Bahraini blogger Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri died Saturday while in custody of the country's security services.
According to Al Jazeera, the official statement said that al-Ashiri was "held since the second of this month on charges of inciting hatred against the regime and the promotion of sectarian" and his death was a result of "sickle cell anemia."
Ai Weiwei was arrested yesterday at the Beijing Airport on his way to Hong Kong, the New Yorker reported. Ai, China's best known artist, a global star and designer of the Beijing Olympics stadium, the Bird's Nest, had plans to possibly leave China to live in Germany, where he had set up a studio, according to Deutsche Welle.
We cover threats to free speech here, especially when those threats intersects the Web. Sometimes we know the people involved, as is the case with Ai. Our founder, Richard MacManus, took part in an historic conversation a year ago in New York with Ai.
Today, the OpenNet Inititative has released a report on the roles Western tech companies have played in enabling repressive Arabic regimes to filter and control the use of the Web by their citizens.
In the report, authors Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York "find that nine countries in the region utilize Western-made tools for the purpose of blocking social and political content, effectively blocking a total of over 20 million Internet users from accessing such websites."
Last Wednesday, Comodo Group, the digital certificate authority and internet security, got hacked. It issued issued nine fraudulent certificates for sites run by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype and Mozilla. It looks like the hack that got these certificates was run by the same Iranian cyber army that earlier hacked the Voice of America.
In a blog post, Comodo explained that login information for an affiliate was obtained and used to break into the Comodo server and issue the certificates.
The World Bank has announced the launch of a Web-based urban development platform for July 1.
In conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Institute for Urban Research, the Urbanization Knowledge Platform will link policy makers, academics, the Bank and other groups struggling to address the rapid increase in the size and importance of cities around the world.
Half the discussion surrounding the digital world seems to revolve around its utility in the real world. How does digital life produce wealth? How can it be used to increase political participation? Can art be made from or in it? It's no wonder that some digital citizens throw up their hands and write the questions off as the carping of eternal grandparents.
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit in San Francisco, has chosen a different route, neither exegesis nor abandonment. Instead (get ready for the sexy), they are the Large Hadron Collider of the digital world, banging people, ideas, approaches, concerns and populations together for the sheer joy of seeing how bright a flash and big a bang they can make.
Zimbabwe tends to remain out of the media spotlight, despite having one of the worst and most enduring dictatorships in the world. One of the reasons for this invisibility is that its resident tinhorn, Robert Mugabe, has outlawed independent domestic media and refused to allow international media in.
But people have a passion for news and that passion has gotten 45 Zimbabweans arrested and charged with treason in the southern African country. Their crime is having watched DVDs of recorded news coverage of the uprising in Egypt.
Dora Siliya, the Minister of Education for the African country of Zambia, and the spokesperson for the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy, has turned to her Facebook page to make national policy announcements.
This isn't the first time an African leader has used Facebook to reach out to his or her citizens. Nigeria's interim president, Goodluck Jonathan, used the social networking service to announce his run for the presidency.
On February 18 the Libyan Internet appeared shut down across the whole of the country. That state of affairs did not last long and since then, the Internet has been intermittent as pro- and anti-government forces fight it out.
Today, however, Rensys confirmed a report we mentioned from journalist Lisa Goldman that the Internet is 100% down for the North African country. The shutdown, even in the areas controlled by opponents of the current government, seems complete.
