Newsnight journalist’s laptop seized by UK police under Terrorism Act. Exiled: When the most dangerous place for journalists is your country. Australia's national security proposals will criminalise journalists, says union. Australia’s media union has warned the Abbott government’s looming national security changes will have a “chilling effect” on public-interest journalism and expose reporters to legitimate complaints about breaches of their professional ethics.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance has warned the federal parliament’s joint intelligence and security committee the first tranche of the Coalition’s national security reforms will “criminalise journalists and journalism”. The critique relates to legislation currently before the parliament. Enemies of the Internet 2014: entities at the heart of censorship and surveillance. Natalia Radzina of Charter97, a Belarusian news website whose criticism of the government is often censored, was attending an OSCE-organized conference in Vienna on the Internet and media freedom in February 2013 when she ran into someone she would rather not have seen: a member of the Operations and Analysis Centre, a Belarusian government unit that coordinates Internet surveillance and censorship.
It is entities like this, little known but often at the heart of surveillance and censorship systems in many countries, that Reporters Without Borders is spotlighting in this year’s Enemies of the Internet report, which it is releasing, as usual, on World Day Against Cyber-Censorship (12 March). Identifying government units or agencies rather than entire governments as Enemies of the Internet allows us to draw attention to the schizophrenic attitude towards online freedoms that prevails in in some countries. Private sector and inter-governmental cooperation National security as pretext. Researching and exposing threats to press freedom. Home: INSI. Freedom House. Reporters Without Borders.
Press Freedom Online - Committee to Protect Journalists. The police’s defence in the Miranda judicial review. UK Court: David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) A British lower court has ruled that London police acted lawfully in employing an anti-terror statute to detain and interrogate David Miranda for nearly nine hours at Heathrow Airport last summer, even while recognizing that the detention was “an indirect interference with press freedom.”
Miranda, a Brazilian national, was carrying secret documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden from one reporter to another — from Laura Poitras in Berlin to Miranda’s partner, Glenn Greenwald, in Rio de Janeiro. Greenwald and Poitras have published extensive revelations from the documents that Snowden provided them, primarily at the Guardian and the New York Times; both are now editors at The Intercept. On the UK's Equating of Journalism With Terrorism. (updated below)
Police: the Security Service wanted to retrieve Miranda’s “espionage” material. Barrett Brown. Ending the Culture of Impunity. Ten journalists to free from prison - Reports. More on This Issue • 2013 prison census • Infographic On World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists is highlighting 10 emblematic cases of journalists in prison, silenced by authorities in retaliation for their work.
CPJ is calling on authorities to release these journalists, as well as all others being held in relation to their work. Bekjanov, Ghaderi, and Hai were convicted on anti-state charges, an allegation used frequently by authoritarian regimes seeking to silence critical news coverage, according to CPJ research. CPJ research has documented a rise in the jailing of journalists since 2000, a year before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States fueled the global expansion of anti-terrorism and national security laws. 100 Information Heroes. Eye catchers / The 61 Countries a Mad Despot Could Instantly Unplug From the Internet -@renesys via @wired. Israel must explain targeting of journalists in Gaza. December 2, 2012 Hon.
Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister of Israel 3 Kaplan St. P.O.B. 187 Kiryat Ben-Gurion Jerusalem 91919 Israel Via email: pm_eng@pmo.gov.il Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu, The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned that Israeli airstrikes targeted individual journalists and media facilities in the Gaza Strip between November 18 and 20. A series of Israeli airstrikes struck two buildings that house news media, resulting in injuries to nine journalists, while separate missile attacks resulted in the deaths of three journalists, according to news reports and CPJ research. Our research shows the following: On November 18 and 19, airstrikes targeted Al-Shawa and Housari Tower and Al-Shuruq Tower, both of which are well-known for housing numerous international and local news organizations.
A third journalist was killed when his car was hit by a missile that same day, AP reported, citing a Gaza health official. On November 20, AP cited Lt. Imprisonments jump worldwide, and Iran is worst - Reports. Stark regional differences are seen as jailings grow significantly in the Middle East and North Africa.
Dozens of journalists are held without charge, many in secret prisons. A CPJ special report Journalists reporting on protests and civil unrest face a rising threat of detention. Here, Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian journalist. Concerns over fate of Syrian prisoner - Middle East. Friends and colleagues of Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian-Syrian, say they fear he is in imminent danger of a quick military trial and possible execution. A coalition of his friends and supporters said on Monday that he was transferred from a civil prison to a military prison and denied a lawyer. The 31-year-old computer engineer was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus on March 15, 2012.
Since then his family has received no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts, according to freebassel.org, an online campaign for his release. Ethiopia: 18-year sentence handed to journalist, blogger, and 2012 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award winner Eskinder Nega on terrorism charges. Jailed Egyptian blogger on hunger strike. Sanad, who runs his own blog, was arrested after he wrote an article criticizing the military and describing his torture by the military while he was in detention.
He also said the military was the real threat to the country--not the deposed President Hosni Mubarak. Sanad, a civilian, was sentenced to three years in prison for "insulting the military" after a trial in military court, his defense lawyer, Ali Atef, told CPJ. In early July, the journalist's defense team submitted an appeal, but the military council said he might not get a court date for another year and a half, his brother, Marc Nabil Sanad, told CPJ. Journalism is Not Terrorism: Calling on Ethiopia to #FreeEskinder Nega. UPDATE November 22, 2012 : According to news reports this morning, Eskinder Nega's appeal has been postponed until December 19th.
A lawyer for another defendant noted : "As they [the Court] scrutinized our ground of appeal they found so many legal and factual irregularities. " Judge Dagne Melaku has stated that the Court needs several weeks to review the "bulky" case file of evidence. Six strikes copyright disconnection event in NYC, Nov 28. NYPD Taru Zuccotti Raid Footage. India: freedom of speech, information & media. How Even Highly-Targeted Censorship Can Lead To Overblocking. Flaw In YouTube Takedown Process Exposed. Textbook Publisher Pearson Takes Down 1.5 Million Teacher And Student Blogs With A Single DMCA Notice. DC police chief announces shockingly reasonable cell camera policy. Information access & communication. Senator Wyden lays out “digital freedom” agenda. CISPA / TPP / ACTA / SOPA / PIPA / COICA. My panel with Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf and Al Gore at Mexico City’s Campus Party. Amnesty International website ‘blocked in Saudi Arabia’
Pakistan escalates its internet censorship - Opinion - Al Jazeera English. Belarus: Browsing Foreign Websites a Misdemeanor - Global Legal Monitor - Law Library of Congress. Center for Copyright Information ISP Copyright Alert System Memorandum of Understanding. Center for Copyright Information ISP Copyright Alert System Fact Sheet and FAQ. White House: we "win the future" by making ISPs into copyright cops. The White House likes the newly announced "six strikes" voluntary agreement announced today between major copyright holders and Internet access providers.
The six ways you can appeal new copyright "mitigation measures" Telstra Starts Implementing Australian Censorship Scheme. Cyberwar - Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors - Series. Unorthodox links to the internet: Signalling dissent. Mexican film on the court system is now the subject of its own trial. To Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011. James Goodale: It’s a bad time for press freedoms. Phone Records of Journalists of The Associated Press Seized by U.S.
The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. Everything You Wanted to Know About the DoJ/AP Controversy. Since news that the Justice Department had secretly obtained journalists’ phone records broke, the story has been developing quickly.
The Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. U.S.-Funded Internet Liberation Project Finds Perfect Test Site: Occupy D.C.