· August, 2010

Stories about TOPICS from August, 2010

A legal case against Nokia Siemens Networks

  31 August 2010

Saharkhiz believes that intelligence offices tracked his location through his limited cell phone usage and arrested him. So he and his son, Mehdi have filed a lawsuit in a U.S. Federal Court against Nokia Siemens Network that sold communications intercept technology to Iran which, according to him, was subsequently used by the government to monitor opposition activists.

Egypt: Security Department to Monitor Facebook and Support the Government

  29 August 2010

On 1st July, 2010, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior (MOI) has reportedly established a special department to monitor Facebook activities and content in Egypt according to the administrative decision 765. Based on the Kuwaiti newspaper Aljarida, this new MOI department works according to three shifts/8 hours each. Each shift is...

China: GFW upgrade

  29 August 2010

Reports from various sources said that one of the most popular circumvention tool, Freegate, has been blocked since last Friday (August 27) in China. When users ran the program, a warning message appeared: Error, the program has to be shut down. Please accept our apology. Below is a screen capture...

Iran: Jailed blogger Goudarzi receives NPC award

  27 August 2010

The National Press Club has announced the international recipient of the 2010 John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award is Iranian blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi, who is being held in Tehran's Evin Prison–notorious for its torture of detainees.

Four Advocacy guides available in Albanian

  26 August 2010

We are pleased to announce the translation of four Global Voices Advocacy guides in to Albanian language. With the help of the Metamorphosis Foundation, SEO Tips for Advocacy Bloggers, Geo-bombing: YouTube + Google Earth, Cross-posting for Advocacy, and Blog for a Cause! are now available for download. Blog for a...

Iran: Blogger May Face Charge of ‘Waging War Against God’

  25 August 2010

There is a growing concern that Shiva Nazar Ahari, a jailed human rights activist, blogger, and editor of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters website in Iran, may be charged with moharbeh (waging war against God/enmity against God) in an upcoming trial. In Iran, this can carry a death sentence....

Azerbaijan: Supreme Court Upholds Bloggers’ Conviction

  20 August 2010

On 19 August, the Azerbaijani Supreme Court considered the case of imprisoned bloggers and youth activists Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. In its decision, the Court upheld the lower courts' rulings, which convicted Milli and Hajizade of hooliganism and sentenced them to two and a half years and two years of imprisonment respectively. The two were arrested on 8 July 2009 after appealing to police as victims of an assault following an incident in which they were attacked in a restaurant.

Our Guide “Mirroring a Censored WordPress Blog” is now available in Arabic

  20 August 2010

This guide is for bloggers with self-hosted* WordPress blogs who believe their sites may be blocked by government filters. Its goal is to help bloggers use a mirror site to make censored content available to readers despite these filters. It contains step-by-step instructions for setting up a mirror for an original (”source”) WordPress blog.

Online dictatorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran

  18 August 2010

Since the post-presidential election of 2009, the Islamic republic of Iran has intensified its crackdown on media including bloggers and even micro-blogging environments like Facebook and twitter. Although the crackdown on media has been a common practice in the Islamic republic, this time, the gravity of the situation is far...

Spaniard bloggers react to the Google-Verizon proposed policy

  17 August 2010

Spaniard bloggers have been very busy discussing and arguing about the recent Google-Verizon proposed policy for an open Internet. Most of them are against it because they consider it a very delicate subject because of the not so distant issue of the Sinde discussion when, “the Spanish Government announced at...

Russia: Anothr Kemerovo Blogger Sued For Libelling

  12 August 2010

A criminal case has been started against Kemerovo-based Alexander Sorokin (aka LJ-user commentator40), Echo Moskvy reported. Sorokin is accused of libel against Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleev for the post in which he compares Russian regional governors to Latin American dictators. It is the second loud case of blogger prosecution in this region in 2010.

China: Anti three-vulgarity campaign

  10 August 2010

Recently Beijing launched a new anti-vulgarity campaign for sanitizing the Internet. On August 3, China Daily and people.com.cn jointly organized a seminar on “boycotting banality, kitsch and debased culture, improving the new media cultural quality” to set the principles and figure out strategies for the new moral campaign. Below is...

Iran: Unifying Filtering

  9 August 2010

Iranian authorities announced [fa] that filtering policy will be unified in country. According to the Islamic Republic's authorities an Iranian company, whose name was not announced, has won the contract to be in charge of filtering in country.

Iran: A blogger among hunger strikers

  8 August 2010

Kouhyar Goodarzi, human rights activist and blogger, is one of 17 Iranian political prisoners who started their hunger strike at the end of July to protest against the poor prison conditions, the behaviour of prison officials, and the ban on visits.

Russia: The First Case of YouTube Ban

  6 August 2010

On July 16, 2010, Komsomolsk-on-Amur city court issued a decision requested by the city prosecutor. The decision requires a local Internet provider “Rosnet” to block IP-addresses of five websites: lib.rus (the judge meant lib.rus.ec, a Russian Internet library), thelib.ru, www.zhurnal.ru, web.archive.org, and… youtube.com. The court believes those websites host extremist content (several online copies of “Mein Kampf” and a video “Russia for Russians” that accompanied a skinhead-related song uploaded by a user from Serbia) while the provider was accused of “not blocking them.

Blocking of Wikipedia reported in Iran

  4 August 2010

According to news published in English and Persian on July 25, the Wikipedia free encyclopedia website was blocked in Iran and could not be accessed. Users tryng to acess the website are having this blockpage stating “By refering to the law concerning computer related misdeeds (crimes) access to this site...

USA: Wikileaks representative detained

  2 August 2010

Jacob Appelbaum, a representative of Wikileaks, has been detained for 3 hours by US agents at the borders after returning from Holland trip. Recently Wikileaks published more than 90,000 leaked classified U.S. military documents. These documents reportedly reveal hidden details of the Afghanistan war.