Tag: Censorship

Late last week, Access intervened before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, Europe’s highest human rights court, in the case Delfi AS v. Estonia. At stake in the Delfi case are questions of intermediary liability and whether european websites can continue allowing users to post content freely, anonymously, and without government-mandated censorship.

Following 67 days of censorship, YouTube was unblocked in Turkey on Tuesday following a ruling last week by the Constitutional Court that the ban violates freedom of expression. While Access welcomes the Court’s decision, the underlying legal frameworks allowing such censorship still exist.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blocks Twitter, another step in his ongoing war against the open internet.

Government censorship of news reporting online severely undermines human rights and freedoms of all Russians.

Today, Turkish President Abdullah Gül signed a law increasing the government’s already tight grip on the internet. Even before Gül put pen to paper, Turkey was home to one of the world’s most restrictive internet censorship regimes — and this new legislation will only further undermine Turkish internet users’ fundamental rights.

All internet services in Sudan were abruptly shut down today while protests swelled in the capital Khartoum for the third day after fuel subsidies were cut, doubling the price of gas.

The Russian government has blocked access to a blog-hosting site that publishes reports from at least two prominent independent journalists often critical of the Kremlin. The site has been added to the country’s recently established official “internet blacklist.”

New mechanisms to censor websites and filter mobile communications could come online in Pakistan, possibly within 60 days, according to government officials in the country and activists on the ground. News that the censorship system is being built directly conflicts with promises made by Pakistani government officials a little less than a year ago to not pursue massive online censorship.