The book is edited by Benedetta Brevini, Arne Hintz and Patrick McCurdy and published by Palgrave Macmillan.

See more here.

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• Internet Freedom
• Syria Updates
• Blogger and Netizen Arrests
• Social Media News
• Cyber Attack
• Iran Telecommunications Updates

INTERNET FREEDOM

Tunisian media freedom organization shuts down – On July 4, the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC), which was tasked with helping to reform the post-revolution media landscape, announced the end of its mission. The head of the commission, Kamel Labidi, accused decision makers of “ignoring” the INRIC’s final report, submitted on April 2012. The report, among other things, urged the government to implement decree laws 115 and 116 ratified in November 2011 by the interim government of former PM Beji Caid Sebsi. Decree 115 (also known as the new press code) guarantees the protection of journalists from harassment and eliminates prison sentences for criminal defamation and a number of other speech offences, while decree 116 laid the ground for the establishment of an independent authority to “organise the audio-visual media landscape in a pluralistic, democratic, and transparent manner.” Despite the laws passing,  there has been a succession of  statements and actions by the government that rides roughshod over the provisions of the current press law. For instance, a 2,400-dinar (US$1,500) fine was imposed on Nabil Karoui, the owner of the television station Nessma TV, for broadcasting the animated film “Persepolis”, denounced as blasphemous by some Islamists.

Tunisians launch online platform to monitor police abuse – The Tunisian Association for Digital Liberties (ATLN) launched Yezzi, a tool which seeks to “collect violence testimonies sent by mobile, web, email and SMS, and then place them on a Google Map.” There is a broad impunity for police officers and acceptance of police brutality in Tunisian society. Indeed, it was the actions of corrupt law enforcement officials that precipitated the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and sparked the Arab Spring. Yezzi (translated as “enough” from Tunisian dialect) combines social activism, citizen journalism, and technological innovation to expose such abuses and seek accountability.

ANHRI condemns the blocking of Alsaha Al-Arabia website in Saudi Arabia – The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) condemned Saudi authorities for blocking Alsaha Al-Arabia, the first Arabic discussion forum created by a group of young Emiratis in the 1990s. The website has been blocked in Saudi Arabia for some time, but remained operational and could be accessed through various circumvention tools. However, site administrators published a statement on June 28 which said that the website will be shut down effective August 1 due to financial concerns. Advertisers have allegedly pulled their funding due to pressure from the Saudi government. Despite the administrators’ attempts to contact the government, they have not provided a rationale for their actions. This is an unusual censorship method as the regime chose to exert pressure financially,  instead of forcing administrators to shutter the website outright.

More than 100 sites filtered in Iran in just three months – Despite the unavailability of official statistics on the number of websites that are filtered across Iran, information collected by provincial governments has shown that more than 100 Iranian and foreign websites have been filtered in the past three months.

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SYRIA UPDATES

Anonymous claims responsibility for Syria Wikileaks – On July 6, the hacktivist group Anonymous released a statement in which it took credit for having provided to WikiLeaks over two million emails that were taken “from Syrian political figures, ministries, and associated companies”.  It also revealed that the “Anonymous Op Syria” team had consisted of elements from Anonymous Syria, the reformed Lulzsec  that is now known as Antisec, and the Peoples Liberation Front. They had aimed “to create a breach of multiple domains and dozens of servers in Syria” . Many hacktivists taking part in the operation were working from inside the country.

Opposition radio in Syria – Syrian activists living in Cairo have founded Radio Ana as an alternative to state media. The Assad regime employs the state media for its propaganda, while private stations have avoided covering political matters entirely for fear of having their licenses revoked. Radio Ana’s founders, Deiaa Dugnmoch and Rami Jarrah, hope that the station will lay the foundations for the development of a democratic system after Assad.

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BLOGGER AND NETIZEN ARRESTS

Detention in Sudan – Blogger Maha El-Senussi, who was arrested weeks ago by Sudanese authorities while covering a series of anti-austerity protests, has given an account of her interrogation and detention by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS).

