Threats to the Open Net: August 12, 2011
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* The Turkish Information Technologies Board has backtracked on its Internet filtering system, postponing its introduction in light of widespread public protest.
* The Hacker group anonymous has undertaken a couple of significant actions this week, replacing the Syrian Defense Ministry website with a protest notice on Monday, and vowing to destroy Facebook in protest over the site's inadequate privacy protections.
* In the UK, in response to the use of BlackBerry, Twitter, and Facebook by riot participants, David Cameron has suggested that people thought to be using social media to organize criminal activities should be banned from using these sites. This has led to a fury of discussion of Internet censorship and the potential uses of social media for good and ill.
* In Russia, a new anti-extremism law has been submitted to the Russian Parliament for approval. Under this new law, the status of blogs is similar to that of mass media outlets, and the distribution of "extremist" materials online carries a 5 year jail sentence.
