I participated as a featured resource practitioner in the Tactical Dialogue - 'Staying Safe: Security Resources for Human Rights Defenders.'

In Indonesia [we are] organising a workshop on e-campaigning for women activists at the frontline of challenging the 'misuse' of culture / religion to justify discrimination and violence against women and girls.  We are doing this in collaboration with APC WNSP and we have 18 activists from Indonesia , Pakistan , Afghanistan , Malaysia  and Philippines who will explore how the virtual space can be used to support their campaigning and we have a session specifically on security issues associated with our use of IT.  I have picked up a lot from our dialogue which I will be bringing into the conversation.

It was great working with you and the rest and I hope to join the next dialogue. 

Activists, bloggers, journalists and students in Egypt are using their mobile phones to alert their networks if they are in danger or have been arrested using SMS text messaging and the micro-blogging service Twitter. Egyptian activists who have informed their network of arrest by police have proved this to be an effective means of getting the word out quickly of their detention so that fellow activists can pressure the government for a quick release, or mount a longer-term campaign in the result of formal charges.

When Egyptian journalist and blogger Wael Abbas returned to Egypt from a forum in Sweden in June of 2009 he was detained at Cairo Airport by authorities and his passport, papers and laptop were taken. Abbas is known for his blog posts exposing incidents of torture and police brutality in Egypt, and is outspoken about political reform and democracy in Egypt. When he was detained at Cairo Airport, Abbas was able to use his Twitter account to alert his followers and give numerous updates on the situation. Issandr El Amrani of The Arabist reported that Abbas’s tweets reached the president of an Egyptian human rights organization, Hisham Kassem, who is also a Twitter user. After hearing about Abbas’s detention Kassem started tweeting about his efforts to dispatch a human rights lawyer to talk to the Egyptian authorities to get Abbas released. Abbas was eventually freed within hours. El Amrani writes, “It may not be a Twitter revolution, but it's a very practical, transparent and engaging way to rally people around a cause.”

Hi everyone,

There is a really great new tool that I would like to let people know about.  It's called Security in-a-box, and was a joint effort between Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line.  Security in-a-box is a toolkit that was created to help human rights defenders and activists protect their privacy and digital security needs. It can also be an important tool for members of the independent media whose work involves human rights.