Link: NYTimes.com

“It was humiliating and ludicrous to have to wear a straight face and explain all my jokes to the detectives,” said Mr. Park, who faces up to seven years in jail if convicted.

Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday

The false choice between degrees of political censorship belies Twitter’s third option, of continuing its censorship-free tradition instead of playing with political fire abroad.

The agency made that argument Wednesday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, which claims the CIA should release the photos taken by U.S. forces. The American public, Judicial Watch said, has a “right to these historical artifacts.”

A new Twitter policy which goes into effect today allows the social network “to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country,” so that Twitter can further expand globally and “enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression.”

A “perfect storm” of repression has raged against photojournalists in the United States in recent years, according to an accomplished news photographer who has become an attorney representing his former colleagues, Mickey H. Osterreicher

Link: BlogPost

We now tie with Argentina, Romania and Latvia at “satisfactory” levels of freedom. The reason for the plummet? “The many arrests of journalists covering Occupy Wall Street protests.”

Jermaine Green, a recently returned US Army veteran (who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan), videoed an LA County Sheriff Deputy strike a mentally handicapped woman in the head. The incident took place on a city bus. The deputy then approached Green and ordered Green to hand over his cell phone

Specifically, the wording at the top of that page entitled “What Should I Consider Suspicious?” on which the very first bullet point states, “Individuals observed filming or photographing passing trains, locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, rail yard operations, tracks, bridges, tunnels, commuter rail trains, subway trains, transit trains, stations and platforms.”

And while Garcia waited for his day in court, his White House press credential expired. Normally renewed as a mere formality, this time around Garcia’s credential was denied. 

Boing Boing

President Obama just signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law despite startling provisions that will allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens. It’s a travesty, defying basic principles of justice and due process in perhaps the most extreme respect our nation has ever seen.

The mayor even argued that to let the press watch the police retake Zuccotti Park would be to violate the privacy of protesters. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said

Using a fat Chinese man, a large backpack, a baseball cap and the hood from my sweatshirt, I attempted to hide myself.

I was sandwiched in between the beefy man and a f-stop Satori backpack jammed with gear on the rear of his motorcycle. He drove me down a dark dirt road in the middle of the night near the uniquely autonomous village of Wukan, Guangdong Province, China.

I was hiding from police and those who might not want attention drawn to the small village of about 13,000 people.

The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples

An Ethiopian court has declared Swedish photojournalist Johan Persson and reporter Martin Schibbye guilty of supporting terrorism and entering the country illegally, according to an AFP report.

The Speaker asserts control over CSPAN’s cameras and has made it clear that Americans can only expect to see their government in session when he believes it is in their interest to do so

Sean Quinn snapped the picture and sent it to The Repository, saying that the officer photographed was only a few hundred yards from a car crash. He said he flashed his own vehicle’s high-beam lights at the cruiser for several minutes in an attempt to get the officer’s attention before another officer responding to the scene stopped him from taking more pictures.

Lacoste reportedly objected for political reasons to a project by finalist Larissa Sansour called “Nation Estate,” which was inspired by the recent Palestinian bid for nationhood at the United Nations. Lacoste said in a statement today that Sansour’s work did not fit the contest theme, and denies it excluded her for political reasons.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a new guide, “Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices,” which explains how the law, good technology choices, cryptography and backups can be combined to keep your data safe while you travel, especially when crossing into the USA, where customs officials reserve the rights to search your laptop and mobile phone without a warrant and keep whatever they find.