French advocacy group, known for its efforts on behalf of jailed journalists, releases report assailing crackdowns on the Internet and antiterrorism measures passed in U.S. and Europe.

The advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres) has an enormous set of cojones -- or more appropriately, couilles. The French group's controversial tactics include the unauthorized use of a famous Che Guevara image to attack the Cuban government for arresting 26 journalists this past March. And RSF protested the Libyan chair of the UN Human Rights Commission by dropping leaflets at a meeting with the line: "The UN has finally appointed someone who knows what she is talking about!" (Ah, the irony of human rights abuser Libya chairing a human rights panel.)

How big can those couilles get? RSF considers forced filtering of the Internet an affront to freedom of information and released its second global report on repressive governments cracking down on Net access and arresting cyberdissidents (currently 49 known to be jailed worldwide). The report, titled "The Internet Under Surveillance," included an introduction by Vint Cerf, the so-called "Father of the Internet," and lengthy reports on the situation in countries such as China, Cuba and Iran. But it also had sections dedicated to Western governments, such as the U.S., Germany and France, for enacting antiterrorism laws post-9/11 that could curtail freedom of expression online.

"I especially appreciate that RSF pulls no punches, not hesitating to denounce any government anywhere that puts constraints on freedom of the press or persecutes journalists," said Doug Ireland, columnist and media critic for TomPaine.com, who worked as a journalist in Paris for nearly a decade. "There are no untouchables or sacred cows for RSF. Their regular e-mail alerts -- which they post in English, Spanish and French -- are invaluable for anyone who writes about or tracks press freedom worldwide."

Reporters Without Borders started in 1985 with a focus on helping freelance journalists, and took a more global perspective aiding jailed journalists about 10 years ago. Think of it as a kind of Amnesty International for journalists. It has about 30 full-time staff, according to U.S. representative Tala Dowlatshahi, along with more than 100 correspondents on the ground around the world.  RSF is a safety valve for them, because if correspondents are jailed by their government, the group helps notify families or lawyers, and even might help them in an asylum situation abroad.

RSF gets about 20 percent of its funding from European government entities, but 80 percent from private donations -- usually from media events. The group sells high-quality photo books from famed photographers, and has given celebrities disposable cameras to shoot pictures, which are auctioned off online. "All this is great publicity for RSF, whose director, Bob Menard, is a well-known figure on French news and talk shows," Ireland said. "It helps RSF raise a significant amount of money to extend their invaluable work."

China's cybercafe crackdown

Reading RSF's Web site is like going through the looking glass into a netherworld of jail cells, torture, repression and abuse -- for journalists of all stripes. It's an eye-opening experience, and utterly depressing if not for the occasional case of journos going free (including Iranian blogger/journalist Sina Motallebi). China, in particular, has been at the forefront of blocking access to particular Internet sites and jailing cyberdissidents. RSF's Asia-Pacific expert, Vincent Brossel, has authored an exhaustive chronicle of Chinese Internet repression, from July 2000 to April 2003. His report on China is a highlight of the recent Net report.

China started by jailing dissidents who supported opposition movements online, then moved to blocking sites such as Reuters, CNN, Google, AltaVista and even Blogspot, for fear of Chinese surfers finding "subversive" material. After a fire at a Beijing cybercafe killed 24 people last summer, the government closed many cafes and restricted new ones from opening.

"China is really full of contradictions," Brossel told me. "The number of Web users is growing fast, and it's important for the country's economic growth. They create the impression that online forums are freer than any other media, but in fact, they monitor forums 24/7. There have been dozens of arrests of people using forums at cybercafes." The government has tried to hold cafe owners responsible for content viewed at their cafes, forcing them to monitor surfing by users.

But can the Chinese government watch every online movement by tens of millions of Web-goers? Cerf, now an MCI executive, doesn't think so. "I think in the long run that the Chinese government will find it virtually impossible to force all traffic through proxies," he told me via e-mail. "Satellite access, radio access, dial-up access outside the country's borders will eventually show how difficult it is to really deny access to information."

The security rationale and UN controversy

So how does the U.S. antiterrorism legislation fit into the picture? The problem isn't only an invasion of privacy for American surfers and e-mailers. Repressive governments in Cuba and China are using the security angle for their own Net crackdowns, basically aping the U.S. rationale in irrational ways. "China is jailing dozens of people for accessing sites like Google, and they say they're clamping down on information for security purposes similar to the U.S. after 9/11," said RSF's Dowlatshahi. "And [Cuban leader Fidel] Castro says, 'We don't want any threat to national security,' so they put journalists in jail in vile conditions."

So far, the U.S. government hasn't responded to RSF's criticism of its antiterrorism laws, which is no different than criticism leveled by many other privacy and civil liberty groups over the past couple years. But the U.S. has stood by RSF in its current imbroglio with the United Nations caused by the pamphleteering incident at the Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva. Cuba and other countries won an early motion to suspend the group's consultative status with the UN for a year, but the U.S. voted against it. A decisive vote on the matter will likely be taken next month by the UN Economic and Social Council, and the U.S. State Department has said it would like a full report on the incident before taking any action.

Regis Bourgeat, who leads RSF's Americas desk, said it would look bad for the Human Rights Commission to suspend the RSF at Cuba's behest. "They are the ones who will lose credibility," he told me. "We will keep doing our work no matter what they decide. We are curious who will vote against us." The group has no shortage of enemies among the league of nations, with so many of them cited for curtailing freedom of press on RSF's Web site.

Cuba and Venezuela

RSF has made waves by educating summer travelers about censorship in Cuba, Tunisia and Turkey. Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com's chief political correspondent, agrees that these countries should be renounced, but hopes the group isn't dissuading tourists from traveling to these places. "I think if outsiders visit, they serve the cause of liberty by exchanging ideas, engaging in conversations, and showing the locals that there's more to life than what they hear on state TV," he e-mailed me. "Tourists traveling to other nations are increasingly likely to have Weblogs or some way to use the Internet to let others know what's going on in more repressive regimes."

The RSF lost a court case in France for use of the Che Guevara image in the campaign and is weighing a possible appeal. It is prohibited from using the image and had to pay court costs to the photographer's daughter, who brought the suit. Pedro de la Hoz, writing for the Cuban outlet Granma, lashed out at RSF as "ultra-reactionary" and criticized "their usual unscrupulous aggressiveness" in anti-Cuban actions at Orly Airport and at the Cuban embassy. "M?nard and his cronies have been let down by this decision," he wrote.

But RSF's Bourgeat  said he was happy for the harsh words. This campaign marked the first time the Cuban government and its outlets had an official reaction to their protest, he said. The only downside was that the court case over Che's image never discussed the reason for the protest: jailed journalists in Cuba with prison terms up to 28 years in bad conditions.

The RSF also came under attack by Narco News editor Al Giordano, who headlined a report on his site as "Distorters Without Borders." The story alleges the group would not support journalists on the government side who were attacked during the coup in Venezuela. Bourgeat said the group did not have good information at the time of the coup, and later denounced any attacks on journalists on both sides. He said the organization is careful not to defend a jailed journalist who might actually be guilty of a crime.

Still, this is a group that seems to drop leaflets, and ask questions later. Or use protected images and pay restitution later. But most of all, it's fighting for jailed journalists and free access to information online; and the more attention it can get in those causes -- come hell or high water -- the better.