This is not a typical blogger-arrested story, but deserves to be covered anyway. According to Japan Probe, Michael Hurt, a resident in South Korea, has been arrested. Hurt, who blogs at Scribblings of the Metropolitician, called the police to report a drunk who was disrupting a photo shoot Hurt was conducting. The drunk, who was cursing the photographer and model in racists terms, “fucking American” and “nigger” and things like this. (If I’m reading this correctly, Hurt is a black American.)

Then, Hurt says the drunk started grabbing him and getting violent. Finally, he called the police. And the police arrested him. Perhaps the police, like the drunk, believed that Americans and dark-skinned people had no business existing, least of all in Korea.

The blog link above is Hurt’s account of the situation. He also included video of part of the altercation, though it wouldn’t play for me.

Update: From a photo-rich post on the student-run Emergency Times:

Police, on Tuesday, baton-charged journalists protesting against the closure of Geo News, outside the Karachi Press Club. Several journalists were wounded in the police charge. Subsequently, the arrested journalists were released at night, following relevant orders from Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad. The media representatives were scheduled to approach the Governor House to speak with the authorities but they were accosted by the police. Thereupon, the journalists staged a sit-in protest, but the police began to arrest them. When the journalists began fleeing, the police chased them into the Press Club and began the baton-charge, wounding several of the media men.

Update: Ange, who is handling the “editing” duties on Teeth Maestro, for the duration of the crisis wrote:

(T)he journalists, bloggers and activists have all been released after a tensed standoff earlier this evening, 3 senior journalists weren’t on the list of those to be released and all 186 journalists at both cop stations refused to leave until the chief minister re-issued the order including those 4 senior journalists – that happened. I think this is the first positive stand off with productive results, and i’ve been monitoring this real close.

Ange wrote to tell us that Urooj Zia, a the journalist from the Daily Times in Pakistan and one of the folks behind the protests against martial law, and who blogs under the name Uzi, was arrested about five hours ago, along with a number of other journalists, and held for abut four hours before being released.

They were arrested by police during a protest and booked at the Docks Police Station in the town of Kemari in Karachi.

According to a statement by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, on Dr. Awab’s blog Teeth Maestro:

(T)he police under the instructions of the provincial administration attacked on a peaceful demonstration of journalists with tear gas and batons and arrested hundreds of journalists and members of civil society while more than a dozen were badly injured.

Update: More confirmation, from a Syrian newspaper. (Thanks, Ammar.)

(OK. That turned into gibberish. What’s a guy gotta do to post in Arabic around here?)

Update: Verified, see comments. Thanks Hazem and Kevin.

We received an anonymous tip regarding Facebook in Syria.

i just wanted to tell you that facebook.com has been banned in syria as well a
few hours ago, i wish you can investigate/post/publish something about it
please.

If anyone can verify, or debunk this, please do.

According to a post on Wired’s Threat Level blog, by Kim Zetter, Dan Egerstad, of DEranged Security, who had previously “obtained log-in and password information for 1,000 e-mail accounts belonging to foreign embassies, corporations and human rights organizations, had his house raided on Monday by Swedish officials, who took him in for questioning.”

Egerstad illustrated how the Tor onion-routing system (that sends an Internet content request through a series of servers to make pursuit difficult) is no outright guarantee of information safety by capturing and publishing this information.

As Egerstad and I discussed the problem in August, we both came to the conclusion that the embassy employees were likely not using Tor nor even knew what Tor was. Instead, we suspected that the traffic he sniffed belonged to someone who had hacked the accounts and was eavesdropping on them via the Tor network. As the hacked data passed through Egerstad’s Tor exit nodes, he was able to read it as well.

So who was responsible for hacking the accounts? The likely suspect — given that most of the accounts Egerstad uncovered belonged to embassies, foreign and defense ministry officials, legislators and human rights groups — was a government or intelligence agency. I attempted to contact several of the account holders in August to ask them whether they used Tor or knew that their accounts had been compromised but never received a response from any of them.

According to Law.com, a judge in Manhattan has ruled that Google, the ISP of a blogger critical of a school board, is under no obligation to disclose the name of the blogger, known as Othormom. The ruling, based on the details of the complaint against the blogger, are not necessarily going to further establish blogging as protected speech, though it does add to precedent in American law.

According to a CPB source, and subsequently the WSJ and others, Yahoo has “settled” with the families of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, the two Chinese users of Yahoo’s email service, whom Yahoo sold out to the Chinese government. Shi, a journalist, and Wang, an activist, were both subsequently “sentenced” to 10 years in a Chinese jail.

