Global Digital Download - Middle East & North Africa News

Six Twitter users were sentenced to a year in prison each by a Bahrain court on May 15 for allegedly insulting King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on the micro-blogging site. According to the government-run Bahrain News Agency, the “six suspects” were charged in five different cases “related to the misuse of freedom of expression and defaming His Majesty the King on Twitter.” It added that the six were “charged [with] misusing freedoms of expression and opinion publicly and remanded…in custody ahead of their trial.”

Iran appears to have quietly launched their “Halal Internet”--a closed-off, heavily censored national Internet free of the corrupting influence of foreign websites. In preparation for the country's national elections on June 14, access speeds for foreign sites have slowed to a crawl. Access speeds for domestic sites, however, remain normal. Although the Halal Internet was originally conceived as a national intranet that would serve as a standalone network similar to old-school, pre-Internet AOL & Compuserve, it appears the finished model is more improvisational. Instead of hermetically sealing off Iran's websites from the outside world, gratuitous packet loss, website blocking, and VPN blocking measures are being used to discourage access to foreign websites.

Bahraini blogger Ali Abdulemam surfaced in London, after escaping from Bahrain, where he has been in hiding for two years. In absentia, Abdulemam, 35 years old, was slapped with a 15-year prison sentence for belonging to a terror organisation and for seeking to topple the government.

On Tuesday at around 2:45 p.m. EST, Web monitors noticed something strange: Internet traffic in and out of Syria had dropped down to zero. It was as if the entire country had simultaneously unplugged its modems and switched off its smart phones, all at the same moment. And it’s still down. How does an entire country go dark? We can’t know what happened for sure, but it’s almost certain that this was not an accident and that the Syrian government pulled the plug.

Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies. Google's Transparency Report pages showed traffic to Google services pages from the country, embroiled in a civil war that has lasted more than two years, suddenly stopping shortly before 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). Google traffic reports continued to show no activity there about four hours after the drop-off. "We've seen this twice before," said Christine Chen, Google's senior manager for free expression. "This happened in Syria last November and in Egypt during the Arab Spring." It is virtually impossible to definitely determine the cause of such disruptions unless a party claims responsibility, experts said. In the past, Syria's government and the rebels fighting to topple it have traded blame.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the continuing harassment of news providers and yet another escalation in censorship. With just six weeks to go to a presidential election, the intelligence ministry has been summoning netizens and media editors to give them instructions on what they may and may not cover. At the same time, persecution of contributors to the Sufi website Majzooban Nor is being stepped up.

Eight years ago, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first took office, the Iranian government announced plans to develop a national internet network. The project attracted little attention at the time but now, with less than two months to go until the next presidential election, some analysts say it is so well advanced that the authorities could soon be in a position to cut off the entire country from the world wide web.

Since the suicide of an underfoot fruit vendor in Tunisia, the Arab world has generated some of the world's most-followed stories. History will find the news coming out of Arab countries during this time both gripping and plentiful. Less is known, however, of the news and information reaching Arab countries and communities during this period, and at times much has been speculated of, say, Twitter reliance in Tunisia, satellite TV dependence in Egypt, or tablet use in the highly connected Arab Gulf.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) holds the Omani government accountable for endangering the lives of human rights defender Saleh Al-Azri and blogger Noah El-Saadi, both of whom had disappeared a few days ago. Al-Azri, who is quite active on social media networks, is known for his continued demands to reform the health care system in Oman and for his solidarity with those who were accused of insulting the Sultan, for peacefully assembling and for violating the Information Technology Act.  

Reporters Without Borders condemns the 10-month jail sentence that an Abu Dhabi court passed yesterday on the netizen Abdullah Al-Hadidi for tweeting details of the trial of 94 alleged government opponents from the courtoom “in bad faith.” Observers and foreign media are not being all owed to attend the trial of the 94 alleged dissidents, who are charged endangering the country’s security. Hadidi, who was able to attend the fourth hearing on 19 March as the son of one of the defendants, was arrested on 22 March and has been held ever since.

