There is no censorship in Italy, but...

"Censorship" was abolished and outlawed in Italy sixtytwo years ago. Freedom of the press and of personal opinion is not only established by the Constitution, but also deeply rooted in custom and in all perceptions of civil society. There are, however, some worrying facts. The concentration in a few hands of a large part of the information system. A general, "centralized" myopia of the "dominant culture", that is partly deliberate manipulation and partly unintentional ignorance. A sly, apparently "benevolent", culture of superficiality and vagueness that tends to lull, confuse and subdue.

A disturbing maverick, in this context, is the internet. Originally feared, later ambiguously applauded, anyhow misunderstood, the net remains annoying for those who are in the habit of having control and are irritated,

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Russian and Ingush human rights organizations, as well as OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), are asking for an investigation into the circumstances of the murder of Magomed Yevloyev, the publisher of ingushetiya.ru, an independent news website in Ingushetia region.

Yevloyev was a strong critic of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov. His website had reported on alleged Russian security force brutality in Ingushetia, a poor Russian region of about half a million people, mostly Muslims. Yevloyev was detained on 31 August by local Interior Ministry officials at Magas airport as he was returning to Ingushetia from Moscow and, according to the police, he was accidentally shot in the head while driven in a police car.

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The conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia region has extended to Internet, both countries having launched cyber-attacks and blocking each other's broadcasting sites.

Georgian authorities have blocked access to Russian news broadcasters and websites, the action being justified by Georgia's Interior Ministry with the argument that Russian broadcasts would "scare our population" which the government could not allow.

Mamia Sanadiradze, founder and CEO of Caucasus Online, the biggest Georgian ISP, told Reuters: "People from the (Georgian) security agencies asked me to block Russian sites. There were threats from viruses, we faced disinformation and so on. (...) I hope that when war is over, we will

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On 18 July 2008, the Dutch Court in Nijmegen dismissed the initial claim in its preliminary ruling in the case of Chip maker NXP against the publication by the University of Nijmegen of the security problems regarding Mifare Classic Chip, dismissing the initial claim.

NXP had asked the judge to order the University of Nijmegen to stop the publication of its research results on the way to crack the security of cards using the NXP chip, arguing that the publication would allow law infringers to easily break into security systems and to fraudulently use the public transportation. In NXP's opinion, the publication would cause considerable damage and security risks for NXP and users all over the world.

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Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has sued the Dutch Computer Security Group of Radboud University in Nijmege in order to stop the publication of research results showing security flaws in NXP's Mifare Classic wireless smart cards used in transit and building entry systems around the world.

The technology is used for the transit system in The Netherlands, in the subway systems in London, Hong Kong and Boston, as well as in cards for accessing buildings and facilities, covering 80 percent of the market.

The security researchers of the Dutch university have checked the Mifare system used with Oyster cards for transport in London and recently succeeded in cracking the encryption on a card and clone it. They added credit to it

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On 6 June 2008, the blog of the Italian journalist Antonino Monteleone was closed, without notification, by the Polizia Postale of Calabria under accusations of defamation, but the journalist claims that this action came after having posted uncomfortable information on political figures.

The whole story started in 2006 after the elections, when the blogger posted extracts from a document containing CVs of candidates for the Italian Parliament. The document included information of certain names on the nomination list that had previous relations to cases of power abuse and manipulation of tenders or even with mafia activities. On 9 December 2006, Monteleone posted an article on Galati, member of UDP party then, undersecretary in the

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Several Radio Free Europe websites were under a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in the past week. The attacks started on 26 April 2008, the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, primary targeted at the Belarus Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) service which was offering live coverage of a rally of protest organized in Minsk against the plight of uncompensated victims and a government decision to build a new nuclear plant.

Martins Zvaners, RFE spokesman, thinks that was the largest attack ever experienced by RFE. At its peak, the DDoS attack was sending more than 50000 requests to the RFE sites, flooding its servers' capacity and throwing them

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The Russian prosecutor's office wants to extend the anti-extremism laws to the Internet, proposing an amendment to the rules that presently govern printed media on the basis of which newspapers considered by the court to have published extremist material can be shut down.

In terms of the new proposal, which began circulating in the State Duma's Security Committee on 10 April 2008, any kind of material considered extremist or website deemed to have hosted extremist material should be blocked by ISPs. If found guilty of repeatedly hosting extremist materials, the website will be shut down. A list of extremist Internet-based materials and sites must be regularly made available and the ISPs will be bound to

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The European Ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs have agreed to make publishing bomb-making instructions on the Internet a crime. The French authorities are discussing making the publication on the Internet of any alleged pro-anorexia information a crime.

Justice and interior ministers from the EU member states backed a proposal from Commissioner Frattini to harmonise the normative acts that will make the "public provocation to commit a terrorist offence, recruitment, and training for terrorism" a crime. According to the statements of the EU officials publishing these acts on the Internet completed the European legislation in this domain. They described the Internet as "a virtual

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U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White reversed his initial decision of shutting down the wikileaks.org domain of Wikileaks, a website where whistleblowers can untraceably leak documents.

Wikileaks, launched in early 2007, has anonymously posted documents revealing delicate subjects such as the infiltration of agents of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, into the commission investigating their organization or massive corruption in Kenya.

The Swiss bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks, at the beginning of February 2008, in relation to documents posted to the site that were showing corruption in the bank's Cayman Islands branch allegedly used by bank clients to launder money, hide assets and evade taxes. The Bank had obtained