Lèse majesté arrests in Oman – Lèse majesté laws have been cited in the arrest of four Omani dissidents accused of making defamatory comments against reigning Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Among them was poet Hamad al-Kharusi who was arrested for publishing a poem directed at the Sultan on his Facebook page. Cited in the arrest was Article 16 of Oman’s Cybercrime Law which prohibits the use of the Internet for “spreading news, video or audio recordings about the private life of individuals, even if it is right, or for insulting or defaming others.”

Iranians posting “lies” or blasphemous comments online can be jailed – Iran’s Cyber and Information Exchange Police (FATA) has released a statement stating that anyone convicted of posting “lies” or blasphemous comments online will face 91 days or up to two years in prison and/or a fine of US$250 up to US$2,000.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media use surges in Bahrain while the government continues to crackdown on political content – 51 percent of Bahrain’s 900,000 Internet users are now active on social networking sites, an increase of approximately 120,000 social media users since last year. Currently, 340,000 citizens are active on Facebook and 60,000 people have Twitter accounts. The government, however, still closely monitors and imposes censorship on these networks, as well as threatens users who post dissenting opinions with arrest. MENA Cyber Watch previously reported on the case of Nabeel Rajab, a prominent human rights activist who was arrested for posting tweets critical of the regime. This week, Rajab was found guilty of libel and sentenced to three months in jail. He also faces jail time for two other charges related to participating in and calling for protests through social media. The trial will resume on July 12.

Sudan’s social media smear campaign against opposition – Darfurian Rudwan Dawod, project director for Sudan Sunrise, an organization working towards peace and reconciliation in Sudan and South Sudan, was arrested last week at a protest organized by the pro-democracy student group, Girifna (Arabic for “We’re Fed Up”). A social media smear campaign then surfaced against Dawood, alleging that he was a terrorist who had been planning to bomb Khartoum. It came as no surprise, as President Omar al-Bashir has been known to use the state-controlled media to discredit activists who opposes his regime. Dawod has reportedly been tortured during his detention in an effort to get him to confess to being a CIA operative.

Arrest of ‘Satanism’ page owner in Iran - Iran’s FATA’s chief police officer in the province of South Khorasan said that cyber experts and police officers have identified a group on a social networking website that promotes Satanism in the country. Police officers have reportedly arrested the owner of the page.

Saudi protesters using social media – Saudi activists in the restive Eastern Province have used social media to draw attention to protests against and abuses by Saudi forces. Videos were posted showing thousands of mourners gathering in the streets during the funeral of Muhammed el-Filfil who was shot and killed on July 8 while protesting the arrest of a prominent Shiite cleric, Sheik Nimr al-Nimr. Videos of protesters clashing with security forces and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police after the funeral have also surfaced.

CYBER ATTACK

Sudanese government allegedly stops cyber-attack – Government-sponsored news source Al-Ahram Al-Yawm reported that the Sudanese government has thwarted attempts by hacker groups to plant spy software into more than 50 government websites. The revelation of the cyber-plot came after Anonymous released a YouTube video warning  that it will take action to protest Sudanese government’s restrictions on free speech and Internet access. MENA Cyber Watch has been covering the ongoing crackdown on anti-government websites and arrests of bloggers since protests against the regime began three weeks ago.

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IRAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS UPDATES

News from the Supreme Council of Cyberspace:

• Mehdi Akhavan Bahabadi, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, spoke on the successful transfer of government websites to Iranian hosts: “In recent years, attempts to host governmental portals and websites from within Iran have been achieved up to approximately 96 percent. However, it seems that the main goal of such a decision, to create a domestic market for the private sector to host governmental data centers, has been forgotten”. Bahabadi went on to say that Iran’s private sector should play a greater role in the IT industry’s expansion and governance. He expects that some of its policies and strategies will be modified in consultation with the private sector and with the help of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace.

• Bahabadi also announced a new decision on the amalgamation of the Telecommunications Research Center with the Supreme Council of Cyberspace following the President’s recommendations. From now on, not only would the Telecommunication Research Center operate under the Supreme Council’s supervision, but the entire facility and staff would also be relocated to the Supreme Council’s current location.

