Ladder
Ladder: surveillance and subpoenas, in Asia
A government collects journalists' communications or records, often to learn who their sources are. Methods include subpoenas (court orders to hand over records or to testify), search warrants, seizure of phones and notes, demands to telephone and internet companies, and spyware placed on reporters' devices.
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
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2Pressure
Using state power short of prosecution to change coverage: regulatory threats, licence reviews, funding cuts, lawsuits by officials, official "fake news" or "foreign agent" labels, advertising pressure, tax audits.
After Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government arrested former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in September 1998, party-linked newspapers pressured staff to follow the official line, police visited journalists who interviewed his wife, and authorities said they would monitor internet traffi…
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
India's Income Tax Department searched BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai for alleged tax evasion, three weeks after the government used emergency powers to block a BBC documentary examining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to 2002 communal violence.
Unknown · 1 source · Full entry
3Punish
Legal or physical action against individual journalists or sources: subpoenas and record seizures, prosecutions, arrests, detention, expulsions, visa denials, assault where a government actor is involved.
Citizen Lab found Pegasus spyware on the phone of Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz, a close associate and collaborator of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, one day before Saudi operatives killed Khashoggi inside the country's Istanbul consulate.
Note: A journalist's close collaborator was covertly surveilled one day before the journalist himself was killed inside his own country's consulate.
Unknown 1 October 2018 · 3 sources · Full entry
On a single day in February 2025, groups of men beat at least eight journalists in two separate incidents in rural Bangladesh while they investigated a medical-negligence tip and a land dispute; the incidents came as the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus drafted new cyber ordinances rights g…
Ongoing · 1 source · Full entry
All ladders · Surveillance and subpoenas: by country and year · The United States chapter