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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 05 Jan 2009
Britain must rethink plans for a database holding details of every email, mobile phone and internet visit, Europe's human rights commissioner has said in an outspoken attack on the growth of surveillance societies. Thomas Hammarberg said that UK proposals for sweeping powers to collect and store data will increase the risk of the "violation of an individual's privacy".
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 05 Jan 2009
Bound and gagged, a desperate woman fights for breath as a noose tightens around her neck.
Her glassy eyes bulge with panic, her tongue lolls and her face is stricken with fear as a camera records every moment of her torture.
And you can view it all in comfort on your living-room computer.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 05 Jan 2009
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the internet monitoring body in Pakistan, has issue directives to all its ISP providers to block a list of six web pages on the grounds that they were "harmful for the integrity of the country."
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 02 Jan 2009
Why do we care if a mother wants to show photos of herself breastfeeding on Facebook? Isn’t Facebook private enough that a user should be able to show pretty much any photo they want? Facebook doesn’t think so. After Heather Farley was told to remove a photo of her breast-feeding, she sent an email to Facebook requesting an explanation.
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By: charles
Date: 30 Dec 2008
Film-style age ratings could be applied to websites to protect children from harmful and offensive material, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Dec 2008
Australia's hugely controversial ISP filtering plan received a lump of Christmas coal in its stocking with the release this week of a new report that points out the many difficulties with such a scheme. The current government's response is to make clear that the report was commissioned by the previous government—which apparently makes it a bit suspect. A live trial of the filtering system has been delayed into January, but it is still going ahead.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Dec 2008
SECRET lists of websites banned in two countries have been leaked online, as the Federal Government delays a live trial of its controversial internet filtering scheme.
A list of 3863 website addresses banned in Denmark was published yesterday by a whistleblower group and is believed to contain links to illegal material including child pornography.
The department of Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has previously compared the Government's filtering plan to "successful" programs in countries including Denmark.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Dec 2008
HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has tightened curbs on bloggers to ban views seen as opposing the state or undermining national security, according to a new edict which asks online service providers to provide data on users.
The Internet has given Vietnamese people a forum to express themselves that cannot be found in the traditional media, which are closely controlled by the communist authorities.
It has produced a flourishing blogosphere, but the government said earlier this month it wanted closer regulation.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Dec 2008
NEW DELHI: Publishing and transmitting obscene material in electronic form besides other e-commerce frauds will now be punishable under the
amended IT Bill, which was today passed by the Lok Sabha.
The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006, adds provisions to the existing Information Technology Act, 2000, to deal with new forms of cyber crimes like publicising sexually explicit material in electronic form, video voyeurism and breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by intermediary and e-commerce frauds.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 23 Dec 2008
The Federal Government has distanced itself from a report that found internet censorship technology under consideration was seriously flawed.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the Internet Industry Association report was commissioned and paid for by the former Howard government.
