Internet Blotter
Turkey lifted its ban on YouTube and then re-asserted it within the same week. Digital technology is helping get news out of North Korea. Small digital cameras and tiny SD memory cards make it easier to smuggle images out. In China, meanwhile, Amazon’s Kindle 3G e-reader is reportedly being used to get the news in.…
The Burmese Internet on the eve of election
Burma tops CPJ’s “10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger.” With the scheduled general election in the country approaching, there have been reports of growing interference with both local and exiled journalists. As Burma enters the final stretch of the campaign, CPJ’s senior South East Asia representative, Shawn Crispin, give me a brief summary of the…
Internet blotter
The International Telecommunications Union starts its plenipotentiary meeting this week. Some worry that some nations will use their position at the ITU to attempt to grab more control over how the Internet works. RSF covers the Burmese DDOS attacks. I’ve heard some really fascinating detective work on the real origins of these attacks – hope…
WordPress: Helping journalists under cyber-attack
Blog hosting site Wordpress.com have just announced a great new feature which is also a simple way that hosting companies can help journalists under attack online. The blogging hosting site now lets you automatically redirect your old Wordpress web address to wherever you move to when you switch blog hosting services. When your readers come…
Burma’s exile media hit by cyber-attacks
Bangkok, September 27, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned by cyber-attacks against three exile-run Burma news outlets, Irrawaddy, Mizzima News, and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have shut Irrawaddy’s main website while temporarily blocking access to Mizzima’s site.
Burma campaign hits Grand Central
New York’s Grand Central Station is a gathering point today for people who are coming into town from a little farther away than usual: Burmese dissidents, writers, monks, and musicians are convening to protest the military junta of Senior General Than Shwe. Human Rights Watch has organized a petition and an art and photo installation in Vanderbilt…
Burmese censorship at work
At a Tuesday meeting of the International Freedom to Publish Committee (a publishing industry group dedicated to free expression) in New York, Maureen Aung-Thwin handed out pages from Flower News, a Rangoon-based newspaper that had been marked up by Burmese government censors. Burma is the world’s second most censored country, according to a 2006 CPJ…
Attacks on the Press 2009: Burma
Top Developments• Some political prisoners freed, but eight journalists still held.• Government censors all print publications, controls broadcasters. Key Statistic 1st: Ranking on CPJ’s Worst Countries to Be a Blogger. Throughout the year, Burma’s ruling junta emphasized its plans to move toward multiparty democracy after decades of military rule, a long-promised transition that dissidents and others…
Burmese government jails another DVB journalist
New York, February 1, 2010—The Burmese government should cease its campaign of intimidation and harassment against the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an exile-run television news provider, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.