Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: June 15, 2012
On Thursday, the UK Home Department released a draft of the Communications Bill. Home Secretary Theresa May defended the bill saying, “If we stand by as technology changes, we will leave police officers fighting crime with one hand tied behind...
ONI Blog: Stuxnet-Flame Connection Highlights the Rise of State-Sanctioned Cyberweaponry
Researchers at the Kaspersky Lab in Russia are reporting that the destructive malware known as Flame, a bug that has been infecting computers in Iran and elsewhere, is now being tied to the other superbug dubbed Stuxnet, the computer bug suspected of...
ONI Blog: Syria ramps up cyber mining to target activists
While web surveillance is far from a new issue in Syria, it appears that under the current state of insecurity the Assad government is raising surveillance to the next level, militarizing the web and using the internet as a tool to target...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: June 8, 2012
China's Internet monitors unleashed a broad clampdown on online discussion of the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, restricting even discussion of the nation’s largest stock market when the index fell by a number that coincidentally alluded to the date...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: May 12, 2012
Tor found two blocked sites in Palestine with their latest OONI-Probe tool. The organization's latest available software installed on local computer networks crawls millions of websites using a transparent HTTP proxy. Sina Weibo released a new set of guidelines that specify...
ONI Blog: Palestinian Authority Unblocks News Websites After Criticisms
The Jerusalem Post reported that the Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered access restored to eight websites that were blocked two weeks ago. In his order to the attorney general, Abbas stated, "Freedom of expression is a right enshrined in...
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: CPJ Ranks Ten Most Censored Countries
In preparation for World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists published its findings on the most censored countries in the world. The top three countries with the most press restrictions and least access to media information were revealed to...
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 13, 2012
Iran's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has denied that they are planning a domestic intranet. In a statement, they claimed that rumors about an intranet were the result of hostile propaganda from the west. Major software and Internet companies have ...

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