-The Hindu It’s Russia, China, and Arab states versus E.U., U.S. and Japan; India is silent The December 3-14 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, could collapse if Russia does not back off from its proposal to bring the Internet under the control of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), thereby subjecting the web to inter-governmental regulation. At the conference’s plenary session, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kazakhstan backed the Russian proposal,...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court, which relentlessly strove to bring to book perpetrators of the fake encounter killings of Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram Prajapati in Gujarat, has an explosive situation on its hands as the National Human Rights Commission informed it that 191 fake encounter killings took place in the country in the last five years. Appalled by the attitude of the Manipur government in responding to over 1,500 alleged fake...

-First Post Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his address to the Annual Convention of Information Commissioners, in early October had  warned against the use of the Right to Information Act — one of the most popular people-oriented steps that the UPA has taken so far — to ridicule public officials and infringe on people’s privacy. The PM’s statement which expressed concern over frivolous and vexatious RTI applications, infringement of personal privacy and...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Thursday said it had directed appointment of retired judges as heads of information commissions at the Centre and state level to ensure their independence as many were headed by persons who "have been in the good books of government". "You will find the chief information commissioners, both at the Centre and state level, are persons who have been in the good books of the...

-The Business Standard IT laws have clauses that can be too easily misused The arrest of two women in Palghar (near Mumbai) for an innocuous Facebook status update is the latest indicator of an increasing intolerance of free speech, especially online. The state has also increased its surveillance. The focus on surveillance and censorship is evident not only in specific instances but also in the statistics. In February, the government said...