#IMWeekly: January 31, 2014

China & Iran Iran's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced this month that it is in talks with China's Information Council about best practices for implementing a closed internal "National Information Network."

Egypt A new anti-terrorism law in Egypt, which will come into effect next month, enables the government to censor websites that "instigate terrorism." Critics of the law worry that this framing could be applied to popular social media sites, including Facebook.

Netherlands After The Hague ruled that blocking access to peer-to-peer file sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay had no measurable effect on piracy, the government of the Netherlands has decided to unblock these sites.

Russia Mashable reports that the Russian government has ramped up surveillance in anticipation of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which begin in Sochi next Friday. The country's System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) allows the Federal Security Service to access servers directly, and according to independent reports from within Russia, the government recently has been experimenting with Deep Packet Inspection as well.