Currently browsing posts tagged: iran.

To Regulate (Or Preferably Not): On Mueller’s claim of misdirected resistance to surveillance technology

A pair of blog posts this week from Milton Mueller have sparked multiple conversations filling my inbox (as well as an unprecedented amount of passive aggression, of which I do not approve, but the sheer number of people practicing it makes me reticent to name names). The posts take on the emerging cottage industry of [...]

29.12.2011

3 Comments

Journalistic Verification, Amina Arraf, and Haystack

How did a Syrian blogger, who told beautiful and heartwrenching stories of life as a lesbian in Damascus, manage to trick so many people? How did an American software engineer, whose passion for the Iranian cause led him to build what he dubbed the safest of circumvention tools, do the same? The stories of Amina [...]

10.06.2011

18 Comments

West Censoring East: Or Why Websense Thinks My Blog is Pornography

Today, the OpenNet Initiative has released a paper, authored by Helmi Noman and myself, enumerating the widespread use of American- and Canadian-built filtering technologies in the Middle East and North Africa.  The paper, entitled “West Censoring East: The Use of Western Technologies by Middle East Censors 2010-2011“, looks closely at Websense, McAfee’s SmartFilter, and Netsweeper [...]

28.03.2011

15 Comments

Iran but not Tunisia: Where’s the outrage?

I fear this post will raise more questions than it will provide answers.  I know that I will likely come across as naive, not able to grasp realpolitik.  I’m angry, on behalf of my friends in and exiled from Tunisia, as to why so little attention is being paid to the current situation (in case [...]

06.01.2011

5 Comments

Why I Don’t Believe in “Net Freedom”

For the past two weeks, Tunisia has been racked with unrest following the December 17 self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a young, educated vendor whose produce stand was confiscated because Bouazizi failed to show a permit.  The protests sweeping the country have resulted in further censorship from authorities, whose stronghold on the Internet has increased as [...]

02.01.2011

12 Comments

Forget WikiLeaks: The Amusement of Public State Department Travel Warnings

I feel a bit guilty writing this post; after all, politics aside, I don’t believe that the State Department wishes the Lebanese tourism industry any ill will, nor do I think that worrying about my safety as a citizen is a bad thing.  I’m sure it goes without saying, also, that I recognize that there [...]

12.12.2010

7 Comments

Facebook and Saudi Arabia

I went offline for this weekend (complete radio silence) for the first time in years.  Of course, during that time, Saudi Arabia had to go and block Facebook the media went crazy reporting that Saudi Arabia blocked Facebook, but Saudi netizens are saying there was no actual block.  And then unblock Facebook.  It’s almost as [...]

14.11.2010

4 Comments

Digital Activism, the U.S. Government, and the Arab World

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an op-ed by respected journalist Rami Khoury, entitled “When Arabs Tweet.” In the piece, Khoury questioned the State Department’s role in promoting digital technologies in the region. Anyone who has ever spoken with me at length about this topic knows how I feel: that the U.S. [...]

07.08.2010

9 Comments

Net Freedom Starts at Home

David Ignatius is one journalist whose work I greatly respect. I followed his PostGlobal project with Fareed Zakaria for its duration and know that, as a journalist, he tends toward openness and honesty, with a definite global (and sometimes even developing world) slant. Yesterday, in a Washington Post op-ed entitled, “The case for spreading press [...]

19.04.2010

1 Comment

How the U.S. Censors Arabs

In my spare time, I’ve been doing a lot of talking to activists and reporters about two issues that are getting very little coverage in the U.S., despite both being facets of U.S. policy. The first is H.R. 2278, which eatbees has done a better job than I ever could of explaining here. For those [...]

29.01.2010

2 Comments

Net freedom for all? Not so much…

I’m a bit late to the party with comments on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Net freedom speech last Thursday; I was deep in work that day and spent the weekend doing fun things (like visiting with friends and finally seeing Avatar). Still, though there have been plenty of excellent analyses of the speech (check [...]

25.01.2010

2 Comments

On Un-Sanctioning Syria

A notable news item this morning is that of the United States’ lifting two bits of its sanctions on Syria, one of which happens to be its ban on the import/export of IT, including hardware and software (the other is on the exportation of goods to the Syrian aviation industry). Syrian envoy to the U.S. [...]

27.07.2009

3 Comments

On Holding Bloggers Accountable

Post-script: As my friend and colleague Ethan Zuckerman points out here, the New York Times does in fact have more of a responsibility than the Iranian blogger who reported on this story. I do still believe that we need to hold bloggers accountable as well, but in taking into consideration the fact that The Lede [...]

23.07.2009

7 Comments

Poor Alternatives

Anne Applebaum, liberal-ish Washington Post and Slate correspondent, former-USSR expert, and wife of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently published the most ridiculous op-ed of all time, entitled “Morocco, an Alternative to Iran.”  On Slate, it was published as “Morocco Makes Peace With Its Past” (perhaps even more proposterous), and I perhaps wouldn’t have [...]

30.06.2009

3 Comments

Blogging for a Cause: Global Voices Advocacy

As part of Zemanta‘s “Blogging for a Cause” month, I would like to pay homage to Global Voices Advocacy, a non-profit organization and sister project of Global Voices Online. Global Voices Advocacy, or “Advox” as it is affectionately called, seeks to advocate on behalf of the rights of bloggers and journalists. It is often the [...]

12.05.2009

5 Comments

Free Hoder?

Following my posts here and at the Huffington Post regarding the “arrest” of blogger Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder), I realize that perhaps my pronouncements were premature. Many of you are following this story with skeptical eyes, and I want you to know: so am I. For those of you who aren’t so aware of what’s [...]

24.11.2008

2 Comments