“All that is happening completely under the radar”, says Oliver “Unicorn” Knapp. He is concerned with the planned census in the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). Together with Tim “Scytale” Weber, Knapp has held a lecture (Slides, in German) at Cologne’s Sigint Conference on the 2011 census law to raise public awareness for the issue. Currently, there is close to none, he says.

In Germany, the word “census” (“Volkszählung” – literally “population count”) is very much connected with a wave of protests from 1983 to 1987. In 1983, plans for a census clashed with an already highly politicized public sphere. Within weeks, hundreds of citizens’ initiatives formed over concerns transcending data security, supported by prominent public figures such as nobel prize laureate Günter Grass. The planned census was stopped and finally prohibited by the federal constitutional court in a groundbreaking decision which established the basic right to informational self-determination.

When the census was finally carried out in updated form in 1987, protests surrounding it turned against decreasing civil liberties and urged for more democracy. Activists called for a boycott of the census and “alternative collecting points” presented more than one million blank forms. The government reacted with a rigorous clampdown against protesters, but some municipalities supported the boycott and had to be forced to conduct the census interviews.

One of the reasons that today we see none of these protests might be that next year’s is going to be a so-called “register-based census”. That means that on the one hand, data from different public institutions will be merged and matched against each other. A process that will not show on the street. Thus the population only perceives the other part of the census – the questioning of a sample of ten percent of all households.

In theory, Germany already has detailed information of all inhabitants in registration offices. But in fact these databases are actually often inaccurate and sometimes not even available in standardized form. For that reason, data from job offices and government agencies (for civil servants) are also collected for the census. By matching these databases, it is expected to expose faults of the registration offices.

Datasets from registration offices, job centers and government agencies will be collected by the respective state offices and then transfered to the national office for statistics – without anonymization. That is also true for individuals who are part of a witness protection program. The entries registration offices hold about them bear a notation prohibitting to forward them. But for the census, these data will still be transfered – including the reference regarding the witness protection program.

The reference date for collecting data is on Mai 9, 2011. From this day on, the census also starts in the way that is still known from 1987: Interviewers are deployed to question Germany’s inhabitants. Unlike 23 years ago, not all of the population is subject to interrogations, but only every tenth household. Giving (correct) answers is obligatory and not doing so can be penalized by a fine of up to 5.000 Euros. This phase will take a few months (Official info graphic, in German).

But obviously, some people are more equal than others. There is a range of so-called “special sectors”: Prisons, nursing homes, psychiatries, doss houses. Here, not only samples are taken, but each inhabitant of these facilities is going to be registered, the CCC acitivists say. The statistics offices mention additional interviews “in some cases”, because the data situation there was especially error-prone. The liability to disclose the requested information is with the establishments’ managements, the individuals concerned are only informed that data is transferred.

Already two weeks before the reference date, all the nation’s real estate owners will receive mail. They have to disclose information on their property, disclose whether a flat has a toilet, bathtub or shower. This questioning is conducted per mail, which is why it is expected to take longer: 14 months. Questioning of a population sample and real estate owners combined, about 30 percent of all inhabitants will have to provide information.

These data will be merged and linked up at the national office for statistics. „That in the process the most comprehensive population index in Germany’s history is created is thus no fault, but intended“, Knapp and Weber write in an article for CCC magazine, “Datenschleuder“.

Additionally, all information is linked up with a unique personal identification number. „For any address, any building, any flat, any household and any person national and state statistics offices assign and keep an identification number, which can be applied across municipalities and buildings. Identification numbers can be used in mergings according to §9“, says the census act.

Both activists see this as a clear breach of Germany’s constitution. They point to 1983′s famous “census verdict”, in which the federal constitutional court established a basic right to informational self-determination. At the core of this judgment, Knapp and Weber see the declaration that

a comprehensive registration and indexing of the personality through merging individual biographical and personal data in order to create profiles of the personality of the citizens [...] is inadmissible even in the anonymity of statistical censi.