• Hamid Shahriari, member of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, stated that the formation of the Supreme Council followed a similar example in Ireland. He said: “In a report prepared for the Supreme Leader of Iran, it has been recommended that an inter-governmental council could greatly contribute to solving some of the current problems in the IT and Communication sector”. In Ireland, a similar council works under the supervision of the Prime Minister and all the ministries and governmental agencies are required to seek the council’s approval before issuing any certificate or allowances in the IT and Communications sector.

Plans for public Wi-Fi zones in Tehran cancelled – MobinNet, an Iranian telecommunications company, has been working on plans to bring high speed wireless Internet to Iran’s capital city. However, according to Mehr News Agency, the Communications Regulatory Authority refused to provide the company with a license to operate.

Iranian citizens typically use Google search engine five times a day - According to research results published by the IT and Digital Media Association, Iran’s 36.5 million Internet users, most of whom use the Google search engine approximately five times daily, contributed US$277 million to the company’s 2011 profits.

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The post Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch: July 6 – July 13, 2012 appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

Days after WikiLeaks began releasing a trove of more than 2 million e-mails stolen from Syrian officials, ministries and companies, members of an Anonymous group have claimed responsibility for the hacks and document dump to Wikileaks.

In a press release published Saturday, a group calling itself Anonymous Op Syria disclosed that its members hacked into multiple domains and dozens of servers inside Syria on Feb. 5 to obtain the e-mails, which it then gave to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks began publishing the e-mails on July 5, working with several media partners outside the United States, but didn’t disclose its partnership with Anonymous.

In its intro to the e-mail cache, WikiLeaks indicated that they came from 678,000 individual e-mail addresses and 680 domains, including ones belonging to Syria’s Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture. At least 400,000 of the e-mails are in Arabic and 68,000 are in Russian.

The documents range from “the intimate correspondence of the most senior Baath party figures to records of financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations,” according to WikiLeaks.

For the full article, see here.

The post Anonymous group says it gave Syrian e-mails to WikiLeaks appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

• Syria Updates
• Sudan Followups
• Cyber Warfare
• Blogger Arrests
• Cyber Surveillance
• Cyber Terrorism
• Internet Freedom
• Iran Telecommunication Updates

SYRIA UPDATES

WikiLeaks releases over two million emails – On July 5, WikiLeaks announced that it would gradually release over two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries, and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012. Julian Assange stated that “The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents. It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it.” The initial batch consisted of 25 emails documenting the ties between SELEX Communications, a subsidiary of an Italian industrial group Finmeccanica, and the Syrian government. SELEX previously sold TETRA, an encrypted communications system, to Syrian military and police forces. However, it has provided systems maintenance and training as late as February 2012, thus violating US and EU sanctions on the regime. It is expected that the remaining emails will be released over the coming months.

Syrian government websites must be hosted locally – Syrian Days and Al-Iqtisad reported that the Prime Minister’s office issued a communiqué which mandated that all ministries, organisations, companies, and public agencies undertake precautionary steps to ensure information security. These steps include transferring Syrian government organisations’ websites that are hosted elsewhere to servers located inside the Syrian Arab Republic, and a periodic (at least once a year) security review of those websites to be carried out by the Center for Information Security at the National Commission for Network Services.

Syrian Electronic Army hacks al-Jazeera’s social media – Pro-Assad Internet activists hacked the Twitter and Facebook accounts of al-Jazeera’s “The Stream” program on July 5. The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility on its website and accused al-Jazeera of propagating lies and falsehood. Al-Jazeera reportedly resolved the issue by day’s end. The incident is just the latest of many online attacks and website defacements attributed to the Syrian Electronic Army.

Reporting in Syria – The Economist reported on the importance of information communication technologies and social media in reporting the civil conflict in Syria. Much of the news comes from citizen journalists, activists, and bloggers inside Syria using Skype, satellite phones, email updates, and handheld video cameras.The article noted that while the government  is guilty of imposing a media blackout and actively disseminating false information, activists are equally guilty of manipulating information to suit their agendas.

