Why the ‘right to Internet’ is a bad idea: As the share of states in government expenditure is inching towards 60%, the budgets of different state governments are more important than ever before. Those budget statements also contain some interesting ideas. One such idea came from Kerala this year. Read More
Hackers attempt to target Army officers’ computers with sex videos: Hackers are targeting computers of Indian Army officers with decoy emails that purportedly contained links of “their sex videos”, found the cyber security team of Indian Army. According to a report of Mail Today, computers of at least four officers of Lieutenant General-rank were on target…
WhatsApp explores UPI for digital payments in India: BENGALURU/DELHI: Popular instant messaging app WhatsApp is exploring the unified payments interface (UPI) among other payment modes to launch its payment solution in India. The development comes about a month after WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton had told ET’s sister publication The Times of India that the Facebook-owned…
Don’t make GPS mandatory for handsets, ICA tells TRAI; Our Take: A government that has a propensity to make things mandatory, did just that last year: the DoT had said in April 2016 that all handsets should mandatorily have GPS by January 2018, apart from having a physical panic button on each device. Read More
Human Rights and Regular Internet Users: Human rights are a topic that came up several times at the IETF meeting that just ended. There’s a Human Rights Research Group that had a session with a bunch of short presentations, and the featured two talks at the plenary asking, ‘Can Internet Protocols Affect Human Rights?’ The…
BJP files police complaint against Prashant Bhushan for ‘insulting’ Lord Krishna: A police complaint has been filed against Prashant Bhushan, a senior advocate and the co-founder of the new political party Swaraj Abhiyan, for his alleged ‘inflammatory tweets’ against ‘Lord Krishna.’ Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga filed the complaint at the Tilak Marg…
Govt plans word limit for RTI, make information expensive: The Modi government’s plan to change information law norms, including a 500-word limit for an application and higher fee, has activists worried who see it as an attempt to dilute the RTI. The changes proposed will make information expensive and take online the process of complaint…
Internet Shutdowns and Content Blocking Not the Answer, Says Internet Society: The Internet Society today voiced its commitment to keeping the Internet on for everyone, in response to the increasing number of government orders to temporarily shut down or restrict access to Internet services. Speaking out at RightsCon 2017, the world’s leading conference on Internet…
Government admits Aadhaar was ‘great initiative’ of Congress regime: Admitting that Aadhaar was a “great initiative” of the previous UPA government, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said it was being expanded by making the card mandatory for direct benefit transfer of subsidy and checking of tax evasion. Read More
Social media, a new tool for burglars: CHENNAI: They don’t lurk in the dark looking for a lock to pick or a wall to scale. Police are confronting a new breed of tech-savvy burglars who tap and swipe their way into homes using smart phones. The giveaway: the victims’ status messages and photos on social…