Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng published a piece in The Atlantic on 27 November. Titled, “How Tech Companies Can Help Overcome Chinese Censorship”, the piece looks at companies facilitating censorship in China.

What do the Trinity Davison Lutheran Church, the Filipino American Women’s Network, the Tucson Jazz Institute, the Sacramento Police Activities League, the Pan Iranist Party of Iran, and the Salvation Army of Houston, Texas have in common?

Their websites are all blocked for Internet users in Saudi Arabia, and for most Internet users in the United Arab Emirates

Cyber Steward Network partner Walid Al-Saqaf writes about the recent launch of Yemen’s chapter of the Internet Society for Global Voices Advocacy.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert’s book, Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, made the long list for the 2014 British Colombia National Non-Fiction award.

The Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) and Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) to co-host discussion on online safety matters in Africa, during November and December 2013.

This post is an introduction to Asia Chats a research project analyzing
information controls and privacy in mobile messaging applications used
in Asia. The project will produce a series of reports that will begin
with a focus on WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk. Reports will include
analysis based on our technical investigation of censorship or
surveillance functionality, assessment of privacy issues surrounding
these applications’ use and storage of user data, and comparison of the
terms of service and privacy policies of the applications.

This report by Seth Hardy (Senior Security Analyst, Citizen Lab)
describes the technical details of client-side censorship functionality
in the LINE messenger client for Android, and a method for disabling it.
This post is the first in a series of research reports analyzing
information controls and privacy in mobile messaging applications used
in Asia. An introduction to the project can be found here

This post analyzes the multistakeholder participation in the 2013 IGF in Indonesia, which has been lauded as a model for how different stakeholdergroups can operate at these events, and discusses developments in the country’s Internet governance agenda.

Cyber Steward partner organization Bytes for All (B4A), based in Pakistan, joined with ARTICLE 19 to condemn a proposal developed by the government of Sindh Province for a three-month ban on instant messaging apps Skype, Viber, and WhatsApp. The provincial government maintained that this proposed ban is part of an effort to block access to networks used by criminals and terrorists for their activities. Legal experts in Pakistan argue that the ban is legally justifiable as the 1996 Telecommunications (Reorganisation) Act allows communication services to be suspended for security concerns. However, B4A and ARTICLE 19 have criticized the proposal as incompatible with international human rights standards.

In January 2013, Cyber Steward partner Bytes for All (B4A) submitted a petition to the Lahore High Court to challenge Internet censorship in the country. This case, in collaboration with the Media Legal Defense Initiative, a non-governmental organisation which helps journalists and independent media outlets around the world defend their rights, highlighted the ongoing censorship of YouTube in Pakistan. The popular video-sharing site has been blocked since 2012 since YouTube refused to remove the controversial anti-Islamic “Innocence of Muslims” video.