Last Month, Moreno-Ocampo told the press that he is 100 percent certain his office will bring charges [JURIST report] against Gaddafi. Also last month, the ICC launched a probe into allegations of crimes against humanity [JURIST report] by the Libyan government. Moreno-Ocampo specifically identified Gaddafi, his sons and his political allies as targets of the investigation and warned Libyan officials that complicity in such abuses would result in prosecution. Additionally, the UN appointed a team of special prosecutors [JURIST report] to investigate allegations that Gaddafi ordered forces to torture and abduct opponents. The UN General Assembly has voted to suspend Libya [JURIST report] from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website] in response to the violent suppression of peaceful protesters by forces loyal to Gaddafi.

Google has recently faced a number of allegations from the international community related to violating privacy laws by capturing personal data through Google Street View. Just last month, A Berlin high court ruled [JURIST report] that Google's Street View mapping service is legal in Germany. The case stems from a suit against Google, brought last year by a woman alleging that photos posted on Google Street View of herself, her family and the front of her house violated her property and privacy rights. The court held that, because the photos were taken from the street, Google did not violate her property rights. Furthermore, the court found no further violations because Germans can opt out of the service, and Google blurs faces and license plates in the posted images. The ruling, which cannot be appealed, was narrowly focused on property rights, ignoring larger data protection issues the company is currently confronting. Additionally in March, the French National Commission of Information Technology and Liberty (CNIL) [official website, in French] fined Google [JURIST report] 100,000 euros (USD $141,300) for violating French data privacy laws by capturing personal data through Google Street View cars, used for its Google Maps service. CNIL stated that Google was not responding to requests in a timely manner and has not stopped using the seized data. Google admitted to the collection of e-mails, passwords and other data over unsecured WiFi networks, but maintained that it was a mistake and that it did not intend to include the code which captured payload data from unsecured WiFi networks. In response to the controversy, Google grounded its Street View cars.

The adoption of the new Constitution and associated reforms has opened the way for Kenya to conduct its own prosecutions in Kenya for the post-election violence in respect of persons at the highest levels of authority and for the most serious crimes...The recent and current initiatives have all been designed and adopted to cure problems, or shortcomings, of the past. They demonstrate that the time is ripe for Kenya to exercise jurisdiction which the ICC should yield.

In December, ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo [official profile] identified the six suspects [JURIST report], including current Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and several Ministry heads. All six are believed to have fomented violence, rape and destruction of property during the 30 days of post-election violence, but they have not yet been charged in Kenya for the alleged crimes. Last month, Moreno-Ocampo warned the six Kenyan suspects that arrests would ensue if they did not comply with the court's conditions [JURIST report]. The warning followed a summons [JURIST report] issued by the ICC earlier that month for the suspects to appear before the court on April 7 for an initial hearing. The Kenyan government also announced last month that it would challenge the admissibility of cases [JURIST report] relating to the post-election violence in the ICC, as well as the jurisdiction of the court.

The Yemeni Parliament enacted several emergency measures [JURIST report] in March at the request of President Ali Abdullah Saleh [official website, in Arabic] in an effort to end anti-government protests. The new laws give the government greater power [AP report] to arrest and detain protesters and to censor the media. Protests, largely organized by the Joint Meeting Party (JMP), have been ongoing in Yemen since February, largely calling for Saleh to step down. Saleh has been in power since 1978 and is considered popular in Yemen and the international community. However, he and his party, the General People's Congress (GPC) have caused mounting political tensions due to attempts to remove presidential term limits [JURIST report] and expand their political power. In December, the parliament stoked outrage among opposition parties and independents when it amended the constitution [AFP report] to eliminate provisions requiring that opposition parties be represented on the high election commission. Although the government has maintained control in urban areas, the northern and southern parts of the country remain unlawful and dangerous, plagued by southern separatists groups and al Qaeda [JURIST news archive]. The protests in Yemen have been analyzed in two recent JURIST op-eds: Constitutional Enforcement in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt by L. Ali Khan, Professor of Law at Washburn University, and The Middle East protest movements: each with a story, all with uncertainty by Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President of Research, Foundation for Defense of Democracies [advocacy organization].

Vu is among several dissidents in Vietnam who have been convicted for anti-government activity. In January, a Vietnamese court sentenced former communist official Vi Duc Hoi to eight years in prison [JURIST report] for advocating democracy and a multi-party system. In January 2010, a Vietnamese court sentenced [JURIST report] writer and democracy activist Pham Thanh Nghien to four years in prison on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda. That same month, a Vietnamese court convicted four democracy activists [JURIST report] of subversion. Following the one-day trial, human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh [JURIST news archive] was sentenced to five years in prison. The four defendants were accused of activities aimed at ending communist rule in Vietnam. Dinh admitted to advocating multi-party democracy in Vietnam and joining the banned Democracy Party. Prior to Dinh's conviction, a Vietnamese court sentenced [JURIST report] pro-democracy dissident Tran Anh Kim in December 2009 to five-and-a-half years in prison for subversion.

Verizon and MetroPCS [JURIST reports] filed the challenges in January out of concern over the broad authority the new rules would grant the FCC. The FCC has long been trying to exert more control over Internet regulation. Last year, US Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) [official website] introduced legislation [JURIST report] intended to block the FCC from implementing its National Broadband Plan [official website; materials]. The Freedom for Consumer Choice Act would remove the FCC's ability to declare the actions of a communications provider illegal unless there was a clear showing that the practice causes harm to consumers and will not be corrected by market forces. A month earlier, the FCC opened a new proceeding [JURIST report] to identify the legal approach that will best support its efforts to develop universal access to "high quality" Internet broadband services. A previous court ruling found that the FCC lacks the power to enforce net neutrality [JURIST report]. Net neutrality is thought by supporters to be essential to the goal of an open flow of information over the Internet regardless of the amount of revenue generated by the information.