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Bloggers Under Fire "tracks instances of bloggers, Internet users being threatened, arrested, harassed, harmed

Bloggers Under Fire: “As activists and ordinary citizens around the world are increasingly making use of the Internet to express their opinions and connect with others, many governments are increasing their surveillance and censorship capabilities and taking legal or extrajudicial actions against bloggers and social media users. The threats to netizens are increasing. The Committee to Protect Journalists found in 2008 that 45% of all imprisoned journalists were arrested for activities conducted online. In their 2012 press freedom barometer, Reporters Without Borders cited 123 incidents of imprisoned “netizens” in twelve countries. Though the motivations of governments vary from country to country, the goal—to silence “threatening” voices—is the same. EFF supports the principles of free expression laid out in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and believes that those principles must extend online. While our domestic work focuses on helping bloggers in the United States understand their legal rights, our international work focuses on the legal and bodily threats to Internet users in countries around the world. To that end, we have partnered with Global Voices Online’s Threatened Voices project, which tracks individual cases of bloggers under threat or detention, to help shed light on this global phenomenon.”

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