350 Iranian bloggers, political and civil society activists co-signed a letter last week warning that the life of publisher, physicist and blogger, Mehdi Khazali is in grave danger after he has been on hunger strike for more than 90 days. But while some bloggers warn that Mehdi Khazali’s life is danger, there are also those who question whether he is really on hunger strike.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) is deeply concerned about the Bahraini prosecution's appeal of the decision to acquit rights defender Said Yousif Al-Muhafdah of charges laid against him for publishing "false news" on Twitter. Al-Muhafdah, Vice-President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, received on 2 April 2013 a notification to appear before the Supreme Criminal Court 1 July 2013 to review his case.  

Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah surrendered himself to the public prosecution today (March 26) after an arrest warrant was issued for him last night. The investigation, tweets Abd El Fattah, revolved around his relationship with Princess Joumana and her mention of him on Twitter. In other words, an arrest warrant was issued for Abd El Fattah, for a mention on Twitter. Arrest warrants were also issued for political activists Ahmed Douma, Karim Al Shaer, Hazem Abdel Azeem and Ahmed Al Sahafi.

The Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) has formally requested that the Jordanian government remove articles in its draft Telecommunications Law that would allow the government to impose censorship, and otherwise control access to the Internet. The request came in a list of suggestions that were presented to the Ministry of ICT in regards to the new draft law. The suggestions also included introducing more open Web and net neutrality principles into the law.

Tunisian blogger Olfa Riahi has been charged with criminal defamation for posting an item in which the country's former foreign minister was alleged to have misused public funds. The minister, Rafik Abdessalem, stepped down soon afterwards. The charge against Riahi came two weeks after university professor Raja Ben Slama was summoned to appear before an investigative judge to face the charge of defaming a public official. If convicted, Riahi and Ben Slama could face prison sentences.

Journalists and other professional nerds are angry that Google is snuffing out its moribund RSS software, Reader. But as Quartz’s Zach Seward points out, plain old normal folks in Iran used Reader quite a bit to get around internet censorship. And those users won’t be helped by the Reader clones popping up in its wake, because Google Reader’s unintended power as an anti-censorship interface flows from its “Google” pedigree, not its “Reader” functionality. 

The narrowing space for dissent and free exchange of ideas in the Iranian public sphere and in public space has been one of the driving forces behind Iranians’ use of cyberspace as a mechanism for expression. The Internet is one of the few remaining platforms where Iranians can practice some level of open debate, less susceptible to social and political limitations. Research on Internet use in Iran sheds light on a large online community engaged in a diversity of activities and expanding at a significant pace. This study seeks to complement standard online research techniques by providing a richer picture of Iranian Internet users.

Iran's judiciary should conclude a speedy, independent, and transparent criminal investigation followed by prosecution of those believed responsible for the death of the blogger Sattar Beheshti, Human Rights Watch said today. Beheshti died in the custody of Tehran's cyber police in November 2012. Iranian officials should stop harassing his family and hampering their efforts to seek justice and ensure that those responsible for the blogger's death are held to account.

Egyptian authorities must do their utmost to determine the whereabouts and ensure the safety of Mohamed el-Sawi, an online journalist who was reported missing on February 21, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ also calls on Egypt to stop using the law to intimidate journalists and prevent them from reporting critically. "We are alarmed by the disappearance of Mohamed el-Sawi and fear for his safety. Egyptian authorities must work swiftly to determine his whereabouts and ensure his safe return," said Sherif Mansour, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa coordinator. "This disappearance comes against the backdrop of a serious deterioration in Egypt's press freedom environment after eight months of Mohamed Morsi's presidency."

Releasing vast amounts of data in the name of national security is a violation of the Constitution and the spirit of Law 140, which was adopted in 1999 and governs security and law enforcement access to telecoms data, analysts said this week. The most recent chapter in the recurring controversy over the telecoms data effectively came to a close Wednesday, with the Cabinet backing the prime minister’s demand that he be allowed to approve or reject requests for data by the Internal Security Forces on a case by case basis, and urging the cooperation of the telecommunications minister.

As the Arab uprisings continue, war and state repression aren't the only threats to free expression. Egypt in the last week saw two other factors impinging on the independent media: bad finances and malignant bureaucracy. They pose a potent threat that could drastically worsen the dimming prospects for a transition away from authoritarianism. The traditional print media's business model has suffered all over the world, and Arab countries undergoing political transitions are not immune. Throw into the mix the fact that bloated state agencies control many of the major publishing conglomerates and television networks, and you have a gargantuan set of problems above and beyond efforts by the government to punish dissent and restrict speech.

