Latest Category: Technology & Human Rights

Following Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election in which President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory over opposition candidate Edmundo González despite overwhelming data to the contrary — González received around 67% of the vote —thousands of Venezuelans have protested the results across the country.

After news broke that a young Egyptian, Khaled Saeed, had been tortured and killed by police in June 2010, Wael Ghonim created the Facebook page, “We are all Khaled Saeed.”

A typical move in the dictator’s handbook is not only oppressing those within the country but silencing voices of dissent outside the country. And technology has only made it easier.

Authoritarian regimes have been increasingly creative in developing ways to control the digital space and the flow of information. Aside from jailing people for their tweets, monitoring accounts that uncover a regime’s misdeeds, and siccing cyber trolls on dissidents, they have also discovered the convenience of using intermediaries to censor. The message is straightforward: “Help us control social media or lose your business.” It is to repress by means of a proxy.

Using photos and videos in criminal trials isn’t a recent phenomenon. The Nuremberg trials were the first, using images of Nazi concentration camps to bring perpetrators to justice. Today, social media has changed the game entirely.