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SUDAN FOLLOW-UPS

Attacks on Media – Attacks on members of the media in Sudan continue unabated. Egyptian journalist Shaimaa Adel was arrested by the security forces in an Internet cafe this week along with Sudanese journalist Marwa el-Tejany.  A post on Index on Censorship’s UNCUT blog detailed both the use of social media in anti-government protests and the government’s heavy-handed response, such as arresting bloggers and online activists. Allegations have surfaced that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have deliberately shut down services to curtail anti-government activities online.

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CYBER-WARFARE

Iran in defensive mode over cyber attacks – The Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) has been partially taken over by the country’s Ministry of Defence. TCI, which regulates various services and equipment such as digital switching centers, fibre optic cables, mobile phones, data networks, satellite services, and telephone services, will now be partially controlled by the Ministry. There is no clear indication as to the reason for this move; however, it could be speculated that this is a defensive measure against recent cyber attacks that have targeted Iran’s nuclear program.

Reza Taqipour, Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, stated that the Flame virus has not caused any notable damages to the country’s infrastructure. He also went on to say that no malware has been able to penetrate Iran’s networks to this date. Taqipour explained that Iran’s cyber defence is so strong, that it is able to filter hundreds of thousands of viruses that attempt to penetrate its network firewalls on a daily basis.

Anonymous hacked the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) government servers in order to highlight Internet censorship in the country. The group leaked a list of URLs filtered by UAE’s ISPs, which included websites with adult content, social media and dating sites, VPN providers, sites providing users with help to circumvent government controls, and sites promoting religious views other than Islam.

In Turkey, a local hacker group called RedHack targeted the official website of the Foreign Ministry. The group published the identities of foreign diplomats serving in Turkey and indicated that it plans to release more “sensitive information” soon. They also defaced the Ministry’s website with images of the Turkish Prime Minister embracing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi.

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BLOGGER ARRESTS

Mohammad Soleimani Nia, an Iranian journalist, translator, poet, and social networking expert, has been arrested again only two months after being released from jail. A CNN International report from July 4 stated that Nia had gone missing after returning to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison to retrieve some of his belongings, including a laptop, his passport, and driver’s license. According to Freedom House, Nia was summoned to Evin and detained without any charges being laid. The reasons behind this sudden detention are still unclear.

Arrests in Morocco – The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) released a statement condemning the upsurge of arrests of journalists and bloggers in Morocco. The most recent arrest occurred last month when Hasan Barhon, a journalist and blogger, was taken into custody for taking photos of a security crackdown of street vendors.

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CYBER SURVEILLANCE

Libya’s transitional government reinstates some surveillance – The Wall Street Journal reported that Libyan authorities have redeployed some of the interception equipment once used by former president Muammar Gaddafi. The equipment has been used over the past few months to track phone calls and online communications between remaining Gaddafi loyalists, including Saadi Gaddafi. The caretaker government’s intelligence agencies have denied using Gaddafi-era surveillance gear, but other Libyan officials have stated otherwise. Some see the measure as a necessary means to protect the revolution from backsliding, while others argue that it is a violation of the principles of democracy and transparency that underpinned Gaddafi’s overthrow in the first place.

Guaranteed protection of Iranian email accounts – Director General of Iran’s government-controlled Information Technology Company, Esmail Radkani, has stated that emails on Iranian servers can be accessed by the government only through a court-issued warrant. If an instance should arise where a person’s email is compromised without a warrant, then that person can make a complaint to the judiciary. However, Radkani added that such assurances cannot be given to persons using non-Iranian email accounts. MENA Cyber Watch has reported on this issue before. This effort is a further push to encourage Iranians to use local email providers and therefore make the country’s cyberspace more self-sufficient.

Hijab for Iranians on the web – In a question and answer period, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, Iran’s Prosecutor General, responded to questions about hijab, the veil worn by Muslim women to cover their hair, in cyberspace by explaining that Iranians are expected to follow Islamic dress code on the Internet. The police have the power to charge any offenders.