But other aspects of the law for 2011′s census as well seem to cross the lines defined by the constitutional judges in their decision. Back then, a lack of anonymization was one of the reasons to block the original plans. Subsequently in 1987, block-wise anonymization was adopted. But today, this security measure is no object anymore.

Another point of criticism in 1983 was that original plans included using census data to correct registration offices’ databases. The constitutional court put a stop to this as well, which seems to still be extant in the so-called “separation principle”: According to that, census data may only be used for statistical purposes. But without anonymization, it is hard to rule out misuse.

The German census act implements an EU directive, other European countries will question their population as well in 2011. But the federal republic exceeds the minimal requirements set by Brussels in two cases. The form will additionally ask whether interviewees or their parents have migrated to Germany, as well as for religious beliefs held by them (answering the latter is optional).

Ten years ago, Germany and Sweden were the only countries not to participate in the European census. 1991 as well a census planned after the fall of the Berlin wall was canceled, which would have updated statistical information on the reunited German nation. The costs were deemed to high back then, but fear of protests from the population was critical for the cancellation as well.

This time costs are again a major issue. 750 million Euros are budgeted for the census, a third of which will be paid by the federal government. Municipalities are thus far from happy about the project since they will have to pay high expenses for administration as well as execution of the census.

Since 1987 (in Eastern Germany 1981), Germany has not had a census, except for an annual microcensus in which about one percent of the population is surveyed. The national office for statistics still works on the base of this old data. But population registers must have considerably improved since 2007, when their data was used for the roll-out of a unique tax payer’s account number. Registration offices were notified about flawed data, which could thus be used to reassess the registers.

Proponents of the census do not tire to emphasize the need for accurate, up-to-date population statistics. In fact, some important decisions are made on the base of these data, including the allocation of large sums of money on a state, federal and EU level. CCC activists Knapp and Weber are therefore sure that it will not be possible to stop the census in its entirety.

Yet at CCC’s Cologne conference Sigint, they called for a constitutional complaint against the law. Still at the event, a working group was formed as a subgroup of anti-surveillance umbrella organization Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (“working group on data retention”). Its goal is to take the census to Germany’s federal constitutional court in Karlsruhe, where the activists hope to achieve better anonymization of collected data.

On June 22, the constitutional complaint was put up online for public support. Up to now, nearly 7000 citizens have signed the petition on the site of civil rights group FoeBuD. The deadline for submitting the complaint is on July 15, when the one-year respite after the passing of the law expires. Until then, attorney Eva Dworschak will prepare the final text to be submitted to Karlsruhe.

What’s up after that? To stop the census in its current form, the federal constitutional court would have to bar it by interim measure. The activists are confident that even Germany’s highest judges are not ignorant to events on the street. A wave of protest as in 1983 would not leave them cold. Thus the issue up next is to form a movement that brings together veteran anti-census protesters and members of Germany’s “new civil rights movement” which has formed up during last years’ in the fight against data retention and internet filtering.

As a member of the Siegen chapter of Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung and FoeBuD, I will do my part in this. We are currently planning a street event to inform people on the upcoming census and collect supporters’ signatures for the constitutional complaint. If you are from Siegen, you are invited to join us in our preparational meeting on Thursday, July 1. More info here.

This article is an updated translation of a post I wrote for Spreeblick, “Aktivisten planen Verfassungsbeschwerde gegen Volkszählung 2011″.

Kyrgyzstan: Revolution, social media, activism through contemporary art

The event was attended by a small group from revolution-shaken Kyrgyzstan. Tolkun Umaraliev highlighted Central Asia-centered group blog NewEurasia and social media news site and blogging platform Kloop.kg has valuable sources during the coup d’état. Eventhough only 14% of the population have access to the Internet, Tolkun sees citizen journalism in an important position.

He also told the story of Timur Toktonaliev, a 16 years old blogger who is the youngest journalist ever accredited to the Kyrgyz parliament. Working after school, he reports from the ongoings at the parliament. Readers of his blog can also pose questions to their deputees, which Timur will then try to get answered in interviews with the politicians.

