REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS—Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of two Venezuelan users of the social-networking service Twitter, a 41-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman, who were arrested on 8 July for criticising the Venezuelan banking system. They are facing the possibility of 9 to 11 years in prison under a 2001 banking law on charges of “disseminating false rumours” to “destabilise the banking system.”
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Raja Petra Kamaruddin

Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the prominent Malaysian blogger has failed to show in court for the second time.  Kamaruddin, who had missed his first court appearance in April 23 and a warrant for his arrest was issued which has not been served as he has not been trace.

We had written earlier that Kamaruddin had indicated his plan to go into hiding as he was sure that the prosecutors would ask for his indefinite detention, which incidentally was what he was in before being released.

Keep up the fight, Raja Petra.

As you are all aware, The Australian government has plans to effected a filtering regime on the websites available for its citizens.¬† Among other things this will have a ‘white-list’ if I can call it that which will be a list of site netizens will be allowed to access, the other will have been blocked.¬† The plan is currently in test phase. Read the rest of this entry…

Fresh from passing a cyber crime law, France plans to pass a law that will make it allows the state to install software that ‘observe, collect, record, save and transmit‘ keystrokes from computers on which it is installed.¬† The law dubbed ‘Loopsi 2‘ essentially allows the state to snoop and know whatever you have been doing online or even offline. Read the rest of this entry…

As if all the censorship and monitoring we have in the world is not enough we now have United Kingdom’s plan to monitor internet communication between users in the country.¬† UK’s Home secretary has called for implementation of a plan to monitor and record internet contact between users there.

The new system would track emails, calls and internet use yet the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith says there will be no government database to store these logs. we wonder what they’ll be using

Under the plan communication providers would be compelled to track and record internet contact between users, while the Home Secretary says that they’ll be no recording of content only recording of who speaks to who, we are concerned with the potential abuse of a service like this.¬† What will stop the government from recording content after all just knowing that two people spoke is pretty much useless while recording what they said¬† is more important.

Already the plan has run into criticism from the opposition with various individuals focusing on the inportance of privacy, which to us here at CPB is an inalienable right.

We have only one word for the UK Home Secretary, “STOP”

Wael Abbas, who is a prominent Egyptian blogger and human rights activist, recently started a Facebook group to express solidarity with and in support of formerly jailed blogger, Mohammed Adel. Sad thing is that Facebook deemed it as against it Terms of Use and took it down.

Wael has termed the take down ‘racist’ and wants it to be rescinded forthwith.¬† Abbas had created the group ‘Operation General Meit‘ a few months ago in support of the then incarcerated blogger, Adel.¬† Abbas says the action is a blatant example of double standards as Facebook is full of profile photos and other photos showing guns, while those that were posted on the group’s page were symbolic as they called for the authorities to arrest them as they had they had done to Adel.¬† The group had photos of various Egyptian bloggers hold fake guns saying that if indeed Adel was a terrorist then they also should be arrested as they were also terrorists.

Menassat quotes Abbas.

I consider what Facebook did racist and dealing with middle-easterners with double standards because Facebook is full of groups about guns. Facebook is full of groups for movie posters, gangster rap pages and pages dedicated to pistols and machine guns, Real ones. None were deleted. Only Egyptians when they pose with toy guns are hateful, threatening and obscene.¬† Please type “guns” in the Facebook search bar and tell me what you see.

We feel that in doing this Facebook is continuing with what we are seeing as an emerging trend where companies and corporates take actions to censor speech on the platforms and then blame them on their TOS’s.

Shame on you Facebook.

Raja Kamaruddin

Blogger, Raja Petra Kamruddin has missed his sedition trial and has gone into hiding.¬† We have written before about the sedition charges facing Raja and he failed to appear in court to answer to the charges which stem from an article he wrote implication Malaysia’s Prime Minister in the murder of a Mongolian woman.

Raja has had various run-ins with the authorities in Malaysia due to his critical stance which has led to his websites and blogs being shut down and him being arrested and jailed.¬† On Thusrday he wrote on his site that he feared being arrested on a law that allows for indefinite detention for people who threaten national security, he had been arrested on the same last year and said that he would go on ‘self exile’

His failure to attend court has led to a new a warrant to be issued against him.  His wife who had posted bail for him was also missing from court.  Raja wrote that he would be attending court because he knew that he would be re-arrested and held indefinitely.

We wish Raja all the best and ask the Malaysia authorities to put an end to this.