CAIRO - The tweets still fly and the videos hit YouTube whenever protesters take to the streets in Iran - even as the Internet battle there turns more grueling. Authorities appear to be intensifying their campaign to block Web sites and chase down the opposition online, and the activists search for new ways to elude them. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain blocked, as they have...

In reference to Facts show Twitter yet to lure Middle East users (July 20), our Spot-On web blog opened this issue up to a vote via an opinion poll on Twitter to see what Middle East Twitter users thought about the future of the platform in the region. Fifty people answered the poll over roughly 24 hours and I have to say that we were surprised by how they answered our poll question: Will...

New York, July 24, 2009-The Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Egyptian authorities today to explain why they have detained three bloggers this week without charge. Islamist blogger Abdel Rahman Ayyash, who writes for Al-Ghareeb (The Stranger), was arrested at the Cairo airport on Tuesday on his return from Turkey where he attended a youth conference, according to multiple news...

When Abdel Rahman Ayyash traveled to Turkey earlier this month, he expected to learn about the role of Islam in governance. The 19-year-old reform-leaning Muslim Brotherhood blogger got more than he bargained for upon returning from that trip on Wednesday evening when Egyptian security forces arrested him and a fellow blogger, Magdy Saad . The two bloggers are now languishing somewhere in the...

This month, amid record profligacy on Capitol Hill, Sens. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) pushed for spending that all Americans can celebrate: $30 million of the Senate's State Department appropriations bill will go to support digital tools for undermining Internet censorship. If the initiative is properly implemented, the politically repressed from Havana to Rangoon will...