconnected to the rest of the world. I feel like over here in Brazil (and Sao Paulo) we’re in a comfort zone that’s very dangerous. We do not have extreme cases of censorship or data retention and people being killed because of what they say and write, journalists have a somewhat good environment to work and to criticize the government and the mass media, and the web is quite open too.

Nevertheless, I’m still very concerned by the fact that in all these places and conferences, the “real” Brazil is sometimes not represented. There are some people doing a lot of great stuff in Northern Brazil, for instance, but they are not heard, not even by their own compatriots. We do not have a very active and political engaged diaspora, nor participation of social movements in such events. I’m often reminded that I am an exception, and although I was at Budapest as part of Global Voices, I have a very different background from all the other Brazilians who took part in the Internet at Liberty.

Last but not least, I also I had the chance to meet Sharon Hom, who’s a Chinese human rights activist. Sharon works for HRI China, and is by far one of the greatest persons I’ve met in Budapest. If you’d like to see videos of the conference, CEUHungary has done a great job and uploaded the videos to their Youtube account. Also, my friend and Global Voices colleague Jillian C York has liveblogged the sessions in her blog.

To see the photos I’ve taken in Buda+pest, please go to my Flickr pool.

Best,

Diego Casaes.

The organization has already issued their latest report “The Enemies of the Internet 2010″, and not very surprinsingly, among their list we find: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam. However, RSF is hopeful:

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attemptimg to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive netizens demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

Mobilizing against these attempts of censoring our dear and precious internet is what will keep us busy for the next years. Whether it is in Asia, Oceania, Africa, Americas or in Europe, 2010 is slowly showing itself as a year when  some governments will fight for not allowing their citizens have proper access to content. We can see examples of this in the ACTA discussions, laws for punishing filesharing and people’s actions on the web, as well as many other reports.

Now, over there in Global Voices, Jillian C. York asked bloggers what anti-cersorship means to us and what are governments and companies takes in this matter. Well, for me, anti-censorship means gathering efforts to promote as much transparency as possible, and allowing people to freely use Internet’s infinite possibilities.

I also think that governments should be encouraged not to regulate, but rather give the proper infra-structure and educate people on how to use the web. This way, citizens will trust the government and be able to freely express themselves on the web: this is of utmost importance! On this matter, I also think companies should become  more aware of their influence in society. Google’s decision not to regulate search results in China after having some Human Rights activists’ accounts hacked (follow this link for more information) is a demonstration of  how companies should position themselves.

All in all, there is much to discuss. I couldn’t address the whole cyber censorship issue by myself in this post. But one thing is certain: we have to pay attention if we want to have a free environment for expressing ourselves and share content in the future. I strongly believe people’s demands will succeed, but there is a long way for us to path yet, and we never know what to expect from repressive countries such as the ones in RSF’s list. Unfortunately, they can go as far as restraining people to preserve their status quo… but they should know we do anything for preserving our rights as well: