In the last month or so, the Chinese government has tightened its control of the internet even further -- forcing users to register under their real names, among other legal requirements. Human Rights Watch looks at the new laws and what they mean for Chinese citizens.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a series of reports looking at online state surveillance in Latin America and strategies for counteracting it.
US-manufactured Internet surveillance and censorship software is being used in over 20 countries, some with less-than-perfect human rights policies such as Syria, China, and Saudi Arabia, a new report reveals.
Vietnam already has a bad press freedom record, but with the new year came the revelation that up to 1,000 bloggers and "online tastemakers" in the country are on the government payroll -- hired to "steer Internet discourse towards support of Communist policies".
Meanwhile, independent voices are being silenced as activists and bloggers are arrested.
(Aaron Swarz. Picture by Daniel J. Sieradski, licensed under CC-BY-SA. From Wikimedia Commons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AaronSwartzPIPA.jpg)
A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity.
During the recent elections in Senegal a website aggregated Tweets, Facebook comments, video and blogs to provide realtime feedback. The site was created by Cheik Fall @cypher007 who was interviewed (in French) by the Information Sciences & Techniques Study Centre, attached to the University of Dakar.
Mona Eltahaway wrote a piece on the status of women in the Middle East "Our political revolutions will not succeed unless they are accompanied by revolutions of thought -- social, sexual, and cultural revolutions that topple the Mubaraks in our minds as well as our bedrooms." But as the Guardian in the UK reported, the article deeply divided opinion amo
