-The Hindu There has been no public debate on the level of watch citizens can be put through, and on what the red lines should be while using intrusive mechanisms The tussle between government agencies' need for a better, faster and real-time interception, surveillance and monitoring mechanism through the Central Monitoring System (CMS), on the one hand, and demands by privacy, civil rights and free speech activists, for ensuring higher privacy for...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The poor in rural areas spend only Rs 17 per day while those living in cities and towns spend Rs 23 a day, a government survey has revealed. The bottom 5% of the population had an average monthly per capita expenditure of Rs 521.44 in rural areas and Rs 700.50 in urban areas, according to National Sample Survey (NSS) data for 2011-12 (July-June). The top 5% of...

-Reuters India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance programme that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said. The expanded surveillance in the world's most populous democracy, which the government says will help safeguard national security, has alarmed privacy advocates at a time when allegations of massive US digital snooping beyond American...

-Newsclick.in A few weeks back Fortune magazine and CNN carried a long online blog titled ‘Dirty Medicine' by Dinesh Thakur, a former employ of Ranbaxy, where he recounts how he came across several procedural and other lapses in the company's manufacturing facilities. Since then the Fortune blog has become one of the most widely circulated and commented upon business stories in the world. The story received attention as it came in the...

-The Times of India KAMDUNI (BARASAT): "Shut up", West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had shouted at Kamduni women on Monday. Her party toughs ensured they did. When TOI visited the village on Tuesday, the roar of a hundred women the previous day had been replaced by a deadening stillness. Branded "CPM supporters" and browbeaten by the CM, the women shut up and shut themselves indoors. On Monday, they had rushed to...