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" The role of technology in recent Middle Eastern revolutions has been made pretty clear. Despite being thousands of miles away, Brett Solomon, Executive Director co-founder of Access Now, is at the epicenter of it this week. Access Now is an NGO committed to &amp;quot;the realization of human rights and democracy\u2026[as] predicated on access to the Internet,&amp;quot; and this week, released and is attempting to move around a bombshell document into countries whose communication lines have been corrupted, as they&amp;#039;re either severed with the rest of the Western World by their governments, or even worse, monitored backed by the threat of civic punishment and worse. And you think Twitter going down is a problem. Entitled Protecting Your Security Online, the paper being released in both English and Arabic, could prove to be a pretty vital piece of information to the organic spread of democracy in the world. Why? It&amp;#039;s a simple user&amp;#039;s guide to circumventing surveillance and hindrance of digital communications by anti-democracy governments. This is why it could also find itself on the precipice of becoming the most scrutinized (and potentially \u2014 literally \u2014 revolutionary) public document one could posess in that region right now, let alone the world, today. Solomon, a young Australian-by-way-of-New-York, who spoke with us on Friday over a bad cell phone connection, would argue differently. ESQUIRE: Who wrote this thing? BRETT SOLOMON: Writing it was a bit of a group effort: A number of individuals here and in the Middle East who compiled it. Digital activists and technologists. ESQ: Why&amp;#039;s it being released today? BS: There wasn&amp;#039;t really a specific day in mind. It&amp;#039;s taken a lot of work to put this document together right, and a lot of time to insure that the Arabic translation is 100% accurate. ESQ: So it was just ready when it was ready? BS: Exactly. [Laughs] There was no day planned. ESQ: How&amp;#039;re you and Access Now getting this thing into places where privacy, security, and access to the Internet has been compromised? BS: Of course, there&amp;#039;s filtering and blocking to prevent this from getting through. So in order to get out a broad-based document, you need to use broad-based channels. Social networks we have control over, for example. The great thing about the digital sphere is that before you would&amp;#039;ve had to cross borders, put it into backpacks, and hide it from border officials.  ESQ: And what, exactly, is in this thing? Are we talking Cliff&amp;#039;s Notes or the digital Anarchists&amp;#039; Cookbook? BS: There&amp;#039;s nothing contained in that document that&amp;#039;s not public. There are existing documents that compile technology tips about security and privacy. ESQ: But if people can&amp;#039;t even get on the Internet, is there really much use for it? Aren&amp;#039;t people who have access to the Internet in politically volatile regions already fully aware of the risks involved? BS: Not necessarily. There are a number of people who have shifted from being citizens to being activists. A lot of their activism is taking place online, and a lot of those people aren&amp;#039;t aware of the risks of being an activist or expressing views online. This document is meant for them.  ESQ: You guys are making a very public push for what seems to me like a very hot document. Can&amp;#039;t that cause some trouble? BS: I don&amp;#039;t feel like this is a hot document. To be clear, it&amp;#039;s not a revolutionary document, it&amp;#039;s a fact-based document, to assist with privacy and assembly. ESQ: If someone has to work to get their hands on something in a country where they have to worry about being spied upon for dissent, doesn&amp;#039;t that make this hot? In other words: If they&amp;#039;re trying to secure their information in a country with a government known for spying on its citizenry openly, doesn&amp;#039;t that make the owners of this document suspect to said regimes? BS: I hear your point. It&amp;#039;s an interesting question. I&amp;#039;m not coming in contact with anybody being arrested or detained for being in possession of information like this. It&amp;#039;s a politically neutral document. If you look at the people who are being detained or arrested, they&amp;#039;re being detained based on the content of their political activity. From Syria to the protests in Egypt, people rely upon the Internet to exercise their right to freedom and expression, and that&amp;#039;s the thing we&amp;#039;re trying to protect.  ESQ: Yet, in these countries, isn&amp;#039;t Internet access is a form of activism? BS: They are certainly people who are digital activists campaigning for the right to Internet access. Does information vital to people&amp;#039;s protections for pre-existing access, does it get withheld? I think in weighing that out, the information to protect people&amp;#039;s security is far greater than the risk of them not having the means to do so. ESQ: There&amp;#039;s always the concern that the wrong team could get their hands on this kind of information. We&amp;#039;re constantly battered with news of terrorists using the Internet to organize, often originating from these same regions. Is that important to take into consideration, here? BS: You&amp;#039;re right. It&amp;#039;s out there, but it&amp;#039;s a very small part of the ecosystem. But I think the Internet in terms of roads: It&amp;#039;s true that criminals use roads, but it doesn&amp;#039;t mean you don&amp;#039;t want safe passageways for the rest of the citizens! It would be naive to think that the Internet would be a rights-restricting space. We should deal with criminal behavior like terrorism in the same way online that we would offline. Any incursion into the rights of privacy and the rights of expression should be very carefully managed and should be the exception. ESQ: Finally: You&amp;#039;re Australian. So is Julian Assange. What&amp;#039;s in the water down there? How can we trust you?! BS: I&amp;#039;ve never been compared to Julian Assange before! [Laughs] My background is: I was the executive director of GetUp, a mass movement in Australian using technology to shape the politics of the country. GetUp now has 400,000 members (the equivalent of eight million in the U.S.). I&amp;#039;ve seen the power of an open Internet on political participation. That&amp;#039;s where this comes from. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a9674/brett-solomon-interview-access-now-5456069/>