Rogue teen blogger Amos Yee has been remanded for two weeks at Singapore’s Institute of Mental Health (IMH) to assess his suitability for a mandatory treatment order (MTO). The court heart Tuesday that, according to a psychiatrist, 16-year-old Yee may be suffering from autism spectrum disorder. An MTO could see him undergoing psychiatric treatment for…
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy has approached the Supreme Court, challenging various provisions of the Indian Penal Code that punish people found guilty of “hate speech”. Swamy had claimed that it violates people’s fundamental right to freedom of speech. The former cabinet minister’s petition, that is likely to be taken up in the second…
Unauthorised phone tapping is a constitutional wrong Phone tapping is surely an interference with the civil liberty of citizens. This was questioned by People’s Union of Civil Liberties before the Supreme Court, which disapproved unguided use of power to intercept and interfere with the telephone communications of persons. However, right to privacy in the form…
A new global report by CIVICUS finds that rights of civil society were violated in almost half of the world’s 193 countries in 2014. In particular, the report draws attention to the systematic assault on Freedom of Association, Expression and Assembly. The CIVICUS Civil Society Watch Report shows that core civil society freedoms of expression,…
India’s decision to support the multistakeholder model of internet governance has drawn mostly applause from civil society organisations and individuals who have been following the issue, even as they cautioned that implementation will determine the success of the model. A day after communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said India will support the multistakeholder…
After challenging the validity of the criminal defamation law, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has now challenged before the Supreme Court various provisions of the Indian Penal Code dealing with offences of ‘hate speech’, saying they were violative of the fundamental right to freedom of speech. According to the law, hate speech is any speech, gesture…
Do you spend your evenings sitting in the kitchen, counting how long it takes to fill a bucket of water from your cold tap, then sending angry emails to your water supplier when it’s not filling as fast as Simon’s identical bucket is three doors down on the same street? Probably not. That would be…
The use of social media in rural India has grown 100 per cent in the past year with 25 million people using the Internet to access Twitter and Facebook, according to a report. “Accessing social media is one of the key reasons for people to access the Internet. In fact, for many people accessing the…
To enable hassle-free access to documents such as school certificates for renewing passports or download school textbooks free of cost, the Modi government is all set to launch a one-stop shop shortly. Starting 1 July, the government will launch many projects under Modi’s $18 billion ‘Digital India’ initiative, one of them being ‘eBasta’. “eBasta is…
In the film Elysium, the ultra-rich have left an apocalyptic Earth ravaged by global warming and overpopulation. Their utopian colony orbits high above Earth which festers below. Science fiction, but Silicon Valley techno-utopians also dream of rising above the planet’s problems. The Seasteading Institute, for example, seeks to create floating cities far enough from land…