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.

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.

The Citizen Lab, Russian secret services watchdog Agentura.Ru, and Privacy International have launched a collaborative project to examine ‘Russia’s Surveillance State.’ As part of this project, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan of Agentura.Ru published a piece in Wired magazine on November 1, 2012, titled The Kremlin’s New Internet Surveillance Plan Goes Live Today.

After years spent as one of the world’s most strictly controlled information environments, the government of Burma has recently begun to open up access to previously censored online content. Recent OpenNet Initiative testing has confirmed these changes, finding a variety of opposition websites, critical blogs and foreign news sites to be accessible after years of blocking. This ONI blog post discusses recent developments in Burma and reports on the results of testing conducted in Burma in August 2012.

In this report, Citizen Lab Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire describes analysis performed on malicious software used to compromise a high profile dissident residing in the United Arab Emirates. The findings indicate that the software is a commercial surveillance backdoor distributed by an Italian company known as Hacking Team. The report also describes the potential involvement of vulnerabilities sold by the French company, VUPEN.

This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch covers topics such as censorship and filtering, cyber attacks and technology.

This edition of the Latin America and The Caribbean CyberWatch covers related developments from Cuba, Jamaica, Venezuela, Chile, and Brazil.