Featured stories from January 2011
Stories from January, 2011
Campus Free Speech: University of Massachusetts’ Policy Criticized
Free speech issue is a hot button issue on campuses in the United States, and a post at Huffington Post has re-ignited the debate once again. In 2009, we talked about Butler University and its handling of criticism by a student blogger Jess Zimmerman. Now it is about a policy...
China: Censorship pressure from the private sector
It is well known that online content providers in China have to follow censorship instructions from various government authorities. However, with the rise of private public relation company, there is an increasing censorship pressure from the private sector. Some of them pay the websites to delete content, some retreat to...
Iran: A blogger's life in danger
Hrana, human rights activists news agency, reports [fa] that Hossein Maleki Ronaghi ‘s life is in danger and he needs urgent medical care in prison. Hossein Maleki Ronaghi has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. Hussein Rongah Melki (also known as “Babak Khoramdin”) was one of the key cyberactivists...
Iran's Cyber Police, Geography, and the Psychological Denial of Service
National Public Radio reports that Iran is planning on dispatching “cyber police” across the country with General Ahmadi Moghaddam stating that “There is no time to wait” in deploying the Islamic Republic's latest line of defense against its real and perceived enemies. This isn't the first time Moghaddam has claimed...
China: A man arrested for micro-blogging about Taxi driver strike
According to NDdaily, a man, known as Mr. Zhou, was arrested for micro-blogging a Taxi driver strike at Xianning city in Hubei province on December 19, 2010 under the charge of “organizing a mob to disturb the social order”. He is still under police detention. Mr. Zhou was once a...
Is the Tunisian internet censorship regime shutting down?
Following persistent widespread protests in Tunisia in recent days and the impending general strike tomorrow, Tunisian President Ben Ali held a speech on the state television chanel Tunisie7 this evening with a long list of highly unusual concessions. Among other points he announced that he will not seek presidency for...
Iran: Blocking activity, email interception, and renewed pressure on the Green Movement
The Tor Project reports that the Iranian firewall is now blocking or throttling Tor, a number of other circumvention tools as well as SSL. They recommend using bridges that are not on port 443. Below are several graphs from the Tor Project demonstrating this: Within Iran there are further conflicting...
Saudi policy on blogging criticized
Saudi Arabia has for long faced criticism and scrutiny for not allowing the country's press and the people to express themselves without any fear of reprisal. The criticism is sure to get louder now that the government has decided to require bloggers and e-news sites to obtain a license before...
Tunisia : Blogger, Global Voices contributor, Slim Amamou arrested today
Activist and blogger Slim Amamou was arrested today, January 6, around 1pm. At this time, his friends and colleagues have no news from him, nor do we know the exact circumstances of his arrest. He had to go to work after completing a technical inspection of his vehicle. The latest news from Slim was a tweet around 1pm.
China: An alleged list of banned SMS terms
Elaine Chow from Shanghaiist reports on an alleged list of banned SMS by major mobile companies in China in 2010. The documents, distributed by @zuola via Twitter, are claimed to be composed by a SMS service company, Boer, which tried to inform their users on all the banned terms adopted...
Taiwan restricting the press?
Reports suggest Taiwan is restricting the press and Freedom House has downgraded the island nation in its annual global free press report. According to The Christian Science Monitor, “Freedom of speech and press are among the most lauded achievements of Taiwan’s democratic transition since martial law was lifted more than two decades...
