Tom MacMaster’s masquerading as blogger activist “Gay Girl in Damascus” was harmful, say APC in a statement, and endangers the right to use the internet anonymously.

Major international decisions are being made about the internet in the coming weeks – decisions that could affect the internet as we know it forever. This week the United Nations Human Rights Council will receive its first ever official report on freedom of expression online – and APC is helping deliver the message to the UN in Geneva.

Can information and communication technologies (ICTs) transform women’s realities? Undoubtedly, yes. This connection between ICTs and the advancement of women’s rights will be addressed during the 55th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 22 February – 4 March in New York. The CSW is a global policy-making body of the United Nations dedicated to gender equality and the advancement of women. APC’s GenderIT.org has released a special edition that speaks directly to this year’s theme of the CSW: gender, education and technology. APC staff attending the CSW will provide live coverage from the session in GenderIT.org’s Feminist Talk section on the website, so stay tuned.

Computers are creating massive e-waste. The paper industry has had to double to meet printer demand. But smart technologies are bringing huge savings in energy consumption. As the UN conference on climate change starts in Cancun, the new Global Information Society Watch from APC and Hivos looks at ICTs and environmental sustainability in 53 countries, six regions and through ten expert thematic reports. What is the state of the industry in your country? Find out.

APC member in Rosario Argentina, Nodo Tau, has been working to help marginalised communities access ICTs for fifteen years. But they do not stop at access – Nodo Tau believes that technologies can change people’s lives, and that technology has its place on the road towards social justice. On behalf of the APC, we wish to congratulate you on your hard work and invite our readers to learn more about Nodo Tau’s work. Photo: Telecentre in Rosario

Freedom of speech and its flipside, access to information, is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. However federally-funded libraries are required to prevent people under eighteen accessing “harmful” content. Kevicha Echols and Melissa Ditmore investigate the use of internet filters on public library computers and find that measures adopted by libraries range from installation of filtering software on all computers for child and adult use to no filters at all! The law is being implemented differently varying across city, county and state. Sectors of the society most likely to be affected by this ad hoc censorship are young people and the economically-disadvantaged who rely particularly on library computers to access online information. Photo: “FallWithMe”:http://www.flickr.com/people/fallwithme/

While members of the Pakistani parliament were on a diplomatic trip in the United States to talk about the impact of the ar on terror on northern rural tribes in the country, they were asked by airport security in Washington to be body-scanned. The right not to undergo a body scan is a privilege given to parliamentarians the world over. APC member Bytes for All in Pakistan applauds the Pakistani parliamentarians’ firm stance and refusal to be scanned.

The greens are growing like weeds in Bulgaria and Hungary and recently ecologists in Bulgaria made significant headway on yet another battle against a Goliath, preventing the further destruction along the Black Sea coast and high mountains to make way for luxury housing. Campaigns spread like viruses through emailing lists and online networks, and ultimately ended up on the streets in protest, a testament to the growth of new citizen-driven green parties in these countries.

After several days of intense debate, APC members identified six issues as the key strategic areas that APC must tackle in the next five years: advocating for affordable internet access for all, ICTs and the environment, building the “information commons” , defending internet rights, critical and creative engagement of emerging technologies from a social change perspective and improving governance, especially governance of the internet. Why did APC members prioritise those six issues? What are the key challenges and opportunities that they perceive regarding the freedom of the internet and its use for social justice in the coming years?