Nellya Dzhamanbaeva of ArtEast told me about how they use contemporary art to raise awareness for social issues. While censors – mostly older people – did not understand contemporary art, the young audience they aim at would get the message, she told me.

As for the current situation in Kyrgyzstan, both Tolkun and Nellya seemed unsure what to expect. Visibly shocked by the second bloody revolution within five years, Nellya told that she doesn’t see a coup d’état as the right way for the country. Tolkun, while praising interim president Rosa Otunbajewa as a “very intelligent person”, said he wasn’t sure what to expect for the future, as the promises of the new leadership could turn out to be populism again, as were those of the revolutionaries of 2005′s “tulip revolution”.

Citizen-proposed legislation in Thailand

Niw Wong spoke about her work at iLaw.or.th, a Thai website that aims to promote citizen-proposed legislation. Since 2007, Thailand’s constitutions requires only 10.000 signatures to bring citizen-proposed legislation into parliament (first introduced through the constitution of 1997, 50.000 signatures were required before). iLaw.or.th collects ideas by citizens and helps them in drafting valid proposals.

Citizen-proposed legislation is, in my eyes, a great concept. Yet no draft has made it into the parliament since the opportunity was introduced more than ten years ago. Niw points out the complex process required for supporting a proposal as a key problem, which includes providing an ID card at a local . A more simple process, probably similar to Germany’s ePetition system, could make it easier for people to support drafts, thus making citizen-proposed legislation an effective tool for participatory politics.

Preparing for violent elections in Uganda

Next year, Uganda, a country that has not seen a single peaceful change of government in 48 years, will have only the second multi-party elections in its history. Gerald Karuhanga of the Justice and Development Council fears that the country will experience the same post-election violence that in 2009 left thousands of Kenyans dead.

An initiative called “PRESERVE” aims to reduce and document violent events before, during and after the elections through regional workshops, information dissemination, debates, public dialogues and “research based advocacy”, mostly trying to reach out to youth leagues, but also police and women’s organisations.

As tools for information dissemination, Gerald named mostly broadcasting tools such as TV, radio and newspapers. Asked about the use of mobile phones, he presented two ways of using mobile phones for information dissemination, namely through sending out SMS and voice mails. The latter is especially interesting because through voice messages, the huge illiterate part of the population (32%) could possibly be reached as well.

Still I think that mobile phones could also be used as a back channel, i.e. for information gathering. E.g. Ushahidi was developed as a crisis mapping tool during Kenya’s after-election riots, and in Ghana activists have used mobile phones to monitor elections and document possible evidence of vote rigging, one of the stated goals of PRESERVE.

Hip hop spreads political messages in Africa

Parker Mah held an enlightening talk about political hip hop in Africa. “Hip hop is booming in Africa”, he said, asking “why hip hop and why Africa?”. I can only recommend you to check out his presentation on Prezi. The slides are mostly self-descriptive and contain most of the content of Parker’s talk, including some great examples of African conscious rap.

As a personal educated guess, I have made up my own answer to Parker’s question. In the West, for several hundred years we have been used to see political criticism presented in written form (i.e. newspapers). Africa, on the other hand, has a longstanding history of oral information dissemination (e.g. Mali’s griot tradition). So hip hop, in my eyes, can be seen as continuing this tradition.

Hungarian elections

Visiting Hungary on election day (April 11), I got a devastating image of a democracy where young people see no (liberal) politicians they can trust in as an antisemitic, antiziganic, neofascist party – Jobbik – gets nearly as much votes as the currently governing social democrats. My German readers may be interested in my article for Spreeblick where I describe my impressions.

The protests erupted rather spontaneously after professors and students at the much smaller Academy of Fine Arts ended a press conference with the statement that from then on the auditorium was seized. Soon, students at the University of Vienna followed suit. Nicole Kernherr, who served as the protesters’ spokeswoman on the first eve, reports:

“We got news about something going on there via mobile phone through personal contacts. Those who are committed to such things know each other quite well here.”

