The Right to Information Act (RTI) was a landmark act of the Parliament of India. Under this act, any citizen of the country can request any information from a public authority (largely referring to the Government). The authority is required to reply to this request within 30 days. This law has helped bring out many…
For better or worse, news outlets around the world are shaping their content to the likes, shares and retweets of social networks more than ever before, shifting power away from editors and giving it to readers. An article in the New York Times, detailing the impact of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm on news websites, highlights the…
The British Council and English in Action have jointly organised a two day seminar on “Education, Technology and Women: Key Issues for Development”. The policy seminar held on 16-17 September 2014, offered a timely platform to discuss and influence policy agendas surrounding education and technology and their access by women in Bangladesh and around the world. The…
At the 2014 Plenipotentiary Conference (‘PP-14’ or ‘Plenipot’) of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), India has tabled a draft proposal on “ITU’s Role in Realising Secure Information Society”. The Draft Resolution identifies 3 security concerns with exchange of information and resource allocation on the Internet: First, it is troubling for India that present network architecture has “security weaknesses”…
All hell broke loose for Chaganti Rahul Reddy of Arundalpet in Andhra Pradesh after he casually posted a message on Facebook allegedly praising Cyclone Hudhud for devastating Visakhapatnam. The police turned up at his place on Friday and arrested him for the ‘offensive’ post. Reddy had unwittingly become a victim of the notoriously vague and…
Facebook has created the ability for users to connect directly to the social network via anonymising “dark web” service Tor. While it was already possible to access Facebook via Tor, the new set-up means all data is encrypted and Tor users are not mistaken for hacked accounts. Users could access the site “without losing the…
The cyber crime cell of Thane police is looking for a person or persons unknown who circulated a woman’s profile picture on WhatsApp with a caption falsely calling her a conwoman. The defamatory message has spread to Hyderabad, Nagpur and other cities through WhatsApp and Facebook. The incident has caused infamy, trauma, and sleepless nights…
Call it an attempt to bridge the digital divide with a Digital India flavour or a race to engage as many eyeballs as possible in a bid to sell more online advertising space on the web and to millions of those Indians with mobiles. Regardless of how you perceive it, the world’s largest social networking…
The Supreme Court on Thursday decided to examine the constitutional validity of Indian Penal Code provisions on criminal defamation, which the media and public spirited persons have for long alleged to have been misused by powerful political leaders to muzzle critical voices. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit stayed five pending…
The new anti-surveillance technologies recently called for by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden is much needed to ensure individuals’ privacy and protection from government, Yan Zhu, a San-Francisco based staff technologist at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told RIA-Novosti Tuesday. “This is good and much needed right now. This is extremely important. In an age…