All major Georgian telecommunication companies are owned by structures of shell entitites, which makes it often difficult or impossible to identify beneficiary owners. A new report by Transparency International Georgia entitled The State of the Internet – Who controls Georgia’s Telecommunication Sector? finds strong indications that 50% of Caucasus Online and 49% of Beeline, the country’s third largest mobile phone operator, are controlled by the same opaque individual(s), hiding behind entities in the British Virgin Islands. These opaque owners have appointed Levan Karamanishvili as their representative, who is also a shareholder of Rustavi 2 and Mze and is linked with the GMC restaurant group and several other businesses.

The acquittal of five Kuwaiti online activists charged with “offending the emir” could help ensure that Kuwaitis can freely express critical political opinions, Human Rights Watch said. Muhammad al-Ajmi, Faris al-Balhan, Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, Fahd al-Jufaira and Rashid Al-Enzi were acquitted by the criminal court on February 13, 2013.

On January 22nd 2013, the long-running campaign against the draft Iraqi Cyber Crimes law finally bore fruit: the Iraqi Speaker of the House approved a request to the Parliamentary Committee for Media and Culture to permanently revoke the proposed legislation. The decision is a victory for Iraqi civil society activists following months of public protests and intense negotiations with policymakers.

A British technology firm faces questions about how its specialist surveillance software allowing users to spy on people's emails ended up in Bahrain. Campaigners fear that it was used to help the country's security services crack down on protesters during the Arab spring. The allegations raise concerns about the export of British technology to oppressive regimes. Tomorrow the campaigners Privacy International will join forces with human rights groups, including the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and Bahrain Watch, to file a complaint with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development alleging that Gamma International UK is in breach of OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises. A separate complaint is being filed against a German company.

Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the internet and mobile network blackout designed to undermine the anti-government protests in Egypt. This event catapulted the issue of telecoms and human rights onto the international stage. To mark this anniversary, Access has sent a letter to the telecommunication sector’s Industry Dialogue on Freedom of Expression and Privacy, an industry working group that arose in the aftermath of the incident. The letter addresses the failure of the major telecoms involved to provide principled guidance to the industry and issues a statement of expectations to governments that would request restrictions on user rights.

The Omani blogger and human rights campaigner Saeed Jaddad, arrested on 14 January, was released three days ago on the orders of Sultan Qaboos after posting bail. According to the Gulf Center for Human Rights, Jaddad was questioned in the absence of his lawyer on 22 January as he was completing the formalities for his release in the public prosecutor's office. 

A court in Saudi Arabia has found that a liberal blogger accused of apostasy has no case to answer. The court had the power to sentence Raif Badawi to death had it found him guilty. But it refused to charge him, referring his case back to a lower court. Mr Badawi, the young co-founder of a website called the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested last year and accused of insulting Islam and showing disobedience.

In the last two days, Kuwaiti courts have issued back-to-back 2-year jail sentences to Twitter users for allegedly insulting Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah. The first verdict was issued on Sunday against 26-year old Rashid Saleh al-Anzi over a Tweet he made to his 5,700 followers in October, that the court said, “stabbed the rights and powers” of the Emir. Al-Anzi has been sentenced to two years in prison and is expected to appeal.

As part of our collaboration with Syria Deeply we are cross-posting a series of articles that capture civilian voices caught in the crossfire, along with perspectives on the conflict from writers around the world. Patrick Hilsman has a light on in Syria’s internet blackout, which cut off the country from the rest of the world on November 29, 2012. The 29-year-old New York native landed in Aleppo to report on the conflict from the rebel-held section of the city, one of the city’s hardest hit neighborhoods. He hopped online and did a Google Hangout with Syria Deeply, describing his journey.

Prominent Saudi novelist and political analyst Turki al-Hamad was reportedly arrested by the Saudi authorities for a series of controversial tweets. The news broke on Twitter on Monday morning when journalist Khaled al Matrafi @Almatrafi announced, " Important: According to my sources, Saudi Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef has issued an arrest warrant for writer Turki al-Hamad and have just arrested him."