But there were no groups involved in organizing the protest. In fact, the Austrian students’ council, which had been behind protest events in the past, still remains relatively silent about the coup. Instead, the protest is organized to be strictly non-hierarchical, Philipp Sonderegger writes:

“The protest is not organized hierarchically, but network-like flat, decentralized and with many nodes. Spokespeople are newly elected every day to prevent individuals from becoming to important. [...] The six members of the organizing team are elected newly every day as well. Allegedly, decisions are prepared in 44 working groups, but have to be rubber-stamped by the plenum to prevent informal structures from taking hold.”

This is also empowered by a live video stream set up to let people follow the plenum online.

Officials of the university have complained about not having a distinct person to address. They were countered by an invitation to speak in front of the plenum. This is just the way the protesters communicate themselves: To the masses. Early-on they have used twitter not only to mobilize, but also to organize and coordinate.

If there is a lack of, let’s say, rice at the canteen, it’s just twittered. Many of the tweets by Unibrennt or those tagged #unibrennt (German for “university is burning”) are similar requests. And the network proves its ability to allocate resources effectively.

But as Jana Herwig remarks in an article entitled “from flash mob to #unibrennt: collective organization in real-time“, the outside world has difficulties to deal with this protest culture.

Herwig makes the point that there is actually a misunderstanding at work of what is political. She picks up criticism that the protesters were just “partysans”, that they were in fact non-political and did not have serious interest in their cause. A criticism that was partly fueled by said live video stream, showing people partying after discussion were over.

Herwig counters that in fact, protesters could never be dead serious 24/7. Previous generations of protesters did party just as this one does – but they were living in different media circumstances. When media was limited – only a few could produce media, and even those still had limited space to broadcast it – protesters could present themselves in placative events, narrowing the image the public would get of them.

“But today, protest is turned inside-out: mobile phone photos, Twitter news, Facebook groups, mobile coverage and of course the live stream from the lecture hall – all this provides opportunities to monitor the squatters at every turn,”

Herwig writes.

And she defends the protesters against accusations of having no program. In fact, she embraces the program being created collectively now that the sit-in has begun:

“This protest is different because one has not come up with elaborate pamphlets, but the program, starting from first demands yet, is evolving.”

Herwig bases her argument on the primary point of discussion at the plenum on Friday noon:

“Basis for the discussion: What was started with the sit-in? How shall it proceed? What do we want to achieve?

Officials struggle to counter this movement, yet it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The first squatters at the academy of arts started their protest demanding “re-democratization instead of neoliberal politics of leadership”. Now the protest’s level of democratization is disarming the old leadership.

There is just no way to decapitate a network, writes Sonderegger. Only if informal structures should finally take hold, providing the authorities with a handle to take on the now-liquid, young movement, it could face rapid marginalization. Meanwhile, the protest has spread to other universities, e.g. in Graz and Turin.

The Bologna process and other neoliberal reforms of the education system are affecting schools and universities in all of the European Union. It will be interesting to see whether these protests can gain further ground in their aim to promote “education, not formation” and a re-democratization of Europe’s universities.

That’s why a big share of time was reserved for presentations for individual projects. Many portals are dedicated to bringing more transparency into parlamentarians’ work. Services such as OpenParlamento from Italy and NosDéputés from France analyze the activities of representatives.

NosDeputés tags speeches of congressmen. This way the discussion around a certain topic can be summarized. The site TheyWorkForYou.com on the other hand lets users link videos from the English House of Commons to text from the Hansard, which includes notes from the speeches that are not verbatim.

Thereby the site is one of the few that let users become actively involved themselves to establish transparency. In a session on “action-based sites” it became apparent that still most e-democracy portals are mere services for citizens and rarely offer opportunities to them to take action themselves.

One important task for such participatory sites named in the session was that they have to take up emotions immediately as they evolve – e.g. as someone has to pay a bribe. Therefore it is important that services are structured accordingly. One could use the Obama iPhone app as an example, where the first option was “call friends” – which is the most obvious action to be taken with a mobile phone.

