-Bloomberg.com One of the most obscene moments after the death of the gang-rape victim in New Delhi was a Tweet by Narendra Modi, the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, offering regret and condolences to the dead woman’s family. Modi, who has quelled restive minorities by allowing attackers to subject women to unspeakable horrors, has done more than any man to numb his prudish country to sexual violence. Yet he...

-The Telegraph When survival is at stake, Tweet. Khap panchayats, the extra-judicial village courts that face possible ban following allegations of encouraging “honour killings”, have decided to give themselves an image makeover. And the “best way” of doing that, they feel, is logging on to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. “It is essential for us to spread information about what we do and who we are. The Internet is the best way...

-The Hindu Leaked documents at WCIT expose secret design; India steers clear of the proposal A leaked document from the UN’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) being held in Dubai, shows that the UAE accompanied by Russia, China, Sudan, Algeria and Brazil had placed a proposal to fundamentally restructure the Web and place it under government control, with authorisation for extensive state surveillance and content regulation. Brazilians later Tweeted, denying their...

-The Indian Express The debate about Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, is growing heated. As more cases of its abuse surface, even Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal has begun to mull changes to the act. The key question to be probed is whether individual actions booked under the provision are isolated instances of abuse or the section itself flawed. For that, we need to first explore how...

-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...