Is technology really good for human rights?

Have a look at these two stories, both from the same news website, about the same country, on the same day. The first looks at the much-discussed “Twitter Revolution” in Iran, and discusses how demonstrators were able to use technology – SMS, blogs, Youtube, Twitter – to mobilise demonstrators and expose human rights abuses by the authorities.

The second article looks at the flipside – MEPs issuing a stinging attack on Nokia-Siemens Networks who, they said, supplied technology hardware to the Iranian authorities that was used in the "persecution and arrests of Iranian dissidents".

Technology, particularly Internet and telecommunications technology, provides ‘the good guys’ with new tools to help them do their job: documenting human rights abuses, telling as many people as possible about it, mobilising people to try to stop them. But it also provides ‘the bad guys’ with new tools to do their job too – bugging people’s conversations, snooping on their emails, tracking their location.

Some commentators also question how effective online activism can be. If we’re outraged about a story we read on a blog, how many of us now retweet the story, join a Facebook group and then sit back  and congratulate ourselves for doing something about it? I can say from experience that social networks have proved really helpful in mobilising people who care about an issue – but doesn’t someone then have to translate that community of concern into action in the real world?

It’s these issues that we’ll be debating at an Amnesty event on Monday 22 February, entitled Is technology really good for human rights? We’ve assembled a great panel: Susan Pointer, Google's Director of Public Policy & Government Relations;  Andrew Keen (via video), author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture; Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of the Guardian; and Annabelle Sreberny, Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies with a special interest in Iran, bloggers & social media (see her article here, for example). Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent for the BBC, will chair the event.

The audience – it's invitation only I'm afraid, we're short of space – will be largely made up of bloggers and keen social media users, and we'll have interaction from outside the auditorium via Twitter, using the #aitech hashtag. I’m anticipating some lively discussion of Google's role in China, the use of Twitter and other social media in Iran's 'Green Movement', the role that the Internet and social media will play in the forthcoming UK general election, issues around 'citizen journalism', plus a host of other topics. We’ll be live tweeting from the event at @newsfromamnesty.

We’re very keen to have a debate that reaches way outside the auditorium, so if you have a question or a comment, please leave it on this blog or tweet it using #aitech. We’ll put as many of them to the panel as we can. No promises to shut down the Amnesty website if the “No’s” win the evening, though…