Web a double-edged sword for free speech

On Wednesday, YouTube became one of the first video sites to allow users to blur faces in footage, helping to protect anonymity with the click of a button.

It's a technology solution to a challenge that technology has exacerbated: With the growing ubiquity of cameras, citizens and activists around the world routinely upload images of rallies, riots and war zones, sometimes revealing troubling glimpses of police or military violence. But those same images can also put participants themselves at risk of arrest, torture or worse if their identities can be ascertained from the footage.

"We're at a point where a citizen can become a citizen witness very quickly and can rapidly endanger others," said Sam Gregory, program director at Witness, a nonprofit that uses video to highlight human rights abuses and has called on technology companies to provide features like the one YouTube introduced. "The blurring tool represents a thinking-through of the implications for images that can be seen by millions."

But YouTube videos are only one example where technology can be a double-edged sword for free expression. It amplifies voices of dissent, as we've seen with the Arab Spring and Occupy movements, but it can also put the identity of speakers at risk.

While the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right to anonymous speech, the tools of 21st century communications often make anonymity difficult to guarantee. Most e-mails, blog posts and video uploads can be traced back to an IP address that, in turn, can be linked to an account holder.

"Generally speaking, when we act online, we leave digital footprints and traces of our activity in all sorts of places," said Chris Conley, technology and civil liberties policy attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.

Protecting identities thus falls to mobile carriers, Internet service providers and online sites that don't always have their users' best interests at heart, or are sometimes compelled by judges or officials to turn over sensitive information.

Reporters Without Borders has linked the arrest and jailing of several dissidents and journalists in China to user information that Yahoo turned over to authorities. The Sunnyvale Internet giant later apologized before Congress and settled a lawsuit brought by the families of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, both of whom were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Subjects of anonymous attacks in the United States have also sought to unmask their online critics, with varying results.

In 2010, then-Pennsylvania Attorney General (now governor) Tom Corbett asked a grand jury to issue a subpoena forcing Twitter to reveal the identities behind two accounts critical of his campaign.

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Web a double-edged sword for free speech