Syrian Facebook users develop strategies against online threats
Jennifer Preston in the New York Times reports on some stories that we also have been hearing from Syrian Internet use. She documents incidents of passwords extracted by force, and the deliberate defacing of social networking pages by security forces, apparently in order to sabotage reports of unrest from that country. A man in his…
Parvaz says Syria detained her for Al-Jazeera work
Al-Jazeera has interviewed Dorothy Parvaz, the network journalist who was held for 19 days in Syria and Iran. Parvaz describes how the Syrian government told her at first that she was believed to be a U.S. spy, but later it became clear, she said, that she was being held because she worked for the network.…
Syrian Facebook: Low-tech threats and high-tech scrutiny
Journalists and online news-gatherers have been struggling to collect and distribute high-quality information about recent events in Syria. Foreign journalists have been turned away at the border; local online reporters have been detained. The quality of Internet and mobile phone connectivity has been extremely variable, with reports of Net and phone connections being cut off…
Internet Blotter
Venezuela prepares law to regulate media, including the Internet. Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan briefly released from jail on $1.5 million bail… …but fellow Iranian-Canadian anti-censorship software designer Saeed Malekpour still faces death penalty. Syrian telecom minister says awareness of the dangers, not censorship of the Internet is the solution.
Cano laureates say no to UNESCO Obiang prize
Each year, UNESCO honors a courageous international journalist with the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, named in honor of the Colombian editor murdered in 1986 by the Medellín Cartel. The prize is chosen by an independent jury and over the years I’ve attended several moving ceremonies in which some of the most daring journalists…
Toronto’s Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors
A basement in the gray, Gothic heart of the University of Toronto is home to the CSI of cyberspace. “We are doing free expression forensics,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies. Deibert and his team of academics and students investigate in real time governments and…
Q&A: Syrian journalist Michel Kilo after prison
On May 18, Syrian journalist and pro-democracy activist Michel Kilo was released from prison after serving a three-year sentence for “weakening national sentiment and encouraging sectarian strife.” Kilo, who was a regular contributor to the leading Lebanese daily, Al-Nahar, and the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi among other publications, was detained in May 2006 after writing…