While the Mexican government has long been suspected of purchasing surveillance equipment, the frequency of these purchases and the level of public funds allocated to them are rapidly increasing. Last February,  New York Times published an investigative report on a USD 355 million outlay by the Mexican Ministry of Defense for sophisticated surveillance equipment. Six months earlier, Carmen Artistegui, a renowned investigative journalist in Mexico, published a report documenting five contracts from the Secretariat of National Defense for the purchase of surveillance technologies. All five contracts were confidential and granted to a single company headquartered in the state of Jalisco called Security Tracking Devices, Inc.

Cyber Steward Network partner Renata Avila details her efforts to bring legal action against FinFisher in Mexico.

Information Controls: Iran’s Presidential Elections is a collaboration between ASL19 and Psiphon. It evaluates the role and impact of information controls during the Iranian Presidential elections in 2013.

This is the Indonesian translation of “IGF 2013: An Overview of Indonesian Internet Infrastructure and Governance,” part one of a four part Citizen Lab series that explores online freedom of expression and the state of information controls in Indonesia in the context of their role as host of the 2013 IGF.

Citizen Lab Special Advisor Robert Guerra shared his views on the IGF 2013 in a piece by Monika Ermert published in Internet Policy Journal.

On Tuesday October 8th, Citizen Lab’s Seth Hardy, Katie Kleemola and Greg Wiseman delivered their presentation “RATastrophe: Monitoring a Malware Menagerie” at SecTor (Security Education Conference Toronto).

Slides are available here.
Video is available here

Citizen Lab research fellows Tim Maurer and Camino Kavanagh report back from the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace. This year participants hosted by the South Korean government included some 43 ministers and vice-ministers as well as delegates from some 87 countries — the highest number yet, making it one of the most high profile international conferences on cyberspace policy to date.

From 22 – 25 October 2013, over 2,000 government, civil society and private sector delegates from around the world gathered in Bali, Indonesia for the 8th Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2013).

This blog post seeks to map out the infrastructure and governance of ICTs in the country, and explores the trends and challenges regarding the right to freedom of expression and access to information, that is grounded in the universal human rights framework.

An Indonesian translation of this post is available here.

Terjemahan dalam bahasa Indonesia dari halaman ini tersedia disini.

Building on past network measurements, legal, and policy analyses undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative, we set out to apply a mixed-methods approach to better understand the current situation. Our analysis is set in the context not only of the 2013 IGF, but amidst increasingly intense debates about free expression and access to information, and rapid technological change and development.