Reporters Without Borders condemns the appeal court rulings issued during the past two weeks that uphold the prison sentences passed on a total of 28 netizens last summer. “These arbitrary decisions represent a new stage in the sultanate’s determination to gag netizens whose only crime was to exercise their right to express opinions and provide information about the policies of the sultan and his government,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We call for their immediate release.”

A court in Egypt has sentenced a blogger to three years in prison for blasphemy and contempt of religion. Alber Saber was arrested in September after neighbours accused him of posting links to a film mocking Islam that led to protests across the Muslim world. Mr Saber, an atheist from a Coptic Christian family, can appeal against the ruling if he pays $167 (£100) bail. The case raises concerns over freedom of expression just as Egyptians are set to vote on a draft constitution.

It’s not unusual for law enforcement agencies to monitor social network activity to gather intelligence and monitor threats. In Lebanon, however, authorities are reportedly trying to take things to a whole new level: by demanding access to all Lebanese citizens’ passwords for email and social media sites. In October, Lebanon’s intelligence chief Wissam al-Hassan died in what appears to be an assassination. The Information Branch of the country’s Internal Security Forces has been aggressively hunting those responsible—a pursuit that included, it has emerged, making a sweeping surveillance request that the country’s judicial authority rejected.

When it comes to YouTube, the government of Afghanistan intends to keep its hand on the switch for now. More than two months after the Afghan government banned YouTube to prevent the spread of an anti-Islamic video, it has yet to restore access to the popular video Web site. While officials say they hope to lift the block “as soon as possible,” they have offered only a vague sense of what must happen before that can be done.

Despite claims to the contrary, the Syrian government is almost certainly responsible for a blackout Thursday that shut down virtually all Internet service in the country, according to a leading Web security firm. "The Syrian Minister of Information is being reported as saying that the government did not disable the Internet, but instead the outage was caused by a cable being cut," writes Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare. "From our investigation, that appears unlikely to be the case."

As CDT has said before: whether in Egypt or Libya, San Francisco or Syria, network shutdowns are never the right choice. We strongly condemn the recent Internet blackout in Syria as an indefensible violation of human rights, and agree with international authorities on free expression and human rights who stated last year in their "Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet": "Cutting off access to the Internet, or parts of the Internet, for whole populations or segments of the public (shutting down the Internet) can never be justified, including on public order or national security grounds." 

Information coming out of Syria has slowed to a trickle in the wake of Thursday’s country-wide communications shutdown, which included nearly all Internet traffic and intermittent cellular network and landline outages. Earlier today, Renesys reported that the last five networks that had survived the initial outage were off the air. In the meantime, experts have cast a skeptical eye on the Syrian Ministry of Information’s claims that the outage is the result of sabotage by “terrorists,” a term that the Assad regime has frequently used to describe the opposition. 

On 22 November, the Tehran prosecutor’s office published a statement on “progress in the investigation and identification of those responsible for the death of Sattar Beheshti, and its responsibility regarding citizens’ rights”. It described the sequence of events, from the day of his arrest to the discovery of his body in his cell at the headquarters of the FTA, Iran’s cyber police.

Recent revisions to the United Arab Emirates’ cybercrime law will not only restrict internet freedom but are in violation of citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and should be immediately repealed. These revisions come amidst a broader crackdown on human rights defenders both online and offline in the UAE. Freedom House renews its calls for authorities to cease efforts to silence opposition through extralegal harassment and intimidation.
 

Taymour Karim didn’t crack under interrogation. His Syrian captors beat him with their fists, with their boots, with sticks, with chains, with the butts of their Kalashnikovs. They hit him so hard they broke two of his teeth and three of his ribs. They threatened to keep torturing him until he died. “I believed I would never see the sun again,” he recalls. But Karim, a 31-year-old doctor who had spent the previous months protesting against the government in Damascus, refused to give up the names of his friends. It didn’t matter. His computer had already told all.

The United Arab Emirates set stricter Internet monitoring and enforcement codes Tuesday that include giving authorities wider leeway to crack down on Web activists for offenses such as mocking the country's rulers or calling for demonstrations. The measures are another sign of tougher cyber-policing efforts by Western-backed leaders across the Gulf amid growing concerns over perceived political or security threats since the Arab Spring uprisings.

Access has repeatedly seen governments crack down on dissent by using telecoms to surveil users and filter content. Iran epitomizes this trend, as its connected, tech-savvy population runs up against a government that relies on advanced surveillance and censorship methods to stifle free expression. One foreign telecom operating there, MTN, has faced international criticism and investigations over reports of its role in the harassment of government critics and participation in corrupt business practices.

Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the state of health of eight women prisoners of conscience who began a hunger strike five days ago in protest against inhuman and degrading jail conditions. They include three journalists and netizens – Mahssa Amrabadi, Jila Bani Yaghoob and Shiva Nazar Ahari.

There is a proxy war going on in Syria, one measured in megabytes rather than in arms. On one side, Iran is providing Bashar al-Assad's regime with the tools of digital dictatorship to locate and bait the Syrian opposition. On the other side, the United States is trying to help the opposition protect itself from such attacks and set up alternate channels of communication. The outcome of this proxy war will affect the lives of many Syrians and the credibility of the State Department's efforts to promote digital freedom internationally.

A U.S. company that makes Internet-blocking gear acknowledges that Syria has been using at least 13 of its devices to censor Web activity there—an admission that comes as the Syrian government cracks down on its citizens and silences their online activities. Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., says it shipped the Internet "filtering" devices to Dubai late last year, believing they were destined for a department of the Iraqi government. However, the devices—which can block websites or record when people visit them—made their way to Syria, a country subject to strict U.S. trade embargoes.

Mother Jones reported that the autocratic Syrian regime was using internet filtering technology produced by a California company, Blue Coat Systems, to aid its crackdown on dissidents. On Saturday, after 10 days of heightened media scrutiny and the launch of a State Department inquiry, the company finally admitted what publicly available electronic records made obvious, telling the Wall Street Journal that Syria did in fact use its products.

When it comes to online freedoms around the world, no region has been the subject of more recent scrutiny than has the Middle East. As the Internet connects more people to one another, religious tensions have become more sensitive than ever before. In some Muslim-majority countries, conservative governments have seized on online censorship as a way to restrict citizens’ access to global ideas and materials.

On a Monday in July, Ahmed Mansoor sat in his study in Dubai and made the mistake of clicking on a Microsoft Word attachment that arrived in an e-mail, labeled “very important” in Arabic, from a sender he thought he recognized. With that click, the pro-democracy activist unwittingly downloaded spyware that seized on a flaw in the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) program to take over his computer and record every keystroke. The hackers infiltrated his digital life so deeply they still accessed his personal e-mail even after he changed his password.

Iran is providing crucial equipment and technical help to Syria in its effort to track opposition forces through the Internet and other forms of electronic surveillance, according to U.S. officials. The aid is the latest example of how Iran is helping Syria in its battle against rebel forces threatening the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The technical assistance is coming mainly through Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the officials said.

For months, against the backdrop of the media focus on Iran's nuclear ambitions and the potential Western response, another story about the Islamic Republic's ambitions has been gaining ground: that story is about the Iranian government's attempt to create its own "halal" internet, cut off from the outside world. Iran's intent, it would seem, is to create an internet where Iranians are "safe" from the pornography, hate speech and cultural influence that the World Wide Web provides, whilst still allowing for intra-national communications, shopping and business to prevail.  

After seriously flipping out, cutting of Iranian access to Google and basically herding all its citizens into a tiny little government-approved intra-net pen, the Iranian government has softened its Internet ban just a little bit and restored access to Gmail. Though the outcry against censoring the Internet at large was loud, the backlash against cutting users off from Google services such as Gmail was particularly strong. Many Iranians (reportedly around half) resorted to using VPNs to get outside of the the intra-net bubble, creating millions of dollars in profit for local VPN firms. Even government officials railed against the lack of Gmail, and complained that local clients just weren't up to snuff.

Iranian bloggers are facing a new wave of repression as more of them are being jailed, and in one case a blogger's wife was beaten by security forces. It seems the regime is raising its own standards for brutality. Several news sites reported [fa] that jailed blogger, Hossein Ronaghi Maleki's life is in danger. His health condition has deteriorated, and he has been moved to an isolation cell. His kidney is hemorrhaging and security forces have prevented appropriate medical care for him.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Global Communications Studies will release a report this week showing that Iran is at the implementation stage of a decade-long plan to launch an internal internet for the country that would be wholly detached from the global internet that we all know, allowing significantly tighter government control over the flow of information into and within Iran. The Washington Post reports that the Iranian government has laid significant technical foundations, and that a number of government and academic sites are already up and running, with email providers in place and more than ten thousand devices connected.

