20 Apr 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized
The anti-internet filtering software, Haystack, received the necessary export license from the US government last week to sell their product to Iran in an effort to help Iranian citizens gain free speech. Inspired by the internet restrictions during the June 2009 elections, the software uses mathematical formulas to mask users’ identities and to allow them to access and post items on government blocked websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and YouTube. Haystack was created by the non-profit Censorship Research Center in San Francisco, and according to the company’s executive director, Austin Heap, the only way to disable the software is by disabling the entire internet.
20 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
In a report yesterday by the New York Times(NYT), an anonymous source identified some of the information stolen in the December cyberattack on Google. The hacks prompted the company’s withdrawal from the Chinese market. Google has only specified that “intellectual property” was compromised in the attack, but the NYT claims its sources have confirmed that a password programme called Gaia, which allowed Google employees and other users access to a range of its web services, was one of the targets. No personal Gmail passwords or account details were breached, but the attack revealed vulnerabilities within Google’s own security system. To date, Google has refused to commented on the situation. US Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton has called for a “transparent” Chinese inquiry into the incident.
20 Apr 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized
The Bahrain Ministry of Information and Culture announced a ban on sharing local news with BlackBerry mobile devices last week. A ministry official, Abdullah Yateem, said the ban was to prevent the “chaos and confusion caused by such news among the public”. Immediately after the ban, the BlackBerry news provider “Breaking News” was forced to stop sending their free six-page daily newspaper to 13,000 subscribers in the country.
20 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called for all presidential candidates standing in the Filipino general election in May to make pledges protecting journalists and to overturn the “country’s culture of impunity”. This move comes after the government dropped the murder charges against Zaldy and Akmad Ampatuan on Saturday, who were linked to the Maguindanao massacre in November 2009. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has today named the Philippines as one of the 12 countries on its 2010 Impunity Index.
