日中韓自由貿易協定(FTA)交渉の第10 回交渉会合(局長/局次長会合)が開催されます
「活力あふれる『ビンテージ・ソサエティ』の実現に向けて」(研究会報告書)をとりまとめました
自動走行との連携が期待される、地図情報に関する国際規格が発行されました
東京電力株式会社の会社分割について、電気事業法に基づき認可しました
Digital Hopes, Real Power: Reflecting on the Legacy of the Arab Spring
This is the first installment of a blog series reflecting on the global digital legacy of the 2011 Arab uprisings.
A new generation of protesters, raised on social media and often fluent in the tools of digital dissent, has taken to the streets in recent months and years. In Bangladesh, Iran, Togo, France, Uganda, Nepal, and more than a dozen other countries, young people have harnessed digital tools to mobilize at scale, shape political narratives, and sustain movements that might once have been easier to ignore or suppress.
The tools at their disposal are vast, allowing them to coordinate quickly and turn local grievances into visible, transnational moments of dissent. But each new tactic is met in turn: governments now implement draconian regulations and deploy sophisticated surveillance systems, content manipulation, and automated censorship to pre-empt, predict, and punish collective action.
This cycle of digital empowerment and repression is not new. In many ways, its roots can be traced to the 2011 uprisings that rippled across the Middle East and North Africa. Often referred to as the “Arab Spring,” these movements didn’t just reshape politics…they transformed how we talk about the internet, and how governments respond in times of protest, crisis, and conflict. Fifteen years later, the legacy of that moment still defines the terms of resistance and control in the digital age.
At the time, we were sold the comforting narrative that the internet would help bring about democracy, that connectivity itself was revolutionary, and that Silicon Valley’s products—particularly social media platforms—were aligned with the people. It was a narrative that tech executives were sometimes happy to amplify and certain Western governments were happy to believe.
But the same networks that helped protesters to organize and broadcast their demands beyond their own borders laid the groundwork for new forms of repression. Over the years, the same tools that were once celebrated as tools of dissent have become instruments for tracking, harassing, and prosecuting dissenters.
This series examines the digital legacy of the 2011 uprisings that shook the region: how governments refined censorship and surveillance after 2011, how platforms alternately resisted and enabled those efforts, and how a new generation of civil society has pushed back.
"Over the years, the same tools that were once celebrated as tools of dissent have become instruments for tracking, harassing, and prosecuting dissenters."
When Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, after repeated harassment by local officials, he could not have known the chain reaction his act would spark. After nearly twenty-three years in power, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali faced a public fed up with repression. Protests spread across Tunisia, ultimately forcing him to flee.
In his final speech, Ben Ali promised reforms: a freer press and fewer internet restrictions. He left before either materialized. For Tunisians, who had lived for years under normalized censorship both online and off, the promises rang hollow.
At the time, Tunisia’s internet controls were among the most restrictive in the world. Reporting by the exiled outlet Nawaat documented a sophisticated filtering regime: DNS tampering, URL blocking, IP filtering, keyword censorship. Yet despite that machinery, Tunisians built a resilient blogging culture, often relying on circumvention tools to push information beyond their borders. When protests began—and before international media caught up—they were ready.
Eleven days after Ben Ali fled, Egyptians took to the streets. International headlines rushed to label it a “Twitter revolution,” mistaking a tool for a movement. Egypt’s government drew a similar conclusion. On January 26, authorities blocked Twitter and Facebook. The next day, they shut down the internet almost entirely, a foreshadowing of what we’d see fifteen years later in Iran.
As Egyptians fought to free their country from President Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule, protests swept across the region to Bahrain, where demonstrators gathered at the Pearl Roundabout before facing a brutal crackdown; to Syria, where early calls for reform spiraled into one of the most devastating conflicts of the century; to Morocco, where the February 20 Movement pushed for constitutional change. Outside of the region, movements took shape in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Iceland, the United States, and beyond.
In each context, digital platforms helped circulate images, testimonies, and tactics across borders. They created visibility—and, in turn, inspired a playbook. Governments watched not only their own populations but one another, quickly learning how to disrupt networks, identify organizers, and seize back control of the narrative.
Cause and Effect
To be clear, the internet didn’t create these movements. Decades of repression, corruption, labor organizing, and grassroots activism did. Later research confirmed what many in the region already understood: digital tools helped people share information and coordinate action, but they were neither the spark nor the engine of revolt.
But regardless, the myth of the “Twitter revolution” had consequences. The breathless coverage, and rapid policy reactions that followed shaped state strategy around the world. Governments across the region and well beyond invested heavily in surveillance technologies, developed new legal mechanisms, increased their own social media presence, and found ways to influence platforms. Internet blackouts, once rare, became a normalized tool of crisis response. And companies were forced into increasingly public decisions about whether to resist state pressure or comply.
When it comes to the internet, the legacy of the 2011 uprisings that swept the region and beyond is a story about power: how states moved to consolidate control online, how platforms—often under pressure—have narrowed the space for dissent, and how civil society has been forced to evolve to defend it.
This five-part series will take a deeper look at how the internet as a space for dissent and for hope has changed over the past fifteen years throughout the region and well beyond.
第484回消費者委員会本会議【3月24日開催】
お知らせ:JPCERT/CC Eyes「世界のCSIRTから ~アゼルバイジャン~」
JVN: シャープ製ルーター製品における一部のweb APIに対する認証欠如の脆弱性
景気動向指数(令和8年1月分速報からの改訂状況)
JVN: 複数のSchneider Electric製品における複数の脆弱性
JVN: Pharos Controls製Mosaic Show Controllerにおける重要な機能に対する認証の欠如の脆弱性
JVN: Grassroots製Grassroots DICOM(GDCM)におけるメモリ解放の欠如の脆弱性
JVN: LibreChat RAG APIにおけるログインジェクションの脆弱性
JVN: 複数の三菱電機製家電製品に搭載されているRealtek社製チップ向けWi-Fiドライバにおけるヒープベースのバッファオーバーフローの脆弱性
Weekly Report: Google Chromeに境界外書き込みの脆弱性
[B] 【4/11、12】ミャンマー春のお正月祭り2026 東京・江東区で開催予定
Nicole Ozer Named as Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Executive Director
SAN FRANCISCO – Nicole Ozer has been appointed as executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation effective June 1.
Ozer is a legal expert on privacy and surveillance, artificial intelligence, and digital speech. She currently serves as the inaugural executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. From 2004-2025, she was founding director of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Ozer will succeed Cindy Cohn, who has been with EFF for more than 25 years and served as its executive director since 2015.
EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development, with a mission to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. The organization celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2025.
"I am honored to lead EFF forward in these critical times. EFF’s global work to defend and advance rights, justice, and democracy in the digital age is fundamental to the future of our countries, our livelihoods, and literally our lives,” Ozer said. “I am ready to hit the ground running with EFF’s exceptional staff, board, and broad base of supporters and ensure that EFF is stronger than ever. Together, we can meet this moment and build a future where technology works for the people.”
“I couldn’t be happier to pass EFF’s reins over to Nicole,” Cohn said. “She has been our stalwart partner for many years in standing up for privacy, free speech and innovation online. I’m confident that she understands both the strong heart and the future potential of EFF especially as our work is more critical than ever.”
“Nicole Ozer is the ideal person to lead EFF during this unprecedented time in our nation’s history,” said EFF Board Chair Gigi Sohn. “She possesses all of the qualities necessary to lead the organization: great vision, strong management skills and deep substantive knowledge. The fact that she has worked alongside EFF for over two decades is icing on the cake. The EFF Board is excited to welcome Nicole and begin a new chapter in our history.”
Over her more than two decades leading public interest technology work, Ozer:
- spearheaded passage of the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act – the nation’s strongest electronic surveillance law, requiring a warrant for government access to electronic information;
- modernized California law to protect reading records in the digital age by helping to craft the Reader Privacy Act requiring a “super warrant” for government access;
- created a groundbreaking model law for local democratic oversight of surveillance systems which inspired 25 laws across the country that help safeguard the rights and safety of more than 17 million people;
- litigated civil liberties cases and drafted influential amicus briefs on technology issues at all levels of state and federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court; and
- developed multi-year campaigns to strengthen the anti-surveillance policies related to social media surveillance and face recognition of major technology companies and foster stronger privacy and free expression protection for billions of people worldwide.
Ozer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; was a 2024-2025 technology and human rights fellow with the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and in 2019 was a visiting researcher at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and a non-residential fellow with the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.
Ozer's work has earned accolades including the Fearless Advocate Award from the American Constitution Society Bay Area, the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California, and a 2025 California Senate Members resolution commending her “unwavering dedication to defending and promoting civil liberties in the digital world.” Her writings on privacy and constitutional law have been published widely, and she regularly provides expert testimony for government proceedings, offers commentary in the press, speaks at academic conferences, and presents at national and global forums including South by Southwest and the Centre for European Policy Studies. She holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a bachelor’s in American Studies from Amherst College.
"It is incredibly exciting to welcome Nicole Ozer as our new leader at EFF at a time when the organization's mission couldn't be more essential,” said entrepreneur, activist, writer, and EFF Board member Anil Dash. "Nicole's unique skills promise to build on the foundation that Cindy Cohn established as Executive Director, preparing EFF to serve an even more vital role in protecting privacy and innovation."
Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993 when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. She served as EFF’s legal director and general counsel from 2000 through 2015, and as executive director since then. She also co-hosted EFF’s award-winning “How to Fix the Internet” podcast. Her memoir, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, was published March 10 by MIT Press, and she is now conducting a national book tour.
EFF's Board of Directors last year assembled a committee which undertook a wide search for Cohn’s successor with assistance from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates.
Contact: press@eff.org