The settlement featured the offender-who-got-away-with-it’s favorite phrase, “Terms were not disclosed.”

The two journalists and a family member sued the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company earlier this year after Yahoo HK, Yahoo’s subsidiary based in Hong Kong, gave Chinese authorities emails containing pro-democracy literature. The jailed journalists alleged in the lawsuit that jailers have tortured them and that Yahoo was responsible.

It goes without saying that Yahoo admitted no culpability. For anything.

So, although it’s hard to say exactly, it seems that what happen was: Yahoo paid the families to stop talking about what Yahoo did to their family members. This is no indictment of the families. At least they made Yahoo pay and have the money to make Shi and Wang’s lives inside possibly less ugly and the families’ lives outside also more comfortable. But no justice was done.

Yahoo got away with it.

Update: Wired quotes “a source at Yahoo” for more vague promises.

(T)he company has been “working with the families, and we’re working with them to provide them with financial, humanitarian and legal assistance.”

Yahoo has also agreed to establish a global human rights fund to provide “humanitarian relief” to support dissidents and their families. The source said that details still have to be worked out.

“After meeting with the families, it was clear to me what we had to do to make this right for them, for Yahoo! and for the future,” said Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in a statement. “Yahoo! was founded on the idea that the free exchange of information can fundamentally change how people lead their lives, conduct their business and interact with their governments.”

“We are committed to making sure our actions match our values around the world. That’s why we are also working to establish a Human Rights Fund to provide humanitarian and legal aid to dissidents who have been imprisoned for expressing their views online,” he said.

Part of the agreement also allegedly contained the provision that Yahoo “would continue to lobby the Chinese government to release his clients. He said that the terms covered many of the issues discussed in the hearing.” What can you say about something like that?

Update: More coverage from The World and Tech Review.

FreeKareem published a memo from the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information today about Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman. An Egyptian blogger also known as Kareem Amer, last week he marked the first year of a four year prison sentence for speaking his mind on his blog.

He’s being tortured in prison.

Cairo, November 12, 2007

The Arabic Network for Human Rights information and Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law sent a communiqué to the Egyptian Prosecutor-General, demanding to investigate into the issue of torturing Karim Amer in his prison. Karim who is an Egyptian blogger sentenced to prison for 4 years for ‘vilifying religions’ and defaming the president was tortured [and this abuse] was ordered and supervised by an investigation officer in Borg Alarab prison. Karim was also ordered into a solitary cell where he was assaulted again and had one of his teeth broken; this assault’s date came to mark one year since Karim was sent to jail.

Karim reported his being tortured in prison to his lawyers in the Arabic Network and Hisham Mubarak Center, the torture came at the hand of another prisoner and a prison guard, ordered by Midhat Samir one of the prison’s investigations officers. This came to pass after Karim has uncovered some corruption act in the prison. Karim was punished and tortured severely which resulted in several injuries in addition to a broken tooth. He was deprived from officially reporting the incident against the accused officer as well as denying him the right to document these injuries in a medical report. The Arabic Network for Human Rights information and Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law mentioned in their communiqué to the Prosecutor-General that the assault on Karim is manifested in the following:

* Being beaten inside ward Number 22 where he is imprisoned at the time of the assault, the battery was launched by another prisoner and a prison guard, in the presence of Officer Midhat Samir and under his supervision. Samir also gave the green light for the assault which resulted in a broken tooth “upper right canine tooth” along with a number of bruises and abrasions on various parts of the body.
* Transferring Karim to a disciplinary cell where he was handcuffed and had his feet strapped into shackles; he was beaten up again which caused him more injuries.
* Another inmate prisoner was brought over where they stripped him out of clothes and beat him severely in front of prisoner Kareem Soliman as they also threatened to inflict upon him the same punishment, if he didn’t mind his own business.

Both of the legal firms the Arabic Network and Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law called for an immediate investigation into Karim Amer’s complaint as according to articles 126,127 and 129 of the criminal code, it fits into the specifications of a torture crime in addition to that, those allegations had they been true, they would represent an infringement to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and also to the UN anti-torture treaty and other treaties on maltreatment, harsh punishment, non- humanitarian or degradeful treatment which Egypt signed on and ratiefied.

It is to mention that Karim since he was imprisoned is subjected to a systemic discriminatory practice and maltreatment in Borg Alarb prison on the hands of the prison’s officers. He mentioned to his lawyer that the maltreatment was always coupled with this phrase “This is until you do change your mind”!! This represents a threat to his life and compounds the difficulty of the already harsh sentence. The two legal firms are calling for transferring him into another prison where he might receive a better humanitarian treatment and where his rights as a prisoner might be respected.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights information
Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law