Stories from September, 2007
Myanmar: Internet Blocked
The follwing post is from a Burmese blogger who wishes to remain anonymous. There have been massive support from Myanmar bloggers for the current protest activities, and the whole Myanmar blogosphere is overwhelmed with news and photos. Because of that, Myanmar Junta got chickened out and banned the political blogs,...
Polish computer programmer arrested for Google Bombing
The 23-years old Polish computer programmer Marek W. might face up to three years in prison for having created a Googlebombing software linking Polish President Lech Kaczynski‘s website to the word “kutas” meaning penis in Polish. Marek who succeeded to manipulate Google search engine rankings so that Polish internet users...
Jordan to monitor online publications and websites
Jordan will monitor online publications and websites, Nabil Al-Momani, the assistant general manager of Jordan Printing and Publishing department announced today. From now on websites and electronic newspapers will fall under the Press and Publication Law. Al-Momani states that his department won’t impose prior censorship or restrictions on online free...
Great Firewall of Turkey: access your WordPress blog with WordPrexy
As a reaction to the court's decision to block access to the entire WordPress.com blogging platform in Turkey, following a libel action brought by the Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, Great Firewall of Turkey activists launched WordPrexy.com project to make Turkish blogs hosted on WordPress.com accessible. WordPrexy is a WordPress-specific proxy server...
Turkey Blocks YouTube. Again.
For the second time in a year, a Turkish court ordered, on Tuesday September 18, to block access to YouTube.com over videos deemed insulting to the country's leaders. The decision followed a complaint by a resident in the eastern city of Sivas that the site hosted videos containing insults against...
Egyptian blogger arrested and prevented from covering a taxi drivers’ strike
Mahmoud Chachtawi, Egyptian blogger and reporter of abna2masr.com website, has been arrested during a taxi drivers’ strike he was covering. After detaining him for four hours, the police released him and confiscated his camera, mobile phone and ID card. According to a twitter message left on the blog, it seems...
Russian LiveJournal blogger could face three-year sentence
The 23-year old Russian blogger, Dmitry Shirinkin, who wrote a fiction story on his blog inspired by the Virginia Tech shooting, could face up to three years in prison (Please read the whole story on Global Voices). Dmitry Shirinkin was running a LiveJournal blog under the title tetraox and wrote...
Iran blocks access to Google and Gmail
Iran has blocked access to Google search engine and Gmail Google's free webmail service, Mehr news agency reported today. “I can confirm these sites have been filtered,” said Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran's National Council of Information. Update:“Due to an error, the Google site was filtered on Sunday evening...
China: Blogs ground down as National Congress gears up
There was a lot of scoffing last month when a big announcement was finally made of a pledge signed by many major blog providers encouraging their users to self-censor their blogging activities. The ‘new’ pact didn't just rehash aims that many before it had attempted and largely failed to achieve,...
Pakistan: blogspot.com blocked again
The Don’t Block The Blog reported today that access to the popular blogging platform blogspot.com, which is owned by Google Inc, has been blocked again in Pakistan: For about four months (since May, 2007) Google fortunately had changed the IP address of its Blogspot servers. The new IP addresses were...
Mumbai police to monitor cyber-cafes
In its war against terrorism, Mumbai's police is planning to install keystroke loggers in Mumbai's cyber cafes. According to Vijay Mukhi, President of the Foundation for Information Security and Technology: The police needs to install programs that will capture every key stroke at regular interval screen shots, which will be...
Thailand: the first victim of the Computer Crime Act
It seems that the Thai authorities have used the recently passed Computer Crime Act (you can download the document below) to arrest two Thais for alleged offensive comments posted on the Internet about the country’s revered monarch. “At least one person being detained in Bangkok Remand Prison for crimes against...
Dailymotion in Tunisia blocked-unblocked-blocked again
The fake “404” error message received today when trying to access Dailymotion. Dailymotion, France's YouTube-like video sharing site has been blocked, again, in Tunisia. Still unclear if the government-controlled body, ATI (Agence Tunisienne d’Internet), throw whom all Tunisia’s ISPs are operating, has imposed the ban. On April 1st, 2007, Dailymotion...
Egyptian blogger Monem threatened again
Silencing Monem? (Free Monem Campaign, By Malek) Egyptian blogger and journalist Abdel Monem Mahmoud, who has been released in June 2007 after 46 days imprisonment in Southern Cairo Torah prison, is “facing detention threats [again]. Both as part of the State’s clensing of political activists from the Egyptian scene and...
ThinkProgress blog banned from the U.S. military network in Baghdad
Error message received by US soldier when trying to access ThinkProgress blog from U.S. military network in Baghdad (Photo credit: the American Progress Action Fund) The liberal ThinkProgress blog has been banned from the U.S. military network in Baghdad. “The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj....
