Internet TV Channel Challenges Kremlin’s Information Monopoly
It was a familiar scenario. A Kremlin-linked website posts embarrassing wiretaps of a prominent opposition figure's phone calls in an apparent effort to discredit him and to dispirit the regime's critics. But this time the story went way off script. Less than 24 hours after the website Lifenews.ru posted recordings of Boris Nemtsov's phone calls -- in which he referred to fellow oppositionist Yevgenia Chirikova as a "bitch or an idiot" -- the two appeared together in a television studio to make up before the public.

Kyrgyz Mosques Under Greater Scrutiny As Ties Between Islam, Extremism Emerge
Even as the Kyrgyz city of Osh was racked by interethnic violence last year, its mosques were seen as a symbol of unity. But the role of the mosques may change as Islamic leaders seek to bring them under stricter central control.

Authoritarian Governments Have Immensely Benefited From The Web
Evgeny Morozov, a noted specialist on the use of new communications technologies to promote democratic values, has a new book titled "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom." In it, he argues that hype about "Twitter revolutions" and the enormous potential of the Internet to promote open societies and roll back authoritarianism is naive and overblown.

Democracies Confront Their Own Growing Censorship Tendencies
Arch Puddington
The murders of journalists in Russia, the jailing of bloggers in China, and the crackdown on the media in Iran regularly remind us that freedom of expression is under duress, even in an era of expanding global communications. However, considerably less attention has been paid to a new, more insidious threat to this fundamental human right.

PMW channel briefly removed from YouTube
Youtube ejected the Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch from its service on Sunday after receiving numerous complaints about alleged violations of YouTube’s community guidelines. The official reason given by youtube for removing PMW’s channel was that it repeatedly aired hate speech.

WikiLeaks Exploits Weaknesses in Technology, Human Nature
Historians, anti-war activists and armchair observers of human nature have had plenty to mull over in recent years thanks to the online group WikiLeaks. The Web site has published hundreds of thousands of stolen U.S. military and diplomatic documents from as recently as February of this year and as far back as the 1960s.

Chinese Web Surfers Blocked From Wikileaks
The WikiLeaks website that is attracting millions of fascinated viewers this week appears to unavailable to Chinese web surfers. People trying to log onto wikileaks.org in China are met with a notice saying the connection has been reset. That is the typical response when Chinese censors have used their sophisticated firewall to block access to a site.

EU Report Slams Curbs Put on Turkish Media
The European Union is criticizing Turkey for the rising number of prosecutions against journalists. E.U. concerns have been raised in an annual progress report on the country's bid to join the bloc. The annual European Union report on Turkey said while there is increasing open and free debate over sensitive issues such as minority rights, concerns were raised over press freedom.

Breaking Internet Censorship Will Take More Than Circumvention Tools
Hal Roberts
The OpenNet Initiative has documented Internet filtering in more than 40 countries worldwide. Filtering allows governments to prevent people within their borders from accessing websites that governments find offensive for any of a variety of political, social, or security reasons.

Russia’s Silicon Valley Dreams May Threaten Cybersecurity
There's little obviously unusual about the drab Moscow suburb Arnold Schwarzenegger visited last month. That's because Skolkovo has only just been selected as the planned site for a new Russian Silicon Valley, the crown jewel of a vaunted project President Dmitry Medvedev promises will modernize his oil-dependent country.

Western Media Getting Afghanistan Wrong
Behind the high walls of Kabul's tightly guarded government offices and diplomatic missions, peace and reconciliation are the new buzz words. International media coverage of Afghanistan echoes with stories about how Afghan officials and NATO are making progress reaching out to -- and even talking to -- Taliban commanders, some of whom have reportedly been given safe passage to Kabul.

Outcry Over Rampant Jailing Of Journalists In Turkey
It reads like a morality tale emblematic of modern Turkey. In a rational world, the killing of Hrant Dink -- a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and newspaper editor who was shot dead in 2007 -- should have been a wake-up call to democracy advocates in a country supposedly reforming to meet European Union membership standards.

What Went Wrong With Haystack?
Technically, "Haystack" was born June 16, 2009, when the young computer programmer Austin Heap announced his goal of offering Internet relays to Iranians trying to get news into and out of their nation. Except none of it was true. Haystack didn't work as its founders said. It never underwent extensive testing, and may have exposed those unknown few in Iran who tried it to detection by authorities.