Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
ONI Blog: The Worst Places to be a Blogger
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has just released a list of the ten worst countries in which to blog. Topping the list is Burma, followed closely by Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan, and Egypt.
In determining...
- Posted on 30/Apr/2009; tagged in Burma, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Syria, Asia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Human rights
ONI Blog: Technology Executives Visit Iraq
According to BBC News reports, top executives from major Internet companies including Google, YouTube, Twitter, Howcast, and Meetup visited Iraq last week in order to assess how their technologies might assist in the ongoing fight against corruption.
The companies will...
- Posted on 27/Apr/2009; tagged in Iraq, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Filtering tech and software
ONI Blog: Google: No Intention to Censor UAE's Internet
According to reports in Business Intelligence—Middle East, Google has no intention of engaging in an Internet censorship program with the United Arab Emirates.
Google admitted to having recently met with Dubai Police authorities along with several other “entities spanning government,...
- Posted on 20/Apr/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Social filtering, Internet tools filtering, Filtering tech and software
ONI Blog: Restriction on Internet use in the Middle East on the rise: Internet cafés in Saudi must install hidden cameras
In addition to technical filtering and surveillance practices, more countries in the Middle East impose restrictions on Internet use in cyber cafés. The latest example comes from Saudi Arabia where Internet cafés have been ordered by the Ministry of Interior to install...
- Posted on 16/Apr/2009; tagged in Saudi Arabia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Surveillance, Cybercrime and security
ONI Blog: Herdict Launches Arabic Site; Saudi Arabia Reports
Herdict Web, the proud child of ONI, has just launched its new Arabic user interface. In the past 24 hours since the launch, the Herdict team has been thrilled to note a high number of reports coming from the...
- Posted on 09/Apr/2009; tagged in Saudi Arabia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Political filtering, Social filtering
ONI Blog: UAE Seeks Feedback On Flickr Filtering
In an unprecedented move, the Telecommunications and Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the UAE is giving users the opportunity to submit feedback over the blocking a number of sites, including Flickr. Internet Service Provider (ISP) du, followed larger ISP...
- Posted on 30/Mar/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Obscenity, Social filtering
ONI Blog: Dubai police chief wages war on youtube
Commander-in-Chief of Dubai police Lt General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim called (full article in Arabic , English summary) this week for the blocking of the social networking Web site youtube because, he said, the site contains religiously inappropriate...
- Posted on 10/Mar/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Obscenity, Hate speech, Human rights, Political filtering, Social filtering
ONI Blog: Middle East countries continue to censor content deemed offensive to Muslims
Countries in the Middle East continue to block online content deemed offensive to Muslims. The latest example comes from the United Arab Emirates which blocked access this week to the Web site Ahmed and Salim, an Israeli Web site which...
- Posted on 01/Mar/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Hate speech, Political filtering, Conflict and security filtering
ONI Blog: Can they hear me now? (On ICT regulations, governments, and transparency)
On February 11, Vodafone's global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, revealed that Vodafone handed over communications data to the Egyptian authorities in response to government demands. This data may have been used to help identify rioters who were...
- Posted on 24/Feb/2009; tagged in Egypt, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Legislation, Arrests and legal action, Human rights, Surveillance, Privacy, Data retention
ONI Blog: Arabic-language Wikipedia Reported Unblocked in Syria
In May 2008, it was reported by Syrian blogger AN@SONLINE [ar] that the Arabic language version of Wikipedia had been filtered by Syrian authorities. A number of Syrian users confirmed this report.
As recently as February 4, it had...
