Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

ONI Blog: Temporary block on LiveJournal in Russia exemplifies overblocking
A regional Russian Internet service provider temporarily blocked the entire Russian LiveJournal site in response to a court order to block one blog on the platform. The incident illustrates the probability of overblocking, especially when targeting an IP address. ...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: August 3, 2012
Tajikistan blocked a number of news websites and YouTube on Monday following deadly clashes last week between security forces and armed rebels in an eastern autonomous region of the Central Asian republic. Among the blocked websites were the Russian...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: May 4, 2012
Freedom House came out with its 2012 survey on the freedom of the press around the world. Media gains happened in the Middle East and Northern Africa as Arab Spring stimulated a significant amount of social media activity. However, press freedom...
ONI Blog: ONI Releases 2011 Year in Review
The OpenNet Initiative is proud to announce the release of its 2011 Year in Review, a collection of the year's top instances of filtering, surveillance, and information warfare around the globe. Starting domestically, 2011 saw the beginnings of SOPA and PIPA, bills...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: April 20, 2012
Google co-founder Sergey Brin criticized China, Iran, entertainment companies, and Facebook for obstructing the openness of the Internet. He specifically targeted oppressive policy measures to censor content and the fact that Facebook's platform remains closed to Google's search crawls. Contemporary artist and...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: March 23, 2012
Pakistan halts its plans to implement a firewall against a list of objectionable URLs. The Ministry of Information Technology reversed its decision after the National Assembly withdrew due to stakeholder concerns. PayPal eased up on its policy on companies using their...
ONI Blog: Pakistan Halts Plans to Install Censoring System
The Pakistani government announced that it would stop plans to install a URL blocking system on the country's Internet network. National Assembly member Bushra Gohar told the press that the Ministry of Information Technology had withdrawn its decision about the...
ONI Blog: Reporters Without Borders Releases "Enemies of the Internet" Report
Last week on World Day Against Cyber Censorship, Reporters Without Borders released this year's "Enemies of the Internet" report. Among the newest additions to the list are Bahrain and Belarus, both of which had been under surveillance but had not...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: March 2, 2012
Chinese users circumvent the Great Firewall to flood President Obama's Google+ campaign page with comment. Messages left included tongue-in-cheek references to the Occupy Wall Street movement, requests for green cards, and criticism of China's heavy-handed censorship practices. The Committee to Protect Journalists...
ONI Blog: Kazakhstan Shuts Down Internet and Mobile Network to Prevent "Kazakh Spring"
In light of Arab Spring and keeping in mind the potential of online organizing, Kazakhstan's government has taken drastic measures to prevent a similar "Kazakh Spring." According to Tech Eye, president Nursultan Nazarbayev gave orders last week to disable the...

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