Blog: UAE Archives - Committee to Protect Journalists

Blog | Iraq, UAE, USA

FOIA needs new muscle behind it, not just promises

By Frank Smyth/Washington Representative and Journalist Security Coordinator

The White House says it wants to improve transparency. Greater access to information could prevent deaths of journalists in the field.

These are busy days for Freedom of Information. On April 5, the watchdog Web site that knows no borders, WikiLeaks, posted a classified U.S. military video showing U.S. forces firing on Iraqi civilians, killing many, including two Reuters journalists, as well as wounding children. Two days later, the Pentagon posted a redacted U.S. military assessment of the same incident concluding that U.S. troops fired “in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.” The very same day President Obama hailed the scheduled release of a new Open Government Initiative by all Cabinet agencies to improve transparency and compliance with information requests.

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Blog | Burma, Canada, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, UAE, USA

Toronto’s Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors

By Robert Mahoney/Deputy Director

A basement in the gray, Gothic heart of the University of Toronto is home to the CSI of cyberspace. “We are doing free expression forensics,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies. Deibert and his team of academics and students investigate in real time governments and companies that restrict what we see and hear on the Internet. They are also trying to help online journalists and bloggers slip the shackles of censorship and surveillance. Deibert is a co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a project of the Citizen Lab in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. ONI tracks the blocking and filtering of the Internet around the globe.

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Blog | Afghanistan, CPJ, UAE, USA

Meeting Sami al-Haj

By Joel Simon/Executive Director

In conjunction with the International Freedom of Expression Exchange general meeting, the Norwegian government hosted a Global Forum on Freedom of Expression featuring three days of discussions, seminars, and lectures from leading experts. For me, a highlight was finally meeting Sami al-Haj, at left, the Al-Jazeera correspondent who was held for six years at Guantanamo Bay.

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Blog | Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Sudan, UAE

Free expression in the Middle East & North Africa

By Mohamed Abdel Dayem/Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator

On Thursday, I participated in a panel discussion about media in the Middle East at the United Nations to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. Other panellists included Alya Al-Thani, counsellor, Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United Nations; Abderrahim Foukara, chief of the Washington Bureau of Al-Jazeera; Ebtihal Mubarak, journalist for Saudi Arabia's English-language daily Arab News; and Ghassan Shabaneh, assistant professor of Middle East and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. I talked about the great obstacles to press freedom in the region...

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FOIA needs new muscle behind it, not just promises

Toronto’s Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors

Meeting Sami al-Haj

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