Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world. It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments in the field.
Days after tens of thousands of India’s young people marched toward Parliament last week, a bright blue van parked near the main protest site at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. The van, emblazoned with the Delhi Police logo, sported a sign that said “Ikshana,” or “vision” in Hindi. As a reporter passed the van, a computer screen inside captured his face framed in a green rectangle—along with a corresponding “face accuracy” score.
Last week, when the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical movement uniting hundreds of thousands across India, posed one of the most significant challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, reports of mass digital rights violations emerged. “The government’s response showed how rapidly the tools of digital governance can be converted into tools of political control and surveillance,” Mishi Choudhary, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in), told CGFoE.
From the front lines of the recent protests in New Delhi, where SFLC.in has been defending digital rights on the ground, Mishi Choudhary spoke to CGFoE about internet shutdowns, surveillance, shadow banning, app blocking, and the arrests of protesters during and after India’s youth-led uprising. Read an excerpt of the interview below. Find the full version on our website.
Mishi Choudhary is a technology lawyer and online civil liberties activist who founded SFLC.in, India’s leading digital rights organization. She serves as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Virtru.
CGFoE: As someone who has spent years defending digital rights in India, what does this moment mean to you? Do the protests and the government’s response mark a turning point?
Mishi Choudhary: This moment shows both the democratic possibilities of technology and the state’s determination to control those very possibilities. The students’ Cockroach movement began through satire and online speech where a dehumanizing insult by the chief justice of India—someone who should know better—allowed young people who were not represented by established political organizations to find one another, describe a shared experience, and turn that experience into collective action.
The resignation of a senior minister demonstrated that digitally networked protests can still produce political accountability. But let’s not start calling them Instagram protests because the government’s response showed how rapidly the tools of digital governance can be converted into tools of political control and surveillance. Each state measure may be presented separately as content moderation, public safety, law and order, state security, policing, or lawful interception. What the protesters are experiencing, however, tells us that the government can make protests costly, visible to the state, and invisible to the public by using the same technology and power.
Read the full interview here.
India
IN RE: Social Science Textbook (Book Banned by Indian Supreme Court)
Decision Date: May 22, 2026
The Supreme Court of India is currently hearing a suo moto case, wherein the Court itself has banned a high school book titled “Exploring Society: India and Beyond, Social Science Grade 8 Part 2,” published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, after a portion of the chapter on the Indian Judiciary discusses a topic titled “corruption in judiciary.” The Court has issued multiple orders, including a ban on further publication of the book, the immediate seizure and removal of all physical and digital copies, and a ban on the authors of the book’s chapters. In the most recent development, the Court directed the Government of India to constitute expert committees to review and redesign future legal education curricula.
Upadhyay v. Union of India
Decision Date: April 29, 2026
The Supreme Court of India rejected a batch of petitions seeking judicial intervention to frame new guidelines and create additional legal mechanisms to curb hate speech, communal incitement, and inflammatory media reporting. The petitions arose from multiple incidents between 2020 and 2025, including communal reporting surrounding the Tablighi Jamaat congregation during the COVID-19 pandemic, alleged inflammatory speeches targeting religious communities, and concerns regarding the spread of hate speech through media and digital platforms. Petitioners argued that the existing legal framework was inadequate and sought new directions, guidelines, and legislative measures to address systemic hate speech and enforcement failures. However, the Court held that the field was already adequately occupied by existing statutory provisions under the Indian Penal Code (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita), the Representation of the People Act, and other allied legislations. While emphasizing the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, the Court ruled that the creation of new criminal offenses and legislative policy fell exclusively within Parliament’s domain and that courts cannot direct the legislature to enact specific laws. The Court concluded that the real issue lay not in the absence of legal provisions but in their inconsistent and selective enforcement, and therefore dismissed the petitions while reaffirming the principle of judicial restraint.
United Kingdom
Kamal v. Tax Policy Associates
Decision Date: March 11, 2026
The High Court of Justice (King’s Bench Division) of the United Kingdom granted summary judgment favoring the respondents, Daniel Neidle and Tax Policy Associates Ltd—within the context of a defamation suit—and classified the petitioner’s suit as a statutory SLAPP (Strategic Litigation against Public Participation). The case arose after Setu Kamal, a tax barrister, filed a libel and malicious falsehood claim against an investigative journalist (Neidle) and a not-for-profit organization (Tax Policy Associates Ltd) over an article criticizing his involvement in a controversial tax avoidance scheme. He sought damages, retractions, and a court-ordered apology, prompting the respondents to argue that the suit was an abusive attempt to silence public interest journalism. The Court, in this case, determined that demanding a retraction would constitute “compelled speech,” infringing upon Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights protections. Additionally, the Court found the legal action was aimed at suppressing free expression and constituted a SLAPP.
