Technology
Cell Phones Behind Bars in Lebanon
Exploring a new era of prison communication.
Major Labels—Reviewing Andrew Simon’s ‘Media of the Masses’
Rethinking Egyptian history through sound.
Transnational Repression Against Exiled Women Activists
In Spring 2011, as the uprising against Bashar Al-Assad erupted in Syria, Sana, the daughter of Syrian exiles living in Canada, began engaging in online activism. Her support for the revolution rapidly gained traction among fellow Syrians and a widening global...The Legal Webs of Transnational Repression
On October 2, 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. Intelligence services quickly determined his death to be a targeted assassination ordered by the Saudi crown prince. The instance was a brazen act of transnational...Normalizing the Surveillance State—Cybersecurity Cooperation and the Abraham Accords
The new, and not-so-new, cyber dimension of Arab-Israeli normalization.
Organizing for Digital Rights—An Interview with Mohamad Najem of SMEX
Activists are fighting for an online civic space.
Big Tech’s Partnership with Authoritarianism
A perspective on the role of major tech corporations in fueling repression.
Major Labels
Rethinking Egyptian history through sound.
Masdar City 2020
In February 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 lockdowns, I visited Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). I had not been there in five years.
A Web Smaller Than a Divide
At first glance, there’s a clear need for expanding the Web beyond the Latin alphabet, including in the Arabic-speaking world. According to the Madar Research Group, about 56 million Arabs, or 17 percent of the Arab world, use the Internet, and those numbers are expected to grow 50 percent over the next three years.
Many think that an Arabic-alphabet Web will bring millions online, helping to bridge the socio-economic divides that pervade the region.
Bedouins, Cassettes and Technologies of Public Culture
Discotheques and taxicabs all over Egypt last January were playing the songs of a new pop star. No one knew exactly where “the Earthquake of ’88” (his biographer’s term) had come from, but everyone seemed to think Ali Hemida was a Bedouin. Some said he came from Sinai; others said Libya. His music was unusual, his dialect not Egyptian, and his lyrics ("wearing silk, she’s like a gazelle, henna-painted hands") evoked the life of desert Arabs.
