Steelie Neelie admits laptop hack during IGF

Okay, so what was Neelie Kroes thinking? I think it is common sense that if you are catalogued as an activist or at least as advocating freedom of speech and you go to a country with a record of violation of that fundamental right, things are going to happen.

China agents were known to get into foreigner's hotel rooms to hack into computers, but in no way this is limited to that country. It seems Azerbaijan is now on the list too. However, Mrs. Kroes should have been smarter and suggest her advisers not to take work or personal laptops, but "one-use" laptops, that would contain no other data or software than what was needed for the forum and that would have been forensically analyzed after the trip back.

That kind of problem is not new and will get worse in the future.

My favorite part from the article is the azerbaijani's reply of "open a complain with us and we will investigate." No comment on that one.

Iran Parliament to investigate death of Blogger during his detention

It is important to keep saying that in certain countries, using one's right to free speech may be punished by death or a lengthy jail time.  

Sattar Beheshti was arrested because of his criticisms toward the corrupt and non democratic government of Iran. He was arrested on 10/30 and he never left custody alive. 

The iranian Parliament has ordered an investigation of that accident. Too little, too late. And one may be suspicious of what that "investigation" will come out in a country where arbitrary arrests, vanishing prisoners and violations of basic human rights are every day's facts. 

Here is the full article on Reuters.