A group of 20 to 30 bloggers and activists including prominent blogger Wael Abbas and Kifaya movement leader George Ishaaq were detained on 15th January bound for Naga Hammadi, the site of recent sectarian clashes. The group was headed to meet the region’s bishop and to visit families of those killed in the January 7th massacre on the eve of the Coptic Christmas.  Six Copts and a Muslim church guard were killed. Read the rest of this entry…

It has been common practice for country, with oppressive governments to block website for a while now, whether is the Chinese, who say it is for guarding against ‘pornography’ or Egypt which gives the reason of ‘protecting minds from being corrupted’.  The reasons never seem to ‘reasonable’.

Disturbingly we rae getting reports of a new trend where the authorities do not block the site (Twitter in this case), but block and individual users page from appearing in that country.  Nawaat reports that Tunisia and Bahrain have blocked some of its dissidents’ user pages/profiles from appearing.

Sami Ben Gharbia, whose twitter username is @ifikra,  the exiled Tunisian activist has had his page blocked in Tunisia, so has engineer, @Ma7moud and @nawaat, the twitter page for Nawaat, the popular indepoendent news source.  Bahrain also reportedly blocked @FreeBahrain on New Year’s Day.

This points to the lengths and sophistication that is now accompanying online repression.  Authorities are now prepared to employ the most sophisticated methods to ensure independent voices are not heard

Image of tweets confirming the blocking

Lets hope this does not start a trend.

Lily Sussman’s MacBook was shot full of holes by Israeli soldiers at the Taba border crossing, but the hard drive survived. Likely they weren’t taken with her camera’s photos from a exhibition on last December’s bombardment of Gaza. She was interviewed by the Daily News Egypt.

Israeli authorities are noted for seizing computers and media equipment from people who have been to the occupied Palestinian territories and either returning them broken or not at all regardless of the contents. Traveler beware.

More at Wired.com.

Setting the scene* here: Members of the OpenNet InitiativeInitiative attending the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) this weekend in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, were attacked by UN security officials for simply holding aloft a poster that read, “The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China’s famous ‘Great Firewall of China’ is one of the first national Internet filtering systems.”

Apparently the Chinese government now has the United Nations doing its censoring for it when people are expressing themselves beyond the Great Firewall. Open Internet Initiative members in their Asia office will be writing a formal complaint to the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights about the illegal and uncalled for act of censorship.

“We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event just because someone is trying to impress or be in the good graces of the Chinese government. It is ironic that while people are allowed to gather here to discuss freedom of expression online, censorship and surveillance practices on the Internet, we are being restricted in expressing our views.” — Al Alegre, Foundation for Media Alternatives, a member of the ONI Network

*Sources: BoingBoing, Open Internet Initiative and Computer World

Tal Pavel at Global Voices has written an analyis of microblogging in the Middle East:

“The massive, sustained protests in Iran this past month against the regime’s apparent falsification of the presidential election results was enabled by widespread employment of new communication technologies. “

And

“Women’s advocacy groups make good use of Twitter: for example, the Egyptian group ‘All of Us are Laila’ has fought against the inequality in women’s daily lives, in Egypt and the Arab world in general, for the last three years. So does Queen Rania of Jordan, who writes about diverse subjects on an almost daily basis, to a readership of about 125,000.”

Read The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East.

The verdict on imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman’s final appeal, which was expected today, was postponed by the judge considering the appeal to September 15th.

From Free Kareem: “We sincerely hope that the Egyptian government will do what they should have done over 3 years ago and conclude this tragedy by FREEING KAREEM. … Considering the amount of death threats Kareem has received both online and offline, his security will still be at risk and your support will be extremely crucial in keeping him safe regardless of the decision that takes place tomorrow morning.”

CPB urges people to contact Kareem via the above mentioned Free Kareem website. Attempts to visit Kareem have proven difficult and The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) reported in July they were not allowed access to him. His lawyer was only able to contact Kareem in July by bribing guards to deliver a letter. Whether or not your message actually reaches Kareem is not the issue. The message will be sent to the government keeping him behind bars.

Andrew Ford Lyons

Andrew Ford Lyons
Andrew is a Web design and online media strategies consultant from the US living in UK. He’s a former newspaper reporter and editor and a freelance writer. He’s worked on web projects with several organisations, including the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie Foundation and the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project. He’s currently on the advisory board for the International Trauma Treatment Program and studying psychology.
Blog: drew3000

Jillian C. York

Jillian C. York
Jillian is a writer and activist based in Boston.  She works at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, coordinating the OpenNet Initiative and working on the Herdict Web project, and is affiliated with Global Voices Online, where she writes about Morocco (where she used to live), Syria, and Palestine.  She has worked with a number of organizations on issues involving free speech online, including Tor and Global Voices Advocacy.
Blog: jilliancyork

Nigel Parry

Nigel Parry
Nigel was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1968, and was brought up in Singapore. In his early years, Nigel had the opportunity to travel to Africa, India, and much of the Far East. The creator of numerous groundbreaking websites including The Electronic Intifada (EI), Electronic Iraq (eIraq) and Electronic Lebanon. Today, Nigel offers web and print design, public relations/publicity, and Internet consulting through his company nigelparry.net. Nigel is currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he spends his non-work time researching, writing, and playing music. A more complete biography is here.
Website: nigelparry.com

James Buck

James Buck
James is a U.S-based photojournalist and multimedia producer. He is currently a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Saudi Arabia and has two dogs. James, a photojournalist and multimedia producer, blogs at Journalism is Not a Crime, and is a Twitterer, probably best known for his arrest at the hands of the Egyptian police while covering a protest. He Twittered “arrested” which caused a brushfire of attention. (Then “free” when he was released.)
Blog: Journalism is Not a Crime

Victor Maritim Ng’eny

Victor Maritim Ng’eny
Victor writes on issues of media and journalism the emerging phenomenon of citizen journalism and the much cliched ‘WEB 2.0′ and is a contributing writer at Africanpath. Victor lives in Kenya, and shuttlea between Nairobi and Kericho (his home). He studies journalism at Uganda Pentecostal University in Uganda where his focus is on digital media.When not on the www, he plays rugby, writes poetry, writes programmes, think about marketing and tries to write the next best novel in the world.
Blog: afro-puffs

Austin Heap

Austin Heap
Austin is an activist and technologist, whose work centers on developing Internet based technologies for establishing rapid transfer of knowledge between people, groups, and organizations. Building on his past work, he is currently working on designing and developing Internet- based technologies that simultaneously optimize users’ networking and personalization within and between online communities and organizations.  He is the Executive Director of the Censorship Research Center in San Francisco.
Blog: Austin Heap