What should journalists know about BlackBerry fights?
The discussions between Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, and governments such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and India continue to hit the headlines. In each case, disagreements center on providing customer communications to security and law enforcement services. The rumblings from these nations over monitoring powers aren’t just limited to RIM:…
Global Voices Advocacy: Great Firewall of China Upgrade?
Oiwan Lam reports widespread disruption for users of Freegate, the popular circumvention software in China: According to the RFA report, users from several provinces across the country have encountered similar problem and they believe that it is due to the upgrade of Great Fire Wall. Apart from the Freegate, when running UltraSurf and FreeU the…
The Economist: The Invisible Regional Censorship of Russia
Russian federal law doesn’t include Internet censorship provisions, but there’s been a recent rash of cases of court-ordered blocking in individual Russian regions. Even though these are usually narrow blocks of particular sites and are quickly unblocked after media exposure, they can still cover a great deal of ground. The Republic of Ingushetia blocked the…
NYT: In Argentina, Google and Yahoo Not Liable
The New York Times reports on a new decision in the liability of internet intermediaries, this time in Argentia. It’s often hard to pick apart exactly what’s been going on in jurisdictions where this issue still evolving. Generally, you get a flurry of conflicting court decision in favour of absolute liability for Net middle-men, usually…
GPGMail – OpenPGP for Apple Mail
For that tiny subset of journalists who use PGP (or its free equivalent, GPG) and have a Mac and use Apple’s Mail client, good news! After a distinct lack of updates, new coding team has taken over, and has just shipped a version that’s compatible with the latest OS X.
Argentine government feud with Clarín deepens
A grave accusation by the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner against Argentina’s two leading newspapers, Clarín and La Nación, has prompted claims that the government is attempting to control the press, and stirred up a heated debate on the state of freedom of expression in the country. The administration is alleging that the papers colluded with a…
Ugandan media celebrates, fights on after sedition ruling
With surprise and relief, Ugandan journalists, who routinely face the police’s “media crimes” unit, welcomed a partial victory for press freedom on Wednesday. The country’s constitutional court had ruled that criminal sedition was unconstitutional. Even so, there was a consensus that more legal press battles lie ahead.
Jailed Iranian journalist Goudarzi receives NPC award
The National Press Club has announced the recipients of the 2010 John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award, which is given each year to individuals who have contributed to the cause of press freedom and open government. This year, the international recipient is Iranian blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi, who is being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison–notorious…
Video: Who is killing Honduran journalists?
With another journalist murdered in Honduras on Tuesday, bringing the total killed since March to eight, the country’s press is understandably jittery. In a new documentary jointly produced by the Inter-American Press Association and the Video Journalism Movement, Carlos Mauricio Flores, the executive director of Tegucigalpa-based El Heraldo newspaper says, “We journalists are living in uncertainty and fear.”