Protecting journalists from Firesheep
There’s been a great deal of coverage in the last day or so of Firesheep, a plugin for Firefox that lets you take over the Facebook and Twitter accounts of others on your local network. If you use Firesheep, you can pick one of the people on, say, the same open wireless at your nearby…
Internet blotter
Computers belonging to South Korean government officials have been infiltrated by targeted malware in email. Chinese hackers are suspected. Contrary to what this article says, I’m betting that the attachments were PDFs, which are currently the document of choice when attempting to infect journalists’ machines. Another intriguing academic paper, this time on the structure of…
CPJ, press groups: Release Eynulla Fatullayev
Dear President Aliyev: We are writing to express our strong concern regarding the continued imprisonment of Editor-in-chief Eynulla Fatullayev, which constitutes a breach of Azerbaijan’s international legal obligations and a violation of Mr Fatullayev’s rights.
Use your Blackberry to map global surveillance
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab has announced a research project to analyze the global infrastructure of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry. It’s looking for BlackBerry users from any country to take part–especially those in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia, Russia and China. All of these countries have at some point…
Mission Journal: A visit to Russia’s Supreme Court
At the end of our recent mission to Moscow, our delegation squeezed in one final official meeting. Vyacheslav M. Lebedev, the chief justice of Russia’s Supreme Court, had sent word only the night before that he would receive us. The meeting had been brokered by Aleksei Venediktov, the legendary founder of the radio station Ekho…
A top Kazakhstan diplomat pledges press reforms
Kazakhstan is ready to bring its press laws in line with international standards, a top diplomat told a CPJ delegation in Vienna this week. Decriminalizing libel, placing caps on defamation awards, and enacting access-to-information legislation are on the government’s agenda, said Kazakhstan Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov, who is chairman of the permanent council of the Organization…
As with Norgrove, a need to probe Munadi death
This morning, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who died in a rescue attempt after she was taken hostage in Afghanistan, may have been killed by a U.S. grenade rather than by her Taliban captors, as originally reported.
Uzbekistan should drop charges against journalists
Dear President Karimov: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the politicized prosecution of two journalists: Abdumalik Boboyev, a stringer for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA), and Vladimir Berezovsky, an editor for the news website Vesti.
Russian journalists detail FSB and ‘New Nobility’
How do you crack Russia’s vaunted security service? You go to low- and mid-level officials for information, say Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, authors of the new book, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. At a luncheon for CPJ supporters on Thursday, Soldatov…
Circle of suspects widens in Politkovskaya case
New York, October 6, 2010–Detectives with the federal Investigative Committee, the Russian agency responsible for investigating serious crimes, say they are probing a widening circle of suspects in the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya.