لى بيهدموه يرجعوا تاني يفحتوه، و إلي يسفلتوه يرجعوا تانى يهدوه، مرة عشان الكهربا ومرة مواسير المية، مرة سلك التليفون، ومرة المجاري . ياما جاري في الدنيا ياما جاري . طب ما كانوا فحتوا مرة واحدة إلي بيقولوا في لجنة تخطيط يمكن الواحد غلطان ولجنة التخطيط هي إلي صح آه، مادام بيجتمعوا كتير ويخططوا كتير يبقى لازم يفحتوا كتير. من فيلم ثرثرة فوق النيل -
Twitter was notably missing from a leaked list of Internet giants reported to be cooperating with The National Security Agency and the FBI on the surveillance program dubbed PRISM.
Those agencies are siphoning data from the servers of nine U.S. Internet companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple, according to news reports about the documents. The cloud storage device Dropbox was described as "coming soon," along with other unidentified firms.
Google and Apple have both denied any knowledge of PRISM. Apple stated "any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order." Google said "we disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully.
There may be two explanations for Twitter's absence.
Twitter has a history of noncompliance and fighting information requests against its users. That may, in part, explain its absence from the list of companies disclosed Thursday. The leaks were reported by The Washington Post and The Guardian.
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The microblogging service notably defended Malcolm Harris last year. He was being prosecuted by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office on allegations of disorderly conduct related to an Occupy Wall Street protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In that instance, Twitter filed a motion in state court in New York in an effort to quash a court order asking it to turn over his communications on Twitter.
"As we've said many times before, Twitter users own their Tweets. They have a right to fight invalid government requests, and we stand with them in that fight. We appealed the Harris decision because it didn't strike the right balance between the rights of users and the interests of law enforcement," said Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser.
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Twitter is also currently embroiled in another legal skirmish to uphold the rights of user privacy. It's fighting a battle in France to not turn over information about users connected to complaints from a private French Jewish students group regarding anti-Semitic content.
Twitter's Prosser points out that the company tries to be transparent with its semi-annual Transparency Report on government requests.
Another explanation for Twitter's absense is that the bulk of its data — aside from direct messages — is publicly available in the form of tweets. That separates it from the likes of Yahoo and Google, which house years of personal emails and data on people.
A young couple, who are anti-government protesters, kiss inside a
damaged public bus, used as a barricade at Taksim Square in Istanbul.
REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
Muhammad Haza’a is one of some 180 people facing death in Yemeni
prisons for crimes they allegedly committed when they were under 18.
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He is due to be taken out of his crowded prison cell tomorrow morning and shot.
Those who supported our call last week to save him from execution
appear to have bought him a precious extra week of life, but would have
hoped that his case be reopened and dealt with justly, according to the
law, not that he would be subjected to a cold-blooded killing.
We were shocked when we first received the phone call that Muhammad Haza’a was going to be executed within 24 hours.
Capital punishment is unfortunately common enough in Yemen, but the
authorities would normally at least grant the prisoner a couple of days
between formally telling them and ending their life.
Equally shocking was the fact that Muhammad had “proof” that he was under 18 at the time of his alleged crime.
We only had a few hours to do something. We had lists of alleged
juvenile offenders on death row in Yemen, but Muhammad’s name was not on
them. We knew nothing about him or his case. Yet we trusted our source
and knew that the information he had provided us was highly likely to be
correct.
Our source had himself been about to be executed a few years ago as a
juvenile offender, when Amnesty International, with the help of other
organizations, intervened; he felt that Amnesty International saved his
life and regularly supports our work.
After we received the call, we urgently sent emails, made calls and
issued appeals. At first we only received automated messages by email
and were confronted with piped musical recordings by phone.
But one breakthrough here and another there soon created momentum.
International and local organizations jumped in and phone calls to the
Yemeni President and the General Prosecutor’s office brought the promise
that the execution would be postponed and the case reviewed.
That was on Tuesday, 26 February. Less than a week later, the following Monday, two parallel events occurred.
In the city of Tai’zz, where Muhammad has been held, the head of the
Appeal Court there filled in a form no longer than four lines and sent
it to the prison authorities. It probably took him or his assistant less
than a minute to fill in the blanks. The execution date is set for
Saturday, 9 March 2013, it read. He added a line underneath: “We advise
that security measures are taken on the above mentioned date of the
execution.”
That last line was added in anticipation of protests. There were
rumours that other death row inmates were planning to prevent the prison
authorities from taking Muhammad to his execution.
Rumours were also emerging that a demonstration in front of the prison was being planned.
Local and international activists were making calls and noise about
the unfairness and illegality of the sentence besides the inhumane
nature of the execution itself. The head of the court apparently
considered that all these calls warranted by way of response was a
single sentence of warning at the bottom of an execution order.
In the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, meanwhile, the General Prosecutor
signed a form ordering the prosecution in Ta’izz to refer Muhammad’s
case to the relevant courts for review on the basis that there remained a
dispute about his age at the time of the alleged offence.
Muhammad’s lawyer decided to personally take the form signed by the
General Prosecutor to the relevant authorities in Ta’izz because he knew
that if the document was faxed or sent by post, it would probably
either arrive too late or mysteriously disappear.
It took him around four hours to drive the 260km south from Sana’a to
Ta’izz. The lawyer was met, but the form was not accepted. Apparently
the Ta’izz authorities were too unhappy with the attention Muhammad’s
case had brought and so have simply refused to follow the laws of their
own country and forward a case to the relevant courts when being ordered
to do so by their superior.
It would surely be unconscionable for an execution to go ahead
essentially because some officials had felt emboldened to flout
instructions, but that seems to be the situation as things stand.
We continue to call on the Yemeni President, the General Prosecutor
and the relevant authorities in Ta’izz to immediately suspend the
execution of Muhammad Haza’a and to order a retrial that is fair and
does not resort to the death penalty.
