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Bassem Youssef Posts Bail as Egyptian Authorities Press Case

March 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment

After presenting himself to prosecutors on Sunday morning for questioning that lasted several hours, the satirist, Bassem Youssef, paid the equivalent of $2,200 bail and was released. Prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Youssef on Saturday on charges stemming from statements he had made on his widely watched television show, including that he had insulted Mr. Morsi, denigrated Islam and disturbed public peace.

Human rights advocates and members of Egypt’s political opposition seized on the warrant as evidence that Egypt’s first freely elected leader had grown impatient with his many critics and was using authoritarian tactics to limit freedom of expression. Similar criticisms were leveled at the government last week, after the public prosecutor issued warrants for five anti-Islamist political activists for things they had written on social media.

Since Mr. Morsi took office in June, prosecutors in at least two dozen cases have been asked to look into charges of insulting the president, according to a human rights lawyer, Gamal Eid. Few of those cases, however, have resulted in arrest warrants.

Mr. Eid said the decision to order bail for Mr. Youssef indicated that the case was continuing, and he raised the possibility that the satirist could be summoned to answer more questions or be referred to court. “He could have been released without bail,” Mr. Eid said. “This is legal, but we think it’s arbitrary.”

In a statement from Mr. Morsi’s media office on Sunday, the president seemed to distance himself from the investigation, saying that the public prosecutor, Talaat Ibrahim, whom Mr. Morsi appointed in November, “operates independently from the presidency.”

“The current legal system allows for individual complaints to be brought to the prosecutor general,” the statement said. “All the current well-publicized claims were initiated by citizens rather than the presidency.”

The statement also said the presidency could not comment on active legal cases, but “respects freedom of speech and the press.”

At the very least, the interrogation of Mr. Youssef seemed to represent a public relations misstep for the government. Mr. Youssef, a heart surgeon who volunteered in a Tahrir Square field hospital during the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak, has struck a nerve in Egypt with a show that mines Egypt’s chaotic and frequently absurd post-uprising politics.

Sunday was no exception. Mr. Youssef appeared at the High Court wearing an enormous black hat — modeled on one that Mr. Morsi wore while receiving an honorary degree in Pakistan last month. As he waited to be questioned by prosecutors, Mr. Youssef posted sarcastic observations on Twitter, including that the investigators felt the need to ask him about the color of his eyes.

“The officers and the lawyers of the public prosecutors office want to take pictures with me,” he wrote. “Is this the reason for the summons?”

Later, some of the tweets were deleted. A spokesman for Mr. Youssef was not immediately able to say why.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/world/middleeast/bassem-youssef-posts-bail-as-egyptian-authorities-press-case.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Ex-Formula One Boss Loses Privacy Case

May 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

PARIS — The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday rejected a bid by Max Mosley, former president of the governing body of Formula One auto racing, to require news organizations to notify the subjects of articles prior to publication.

The court, based in Strasbourg, said such a requirement would create a “chilling effect” for freedom of speech.

The case stemmed from a 2008 story in The News of the World, a racy British tabloid, that was headlined “F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers.” The story described a sex session involving Mr. Mosley, who headed the International Automobile Federation from 1993 until 2009.

Mr. Mosley, a son of Oswald Mosley, former leader of the British Union of Fascists, sued The News of the World, saying there had been no Nazi theme, though he acknowledged the sadomasochistic flavor. A British court called the story a flagrant invasion of his privacy and fined The News of the World £60,000, or nearly $100,000.

In his case before the European court, Mr. Mosley had argued that British media laws violated the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to protect him from intrusions into his private life. He was seeking a requirement that newspapers and other media should have to give the subjects of their stories a chance to respond before the papers appear on the newsstand.

The court rejected Mr. Mosley’s claim, saying there were already sufficient privacy protections in place in Britain.

“Although punitive fines and criminal sanctions could be effective in encouraging pre-notification, that would have a chilling effect on journalism, even political and investigative reporting, both of which attracted a high level of protection under the convention,” the court wrote. “That ran the risk of being incompatible with the convention requirements of freedom of expression.”

The decision comes amid a heated debate in Britain over the balance between privacy rights and Fleet Street’s freedom to publish celebrity tell-alls. Newspapers complain about the growing use of court orders to stifle such reporting, including so-called “superinjunctions,” which bar reporting even the existence of the order.

A lawyer for Mr. Mosley could not immediately be reached.

