Pakistan, Bangladesh fail to tackle online violence

Significance However, women as well as gender minorities in these countries have experienced an uptick in cyberviolence in recent years. Most existing laws lack clear definition on what constitutes gender-based cybercrimes, and some cybercrime laws have been misused to limit free speech and increase state surveillance. Impacts Across South Asia, content regulation laws for tech platforms are likely to be used to target dissidents. Tech platforms do not face an immediate political push to improve the safety of their female customers. Civil society activism on digital dignity will create reputational risks for platforms failing to take action.

Paya Soup

This short story set in Mumbai imagines the enduring legacies of pandemic sickness and immunity. Everyday labors, pleasures, demands, and relations must be navigated across the fault lines of health, illness, and state surveillance.

Privacy, Porn, and Gay Sex Parties: The Carceral Governance of Homosexuality in Indonesia

This article examines how the recent Indonesian Pornography Law renders homosexuality and/or homosexual acts intelligible to the Indonesia state and society by institutionalising them as criminal offences. By drawing on insights from queer studies and exploring the cases of gay arrests in the country, I demonstrate that certain same-sex sexual acts are more susceptible to criminalisation, especially when those acts blur the distinction between public and private. The deployment of the Pornography Law against gay people, together with the anti-LGBT media environment in the country, has carried consequences for LGBT individuals, particularly gay people, by making them visible, legible, and thus subject to state surveillance and control.

Cybersecurity, Human Rights, and Empiricism

This chapter examines recent research on the impact of surveillance, both mass and targeted forms, and considers these insights and their implications for cybersecurity. State surveillance has been central to the ‘securitization’ in cybersecurity, particularly the increasing sophistication and expansion of digital surveillance. The chapter looks at different theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding the impact of such surveillance activities, particularly surveillance studies and chilling effects theory. It also considers how new research shows that surveillance has an impact on a range of fundamental human rights and freedoms, with important implications for civil society and deliberative democracy. Awareness of surveillance, or the threat of it, can have a substantial chilling effect on people’s exercise of these rights, leading them to self-censor or avoid seeking or imparting certain sensitive information. Surveillance can also be said to violate international rights against discrimination and protections for minorities, in that it has unequal or disproportionate impact on certain groups, including vulnerable minorities. The chapter then argues for new frameworks for cybersecurity centred on civil society or human rights.

187. Characterizing Household Clustering of COVID-19 Cases in Fulton County, Georgia, June 2020–April 2021

Background Households are important for SARS-CoV-2 transmission due to close proximity in enclosed living spaces over long durations. Using contact tracing, the secondary attack rate in households is estimated at 18-20%, yet no studies have examined COVID-19 clustering within households, an important measure to inform testing and prevention. We sought to quantify and characterize household clustering of COVID-19 cases in Fulton County, Georgia. Methods We used state surveillance data to identify all PCR- or antigen-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Fulton County. Clustered cases were defined as cases with matching street address, including unit number. Communal places (e.g., nursing homes, correctional facilities) were excluded, as were apartments missing unit number. Household clusters were defined as ≥2 COVID-19 cases at the same residential address with positive sample collection dates within 14 days of one another. We described proportion of COVID-19 cases that were clustered, stratified by age, sex, and race/ethnicity over time. Results There were 60,614 COVID-19 cases with available address reported in Fulton County during 6/1/20–4/30/21. Of these, 25,149 (41.6%) had an address that matched at least one other case; 20,793 (34.3%) were from 8,582 household clusters with positive sample collection dates within 14 days (Fig 1). Majority of clusters had 2 individuals (N=6119, 71%), though some had ≥6 individuals (N=79, 0.9%). Clustering increased through January 2021 (Fig 2). Children were more likely to be in household clusters (Fig 4) and 15% of clusters had a child as first diagnosed case with increases since January 2021 (Fig 3). Consistently higher clustering was observed among Hispanic persons, with rising clustering among Asian persons (Fig 5). Figure 1. Distribution of household-clustered COVID-19 cases in Fulton county between June, 2020 and April 2021 Figure 2. Proportion of COVID-19 cases that were part of a household cluster, Fulton County, June 2020–April 2021. Error bars denote 95% confidence interval around the point estimate. Figure 3. Age of first diagnosis among households with at least 2 cases diagnosed within 14 days Conclusion One-third of COVID-19 cases in Fulton County were part of a household cluster. The higher proportion of children in household clusters likely reflects higher probability of living in a home with an adult caregiver. Higher household clustering among Hispanic and Asian persons, regardless of age, may reflect larger households (supported by census data) or increased exposures outside the house. Timely testing for household members to prevent ongoing transmission remains essential. Figure 4. Proportion of COVID-19 cases that were part of a household cluster, by age – Fulton County, June 2020–March 2021 Proportion of COVID-19 cases that were part of a household cluster in Fulton County stratified by race/ethnicity over time Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures

