If Cuba seems the island time forgot, it’s not just because of the classic 1950s cars on the roads or the Cold War atmosphere that continues to hover over U.S.-Cuba relations, including the still-strangulating U.S. embargo.
It’s also because Cubans—the vast majority of them—have no internet. No smartphones, Google, Facebook, YouTube, or Skype. No regular email. No chatrooms. No access to media, library, or university websites. No Twitter, Linkedin, or tripadvisor.
Visiting Cuba recently with CODEPINK, I was part of a group who spoke to the former head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon. Alarcon attributes Cuba’s lack of internet to the continuing U.S. embargo, and surely there’s some truth to that. The Helms-Burton Act, committing U.S. policy and dollars to regime change, strictly blocks Cuba’s access to U.S. technology.
But there’s more going on here than a Dr. Strangelove-era stand-off. Even patriotic Cubans assume that Cuba’s lack of internet access dovetails perfectly with government policies restricting information. And whatever the reasons that Cuba is offline, getting the country connected is not a government priority. As Cuban filmmaker Yaima Pardo told me, there’s an “internal blockade”—a lack of political will that’s just as bad as the embargo.
Pardo, who has a day job with Cuban TV, is also part of Cuba’s small, struggling set of independent filmmakers. And she’s directed Offline, a thoughtful and yearning film about the plight of her isolated island.
Her film will never get mainstream distribution on Cuban TV or in theaters—I saw it in a Cuban living room. But Offline is carefully tailored yet powerful dissent from a loyal insider still resident, a poignant missive to Cuban officialdom. Pardo is trying to push the powers-that-be to care about connectivity, advocating the way adult children might lobby stubborn parents in a loving family with a huge generation gap.
She frames internet access as a necessary extension of the Cuban revolution. For example, in Cuba, education is officially prized, and an all-out, island-wide 1961 campaign transformed the country into the most literate society in Latin America. But today only university students can be assured of internet access: “Once you graduate…when you need to make use of everything you learned, they’ll build a wall around you or slam a door in your face,” an unidentified interviewee declares during Offline’s opening credits.
For Pardo’s earnest and passionate talking heads—Cuban artists, editors, and scholars—the internet means freedom. They view it as the portal to decentralized decision-making and democracy, freedom of expression, consumer choice, and the chance at reaching one’s capacity as a human being. For them, it’s the necessary bridge from Cuba’s old guard to the future.
As one, magazine editor Alen Garcia Aguero, tersely asserts: “A nation that turns its back on technology turns its back on the world.”
I found the film both fascinating and hard to process. Are Pardo’s respondents naïve or am I just jaded, with my too-acute awareness of the dark side of the internet—the cyber-bullying, the hacking, the platform monopolies, the pervasive corporate and government surveillance? Is the internet a leg-up for the most vulnerable—an equalizer—or just another way for those with power to consolidate it?
Obviously, it can be both, and how the internet will evolve is a question that’s still being fought out, in the United States and elsewhere. Meanwhile Pardo’s film is a fabulous reminder of the privileges so many of us take for granted.
Including the privilege of watching her film. In Cuba, it’s shared thumb drive by thumb drive. But we who are privileged with internet access can .
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
MississippiJul 2024
Free Speech
Privacy & Technology
NetChoice v. FitchNetChoice v. Fitch
Whether a law that mandates age verification for all users of social media services violates the First Amendment. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Free Speech
Can you define pornography? Neither can the government.Can you define pornography? Neither can the government.
We break down the absurd-but-true history of trying to censor sexual speech under the guise of "keeping kids safe." -
Minnesota Supreme CourtNov 2024
Free Speech
Energy Transfer LP v. Greenpeace International, Unicorn RiotEnergy Transfer LP v. Greenpeace International, Unicorn Riot
This case in the Minnesota Supreme Court asks whether the MFFIA's protections apply to newsgatherers even if they are alleged to have engaged in trespassing while newsgathering. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Minnesota and law firm Biersdorf & Associations, filed a brief representing Unicorn Riot, a media organization that covered protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The brief argues that MFFIA and constitutional reporter’s privileges, under both the U.S. and Minnesota constitutions, protect Unicorn Riot from having to comply with Energy Transfer’s subpoenas.