The Saudi official news agency, SPA, reported earlier today that the Communications and Information Technology Commission reacted to the trailer of the movie “Innocence of Muslims” by threatening to block YouTube, which has blocked at least one clip since the statement was published.

Google lists eight reasons on its “YouTube Community Guidelines” page for why it might take down a video. Inciting riots is not among them. But after the White House warned Tuesday that a crude anti-Muslim movie trailer had sparked lethal violence in the Middle East, Google acted. Days later, controversy over the 14-minute clip from “The Innocence of Muslims” was still roiling the Islamic world, with access blocked in Egypt, Libya, India, Indonesia and Afghanistan — keeping it from easy viewing in countries where more than a quarter of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live.

An Omani court sentenced six people to jail terms ranging from a year to 18 months for slander over internet posts against the government that it called "abusive and provocative", an opposition activist present at the hearing said on Monday. The verdict, issued on Sunday, was a further move by Oman to deter unrest inspired by Arab Spring revolts last year. Protests this year in Oman, which fronts the Gulf sea lane through which much of the world's oil trade is shipped, have highlighted difficulties in implementing a strategy of defusing discontent by creating tens of thousands of public sector jobs.

Bahraini authorities should toss out the unjust conviction and life sentence handed to an online journalist who was imprisoned for exercising his right to free expression during the country's 2011 popular uprising, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The High Court of Appeal on Tuesday upheld a life sentence given to Abduljalil Alsingace, a prominent independent blogger and human rights defender, on charges related to "plotting to topple" the regime, according to news reports. Alsingace had been convicted and sentenced by a military court in June 2011, the reports said.

Many Gazans have long lamented that there’s not much to do in the Gaza Strip. There are no movie theaters, pool halls or bowling alleys -- all of which are seen as “un-Islamic.” And it’s not getting any better. In fact, now, curbs are being extended further – to the Internet. The Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza issued a new law this week that forces Gaza’s ten main internet providers to block all access to any websites with pornographic content.

Jordan is slipping into a black hole, with new restrictions on Internet freedom being approved by the government today [August 22, 2012]. First, the government gave the go ahead to block websites. Now, a new Publications Law, which allows for more control and censorship over the Internet, has also been approved as a draft.

For a long time, the only people interested in Yemen were Joseph Kessel and Al-Qaida. After the revolution that brought down 32 years of dictatorship, the interest of the West quickly waned, abandoning the country to its difficult political transition. It is an exhausted country, without a vision nor a hope of something better and crippled by depressing figures: there is a 23 percent inflation rate, 35 percent of people are homeless, 40 percent live under the poverty line, 60 percent are illiterate, the majority of whom are women and therefore reduced to mere objects. 

An email claiming to reveal a political scandal will grab the attention of almost any journalist. But what if the email was just a ruse to make you download government-grade spyware designed to take total control of your computer? It could happen—as a team of award-winning Moroccan reporters recently found out.

A prominent Bahraini human rights activist has been sentenced to three years in prison for attending an "illegal demonstration". Nabeel Rajab, who is already serving a three-month sentence for posting anti-government comments on Twitter, is the head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and one of the most outspoken critics of the island state's government.

As the violence escalates across Syria, so do the campaigns of targeted malware attacks against Syrian activists, journalists, and members of the opposition, which covertly install surveillance software on their computers. Syrians are growing more aware of the danger these campaigns pose to their security and the security of their friends and loved ones. On Facebook, the Union of Free Students in Syria group has started an album of students holding up signs warning against phishing attacks and malware, with messages that such as, "Assad supporters are sending dangerous files with hacked accounts. Check with your friends before opening an attachment."

The international community has been urged to act quickly to curb cyber espionage after security researchers discovered the latest state-sponsored attack targeting financial systems in Lebanon. Thousands of people in the Middle East were targeted by the latest cyber snooping assault, named Gauss, according to the security experts Kaspersky Lab.

As the situation on the ground becomes ever more bloody, both sides in Syria are also waging what seems to be an intensifying conflict in cyberspace, often attempting to use misinformation and rumor to tilt the war in reality. On Friday, Reuters was forced to temporarily shut down its system for posting blogs on www.Reuters.com after the appearance of a series of unauthorized, and inaccurate, reports citing opposition military reverses in Syria.

