Stories about Syria
MENA Journalists & Cyber Activists: In the Line of Fire
From Morocco to Bahrain, everyday people have taken on the cast iron hold of dictatorships and absolute monarchies resulting in an extraordinary collective awakening that has paved the way for epochal change in the region. The youth movement, which lies at the core of the uprisings, continues to play a prominent role in the pro-democracy and pro-reform demonstrations, which have swept through the region, unabated by government clampdowns or concessions.
Spam Bots Flooding Twitter to Drown Info About #Syria Protests [Updated]
After recent protests demanding freedom and democracy in Syria and the regime's brutal crackdown started, information warfare has been taking place on twitter. This post attempts to analyze the proliferation of twitter spams bots especially designed to flood the #Syria hash tag on twitter in order to make information about the events harder to find, and stop the conversation about them.
Muhammad Bakr Radwan: an Egyptian activist detained in Syria
On March 26 Egyptian engineer Muhammad Bakr Radwan was detained in Damascus, Syria, following Friday’s demonstrations in the country. He has been accused of espionage. Radwan is an Egyptian-American citizen who has been very active in the mobilizations in Egypt, joining demonstrators in Tahrir during the days after #Jan25 and broadcasting news about Syria and the Arab uprisings from his Twitter and Facebook account.
Microsoft Compromises Users’ Privacy: No HTTPS in Arab Countries, Iran
With the ongoing protestes and violent crackdown from governments in the Middle East, compromising online security could have dire repercussions on the wellbeing of internet users in the region. Email security is a priority and HTTPS should be enabled by default. Gmail does that, while Microsoft allows users to choose to activate...
Syria: A Blogger Arrested, a Journalist Missing
Amidst a crackdown on protests in Daraa, Syria, a journalist is reported missing, while a blogger has reportedly been arrested, not long after being released for a previous arrest.
Syrian Blogger Ahmad Abu al-Khair Arrested This Morning
Close friends of Syrian blogger Ahmad Abu al-Khair reported that he was arrested this morning at 5:00 am local time on his way back to Damascus from the coastal city of Banias. Security forces allegedly have also confiscated his personal computers. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Syria: New e-Publishing Law Announced
A new e-publishing law in Syria is now in its final stages for approval. The law has received considerable coverage since the drafting started in early 2010. The detail of the law are yet to be cleared out, and coverage thus far has been contradictory. The law officially aims at...
Syria: Tal al-Molouhi, a 19-year-old female blogger in jail for almost a year
Tal al-Molouhi, a Syrian blogger, was arrested by Syrian state security agents for posting poems on her blog about Palestine. Till now she is detained with no charges and no trial, whereabouts unknown, that her mother has appealed the Syrian president for her release. The Arabic blogosphere is calling for support.
Web filtering In the Middle East using Bing Microsoft's search engine
Research conducted earlier this year examined the extent of Internet filtering in Arab countries made using Bing search engine of Microsoft for terms with a sexual orientation. Bing search engine is active in 41 languages and it offers a Web filtering system based on keywords entered into the system in...
The Second Decade of Middle East Internet
In its second decade in the Middle East, the Internet has been increasingly challenging many of the region's governments – specifically dictatorships that impose strict limitations on civil freedoms. It has brought about the formation of pressure groups for social and political change on FaceBook, allowed for real-time coverage of...
SourceForge Removes Blanket Block
In late January, on the same day as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech on Net freedom, open source community SourceForge blocked access to users from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, in an effort to keep in line with U.S. Treasury export restrictions on those countries. On Sunday, SourceForge announced that they had revoked the ban, unveiling their new strategy for complying with U.S. law.
On-line Social Networks in Syria
Syria was among the last countries in the Middle East to introduce the Internet. On February 24, 1996, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE) received permission from the prime minister’s office to do so, and to serve as the body responsible for the Country Top-Level Domain Code (sy.). Two weeks later,...
The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East
The massive, sustained protests in Iran this past month against the regime’s apparent falsification of the presidential election results was enabled by widespread employment of new communication technologies. Among them is Twitter, the micro-blog which enables its users to distribute short messages of no more than 140 characters (‘Tweets’) via...
Syria: Blogger Kareem Arbaji Sentenced to Three Years in prison
On September 13, 2009, the Syrian State Security Supreme Court sentenced the young blogger Kareem Arbaji to three-years prison for “publishing mendacious information liable to weaken the nation’s morale,” under article #286 of the Syrian penal code. The thirty- one years old economics graduate, Kareem Arbaji, has been detained for...
Once again, Syria bans Facebook
Editor's Note: Facebook has been blocked in Syria consistently for the past two years; therefore, the statement that a ban will be “reintroduced” is incorrect. The linked article from ‘Al Quds Al Arabi’,” which has since been removed, did not actually claim that Syria planned to reintroduce a ban. The...
While White-listing Syria, Linkedin Keeps Sudan's Internet Users Blocked!
After Linkedin the business social Network, blocked Internet users in Syria and then unblocked them and apologized (as ArabCrunch has reported.) It was confirmed that Internet users in Sudan (an African Arab country) still cannot access Linkedin, who were blocked by Linkedin since several months ago.
LinkedIn Restores Services to Syrian Users
Last week, Global Voices Advocacy broke the news that Syrian users had been cut off from LinkedIn's services. The business-oriented social networking site had stated in e-mails to several of its users that, "Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria."
Syria: Linkedin Kicks Off Syrian Users!
AnasOnline blog reports (Arabic link) that Linkedin (AC Group here) completely blocked all Syrian users. According to the blog post: 3 weeks ago when Linkedin blocked all Syrian IPs users , but they were able to access the site by using IP changing programs (such as Tor), but in the last days, Linkedin blocked all Syrian users even if they changed their IPs
Syria blocks personal blog of Human rights activist
Syrian authorities have blocked access to the personal blog of the 26-year-old Syrian Human rights activist and blogger Mohammad Al-Abdallah who is blogging at Raye7wmishRaj3 (I’m Leaving and I’m Not Coming Back). Syrian Netizens can access the blocked blog via HTTPS or simply by visiting the mirror blog at http://rwmr.wordpress.com/.
Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Syria Prevent blogger and journalists from Attending Free Press Conference in Beirut
One blogger, two journalists, and one online writer were prevented from traveling to Beirut, Lebanon, to attend the 3rd Arab Free Press Forum that took place on 12 and 13 December, 2008 Saudi Arabia prevented the leading Saudi blogger, Fouad Al Farhan, from attending the event where he was scheduled to take part in a panel entitled “The Changing face of Arab blogging“.
