Mere om Flickrs censur af egyptiske SS-folk

Disse billeder er nu online igen, ikke takket være Flickr, som ikke turde modstå et ganske givet politisk pres for at tage dem ned. Du kan for eksempel se dem her eller her.

Selv om projektet med at udstille Egyptens torturbødler går flere år tilbage, kom disse konkrete billeder (i modsætning til, hvad jeg skrev i det sidste indlæg) fra sidste uges storm på det hemmelige politis hovedkvarter i Cairo.

Hossam El-Hamalawy fortæller:

When we stormed State Security Police headquarters in Nasr City, which hosted one of Mubarak’s largest torture facilities, on Saturday I found two DVDs in one of the offices, both titled “أرشيف السادة ضباط الجهاز” The Agency Officers’ Archive. The DVDs included profile pictures of State Security officers, organized in folders. Each folder had the officers’ name. Some however did not have the names. There were also sub folders that included pictures of those officers in social events like weddings.

I don’t know what was the purpose of these two DVDs, but I sincerely thank the State Security officials who gave us this present on a golden plate. I’ve uploaded the profile pictures to this flickr set and added them to the Piggipedia. I urge you all to circulate them. And if you have any more information about those officers please come forward.

Each member of SS has to be brought to justice. This was an agency devoted to spying, surveillance, torture and murder. Every member of this organization from the informer all the way up to the generals should be prosecuted. SS has to be dissolved. It cannot be “restructured” like what the current PM is calling for.

Although those torturers violated our private lives on a daily basis, bugging our phones, offices, and even our bedrooms, I will respect the privacy of their families and will not publish the photos of their social events that included family members.

Dear SS, yes you had every right to be worried from the Piggipedia. We will expose you, bring shame on you. You forced millions of Egyptians to live in fear and terror. Now you have to answer for your crimes.

Kan Flickrs beslutning om at censurere forsvares med henvisning til deres retningslinjer, som de selv gør? Nej, mener den mangeårige Flickr-bruger Thomas Hawks – det er rent hykleri:

This is one giant cop out on Flickr’s part. Flickr knows that Flickr is *full* of photos that are “not a member’s work.” In fact Flickr staff themselves routinely upload photos to their own personal photostreams that are “not their work.” For example, is this Flickr Maps screenshot of a Rev Dan Catt photograph really Flickr Chief Matthew Rothenberg’s own work? What about this screengrab of an AOL advertisement? Is this Rothenberg’s “own work?” How about this screengrab of a Valleywag page? While I suspect that this “flickrhq masturbating dinosaur award for excellence in the field of community abuse and advocacy,” is in fact Rothenberg’s own photograph, his own stream, as well as the streams of many other flickr staffers are full of photos that are not “their work.”Withdrawing Arabawy’s photos of suspected torturers by citing a technicality that the photos were not “his own work,” is disingenuous. The photos were pulled because Flickr was pressured to pull the photos and chose to respond to that pressure rather than to take a stand for freedom. Flickr knows that Flickr is chock full of photographs in photostreams that are not a members own work and this act on their part simply points to another act where they have selectively applied one of their rules to suit their needs using their overly ambiguous Community Guidelines as justification. Flickr should apologize to Arabawy and restore his photoset.

Men det kommer jo nok ikke til at ske. Og så er det godt, at vi har Anonymous og andre grupper, der ikke ryster nær så meget i bukserne som Flickr og de andre Web 2.0-dinosaurer.