This Wednesday, Americans mourned the death of freelance journalist James Foley at the hands of Islamic extremists. His mother Diane Foley said in statement that her son “gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people.”
New York Times journalist Matthew Rosenberg found himself embroiled in ongoing political intrigues in Afghanistan on Wednesday after refusing to reveal his sources for a report describing alleged behind-the-scenes maneuverings in the formation of a new government. Rosenberg was expelled from the Central Asian country on Thursday.
New details have emerged concerning the detention of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, held incommunicado in Tehran since his detention a month ago. The state-owned IRNA news agency quoted a judicial spokesperson as saying that Rezaian and his wife are being held on “security issues” and that an initial investigation is underway. Two photojournalists detained with Rezaian have subsequently been released.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings denounced the FCC’s proposed “pay to play” internet structure in an article for Wired this week. Championing the open internet, Hastings argued that “it would be better to have no rules than the ones being proposed by the FCC, which simply legalize discrimination on the internet.”
Two Yale computer science professors presented a new model for government data collection dubbed the Lawful Set-Intersection Protocol. The professors argue that their Protocol “would ensure that lawful electronic surveillance activities protect the innocent, are properly authorized and limited in scope, are subject to robust oversight, and follow transparent processes that the public can debate or challenge in court.”
The impact of Russia’s own new law regulating blogging remains uncertain with many internet users in Russia openly skeptical of the law’s effectiveness or seemingly choosing to ignore it. The law came into force on August 1 and in its first week only 11 of 486 registration requests accounts were accepted. Under the law, bloggers with daily audiences larger than 3,000 people must register, essentially becoming liable as media outlets.
After the African Leaders’ Summit in Washington, former politician and prisoner of conscience Birkutan Mideska says she doubts the impact of President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry’s support for press freedoms in her native Ethiopia, where journalists continue to be jailed under anti-terror laws. (Read a joint statement by PEN Nigeria, PEN South Africa, and PEN America expressing concern at the lack of attention to rights issues in the summit discussions.)
In neighboring Somalia, the western-backed interim government is showing little regard for freedom of the press. Security forces allegedly tortured 19 people; mostly journalists and staff members of independent radio stations Radio Shabelle and Sky FM detained during their forced closures.
On Tuesday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights expressed growing alarm at ongoing attacks on free expression in Thailand. The junta has opened at least 13 lèse-majesté cases since seizing power in July, including the arrests of Patiwat Saraiyam and Pornthip M. for their roles in a play depicting a fictional monarch manipulated by his advisors. Already under lèse-majesté and the Computer Crime Act, a taxi driver was sentenced to two and a half years for a conversation with a passenger, and a Facebook user to 15 years for a message.
Catastrophic news for feline fanatics: the seemingly harmless sharing of cat pictures may be giving people information on where you live and what is in your home, IKnowWhereYourCatLives.com shows. Art professor Owen Mundy utilized super computers at Florida State University to track the upwards of five million geo-tagged cat snaps uploaded to social media.