7amleh – Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media

In a month that included a malware surveillance campaign in Lebanon, Telegram being blocked in Iran and crackdowns in Tunisia, the release of Hisham Al-Omeisy was a welcome bit of good news.

The Justice Ministry has proposed striking some repressive provisions in the 2017 law in response to concerns from civil society groups, but left in place others that would allow disproportionate and arbitrary restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, and protection of data.

Having a Facebook profile in Palestine means not only being targeted by Israel’s algorithm and censored by the platform itself, but also facing the threat of the Palestinian Authority’s new Electronic Crimes Law.

A joint statement by the Association of Progressive Communications, IFEX and 64 co-signatories at the UN-HRC 36 warns of the threat to human rights posed by recent attacks on the right to use encryption technology, in Turkey and across the globe.

Whether authoritarian regimes, so-called democracies or warring armed groups, those who wield power in the Middle East and North Africa have taken internet censorship to new levels and stepped up their individual campaigns against critics, journalists, and opponents this month.

On the one-year anniversary of the death of popular Cambodian activist Kem Ley, civil society organisations from around the world reiterated their call for an independent inquiry.

NGOs around the world ask authorities to stop campaigns of repression against HRDs and civil society organisations in the Middle East and North Africa region