Last month, we heard that BlackBerry was planning to leave Pakistan due to privacy concerns. BlackBerry refused to accept the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s plea for “unfettered access” to use users’ information that included emails and BBM conversations.

The request made by the PTA would directly infringe on users’ privacy. And BlackBerry is not one to jeopardise the privacy of its customers. Earlier in July, the PTA sent out notifications to the country’s mobile phone operators stating that BlackBerry’s BES servers won’t be allowed to operate in the country starting December due to “security reasons”. It was then that the Canadian phone company decided to leave [...]

As users complain of call drops and call lags, the government has asked Telecom companies to improve their standards by ‘focusing on improving capital expenditure and optimising resource utilisation to curb call drops,’ as stated by Business Standard.

“The projected acute shortage of towers due to non-cooperation of state government and local bodies can’t be accepted as a reason for the call drops in last four to six months as this problem has assumed severe proportion during this period,” it said.

A meeting was held on Tuesday with the Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg and the CEOs of [...]

A directive had been passed, late Friday evening, blocking around 800 porn websites. Although, the effect of this legislation may not have taken place all over the country, it is said to become active in a couple of days.

So now when one tries to access a particular porn website, an error message will show, suggesting that the Indian government had asked the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to block the site. This is the result of a PIL that is being held in the Supreme Court asking the government to block citizens from accessing pornography  on the internet. In November, the government asked the Internet And Mobile Association of India to curate a list of pornography websites [...]

The much heated issue of Net Neutrality now has the Centre’s support. The government hasn’t come out with a final verdict on the same, but is committed to keeping the Intenet open and evenly accessible to everyone. Standing up in support of free internet, Telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a firm voice said that the practices of blocking and deliberately slowing down or speeding up of lawful content on web should not be allowed.

While responding to a discussion on Net Neutrality in Rajya Sabha, Prasad commented –

Government stands for ensuring [...]

The present Indian government has put particular focus on the communication infrastructure of the country. The focus is especially on making India a powerful force in the digital era. It envisions mobile connectivity for every Indian and developing the nation through an e-governance system. The Digital India program is the most visible action plan by the government. But experts are asking the Indian authorities to take a breather and first work out a clear strategy for cyber security.

Cyber Security is an important element of a communication infrastructure. It is not just necessary to establish these protocols but to [...]

Microsoft, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo and AOL have together asked the world’s governments to reform its current laws and practices. 

All of these companies have issued a letter to the government directly and also posted it in various publications to spread it worldwide. This is what the letter says:

The undersigned companies believe that it is time for the world’s governments to address the practices and laws regulating government surveillance of individuals and access to their information.

While the undersigned companies understand that governments need to take action to protect their [...]

Yahoo received 29,000 government data requests on its users this year, with almost half coming from the United States, according to the company’s global transparency report released Friday.

Yahoo said in the report, covering the first six months of 2013, that 12,444 of the requests from worldwide governments came from the United States.

At Yahoo, we take the privacy of our users seriously,” general counsel (Yahoo) Ron Bell said in a blog post. We also recognize our role as a global company in promoting freedom of expression wherever we do business. That’s why we’re issuing our first [...]

There are reports that the Indian government has blocked Facebook and YouTube in Kashmir. The story was first reported by GreaterKashmir which said that, ISP companies blocked social networking sites including Facebook and YouTube in Kashmir without any official directive the state government.

The cellular companies have also blocked GPRS facilities on the mobile telephones causing immense inconvenience to the subscribers.  Greater Kashmir received over a dozen telephone calls from different areas of the Valley, complaining that the internet service has been blocked by companies [...]

Government has issued directions to all Internet service providers to disable any inflammatory or hateful content that targets the community for north eastern states.

“Based on complaints regarding content that’s inflammatory, hateful and inciting violence targeting North East Community, DIT has issued an advisory to all intermediaries,” Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sachin Pilot said.

The advisory based on terms and provisions of IT Act and Rules asks them to take action for disabling all such content on priority, the minister said.