Dominic Crossley, a partner at Collyer Bristow who represents Mr. Mosley, had argued that in publishing stories like the one on Mr. Mosley, British tabloids crossed the line separating freedom from recklessness.

“The first Max knew about the News of the World story was on the morning of 30 March 2008, the same time as 15 percent of the adult population of the U.K. were also reading it,” Mr. Crossley told the Guardian in January. “The decision not to notify the subjects of stories like this is a technique used by tabloid editors in extreme cases when the article is clearly going to be unlawful — they take a decision which renders privacy rights entirely futile.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9ae2029c381619d7e5100447895ad4e3

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India Feels a Chill Over New Rules on Web Speech

April 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

MUMBAI — Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations that seek to restrict Web content that, among other things, could be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.”

The new rules
, issued by the Indian Department of Information Technology this month without much publicity, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content that they consider objectionable by drawing from a long list of reasons.

Critics say that the new regulations could severely curtail debate and discussion on the Internet, use of which has been growing quickly in India. The list of objectionable content is sweeping and, for instance, includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.”

The rules highlight the ambivalence with which Indian officials have long treated freedom of expression. The country’s Constitution allows “reasonable restrictions” on free speech, but lawmakers have periodically stretched that definition to ban books, movies and other material about sensitive subjects like sex, politics and religion.

An Indian state recently banned a new book
by an American author on the Indian freedom fighter Mohandas K. Gandhi that critics have argued disparages the leader by describing his relationship with another man.

Fewer than 10 percent of Indians have access to the Internet, but that number has been growing quickly, especially on mobile devices. There are more than 700 million cellphone accounts in India. The country has also established a thriving technology industry that writes software and creates Web services, primarily for Western clients.

Even before the new rules — known as the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 — India has periodically tried to restrict speech on the Internet. In 2009, the government banned a popular and graphic online comic strip, “Savita Bhabhi,” about a housewife with an active sex life. Indian officials have also forced social networking sites like Orkut to take down posts that offended ethnic and religious groups.

Using a freedom of information law, the Center for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research and advocacy group, recently obtained and published a list of 11 Web sites
banned by the Department of Information Technology. Other government agencies have probably blocked more sites, the group said.

The new Internet rules go further than existing Indian laws and restrictions, said Sunil Abraham, the executive director for the Center for Internet and Society. The rules require Internet “intermediaries” — an all-encompassing group that includes sites like YouTube and Facebook and companies that are host to Web sites or that provide Internet connections — to respond to any demand to take down offensive content within 36 hours. The rules do not offer a way for content producers to defend their work.

“These rules overly favor those who want to clamp down on freedom of expression,” Mr. Abraham said. “Whenever there are limits of freedom of expression, in order for those limits to be considered constitutionally valid, those limits have to be clear and not be very vague. Many of these rules that seek to place limits are very, very vague.”

An official for the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, an advocacy group based in New Delhi, said Wednesday that it was considering a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the new rules.

“What are we, Saudi Arabia?” said Pushkar Raj, the group’s general secretary. “We don’t expect this from India. This is something very serious.”

Gulshan Rai, an official at the Department of Information Technology, did not return calls and messages.

The rules are based on a 2008 information technology law that the Indian Parliament passed shortly after a three-day battle in Mumbai with Pakistan-based terrorists in which more than 160 people were killed. Among other things, that law granted the authorities more expansive powers to monitor electronic communications on national security grounds. It also granted privacy protections to consumers.

While advocates for free speech and civil liberties have complained that the 2008 law goes too far in violating the rights of Indians, Internet firms have expressed support for it. The law removed liability from Internet intermediaries as long as they were not active participants in creating content that was later deemed to be offensive.

Subho Ray, the president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, which represents companies like Google and eBay, said that change had been a big improvement over a previous law that had been used to hold intermediaries liable for being host to content created by others. In 2004, for instance, the police arrested eBay’s top India executive because a user of the company’s Indian auction site had offered to sell a video clip of a teenage couple having sex.

“The new I.T. Act (2008) is, in fact, a large improvement on the old one,” Mr. Ray said in an e-mail response to questions. He said his association had not taken a stance on the new regulations.

An India-based spokeswoman for Google declined to comment on the new rules, saying the company needed more time to respond.

Along with the new content regulations, the government also issued rules governing data security, Internet cafes and the electronic provision of government services.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4fe8a689679a2d0a16b432b63e1241af

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