Before disagreements and tensions increased between conservatives and fundamentalists, reformists and their websites, newspapers, and magazines were the main target of censorship and filtering. However, since the final year of Ahmadinejad’s first term of presidency (2008-2009), media censorship has also been imposed on conservatives and fundamentalists. 

This briefing provides an overview of privacy and surveillance laws, policies and practices in Bahrain. The regulations that permit access to personal data, the communications interception regime and relevant consitutional safeguards are highlighted and examined. This is not intended to be a full analysis, but rather contains all the necessary information to facilitate a basic understanding of surveillance practices inside Bahrain, especially with regards to to foreign companies supplying surveillance and monitoring technologies. 

On Thursday, Syria shut down all access to the Internet for forty minutes. While it is unclear whether the Syrian government is planning a complete Internet outage, many believe this to be the regime exhibiting its potential censorship capabilities. Up until now, Internet usage has been considered very stable in Syria.

Saudi authorities should drop charges and release the editor of the Free Saudi Liberals website for violating his right to freedom of expression on matters of religion and religious figures, Human Rights Watch said today. Prosecutors have charged Ra'if Badawi under the 2007 Anti-Cybercrime law, alleging that his website “infringes on religious values” by providing a platform for open debate of views on religion and religious figures.

A total of 33 professional and citizen journalists have been killed since the start of the uprising in Syria in March 2001, Reporters Without Borders said today. The past few weeks have been particularly deadly, with around 10 citizen journalists killed since late May. Reporters Without Borders is also very disturbed to learn that freelance journalist Mohamed Sami Al-Kayyal was arrested in the coastal city of Tartus on 27 June.

Western technology has played a key role in providing the Syrian regime with tools to track and repress citizens for years. The latest Wikileaks files on Syria, which include more than two million emails from political figures and companies, reveal that the involvement of Western companies in the crackdown against Syrian citizens has continued despite sanctions and international pressure.

The Afghan government should withdraw a draft media law that would expand government control over the media and chill free speech, Human Rights Watch said today. The draft law raises serious questions about President Hamid Karzai's commitment to freedom of expression.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, in coalition with 12 other rights organizations and policy organizations, is calling on leading tech companies including, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Oracle and Go Daddy to stop blocking internet technology to citizens living in repressive countries like Iran. The Campaign and its collaborators pointed out that these industry leaders are denying citizens of Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba internet communication services that help promote fee expression. The denial continues despite the fact that the US government created an exception to its sanctions.

Some Egyptian online activists have created an initiative to track whether the new President-elect, Mohammed Mursi, fulfils his election promises. Straight after Mursi's victory was announced on 24 June a website called "Mursi Meter" was launched by activists who said that they were not affiliated to any political trend. The activists wrote on the website that their initiative was "an attempt to document and monitor" Mursi's first 100 days in office. They wanted to check on the implementation of the Muslim Brotherhood's so-called "Renaissance Project", a package of reforms that Mr Mursi promised during the election campaign.

The minister in charge of implementing media reforms in Bahrain made waves earlier this month when she promised that the country would soon introduce laws to regulate the misuse of social media in the country. Samira Rajab, the Minister of State for Information Affairs, said that new laws should take aim at false information spread by social networks such as Twitter. “The unrest in Bahrain last year was fuelled by the irresponsible use of such media and everything was blown out of proportion to suit some people’s agenda,” she told Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News. Her statement comes amid reports of arrests and state-security questioning in Bahrain over comments made on Twitter.

Spyware has been embedded into what looks like just one of many .pif video files being circulated by Syrian activists on Skype to help document attacks and human rights abuses by Syrian government and pro-government forces, according to a report posted yesterday by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. North American-based forensic experts dissected the Trojan spyware embedded in the video file circulating on Skype, which ends with the extension "new_new.pif." The digital workings of the latest Skype Trojan are similar to those of a prior YouTube video Trojan that also targeted Syrian activists, according to a report yesterday by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF report includes screen shots to help Syrian activists and other users identify the specific harmful files.