● India: SFLC.in’s Statement Against Arbitrary Takedown of Online Content. The Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in) condemns “the arbitrary, unconstitutional takedown of online content,” ongoing in response to India’s mass youth-led protests. The Delhi Police has reportedly been monitoring social media for “objectionable, abusive, and offensive” content and sending out takedown notices to platforms. SFLC.in stresses the measure directly contradicts Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. Are you in India? SFLC.in put together essential resources for protesters. Are you facing takedowns, shutdowns, gendered harassment, or seizure of devices? SFLC.in’s pro bono legal helpline, RightsLine, provides free legal help.
● India: IFF Writes to the Commissioner of Police and Files RTIs (Right to Information Requests) on Live Facial Recognition at Jantar Mantar. The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has been seeking answers and accountability for the mass surveillance of protesters in India. IFF has been demanding an immediate stop to the use of live facial recognition technology, erasure of protesters’ biometric data, and the publication of relevant governing rules. In a challenge currently pending before the Delhi High Court, student activist Aishe Ghosh alleges “continuous, indiscriminate, and intrusive surveillance of the assembly.”
● EU: A Cure Worse than the Disease—Why the Proposal to Criminalize Hate Speech Violates Freedom of Expression, by Jacob Mchangama and Natalie Alkiviadou. In a paper published by the Journal of Free Speech Law, Jacob Mchangama and Natalie Alkiviadou of The Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University analyze—through the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality—the European Commission’s efforts to expand the criminalization of hate speech at the EU level and, more recently, to harmonize online hate-speech offenses by relying on existing EU competences.
This Week in Protests
Last Wednesday, July 22, hundreds marched after police shot and killed Corey Ruiz in Madison, Wisconsin, the US—protests continued into this week, with a camp blocking the intersection where the killing occurred. On Friday, July 24, in Kyiv, Ukraine, wartime protests resumed, demanding the reinstatement of popular defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov. On Saturday, in Tel Aviv, Israel, more than 200 people protested the escalation of settler violence in the occupied West Bank; police reportedly used force and arrested nine. That day in Glasgow, Scotland, a Stand Up To Racism rally gathered hundreds; violence broke out as an anti-immigration protest was taking place at the same time. On Sunday and Monday, in Tripoli and other locations in Libya, protests over power cuts escalated into demands to overthrow the Government of National Unity; a civil disobedience campaign shut down roads and public buildings.
Find our new web tool documenting protests since January 2026 here.
On July 25 in Tunis, thousands held an anti-government rally, marking five years since President Kais Saied’s seizure of emergency powers on July 25, 2021.
Background & Demands: Five years ago, President Saied suspended Parliament and has governed by decree since March 2022, triggering what the opposition describes as an unprecedented concentration of power and collapse of state institutions. The country’s economy has plummeted, with high inflation and a surge in unemployment. Last Saturday, protesters called for Saied’s departure and chanted for “freedom, work, and national dignity.” A central demand was the release of political prisoners. Earlier anti-Saied mobilizations included rallies in late 2025, early 2026, and this past May, when protesters condemned the state’s crackdown on dissent.
Significance: The months-long protest cycle has widened to encompass a broad range of disaffected citizens. Notably, on July 25, protesters revived “the people want the fall of the regime,” the chant of the 2011 revolution, voiced on the same avenue in Tunis.
State Response: The July 25 demonstration reportedly proceeded without direct police intervention. In the preceding months and years, however, the state has been suppressing dissent through courts and administrative instruments. Former parliament speaker Rached Ghannouchi, one of Tunisia’s most prominent political prisoners, was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison on terrorism charges this past June. Among others targeted are human rights defenders, journalists, political candidates, independent lawyers, judges, and migrants. Between July 2025 and April 2026, a Tunis court suspended at least 25 civil society associations, including the Tunisian League for Human Rights. Since March 2026, individuals and NGOs can no longer bring cases before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
FoE Violations: The authorities have been obstructing reporters’ coverage of protests and imposing administrative hurdles on international correspondents. In the days leading up to the most recent rally, journalist Haythem El Mekki was sentenced to one year in prison over a post critical of conditions in a hospital morgue; weeks earlier, an appeals court upheld the one-year sentence for journalist Zied El Heni over comments critical of legal decisions, and journalist Khaoula Boukrim was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison under Decree-Law No. 2022-54—one of the state’s primary tools in shrinking freedom of expression.
● A Roadmap for Confronting the Chilling Effects of Censorship, Surveillance and New Technology. In this podcast, Justin Hendrix, CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, speaks to Jonathon W. Penney, author of Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age, about the weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and technologies of control.
● Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous, by Arundhati Roy. In a dispatch for the Equator magazine, author and activist Arundhati Roy writes from Delhi, “[A] generation of desperate and furious young people, who have seen their future snuffed out before their eyes, intended to reclaim what their parents and grandparents’ generations had conceded: our dignity as a people and as a country.”
This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression. For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.