Internet

New York, October 22, 2010–CPJ is concerned by Vietnamese authorities’ recent crackdown against several bloggers and one print journalist.

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…

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…

New York, October 21, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned about the health of imprisoned Tunisian journalist Fahem Boukadous. We call upon the Tunisian government to release him immediately.

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…

New York, October 20, 2010–Brazilian police on Tuesday arrested a man suspected of killing radio reporter Francisco Gomes de Medeiros in the city of Caicó, state of Rio Grande do Norte, local press reports said. Gomes was shot to death Monday in front of his house. The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the arrest and…

Here’s a great study by the Harvard’s Berkman Center, estimating the actual usage of anti-censorship tools by Internet users in countries with pervasive website blocking.Berkman estimates that 3% or less of the total Net population in these countries bypass censorship via web and http proxies, virtual private networks, or circumvention software like Tor and Psiphon.The…

Omid Memarian gives insight into the Iranian hardliner in-fighting that led to “blogfather” Hossein Derakhshan’s arrest and sentencing.Pakistan blocks Facebook, but doesn’t block militant jihadi sites.What happened when the authorities shut down the Internet in China’s Xinjiang province.”Deleted” Facebook photos can stay available for years (from the excellent Ars Technica, now banned in Iran).Quote of…

Private security personnel working for Joe Miller, Alaska’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, detained and handcuffed a local editor on October 17, 2010, when he persisted in questioning Miller at a town hall event.

Access, a global Internet freedom advocacy group, has launched a “No To Nokia” petition as part of a campaign supporting Iranian journalist Issa Saharkiz’s lawsuit against Nokia Siemens. The Saharkiz lawsuit claims that Nokia Siemen’s sales of mobile tracking technology to Iran was instrumental in allowing the Iranian government to locate the journalist when he…