Rob McKinnon of TheyWorkForYou.co.nz made a point in his lecture that it is important to establish transparency apart from big politics. He used the concept of a “web of power” to show that there is a lot of influence located within companies – probably even more than within parliaments.

Therefore it needed more projects that focus e.g. on making lobbyism more transparent, McKinnon said. The goal is to “disentangle” the various circles of influence – politics, media, money. One example for that is journalisted.com, a site that collects information on journalists.

But there was criticism towards those efforts for more transparency as well. Tobies Escher of the Oxford Internet Institute referred to a recent essay by Lawrence Lessig provocantly entitled “Against Transparency“. It is a fact, Escher said, that online even more than offline it is the most well-educated part of society that turns to political activism. E.g. two thirds of mySociety users are academicians. Eschers point is: To only establish transparency isn’t enough, as long as people don’t use the publicly available data.

William Perrin thinks he has found a solution to this problem. He advocates “hyber local community websites”, such as his own project Kings Cross Local Environment. By breaking down information that is available, but hard to understand to its importance for a small neighborhood local initiatives are empowered, he said. This way things could actually be done. Perrin also wants to further spread this approach through is project Talk About Local.

This is a translation of my post for netzpolitik.org (where I am doing an internship at the moment). There’s another report at e-politik.de (in German), and you may have a look at the tweets from the conference, tagged with #bios09.

But if it’s getting bored, the Internet strikes back. It all started with the photo above. It shows an invitation to an event with Angela Merkel in Hamburg, saying “The chancellor’s coming”. Somebody has scribbled beneath it: “And everybody goes ‘yeaahh’”.

Initially posted on flickr, the photo has made its way through the German blogosphere. As it was taken up by Spreeblick, somebody proposed a flashmob in the comments: “I’d like to be in Hamburg tomorrow! Who’s going? A ‘yeaahh’ flashmob?”

And they went there. The flashmobbers were only a small minority among the 2000 people that had come to listen to Mrs. Merkel, but they certainly had their share of attention when they commented each sentence of the chancellor with an enthusiastic “yeaahh”.

The thing didn’t end there. When Mrs. Merkel went to Mainz, people showed up to shout “yeaahh” in Mainz. When she spoke in Wuppertal, flashmobbers were already awaiting the chancellor, accompanied by reporters of the honorable “Tagesthemen” newscast.

In a comment for “Tagesthemen“, Thomas Hinrichs complains that the “yeaahh” flashmobs are nonsensical. He’s right about that. In fact, that’s the only point about them. Hinrichs attributes the emergence of the flashmobs to the failed communication between politicians and netizens. The latter, he said, had to stop calling everybody stupid who’s not using social networks, while the parties should start to step up to each other on the internet. I differ on that.

During the last years, Germany has seen the rise of an unexpected civil liberties movement. Fighting against data retention, tens of thousands took to the streets. Fearing the installation of an internet censorship infrastructure, more than 130.000 people signed a petition to the parliament. They went unheard.

Especially the latter case has led to a lot of frustration. The so-called “access aggravation act” proposes the introduction of DNS blocks to complicate the access to child pornography on the internet. On the one hand, these blocks are easily to be circumvented, on the other hand the sites should be deleted, not blocked. The act is, in one word, nonsensical.

This is what experts and activists told the politicians. Over and over again they repeated what they see as reasonable arguments, only to be ignored. In the end, only four politicians of the governing coalition dared to vote against the bill.

That’s why people are on the streets today, parodying the chancellor’s speeches with choruses of yeaahh’s. As all reasonable arguments have failed, people join the meaningless play called politics, answering nonsensical phrases with nonsensical shouts. Mr. Hinrichs is wrong: People don’t want to befriend their chancellor on Facebook. They want to be taken serious. The flashmobs are just the ultimate mirror they hold against those who have ignored them when they came to them with arguments and petitions.

I must admit, I took the headline from Ahmed Al-Omran, who used it to refer to his home country Saudi Arabia.

