The Malaysian government is on a roll. Three months back, it mulled over the possibility of banning Facebook locally, following 2,000 reports of abuse made in the country. That didn’t sit well with Malaysians at all. Now, the Malay Mail Online reports that authorities are looking into setting up a firewall on a number of websites including YouTube. The…
A new tool to enable journalists and human rights defenders to scan their computers for known surveillance spyware has been released today by Amnesty International and a coalition of human rights and technology organizations. Detekt is the first tool to be made available to the public that detects major known surveillance spyware, some of which is…
Earlier this month, at the Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunications Union — its highest decision-making forum — India moved a radical proposal to govern the internet. Online traffic originating and terminating in a country should stay within that country, argued India, making the case for a “routing plan” that ensured all communication was traceable.…
It would be difficult, if not impossible to imagine existence without the World Wide Web. It is so very much a part of our daily lives. We take it for granted. Equally, not many of us are aware or even care to educate ourselves about the genesis of this indispensable part of our existence. Efforts…
Facebook is again trying to simplify its privacy policy — and make it much shorter — to better explain how it targets advertisements to its 1.35 billion users. The world’s largest online social network uses the information people share on its site, along with the apps they employ and the websites they visit, to show…
Blocking Internet porn may be next to impossible. But the Indian government is going to try anyhow. The plan is to begin by creating a list of pornography sites, especially those hosting child porn, and provide that to Internet service providers (ISPs) to block. And then, to ensure that large-scale blocking does not slow Internet access, service…
Now that net neutrality is in the news again thanks to President Obama’s strong statement in favor of it yesterday, it’s worth revisiting one of the core tenets of technology. In a free market, when technology increases personal freedom, it succeeds. When it tries to diminish personal freedom, it fails. People stop using it, and it…
The vast majority – 91% – of Americans believe that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies, according to a survey. A further 80% also felt that Americans should be concerned about government surveillance, Pew Research suggested. It looked at attitudes to privacy and data in the wake…
America’s major telecoms and cable companies and business groups came out fighting on Monday after Barack Obama called for tough new regulations for broadband that would protect net neutrality, saying they were “stunned” by the president’s proposals. The president called for new regulations to protect “net neutrality” – the principle that all traffic on the internet should be…
Charity organisations and other not for-profits can soon get an exclusive domain extension to register their Web identity. Public Interest Registry (PIR), the organisation that manages also the .org domain, will roll out the .ngo suffix this January, giving non-governmental organisations the option to add it to the right of the dot in their website…