· January, 2011

Stories about Feature from January, 2011

China: Bridging news on Egypt

  30 January 2011

On 28 of January, when commenting on the political situation in Egypt, the spoke person from Chinese foreign ministry stated that the Chinese government will continue to support the Egyptian government in maintaining social stability and oppose any foreign intervention in Egypt. Since then, the term “Egypt” has been blocked...

Cyber “long war” continues in Iran

  29 January 2011

The past few weeks have seen attention focused on Tunisia and Egypt in hopes of understanding what role, if any, information and communications technologies (ICTs) are playing in the recent unrest in both countries. While experts and pundits continue to discuss and debate, Iran's efforts at silencing the Green Movement...

China: Censorship pressure from the private sector

  27 January 2011

It is well known that online content providers in China have to follow censorship instructions from various government authorities. However, with the rise of private public relation company, there is an increasing censorship pressure from the private sector. Some of them pay the websites to delete content, some retreat to...

Iran's Cyber Police, Geography, and the Psychological Denial of Service

  20 January 2011

National Public Radio reports that Iran is planning on dispatching “cyber police” across the country with General Ahmadi Moghaddam stating that “There is no time to wait” in deploying the Islamic Republic's latest line of defense against its real and perceived enemies. This isn't the first time Moghaddam has claimed...

China: A man arrested for micro-blogging about Taxi driver strike

  14 January 2011

According to NDdaily, a man, known as Mr. Zhou, was arrested for micro-blogging a Taxi driver strike at Xianning city in Hubei province on December 19, 2010 under the charge of “organizing a mob to disturb the social order”. He is still under police detention. Mr. Zhou was once a...

Is the Tunisian internet censorship regime shutting down?

  13 January 2011

Following persistent widespread protests in Tunisia in recent days and the impending general strike tomorrow, Tunisian President Ben Ali held a speech on the state television chanel Tunisie7 this evening with a long list of highly unusual concessions. Among other points he announced that he will not seek presidency for...

Tunisia : Blogger, Global Voices contributor, Slim Amamou arrested today

  7 January 2011

Activist and blogger Slim Amamou was arrested today, January 6, around 1pm. At this time, his friends and colleagues have no news from him, nor do we know the exact circumstances of his arrest. He had to go to work after completing a technical inspection of his vehicle. The latest news from Slim was a tweet around 1pm.

China: An alleged list of banned SMS terms

  5 January 2011

Elaine Chow from Shanghaiist reports on an alleged list of banned SMS by major mobile companies in China in 2010. The documents, distributed by @zuola via Twitter, are claimed to be composed by a SMS service company, Boer, which tried to inform their users on all the banned terms adopted...