At dawn on 12 March 2013, police in Bahrain raided the house of 17 year-old Ali Shofa, confiscated his laptop and phone, and took him into custody. Ali was charged with writing anonymous Tweets referring to Bahrain's king as a "dictator," and was sentenced to 1 year in prison. Authorities had tracked him down by hijacking Ali's friend's account to send malicious links to Ali.

Governments, cyber militias, and others increasingly seek to exploit the digital security vulnerabilities of their adversaries to cause physical harm including imprisonment, disappearances, and even murder. A growing commercial "lawful intercept" industry from the West supplements freely available tools from the hacker underground.

Learn more from security researchers and victims alike about how these crimes have unfolded and what you can do to prevent them. Even if you’re not a computer security expert--or have never traveled outside of the US--you can play a part in making such abuses a thing of the past.