Featured stories from April 2012
Stories from April, 2012
Netizen Report: Firewall Edition
On April 12, the Chinese Internet was cut off from the global Internet for about two hours, for reasons that remain unknown. Meanwhile, netizens around the world have been busy fighting threats to their freedom of all kinds. All the details are brought to you by our Netizen Report team: Weiping Li, Mera Szendro Bok, James Losey, Grady Johnson, and Sarah Myers.
How Should We Govern the Internet? Livestream of Global INET Forum 2012
An important meeting on Internet governance issues is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland from April 23-23, 2012. Participate remotely to follow discussions on privacy, net neutrality, IPv6, security, digital content and innovation, human rights and free speech.
Arab World: Technology in the Time of Revolution
The Arab uprisings have created a debate about the role played by social media and mobile technology in bringing change. Whatever conclusion you come to on that subject, activists certainly make use of a wide range of new technologies, and Tarek Amr takes a look at some of them in this post.
China: Battle over the spread and deletion of “rumors”
The China propaganda machine continues to launch the war against “rumors” distributing via social media. However, many still believe that people will eventually win in this online battle. Yesterday People's Daily had a featured article on “Internet rumors harm people and harm our society. The public must not believe or...
Guinea-Bissau: Top Blogger Detained, Beaten by Military After Coup
Aly Silva is one of the most important bloggers in the small west African country of about 1 million people, if not the most important (see this Global Voices interview with him). He is a controversial figure in the country, who does not hide his political leanings. Yet nobody can match him in terms of his longevity, frequency of posting, and dedication to blogging.
China: Testing for “Kill Switch” of the World Wide Web?
China's internet became an intranet for about two hours on April 12. All internet users in China could not access to the World Wide Web and were cut off from all overseas social networking sites and email services. Netizens believe it is a testing of the web censor for the...
Kuwait: Tortured for Someone Else's Tweets
Throughout the year of 2011, Kuwait has had many cases of arrests of twitter users. It started with two tweeps getting arrested for insulting a religious sect. Other cases had a political nature as those tweeps played a role in protesting the former prime minister who was accused of corruption....
Netizen Report: Legislative Edition
Democratic nations face a challenge in finding the right balance between national security imperatives on the one hand and the need to protect citizens’ freedoms on the other. In this week’s report we highlight several solutions that fall too far on the former side.
Pakistan: Unpacking an Anti-Censorship Campaign
When Pakistan's government called for proposals for a new URL filtering and blocking system earlier this year, local and global civil society coordinated their campaigns to focus on the strategies most likely to elicit a response from the authorities.
An Occupy Wall Street Tutorial: “How to Film a Revolution”
On Sunday December 11, 2011 The New York Times published an extensive article illustrating the role of livestream technologies in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The following day, seventeen mediamakers, including members of the Global Revolution livestream team were arrested.
A bullet killed Ahmed Ismael, but not his videos
When people talk about legendary freedom fighters, I always recall citizen journalists. Those young men and women who post videos and updates online for the rest of the world are real heroes. It has never been easy to be in the middle of police crackdown and take video and photo...