Egyptian Facebook satire: a post-Spring carnivalesque

The Arab Spring offered Egyptians a brief opportunity for political freedom of expression; it also offered many creative youths a chance to experiment with their newfound digital talents. However, this was soon followed by a state crackdown on public forms of dissent; subsequently, creative expression had to find other platforms and modalities to continue its practices of playful dissent. Through Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1984) theory of Carnivalesque, this paper examines how Egyptian youths managed to create alternate spaces, other than the highly scrutinised political square, to challenge officialdom and generate their own folk culture through laughter and creative digital arts. This research is based on interviews conducted with administrators and fans of Facebook pages that offer satirical content in the form of memes and remix videos. Fans of these pages mostly belong to the 1980s and 1990s generations, but they also include younger adults whose formative years were those of the Arab Spring. This study argues that, like Bakhtin’s carnival, laughter and everyday comedy was a means by which creative artists could continue to express their opinions and indirect dissent amid intensifying state surveillance. These spaces, therefore, constituted third spaces away from polarised politics, where fans could playfully discuss the comedy away from the heat of events. They were spaces where youths could exercise control over the objects of laughter and challenge established institutions. Like the carnival, youths exercised Carnival practices of both reversal and renewal to craft a new folk culture of their own that did not have to abide by the rules of patronising politics.

Eyes Everywhere: Ecological Migration and State Surveillance in the Age of Iron Man

In today’s society, migrants/citizens are monitored and exploited. A comprehension of the complexity of surveillance and resistance to it is crucial to guarantee a more democratic community. Disciplinary societies (in the Foucauldian context) have moved beyond the panopticon’s ecologies. Today’s monitoring is reterritorialized. Surveillance, enabled by digitalization, can adapt to any room today, but with the constant change in spaces, simply monitoring human actions would be inadequate. It is necessary to monitor both behavior and geographical place. Surveillance is also increasingly being marketed. Products are now being sold on the basis of people’s private lives. This dual aspect of surveillance connected to “safety” and “company” is well suited to the neo-liberal agenda. But monitoring also needs the supervised to participate. The States and MNCs are in a challenging situation if and when the monitored resist surveillance. Efforts are still being made by the state and its technology to properly monitor ecological migrations. This study claims that it is ecological and migration surveillance that makes Iron Man a strong avenger. Yet there are several cases in which his surveillance is inefficient through the cinematic narrative. For those already oppressed and who resist surveillance, the study would investigate these moments as flashes of optimism. This study also attempts to enunciate some of the aspects derived from works by theoreticians like Gary Marx and David Lyon. With the collective will of surveillance, unethical monitoring of ecologies and migrations imposed on us, it can be resisted to a good extent.

Strategies of Disability Activism in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Despite Russia’s history of state surveillance of activists and civil society, both in the Soviet era and after, people with disabilities have found ways to challenge their living conditions and push for change. Through a variety of grassroots tactics, they have historically been active participants in society. Disability rights activists have developed an expansive repertoire of activist engagements (including online) that transcend the boundaries of familiar models of overt protest, dissent, and confrontation typical of disabled activists in Western democratic countries.