Ahmed utters a complaint that is quite common among young Saudis and other Gulf Arabs: In a move to, as they say, protect women from sexual harassment, many cafés and malls only allow families and single females into their locations. As a result, even though these societies are often very restrictive towards women, these have more opportunities to go out than their male counterparts.

Abdu Khal writes, “If you count the number of youths who have nowhere to go to because malls, parks and beaches are dedicated to families, then you would be appalled. What will the youth do when they find themselves trapped and discarded?”

It is this a problem I encounter day by day. Social restrictions force young people to hang out on the streets. Walking for my favorite café on a weekday’s eve, I will observe youth, probably a little younger than myself, hanging out at dimly-lit bus stops and abandoned playgrounds. They might not even notice because they are so used to it, but I bet they would trade their situation for mine.

Only, they can’t. My favorite café is closed for minors (under 18) after 8 pm, and so are most locations. A recent reportage on the backgrounds of three teenagers that beat up several people in Munich cites one young Swiss: “In the youth center there are only high school students and pussies. The bars we don’t get in. So we hang around here [at the train station] every day.”

A few days ago in an article on Braunschweig’s ban on flashmobs, I cited the city’s conviction that “the public space in Braunschweig serves exclusively traffic, i.e. the transfer from home a to home b, from home a to business b or from business a to business b.”

This is devastating for teenagers that might not find rest at home, nor in commercial cafés. Where are they to go if “public space serves exclusively traffic”? Ahmed gives an answer that is true for Saudi youth as much as for Swiss: “Well, they will do other things that you probably will not like.”

This could be a story about the need of teenagers for a place to hang out at. Indeed, it is. But at the same time, I would like to see this in a broader context. Why are young people forced to hang out on the streets? Essentially, because they don’t own a place of their own. At home, there are their parents, in the café there are owners that are just not their generation.

They don’t own a place because they can’t afford it, and for the same reason they can’t buy access to one (you won’t find the son of a millionaire hanging out on the streets). In this, teenagers share a problem with other groups that are socially marginalized.

The answer to this situation could be the creation of commons. If you have ever been to one of the existing commons after dusk you will know that most of them are far from inviting. Barely lit parks are much more welcoming to those who seek darkness than to good citizens.

But does it have to be like this? In ancient times, the town square was a meeting place for all citizens. A public space, open to the social activities of whoever went there. Today, we have shifted this place to Starbucks, have shifted it from a commons to private property.

Imagine commons, places that are not socially exclusive, but open (and inviting) to everyone. A good market square should be just like that. I have experienced this in Brussels: Hundreds of people sitting on the Grote Markt in the evening, chatting.

Lawrence Lessig describes the internet as a “creative commons”. This square I would call a “social commons”. And just as the internet being a commons enables creative invention, a social commons enables new social networks. It is therefore most of use for those who have not yet established themselves in society. Teenagers are just some of them.

Every time when we talk about integration, we should talk about commons. Their openness allows anybody to participate in them, weaving new networks and building a better, a more equal society. For that a state become a country (also) for young (wo)men.

What I find especially worrying is that authorities said that “the public space in Braunschweig serves exclusively traffic, i.e. the transfer from home a to home b, from home a to business b or from business a to business b.”

I.e. authorities think there should be no public life. In the dreams of these people, citizens would either be in their homes, their cars or privately-owned businesses.

Currently reading Lawrence Lessig’s “The Future of Ideas”, I think they forget about something important. Lessig time and again cites parks as an example for commons: Public space that is meant to serve people to hang around. In times where it has become a common complaint that you have to buy a latte macchiato in order to talk to your acquaintances, I find it worrying when cities try to erase the last free facilities for public life.

In fact, Braunschweig says that you may only assemble publicly when you have something political to say. The flashmobbers could announce a demonstration, but in this case, their picnic would not be granted. A picnic is, in the words of the authorities, “a non-licensable extraordinary use”.

Officially, the city is worried that the picnic may harm public property. It’s highly probable that they fear the flashmob could get out of hand like a recent event where thousands stormed the island of Sylt and indeed caused some damages. But even if this is the case, a simple fear cannot be reason enough to crack down on public life.

