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Addressing issues of both online and offline safety for people within the LGBT community
The internet offers a wealth of information on LGBT experiences, access to support networks, and a seemingly safe haven in which LGBT people can communicate and express themselves – often in ways that would be unsafe “IRL,” in real life. However, the online space houses its own dangers.
A topic addressed by the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum since its first session has been how LGBT activists and individuals in general can remain safe online. In more oppressive regimes, most LGBT activists depend heavily on social media in order to discuss LGBT rights and issues in their respective countries, mainly because the internet offers a safe space, where activists are not faced by the same threats of doing activism on the ground. However, during the last few years, arrests based on people’s online activism have been on the rise, especially in the Arab world.
At its inaugural session, security expert Fadi Saleh led a knowledge café discussion on how to remain safe online and spoke to Salzburg Global on camera: “There is an increase of using online activism more than anything else across the region because of course, on the ground it’s very dangerous all the time for a lot of people,” explained Saleh. “So people get a sense of security when they go on the internet. But this is of course a false sense of security. And that’s the issue we [Tactical Tech] try to tackle… especially because across the [Middle East and North Africa] region in the last few years many of the attacks, the arrests, the blackmailings, all of it happens because of online activism and what people post online.”
Cases exist across the Middle East and North Africa: from two men in Algeria being arrested for merely changing their relationship status on Facebook; a LGBT magazine in Tunisia being hacked leading to the arrest of their journalists; to gay men being entrapped by police in Egypt via online chatrooms, leading to them being arrested and tortured. Similar cases have been reported in other countries, including Russia where homophobic vigilantes have used location-based gay dating apps like Grindr to lure gay men and blackmail or beat them.
“So all of this is important – how to change your behavior online? What sort of information are you supposed to share, in which context?” asks Saleh. He realized that there was a great level of ignorance about how unsafe the online space could potentially be. As a consultant for the Berlin-based collective Tactical Tech, Saleh has contributed to “toolkits,” detailed guides on how to stay safe online. Saleh and Andrea Rocca from Frontline Defenders, with whom these resources were developed, presented them at the 2014 Berlin Forum meeting at the German Foreign Office to make them more widely known. All are available online: www.tacticaltech.org/projects
Even when LGBT people are not lured into danger “IRL” (in real life), engaging online can still be discouraging and disheartening as LGBT people – activists and private individuals alike – face harassment, bulling and “trolling” for anti-LGBT extremists. Many of these “trolls” might not be audacious enough to attack someone in the street but they have few qualms about sending messages of hate online from behind the safety of their own screen.
In these cases, many social media platforms now all have features to report abusive comments and accounts. “Use them!” was a key point of advice from Kasha Nabagesera, who as one of Uganda’s most prominent LGBT activists – both online and offline – has long endured such online harassment. As activists, there can be the expectation or belief that you must engage with those who disagree with you, but the relentless nature of social media engagement can be disheartening. “Stay healthy!” a Russian Fellow advised, by blocking or reporting those who abuse you and mobilize your followers to also report abusive comments and users. However, these report/block functions can also be used against LGBT activists to silence them. Nabagesera has extensive experience in personal and professional social media engagement and, having spoken to representatives from numerous social media corporations, offers the following advice:
Apply for verification (the blue tick). Activists do not need thousands of followers to do this and if awarded it can stop instant blocking if reported by anti-LGBT users.
Ask other “legitimate” and well-recognized human rights groups to message Facebook on your behalf to vouch for you. This will also prompt Facebook to stop enforcing an immediate block and get you out of “Facebook jail” if falsely reported by homophobic users.
Apply to Project Shield to protect your website from negative reviews and reports in Google Search.
Several Fellows of the Forum have taken steps to protect their online identities. Some use pseudonyms, others do not share images of themselves online to protect their offline identities. Another simple piece of advice to stop hackers is to use the two-step verification features that are now offered by many platforms. Many of the major social media platforms also have LGBT staff and interest groups within their corporations; activists should try to cultivate a relationship with these groups.
Saleh sees staying safe online as being not only a local or regional issue but also a global one: “Current human rights and LGBT discourse is getting more and more international… If you want to [join that discourse] you need to do it as securely as possible – not only for your sake but the sake of everybody else as well.”
Fadi Saleh on how LGBT activists can be safe online in the Arab world