Dear President Obama and Attorney General Holder: We write because of deep concern about reports that you are considering the prosecution of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for publishing classified cables and other documents. Based on everything we know about these events, we urge you to avoid such action. Our concern flows not from an embrace of Assange’s motives and objectives. Indeed, we wish that he would fully disclose his sources of financing and support. But the Constitution protects the right to publish information of important interest to the public. That right has been upheld through decades of American jurisprudence and has served the people well.
Richard C. Holbrooke, “one of the giants of American foreign policy” in President Barack Obama’s words, was also an ally of press freedom and a good friend to CPJ. In a statement marking Holbrooke’s death at age 69, Chairman Paul E. Steiger said: “CPJ mourns the passing of Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. He was a…
Wikileaks hit by denial-of-service attack, turns to Amazon hosting… …but Amazon drops the site following pressure from a U.S. senator. Google extends its https encryption to YouTube, making video blocking harder. Censorship of the Net directly related to how authoritarian a regime is, claims a study. Venezuala’s telecom regulator proposes stronger takedown powers over Internet…
New York, November 23, 2010–Two journalists from the Moscow-based broadcast outlet Russia Today were arrested on November 20 while covering a protest against the U.S. military training center formerly known as the “School of the Americas” at Fort Benning, Georgia. On-air correspondent Kaelyn Forde and cameraman Jon Conway, both of whom are U.S. citizens, were…
Egyptian blogger Karim Amer is finally free after four years in prison. Iran launches yet another police force to deal with the Internet, headquartered with the Revolutionary Guard. Its commander says the state plans to quadruple its Internet control budget. Google lobbies U.S. policymakers to consider online censorship a free trade issue. Is breaking into…
After almost a year in exile in America, an icy ocean away from his home in Ethiopia, journalist Samson Mekonnen, left, only recently received his work permit in Washington. In the interim, like most journalists undergoing the emotionally and financially grueling resettlement process, he has relied on friends, family, and international organizations like CPJ to…
The National Press Club next week will honor an Iranian journalist who is languishing in prison. Kouhyar Goudarzi, an online reporter and human rights activist, was pursuing an aerospace degree at Sharif Industrial University when security agents put him behind bars, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Goudarzi, left, was an…
CPJ protested the arrest of Bahrain blogger Ali Abdel Imam back in September — The Wall Street Journal has a story on his continuing detainment. Activism around the imprisonment of Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan continues: PEN Canada is focusing on his case and Canada and France’s foreign ministers have urged his release. Local Thai ISPs are…