2010
Bahrain gags press as it cracks down on opposition
New York, August 31, 2010–Bahrainian prosecutors have banned journalists from reporting on the detentions of dozens of opposition activists, according to news accounts. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities to lift the censorship order immediately.
Malawian president threatens newspaper closings
New York, August 31, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns threatening comments made by President Bingu wa Mutharika against Malawian news outlets last week. Mutharika threatened to close newspapers that report critically about his administration after the private weeklies Malawi News and Weekend Nation cited a regional agency’s report forecasting food shortages in the country,…
Global Voices Advocacy: Great Firewall of China Upgrade?
Oiwan Lam reports widespread disruption for users of Freegate, the popular circumvention software in China: According to the RFA report, users from several provinces across the country have encountered similar problem and they believe that it is due to the upgrade of Great Fire Wall. Apart from the Freegate, when running UltraSurf and FreeU the…
O’Brien: The Internet’s secret back door
In an article in Slate Magazine, CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator Danny O’Brien writes about how Web users in the United Arab Emirates have more to worry about than having just their BlackBerries cracked. “The UAE continues to wrestle with Research in Motion over government access to BlackBerry messages, threatening to ban the company’s services if it…
The Economist: The Invisible Regional Censorship of Russia
Russian federal law doesn’t include Internet censorship provisions, but there’s been a recent rash of cases of court-ordered blocking in individual Russian regions. Even though these are usually narrow blocks of particular sites and are quickly unblocked after media exposure, they can still cover a great deal of ground. The Republic of Ingushetia blocked the…
NYT: In Argentina, Google and Yahoo Not Liable
The New York Times reports on a new decision in the liability of internet intermediaries, this time in Argentia. It’s often hard to pick apart exactly what’s been going on in jurisdictions where this issue still evolving. Generally, you get a flurry of conflicting court decision in favour of absolute liability for Net middle-men, usually…
GPGMail – OpenPGP for Apple Mail
For that tiny subset of journalists who use PGP (or its free equivalent, GPG) and have a Mac and use Apple’s Mail client, good news! After a distinct lack of updates, new coding team has taken over, and has just shipped a version that’s compatible with the latest OS X.
Car bomb explodes outside Televisa in northern Mexico
New York, August 27, 2010–Mexico’s main television network reported that a car bomb exploded at its headquarters in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state early today. There were no injuries, the Televisa network said, but its transmission was knocked out for several hours and there was damage to neighboring buildings.
Argentine government feud with Clarín deepens
A grave accusation by the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner against Argentina’s two leading newspapers, Clarín and La Nación, has prompted claims that the government is attempting to control the press, and stirred up a heated debate on the state of freedom of expression in the country. The administration is alleging that the papers colluded with a…