Our assessment of events that took place in 2012 has found that freedom of expression continues to be under threat in these parts of the world, although some progress has been made in certain countries. This review discusses trends in cyber attacks, changing legal norms, social media use, technological development, censorship and filtering, and arrests of rights activists.

Seth Hardy was interviewed in a piece about the use of smartphones in cybercrime.

Citizen Lab Senior Advisor Robert Guerra and Post-Doctoral Fellow Brenden Kuerbis represented the Citizen Lab at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that was held in Baku, Azerbaijan from 6-9 November, 2012.

John Scott-Railton is conducting research in collaboration with the Citizen Lab on electronic attacks against opposition groups and the media in Libya and Syria.

The inaugural edition of the Social Media CyberWatch discusses issues related to privacy awareness.

The Citizen Lab report “The Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada” and its follow-up, “The Canadian Connection: One Year Later”, have been mentioned in the media in relation to the recent shutting down of Internet networks by the Assad regime in Syria.

This edition of the Latin America and the Caribbean CyberWatch covers related developments from Costa Rica, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Brazil, and Bolivia.

This edition of the Southeast Asia CyberWatch covers Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch covers topics such as censorship and filtering, blogger and netizen arrests, Internet and social media use, and technology.

This edition of the Latin America and the Caribbean CyberWatch covers related developments from Cuba, Argentina, Panama, Brazil, and Antigua.