The Anti-Pornography Act 2014, the Public Order Management Act 2013, the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2014, the 2014 Press and Journalist regulations and the Non Government Organisation (NGO) Amendment bill have been criticised for creating unwarranted restrictions to liberties granted by the country’s 1995 constitution.

Cyber Steward Shahzad Ahmad, Director of Bytes for All (B4A), has won the Doughty Street Advocacy Award as part of Index on Censorship’s 2014 Freedom of Expression Awards. Ahmad was nominated in the advocacy category which recognizes activists fighting for free expression around the world.

Bytes for All (B4A) is continuing its battle at the Lahore High Court against Internet censorship in Pakistan. The court case has highlighted the ongoing censorship of YouTube in Pakistan, a result of the video sharing site’s refusal to block the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” video.

Where do human rights and online rights meet? Is there a clash between online freedom and human rights? Is there room for self-regulation? These are some of the questions that a recently concluded online discussions report on Internet freedom in Africa explores.

Cyber Stewards Network partner Bytes for All (B4A) is working together with Privacy International (PI) to sue the government of the United Kingdom over their Tempora surveillance program.

Cyber Stewards Walid Al-Saqaf, Hisham Al-Miraat, Ramsey George, and Reem Al-Masri, along with Citizen Lab affiliated Morgan Marquis-Boire and Lidija Sabados, participated in the 4th Arab Bloggers Meeting.

Civil society and academia have raised concerns about some of the articles in the convention, which had earlier been expected to be signed in January 2014. Latest reports indicate that, at the earliest, the law could be signed in June this year.

Mereka yang bertanya-tanya tentang masa depan Internet perlu tidak melihat lebih jauh lagi dari Indonesia. Seperti banyak negara di Selatan Dunia, Indonesia telah dengan cepat masuk ke dalam alam komunikasi digital global. Ibukota negara, Jakarta, disebut sebagai kota Twitter paling aktif di dunia, dan Indonesia kini memiliki jumlah keempat terbesar pengguna Facebook. Dari jumlah yang… Read more »

This report, Islands of Control, Islands of Resistance: Monitoring the 2013 Indonesian IGF, is the first in a series of Citizen Lab reports that apply a mixture of methods, from technical interrogation to field research and social and legal analyses, to study information controls in and around particular events. This report focuses on information controls in and around Indonesia’s hosting of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Governments’ use of biometric systems have raised privacy concerns and the need for greater transparency and accountability. This is because these systems collect and store individuals’ physical traits such as fingerprints, facial recognition, iris scans, and other personal characteristics. Biometric identification has been criticized as being error-prone and unreliable, as well as being fundamentally detrimental to privacy, free expression, and the right to anonymity, especially with regards to vulnerable individuals such as dissidents, whistleblowers, and journalists. Members of the Cyber Stewards Network are active in efforts to raise awareness on the use of biometric systems and surveillance technologies.