This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch discusses censorship and filtering, surveillance, blogger and netizen arrests and more.

Blue Coat Devices capable of filtering, censorship, and surveillance are being used around the world. 61 of these Blue Coat appliances are on public or government networks in countries with a history of concerns over human rights, surveillance, and censorship. Our findings support the need for national and international scrutiny of Blue Coat implementations in the countries we have identified, and a closer look at the global proliferation of “dual-use” information and communication technologies.

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

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

Source: Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times

Security researchers who studied the spyware last month said it can grab images of users’ computer screens, record their Skype chats, remotely turn on cameras and microphones, and log keystrokes.

In this article, CTV News reports on the role of Western companies in promoting censorship in the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, it looks at Netsweeper Inc., a Canada-based developer of content filtering software, and its role in providing governments in Qatar, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates with tools to filter online content.

Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, told CTV News that the recent controversy surrounding the Canadian company demonstrates that the Canadian federal government needs to take a clear position on content filtering, and within this, develop a clear foreign policy for cyberspace. For example, Deibert suggests that the Canadian government introduce legislation which makes it “illegal for Canadian companies to filter content in countries that violate the freedoms outlined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.” In essence, “take a major international treaty of the 20th century, and apply it in a decidedly 21st century context.”

Deibert said that Canada should take on a leadership role on cyber policy “in international forums to spotlight and develop a kind of normative agreement that is consistent with the values we hold as a country.”

For the full article see here.

“Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and her Qatari counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani have signed a bilateral security accord to better fight terrorism and threats in cyberspace.”

From The New New Internet