Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

A study of four countries in the Arab world: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia. Each has faced an increased threat of terrorist activity in recent years, and to varying degrees, each has responded by cracking down on online speech.

The bill would have forced companies to dedicate resources to finding ways to defeat their own encryption or insert backdoors to facilitate decryption. As a result, the bill would have essentially prohibited companies from offering full disk encryption for their phones.

Critical blogging is the lifeblood of free societies, not a threat to social stability, say rights groups.

The new method of accessing the iPhone raises questions about the government’s apparent use of security vulnerabilities in iOS and whether it will inform Apple about these vulnerabilities.

For now, the government is backing off its demand that Apple build a tool that will compromise the security of millions, contradicts Apple’s own beliefs, and is unsafe and unconstitutional.

According to the New York Times, the Department of Justice is locked in a “prolonged standoff” with WhatsApp. The story may represent a disturbing preview of the next front in the FBI’s war against encryption.

Since his detention, many human rights groups have campaigned for his release. On 21 April 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and called for his release, yet the Syrian authorities refuse to free him.

March 13-19 is Sunshine Week, when open government activists around the country make noise about the need to reform laws on access to information. EFF created “The Foilies,” name-and-shame awards for agencies and officials who stand in the way of transparency and accountability.