Stories about Feature from August, 2010
A legal case against Nokia Siemens Networks
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
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
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...
Four Advocacy guides available in Albanian
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’
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
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
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.
A First Glimpse at the Internet Filtering in Tunisia
We learned that the censorship imposed illegally on hundreds of Tunisian blogs and websites, both Tunisians and foreigners, was “shut off” temporarily for few hours on Monday, August 16, 2010. And although the information on this brief lifting of the censorship in the country is still contradictory – as some...
Online dictatorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran
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
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...
Facebook Responds to Activists
I’ve been writing about Facebook woes for nearly four months, so imagine my surprise yesterday when I received an e-mail from a Facebook staffer in response to my blog posts. Since I don’t have said staffer’s express permission to use his name or post his e-mail in its entirety, I will instead post the most remarkable excerpts with my own notes.
Russia: Anothr Kemerovo Blogger Sued For Libelling
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: ISP level Gmail phishing
In the past few days, there are many reports from Chinese internet users saying that when they try to access gmail account, they are redirected to a url: http://124.117.227.201/web/gmail/ and asked to re-enter their password. Today NTDTV.com disclosed that the url is a phishing page for stealing users’ password. It...
China: Anti three-vulgarity campaign
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...
Skype has launched its Middle East headquarters
On June 28, 2010 Skype announced on its blog the opening of the company's first headquarters in the Middle East and Africa which will be located in Manama, Bahrain's capital. Rouzbeh Pasha, Business Development Manager for the Middle East region, will lead the company's operations in the region. The announcement...
Russia: The First Case of YouTube Ban
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.
Blackberry face growing pressure in the Gulf and India over encryption code
The United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulation Authority (TRA) and The Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) announced, respectively on August 1st 2010 and on August 5th, 2010, that they will block some functions of the Blackberry due to non-compliance with the regulatory requirements in both countries.
Blocking of Wikipedia reported in Iran
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
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.
