Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

Our Middle East and North Africa round-up spotlights Bahrain’s first military trial of civilians since 2011, a growing crackdown on members of Egypt’s LGBTQI+ community, and a new player restricting Iranians’ internet access.

The “Phish For The Future” campaign targeted digital civil liberties activists at Free Press and Fight For the Future, and appears to have been aimed at stealing credentials for various business services.

Our monthly roundup spotllghts Egypt’s latest efforts to control the media (and rainbow flags), the Kurdish referendum (and aftershocks), a campaign to tackle self-censorship in Palestine and much more.

The seizure of .cat domains is a worrying signal that the Spanish government places its own interests in quelling the Catalonian independence movement above the human rights of its citizens to access a free and open Internet.

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.

Whistleblower and activist Chelsea Manning, Techdirt editor and open internet advocate Mike Masnick, and IFEX executive director and global freedom of expression defender Annie Game are the distinguished winners of the 2017 Pioneer Awards, which recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier.

“All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. But we must also recognize that on the Internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with.”

In a report called “The Pregnancy Panopticon”, EFF and Gizmodo reporter Kashmir Hill examine some of the privacy and security properties of nearly twenty different fertility and pregnancy tracking applications.