CyberLaw Blog

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BBC News: Few gains for press freedom: “Wednesday, 30 April 2008 13:02 UK

An annual survey of media freedom has reported a mixed picture in East Asia – with some losses and some gains.

The US-based Freedom House organisation says China tightened some restrictions in 2007, but also tolerated more investigative journalism into cases of official corruption.

The report noted gains last year in Thailand and Malaysia, but said Vietnam and Laos continue to fare poorly.

It ranked North Korea as the world’s most restricted media environment.

‘Moderate breakthroughs’

Freedom House reported that China made some progress in 2007 in allowing investigative journalists to carry out their work – in cases including corruption and enforced child labour.”

See the Freedom House Freedom of the Press 2008 report (pdf file).

They have been working on this for a while. It will be interesting to see whether it leads into anything. It would be also interesting to see if serious over-blocking (as well as under-blocking) will be witnessed with the certified products…

UK – Standard adopted for filtering tools: “(BSI)
The Kitemark for Child Safety Online has been launched with the Home Office and Ofcom to provide consumers – especially parents – reassurance that their children will not be subjected to undesirable web content. Manufacturers of filtering, monitoring and blocking applications can get their products certified against the Kitemark standard and those that pass the tests will be able to display the Kitemark symbol on their products. Parents will be able to see clearly and quickly which products will give their children the most effective protection whilst online. The Kitemark for Child Safety Online has been developed through a collaboration between BSI (the UK’s National Standards Body), the Home Office, Ofcom and representatives from ISPs and application developers.”

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

Latest issue of EDRI-gram is available now, and provides a good overview of recent developments at the Council of Europe level.

CoE – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: “(EDRI-gram)
The 9th meeting of the Council of Europe (CoE) group of specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society (MC-S-IS) was held in Strasbourg from 31 March to 2 April 2008. At the same time, on 1-2 April, another division of the CoE was holding in a building across the street its 2008 Octopus conference on cooperation against cybercrime. This schedule overlapping is not the only sign that CoE’s left hand seems to ignore what its right hand is doing: different divisions are also addressing same issues, though from different points of view and with different results.”

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

Six months on from HMRC, data losses still rising, says ICO: “

Disappointed by apparent learning failure

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas is again telling UK companies to sort out their data protection systems as the number of reported losses of private information keeps on growing.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)