(Image from the HRW report)

Human Rights Watch has released a 137 page report on the surveillance of perceived political opponents inside Ethiopia and among the diaspora.

The NSA has been recording 100% of the phone calls of an unnamed country, reports the Washington Post.

New NSA secrets reveal the US agency's hunting and hacking of System administrators.

From the Guardian: “Microsoft announced an overhaul of its customer service agreement.... in the wake of angry reactions to the news that it had searched a blogger’s email account in an attempt to discover the identity of an employee leaking its software.”

(screenshot from Google's video)

Google has released a short-short video that uses stop-motion animation to explain how they respond to legal requests for user data.

In 2013, Rafael Marques, an Angolan investigative journalist and anti-corruption activist, found out his computer had been hacked. Since then, he has been tracking the issue of surveillance in Angola.

(Activists celebrate victory in Brasilia. Photo shared by @MarcoCivil via Twitter)

Brazil's brand new Marco Civil da Internet - a “Bill of Rights for the Internet” was passed last month, to much celebration among Brazilian activists and rights advocates.

With more and more people using ad-blocker software to prevent being bothered by adverts online, PageFair - founded in 2012 - continues in its mission to help websites deal with ad-blocking by users.

For more on ad-blocking software and how to use it, consult our website Me and My Shadow.

A new First Monday journal article examines the use of Twitter in the Occupy Movement.

(Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Image: Screenshot from Democracy Now interview)

One of Egypt’s most prominent dissidents, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, gave his first extended interview after nearly four months behind bars, speaking out about prison and the Egyptian regime's "War on a Whole Generation".