The use of remote surveillance software against activists has been a feature of the ongoing conflict in Syria. In February 2012, CNN reported that “Computer spyware is the newest weapon in the Syrian conflict”. Since then numerous electronic campaigns targeting Syrian activists have been observed. These have included: a phishing campaign involving the compromise of a high profile Syrian opposition figure; malware targeting activists by claiming to be documents regarding the foundation of a Syrian revolution leadership council; and, malware purporting to be a plan to assist the city of Aleppo.

Five citizen journalists were killed in two days in Syria last month, cementing the country's position as the world's worst for journalists in 2012, say the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the International Press Institute (IPI) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF). "This is another tragic reminder of the role that citizen journalists have played covering the conflict in Syria, including the documentation of horrific violence perpetrated against civilians," said CPJ.

Iran's cyber police force is poised to launch a new crackdown on software that lets many Iranians circumvent the regime's Internet censorship. In Iran, 20-30% of internet users get around state censorship through the use of either VPNs or IP proxy software, but they are being increasingly hemmed in by more sophisticated measures being deployed by officials.

Since the Arab Spring first sparked, Kuwaiti authorities have been following internet users closely and summoning them to interrogation and then sending them to courts for prosecution over different cases that are mostly sectarian or political.

A Yemeni court on Monday sentenced journalist Majed Karoot to one year in prison and fined him YR 200,000 for criticising local government officials on the popular social networking site Facebook. The director of corporate communications for the Al-Baida governorate, Mohammed Al-Karfoshi and his deputy, Kamal Al-Najar filed the complaint against posts made by the journalist on the site last year. The Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate (YJS) called the verdict a “threat to freedom of the press and freedom of expression”.

Simurgh is an Iranian stand-alone proxy software for Microsoft Windows. It has been used mainly by Iranians to bypass censorship since 2009. It has recently come to our attention that this software is being recommended and circulated among Syrian Internet users for bypassing censorship in their country. This information led to the discovery and analysis of a back-doored version of this software. Since the inital report on the Simurgh backdoor was published, the Simurgh team has taken several important steps to warn their users about this threat and the provider that was hosting the malicious version of Simurgh has removed the malicious package their site.

A Small Media report revealing how Iran's LGBT communities use global communications technology in their everyday lives. LGBT Republic of Iran: Is the Internet a safe haven or a honeytrap for LGBT Iranians? The repressive Iranian regimes is spilling over into the virtual realm.

A Kuwaiti man has pleaded not guilty to charges that he insulted the Prophet Muhammad and the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in messages on Twitter. Hamad al-Naqi, a Shia Muslim, said his Twitter account had been hacked and that he had not written the messages. The judge denied Mr Naqi's request for bail after two months in detention and adjourned his trial until next week.

According to pro-government daily Al-Ayam, Bahrain has now announced plans to prosecute citizens who post video footage from protests, or offer a “distorted” picture of Bahrain’s “renaissance”. Well-known human rights defender and Index award winner Nabeel Rajab was recently arrested based on his tweets. His detention was extended by a week this Saturday, and is also being charged based on protesting as well as his activity on social networking sites.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s own words have now become a victim of Iran’s massive online censorship infrastructure. According to Radio Free Europe (RFE), last week Khamenei issued a “fatwa,” or religious edict, confirming that anti-filtering tools and software are illegal in Iran. The decree came in response to a question by Mehr News (Google Translate), a semi-official news agency, which had asked for clarification on the ruling due to the fact that, as journalists, employees sometimes need to access blocked websites and other non-authorized information.

The campaign of attacks targeting Syrian opposition activists on the Internet has taken a new turn. Since the beginning of the year, Syrian opposition activists have been targeted using several Trojans, which covertly install spying software onto the infected computer, as well as a multitude of phishing attacks which steal YouTube and Facebook login credentials. Last week, TrendMicro's Malware Blog described a website which purportedly offered Skype encryption software, but was actually a Trojan.

The communications minister of the Palestinian Authority has resigned, claiming it was trying to silence its critics and curb freedom of expression. Mashour Abu Daqa said senior officials had ordered several opposition websites to be blocked over the past six months. Security forces have also recently arrested four journalists and an activist who had criticised President Mahmoud Abbas and other officials.

The Palestinian Authority has blocked up to eight critical news websites in the West Bank since February, according to a report released by an independent news agency on Monday.