USA

Richard C. Holbrooke, "one of the giants of American foreign policy" in President Barack Obama's words, was also an ally of press freedom and a good friend to CPJ. In a statement marking Holbrooke's death at age 69, Chairman Paul E. Steiger said: "CPJ mourns the passing of Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. He was a champion of human rights and a great friend to press freedom. Our thoughts are with his family, especially his widow, CPJ board member and former chair, Kati Marton." 

• Wikileaks hit by denial-of-service attack, turns to Amazon hosting...
• ...but Amazon drops the site following pressure from a U.S. senator.
• Google extends its https encryption to YouTube, making video blocking harder.
• Censorship of the Net directly related to how authoritarian a regime is, claims a study.
• Venezuala's telecom regulator proposes stronger takedown powers over Internet content.
• Thailand's technology minister says "blacklisting [websites] doesn't work."
• UK police seek powers to suspend web domains if there are "reasonable grounds to believe they are being used to commit a crime," even before a warrant or trial.

• Egyptian blogger Karim Amer is finally free after four years in prison.
• Iran launches yet another police force to deal with the Internet, headquartered with the Revolutionary Guard. Its commander says the state plans to quadruple its Internet control budget.
• Google lobbies U.S. policymakers to consider online censorship a free trade issue.
• Is breaking into Yahoo e-mail too easy? The Sarah Palin hack revealed flaws in the webmail system's security that can still be exploited.
• Yet more malicious attacks on computers connected to the Nobel Peace Prize. As with CPJ and other groups, the Nobel Institute's director, Geir Lundestad, received a personalized, but fake e-mail containing malware.
• Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over "moral concerns"--then immediately unblocks it, claiming an "error."

After almost a year in exile in America, an icy ocean away from his home in Ethiopia, journalist Samson Mekonnen, left, only recently received his work permit in Washington. In the interim, like most journalists undergoing the emotionally and financially grueling resettlement process, he has relied on friends, family, and international organizations like CPJ to support himself and his family while his petition for asylum navigates the bureaucratic waters.  

The
National Press Club next week will honor an Iranian journalist who is languishing in prison. Kouhyar Goudarzi, an online reporter and human rights activist, was
pursuing an aerospace degree at Sharif Industrial University when security agents put him behind bars, according to the International
Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Goudarzi, left, was an editor for Iran's Committee
of Human Rights Reporters and a producer for Radio Zamaneh.

Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the murder of Brad Will, a 36-year-old American activist and journalist who was shot while covering anti-government protests in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. His murderers remain at large. 

• CPJ protested the arrest of Bahrain blogger Ali Abdel Imam back in September -- The Wall Street Journal has a story on his continuing detainment.
• Activism around the imprisonment of Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan continues: PEN Canada is  focusing on his case and Canada and France's foreign ministers have urged his release.
• Local Thai ISPs are being called in by the government to help block the country's rapidly expanding website blacklist. The authorities want them to respond 24/7 to censorship requests.
• The Journal of Democracy has published Ron Deibert and Rafai Rohozinski's overview of the pros and cons of new technology in authoritarian societies. It's available here in PDF format.
• The New York Times has more info on US law enforcement's request to broaden its Internet interception powers.
• Jared Cohen, the US State Department's advocate for high-tech diplomacy, has moved to Google. Foreign Policy interviews him on his new job.

Private security personnel working for Joe Miller, Alaska's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, detained and handcuffed a local editor on October 17, 2010, when he persisted in questioning Miller at a town hall event.