Safety

A US federal judge has overturned the conviction of 49-year-old Laurie Drew. She was accused of driving 13-year-old Megan Meyer, her daughter's classmate, to suicide. Here is how it was. Deciding to teach Meyer, with whom her daughter had recently quarreled, a lesson, Drew created an account on the social network FaceBook in the name of Josh Evans, a 16-year-old boy who began to flirt with Megan, confessed his love for her, and then suddenly changed dramatically and turned to verbal aggression. At the next phrase (“The world would be better without you”), the girl, driven to despair, walked away from the computer and hanged herself in the wardrobe. This was in October 2006. A year later, the FBI restored the picture of what happened, and a year later, under public pressure, charges were brought: the prosecutor’s office tried to equate registration with knowingly incorrect data to “unauthorized access to computer information,” the article on “Incitement to suicide” is used extremely rarely, and those built on it cases rarely reach convictions. The higher court, however, did not agree with such a broad interpretation of cyber hacking and overturned the sentence: three years in prison and a $300,000 fine. The prosecutor promises to appeal the decision and find other ways to prosecute Laurie Drew.

Twitter, Iran, Nobel Peace Prize

Confession

Michael Feifley, a former assistant national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, has proposed nominating microblogging service Twitter for the Nobel Peace Prize for the role microblogging played in covering events in Iran. Let us recall that even before the elections, the Iranian authorities blocked most of the popular Web 2.0 services, such as YouTube, Flickr and partly FaceBook, which were used by opposition representatives to coordinate actions even at the parliamentary stage of the struggle. Twitter, which allows not only posting information for public viewing, but also exchanging private messages (much like in ICQ), remained almost the only channel of communication between Iran and the world: after the start of street protests, the authorities banned the work of foreign correspondents. Earlier, one of the founders of Twitter, Biz Stone, said that the role of Twitter in the Iranian events shows us the triumph not of technology, but of humanism. And now Michael Feifley, who a week ago voiced the idea of the Nobel Peace Prize in an interview on FoxNews, said that he had sent an official letter to the Nobel Committee. According to Feifli, Twitter and other social media have become the "soft weapons" of democracy... They tell us the story of the Iranian people's desire for freedom.

Ilham Tohti, Urumqi, blog

freedom of speech

Minzu University economics professor Ilham Tohti has been arrested in Beijing. He is accused of calling for riots on his blog. Tohti, a Uyghur, wrote on his blog about the complexities of inter-ethnic relations between Uyghurs and Han (Chinese) people in Xinjiang. The other day, the professor posted a report on the unrest now taking place in the most problematic of the five national autonomous regions of China. Reporters Without Borders, an organization that defends the rights of journalists around the world, issued a statement expressing extreme concern about Tohti's arrest: "The crackdown is not limited to Xinjiang. A man was arrested who was just writing on his blog." Clashes between Uyghurs and Chinese in the regional capital Urumqi killed 156 people (according to official data). The central government says the situation is under control, but independent sources say the unrest has not completely stopped. Access to Tokhti's blog is blocked. In addition, FaceBook, YouTube and Twitter are not accessible from Xinjiang.

facebook, laurie draw, megan meyer