Stories from May, 2011
India's Information Technology Rules 2011 Has Many Fuming
Is India following China's lead when it comes to user generated content online? Many will answer yes, following newly released Information Technology Rules 2011. The Economic Times reports that the...
China: Cracking down circumvention tools
A number of Chinese netizens report that since May 6 2011 visiting overseas website via China Telecom and China Unicom has become highly unstable. This time the disruption mainly affected...
Nepal: Facebooking Revolt and Censorship
Arab spring has brought winds of change into Nepal. On Saturday, May 7, group of young people gathered near Maitighar area of capital Kathmandu demanding speedy resolution to the current deadlocke caused...
Egypt: how companies help the government spy on activists
Few weeks ago when authorities didn’t respond immediately to people’s demand, many Egyptians stormed the State Security Investigations (SSI) headquarters to protect the evidences against SSI offices (including torture equipments and documents). Among those documents where communications between SSI units related to censorship, monitoring online content, controlling computes/ laptops, as well as shutting down communications services.
Azerbaijan: Youth Activist Sentenced
Jabbar Savalan, a 20-year-old opposition youth activist, has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison on drug possession charges. However, others maintain that Javalan was detained because of calls made on Facebook for demonstrations to be held in Azerbaijan following popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Did Syria replace Facebook's security certificate with a forged one?
Ana Souri [I'm Syrian in Arabic] tumblr user is claiming that Syrian Telecom Ministry has replaced Facebook's security certificate with a forged one that makes it easy to spy on users, record their passwords, and view their private content.
China: Political Spam in Twitter
The tag system in Twitter is an effective way in distributing information beyond a user's social network. However, the system can easily be contaminated by spam messages. In western countries,...
In Bahrain, World Press Non-Freedom Day
Today is World Press Freedom Day, a day that is being commiserated more than celebrated in many nations, including Bahrain, where journalists and bloggers are currently under siege by government.
China: Exposing Internet Surveillance Abroad
The U.S-China Human Rights Dialogue did not have any concrete consensus last week. While the U.S government questioned Chinese government's crackdown on dissent, oppression of religion and expression freedom, Chinese...
