Leila Nachawati

I´m a Spanish-Syrian activist based in Madrid. I teach Communications at Carlos III University, where I am currently starting my PhD. I write about human rights with a special focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Obsessed with freedom of speech.

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Latest posts by Leila Nachawati

Facebook's Suspicious Behavior

  20 December 2012

Dead people liking stuff on Facebook. Living people liking and sharing stuff without their knowledge. Leila Nachawati investigates Facebook's unusual behavior.

EU to Tighten Rules on Surveillance Technology Exports

  1 November 2012

“It is unacceptable that regimes in Syria and Iran can use European technologies to violate human rights”. Marietje Schaake Activists have been fighting the battle against technology exports to repressive countries for years. To track and surveil citizens online, regimes such as Mubarak´s in Egypt or Assad´s  in Syria have relied...

Syria Files: More Western technology for the Syrian regime

  7 July 2012

Western technology has played a key role in providing the Syrian regime with tools to track and repress citizens for years. The latest Wikileaks files on Syria, which include more than two million emails from political figures and companies, reveal that the involvement of Western companies in the crackdown against Syrian citizens has continued despite sanctions and international pressure.

US and European firms help Syrian regime spy on citizens

  15 November 2011

To track and surveil citizens online, repressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa have relied on Western technology for years. US company BlueCoat has been accused for months of providing the Assads with products for online crackdown, and the firm finally acknowledged that the Syrian regime has been...

Detained Bloggers and Journalists in Syria: The List Gets Longer

  28 October 2011

Since the street protest movement began in March 2011 in Syria, threats and physical attacks against journalists have increased. The list of detained bloggers and journalists gets longer and includes foreign journalists arrested and deported. Among the latest, prominent blogger and programmer Hussein Ghrer, who disappeared on October 24.

Syria: Prominent Blogger Disappears in Damascus

  26 October 2011

Syrian blogger Hussein Ghrer left his home in Damascus on Monday, October 24, and has not come back. He is a thirty-year-old married father of two. The most recent post on Ghrer's blog focuses on the arrest earlier this year of now-released Syrian blogger Anas Maarawi in the context of freedom in Syria.

BlueCoat: US technology surveilling Syrian citizens online

  10 October 2011

In the context of repression in the Middle East and North Africa, surveillance technology has played a key role in providing authoritarian regimes with the tools necessary to track citizens online. Among these companies, BlueCoat has proved to be the most efficient in helping the Syrian regime control every movement of Syrians on the Internet.

Syrian uprisings and official vs. decentralized communications

  27 April 2011

The world looks at Syria for the first time in decades, while hundreds of thousands of citizens demonstrate against the regime that has ruled the country for almost 50 years. While hundreds of protesters were killed according to many reports, the official version shows quite a different picture. The gap...

Spanish intellectual property law and global netfreedom

  10 March 2011

Many of the challenges and threats that Egyptians, Tunisians or Libyans are facing are global and affect civil societies as a whole. Among these is the threat against the Internet as we know it and which is often taken for granted in Western countries like the US, France or Spain....