Thailand

At least 42 journalists are killed in 2010 as two trends emerge. Suicide attacks and violent street protests cause an unusually high proportion of deaths. And online journalists are increasingly prominent among the victims. A CPJ special report

• 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.

• Microsoft allows users to turn on https by default in Hotmail, but it's still couched in warnings.
• Meanwhile, Access starts its own global campaign for https to be turned on for the most visited websites.
• Thai censorship, originally aimed at a few hundred domains, now covers over 250,000 websites.
• China "unpublishes" previously approved online articles about a Party official's private life.
• Burma's entire internal network is knocked offline in a denial-of-service attack...
• ... while Digital Democracy reports on the domestic state of commmunications technology in the country.

• A powerful advocate for press and Internet freedom, Persephone Miel sadly passed away in June. The Pulitzer Center, in partnership with Internews, has launched a memorial fellowship in her name.
• How the Great Firewall of China breaks the global Internet: stories of Chinese re-routing and censorship affecting services in Chile, the US, and even the American military.
• Thai crisis fuels social media boom: Thai authorities have shut down a number of Web sites in recent years, leading to wider use of uncensored social networking sites.
• A move toward secure hosts for botnets. As sites like Google's Gmail encrypt and secure their communications, malware botnets begin using them for their secure messaging.
• News of new Internet censorship measures in Tajikistan. (Rough Google translation only.)

• 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.

Bangkok, September 24, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arrest today of Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the popular Thailand news website Prachatai, on charges of insulting the royal family. 

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) hosted a memorial Thursday to mark the 25^th anniversary of the deaths of NBC cameraman correspondent Neil Davis and soundman Bill Latch. The two journalists were killed by military fire on September 9, 1985, while covering a failed coup attempt in the Thai capital. 

Two days before Italian photographer Fabio Polenghi was fatally shot while covering widespread civil unrest in the streets of Bangkok, he posted a short message to his Facebook page: “Every day is a gift, so do your best,” he wrote in a message made more poignant by his death on May 19. 

More than two months later, however, it’s not clear that Thai authorities are doing their best to solve the case and bring the perpetrators to justice.