I think that we actually need more public life, and we need more gatherings like said flashmob that do not serve any higher means. It is an annual event; in the years before, no more than 70 people showed up. And even if it were some more – what is so worrying about people picnicking together on a public square? The same politicians that complain at length about anti-social behavior seem to have a strange, deep-rooted fear of citizens engaging in public life.

It is a fear of the unorganized character of a flashmob. These people do not understand an event where there are no authorities, where the one who started it does not claim to have a right to command those taking up the idea, where there is no leader assuming responsability, but many citizens that are all responsable for themselves. In one word, flashmobs are just too democratic for these old authorities.

Global Voices Advocacy has some information on the two detainees’ case:

“In what might be the first case of a prominent blogger being assaulted and detained in the South Caucasus, two youth activists were yesterday imprisoned for two months pre-trial investigative detention in what many consider to be a travesty of justice. [...]

Ali S. Novruzov (who himself had been detained earlier this year) and Onnik Krikorian continue to cover the case for Global Voices Advocacy.

Jörg Tauss asks his peers to support Milli and Hajizada by sending mails to Azerbaijani officials and also points them to an online petition.

It’s interesting to see Tauss using both classic diplomacy and up-to-date digital activism to build up pressure on Azerbaijani authorities to release the two activists. While Jörg Tauss is in a very special position since he is not member of a big party, but rather the figurehead of a new web-based extraparliamentary opposition, this mix of two tactics is certainly interesting. And I must say I am not sure what to think of it.

On the one hand, we who always complain about politics which have distanced themselves from the people should embrace when high-ranking politicians turn to us to make politics. In a way, by sending letters to Azerbaijani officials we all become diplomats. This is some kind of a democratization of foreign politics. Not one that has been enabled by the web, but one that has been made essentially easier by its technological means.

Not that we have any real power to show off confronting the Azerbaijani authorities, but neither does Mr. Tauss as an opposition politician. And to be fair: Would our leaders do anything to Azerbaijan just to support some poor activists? I doubt it. All foreigners can do in this case is to show that they care.

So I say this is a democratization of diplomacy. Democratization is one of the big words we use to honor tiny steps we make towards a society we dream of, where we imagine to people to have more power, and the big players to have less.

And this is the point where I see a dark side of how Mr. Tauss turns to the netizens to support Milli and Hajizada. Because I know that many grassroot activists shy away from becoming related to any kind of foreign government or state-controlled organization for good reasons, I am myself skeptical about official politics and grassroot activism mingling.

When party or national politics become mixed with the efforts of grassroot activists, the latter are always in danger to suffer from this connection. This becomes even more true when it comes to foreign politics. While I appreciate the efforts of Mr. Tauss as a citizen, I find it worrying that he spearheads what should not need to be lead by any politicians.

Mr. Tauss may, as I have said, be in a special situation. He is, for certain reasons, no longer a member of the establishment. Still, when visiting Azerbaijan as a German MP, he acts as if he were (and he can do nothing about it – he is a German MP, and he will be seen as one).

Additionally, Mr. Tauss has done something I deem as a failure: He has started his own campaign to support Milli and Hajizada. It is a German campaign, started and lead by a German MP. Something I have always heard from activists in the Middle East was their urge to Westerners not to start their own campaigns, but rather to support local activists. Their argument is clear: Foreigners just do not have the insights needed to run a successful campaign. They can still make a difference, but they can only do so if they act focused. That is why they should support those familiar with the environment in which the case is set.

In this case, the mingling of said tactics may still form a fine strategy. But in general, the people should in on their own behalf instead of following the order of authorities. Everybody can stand up for human rights. That does not need a MP as crutch. Officials may join or even lead any campaign. But they should do so as citizens, not as politicians.

gulli:news: Can you tell us a bit about your projects, what you are doing and what is your motivation behind it?