Dealing with unethical behaviour on Facebook in Iran – According to Mashregh News, several Facebook accounts with un-Islamic profiles and cover photos were hacked last week. Their profile photos were replaced with the logo of Iran’s judicial body and accompanied by the text: “By judicial order, the owner of this page has been placed under investigation”. A few friends in the hacked accounts were also tagged in the warning photographs.

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CYBER TERRORISM

TIME magazine reported that French counter-terror authorities have arrested a Tunisian man accused of being a “key enabler of communications between extremist groups allied to al-Qaeda around the globe”. As administrator of a website favored by Islamist radicals, the suspect’s web activities included facilitating secure communication for the groups, raising funds, recruiting volunteers, and providing information on potential targets.

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INTERNET FREEDOM

The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council adopted a resolution affirming that all human rights must be protected online as well as offline. The resolution was submitted by Turkey, Tunisia, plus three other countries, and co-sponsored by 85 countries – a number of them in the MENA region. Tunisia’s Ambassador to the UN, Moncef Baati, noted the particular importance of the resolution for his country, stating, “The most important result of the Tunisian revolution is this right to freedom of expression…(this) is very important at the moment (in Tunisia) and it is for this reason that there is a strong commitment in Tunisia to consolidate Internet rights.”

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IRAN TELECOMMUNICATION UPDATES

Mashregh News reported that Google’s tutorial on effective search methods, Power Searching with Google, is no longer accessible in Iran. Google has cut access due to recent American sanctions on Iran. Access to Google Analytics was also terminated in June for the same reason.

Training on circumvention tools deemed illegal – Iran’s Cyber and Information Exchange Police in the province of North Khorasan stated that it is a criminal offence to sell, publish, provide unauthorised access to, or train people on the use of circumvention tools.

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The post Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch: June 29 – July 5, 2012 appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

Today, Thursday 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files – more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012.

This extraordinary data set derives from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, including those of the Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture.

Over the next two months, ground-breaking stories derived from the files will appear in WikiLeaks (global), Al Akhbar (Lebanon), Al Masry Al Youm (Egypt), ARD (Germany), Associated Press (US), L’Espresso (Italy), Owni (France) and Publico.es (Spain). Other publications will announce themselves closer to their publishing date.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said: “The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents. It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it.”

For the full release, and to view the files, see here.

For more analysis on the files, click here.

The post Wikileaks publishes two million Syrian related emails appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

As the US and Europe leveled increasingly severe sanctions on Syria, Western tech companies were still working eagerly with the Assad regime and Syrian government-owned entities. This is according to e-mails obtained by Wikileaks, dating from 2006 up until March of 2012. The e-mails are now being published in waves by Wikileaks, both through its own website and through a collection of news organizations.

The first wave of released documents—25 out of more than two million e-mails obtained by Wikileaks—focuses on Italian networking and systems integration vendor SELEX (a subsidiary of Finmeccanica—which, coincidentally, also owns Agusta, the helicopter manufacturer tied to the development of the Chinese Z-10 attack helicopter) and Greek network integrator Intracom. E-mails between representatives of the two companies published by Wikileaks show how they worked around the ever-tightening political noose of trade sanctions to bring a joint project in Syria to completion. That project? A secure software-defined radio network for the Syrian government based on SELEX’s TETRA trunked radio network hardware.

The VS-3000 and AS-3000 mobile TETRA transceivers, delivered under the contract—for what was advertised as a “public safety” network for emergency and disaster response—provide mobile voice and data for ground vehicles, coastal patrol craft, and aircraft. They link to a nationwide grid of ground stations connected by a fiber-optic network. But starting in May of last year, the project was expanded from its original 40 million euro price tag by more than 25 percent. A February invoice for the project totaled over 66 million euros. Those expansions came as the Syrian government requested TEA3 encryption for the radio system and started rolling it out to police.

For the full article, see here.

The post Italian firm sold Syria secure radios as crackdown raged appeared first on The Citizen Lab.