Feature image October 26, 2017: The Great Departed playing in Zurich. On May 11, SMEX and Lebanese band Al-Rahel Al-Kabir (The Great Departed) launched a petition demanding that iTunes Middle East release a public explanation for its refusal to upload five of the band’s songs, which mock religious fundamentalism, political[...]
Feature image via Breaking News Syria August 7, 2017: The headquarters of Syrian Criminal Security, the apparatus that runs the Cybercrimes branch. Update: After being approved by the Syrian parliament on March 18, 2018, the new anti-cybercrime legislation (Law 9/2018) was officially decreed by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Monday[...]
In the context of growing government control of mobile networks and a lack of transparency by both governments and companies in making these controls visible, this report, “Dependent Yet Disenfranchised: The Policy Void that Threatens the Rights of Mobile Users in Arab States” seeks to document the public disclosure[...]
Feature image via Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch: A large watchful eye observes as three laptops display information on their screens. (Beirut) – Lebanon’s general prosecutor should investigate reports of secret large-scale surveillance tied to a Lebanese intelligence agency, seven human rights and media organizations said today. Privacy and surveillance researchers on January[...]
Feature image: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Data depicts the outage of the internet in Yemen on the night of Thursday, December 7. On Thursday night, the Houthis, the northern Yemen-based insurgent group in control of most of Sana’a since 2015, completely shut down the internet for close to 30 minutes.[...]
Update on December 13, 2017: After 15 days of detention, poet Mustafa Sbeity was released on Tuesday, December 12, 2017, after paying a bail of 500000 L.L. (around $333), according to Annahar. However, the public prosecutor did not drop the charges against Sbeity and his case remains open. On Monday, the[...]
Despite criticism from free expression and digital rights groups, such as IFEX and AccessNow, the Iraqi government appears increasingly reliant on blocking access to the internet as a tactic to deal with social, political, and security concerns. There have been 25 shutdowns since the beginning of 2017, including[...]
Lebanese authorities are failing to abide by their obligations to protect individuals from unfair trials and to ensure their right to freedom of expression, nine human rights and media organizations said today, following yet another criminal investigation of a Lebanese citizen for posts made on Facebook. Mr. Selman Samaha was[...]
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 28, 2017 — We, the undersigned human rights and media organizations, condemn the arrest, detention, and prosecution of the activist Ahmad Amhaz. His arrest and continued detention is a violation of Lebanese law and Lebanon’s human rights obligations. Amhaz was arrested on March 21 and[...]
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017 — Dozens of free speech advocates and civil society leaders gathered at the SMEX office in Badaro last night to engage with UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression David Kaye. They[...]