Esra’a Al Shafei: I founded MideastYouth.com and its network of projects. We are a group of young digital natives reaching out across seemingly impenetrable national social, political, ethnic, and sectarian barriers, employing the freedom and responsibility created by multiple media platforms to demand and create our own civil discourse across multiple divisions in a region where ideals of free expression, political dissent and activism, universal human rights, and civil dialogue are tightly oppressed and forcefully punished. We campaign for the rights of ethnic, religious and intellectual minorities by grasping the revolutionary power of information technology in a region where information is controlled and censored by our leaders to manipulate public sentiment by illustrating the “otherness” of our neighbors and our “enemies”. A growing list of our ongoing projects can be found here.

As a child I was shocked by the inhumane treatment of immigrant workers that I witnessed, and a sense of outrage and injustice grew in my heart. Increasingly frustrated in my early college years by the prejudicial stereotypes throughout media of Middle Eastern youth – a portrayal unanswered because of censorship and state control of media in the region – I turned to my keyboard to respond with my own voice, to show not only the diversity of ethnicities, religions, and cultures in the region, but also the diversity of opinion, fervor, ideals, hopes, and politics; to portray for the first time in the global discourse Middle Eastern youth in all our depth, our feelings, and our complexity. I was joined over time by a growing number of similar voices, declaring in unison that we are Muslim and moderate, idealistic and hopeful, Jewish and peaceful; we are Christians, Baha’i, Sunni and Shia; Persians and Arabs; Turks, Berbers and Kurds, and we are all here at MideastYouth.com so that the world hears us in our own voices, and sees that we are capable of thoughtful and reasoned discussions of our differences. We want our humanity and our futures in our own hands and we use the internet and other forms of technology to fight for those rights.

The interview is available in English and German.
I can only commend you to also listen to the keynote Esra’a held at this year’s re:publica conference in Berlin.

“The News of the World didn’t go far enough. [...]
Now in Britain, we see similar sanctimonious hand-wringing over the “privacy rights” of the British elite. These individuals, through active scheming and quiet acceptance, have turned the UK into what Privacy International now bills as an “Endemic Surveillance Society”. Barely a month goes by without the government and its supporters pushing another Orwellian state surveillance scheme. But now, like Berlusconi, these elites purport a sudden interest in protecting the privacy rights of the people, not by rolling back such schemes, but by gagging the press. [...]
The News of the World should have released the tapes made by its private investigators. The elite exposed are the usual paymasters of such private intelligence firms. The democratic process should not be denied the same high quality information that businessmen, celebrities and oligarchs acquire on a daily basis. [...]
The actions of major newspapers are “voted on” every day by their readers. Whatever their faults, popular newspapers remain the most visible and the most democratically accountable institutions in the country. Their mandate to inform the public vastly exceeds that granted to the unelected and the rarely elected at Westminister, who are nonetheless quick to grant themselves a blanket exemption from all censorship.”

I think Julian Assanges furious demands touch on a very difficult topic. For those who have, during the recent years, committed themselves to campaign for the right to privacy as well as against intransparent politics, two major moral concepts collide here.
First of all, there is nothing to say against the demand for less obscure politics. “Transparent politicians not transparent citizens”, has become the activists’ motto at this front.
But it is not everything as simple as this slogan may suggest. The “News of the World” has intruded the privacy of several thousand people. Without requirement of a judicial decree. Without informing the persons concerned in the aftermath. With nothing but the suspicion that their private talk will be worth a headline or two.
It is easy to demand all personal telecommunication of, let’s say, Germany’s hardly popular minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, ought to be made public. It is much harder to call for the publication of your neighbor’s calls to his wife, only because you have elected him to the city council. And there is certainly no way to argue for the wire-tapping of Gwyneth Paltrow and George Michael without giving up the whole concept of privacy.
I am not the only one to have taken to the streets over much less dangerous intents of our government. And I see no reason why a newspaper, Murdoch-owned or not, should be granted more rights than our elected representatives. Is is indeed important that more journalists do investigative research. It is true that politics, big and small, become more transparent. But it would be the worst mistake to give up our most basic rights over this.

(this is an altered translation of my article for gulli:news on the same subject).