The new Thai government has ordered ministries to act more decisively against those who violate laws protecting the image of the monarchy.

The new minister for information and technology said the government was already blocking 2,300 websites deemed offensive to the monarchy.

It was seeking permission to block 400 more.

The Chinese authorities have launched a fresh campaign to get rid of unhealthy, vulgar and pornographic content on the internet.

The authorities have also published the names of 19 websites that have failed to heed requests to get rid of unsuitable material.

These include Google and China's top internet search engine, Baidu.

Even before a change of president, US government officials have realised that trying to block porn online is a bad way of trying to enhance the Internet. Anyone wanna tell Conroy?

It wasn't tough for a protagonist in a Kundera novel to figure out if he/she were living in a police state. Looking out of the apartment window they could see agents of the state keeping a watch over them from a car parked in the street round the corner. Sometimes shady characters broke in and rummaged through shelves looking for letters or diary notes. Their phones were wiretapped and there was absolutely no way of knowing if the friend they met for a drink last night was an informer or not.

An Indian blogger discusses how India has quietly turned to surveillance.

Britain must rethink plans for a database holding details of every email, mobile phone and internet visit, Europe's human rights commissioner has said in an outspoken attack on the growth of surveillance societies. Thomas Hammarberg said that UK proposals for sweeping powers to collect and store data will increase the risk of the "violation of an individual's privacy".

Bound and gagged, a desperate woman fights for breath as a noose tightens around her neck.

Her glassy eyes bulge with panic, her tongue lolls and her face is stricken with fear as a camera records every moment of her torture.

And you can view it all in comfort on your living-room computer.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the internet monitoring body in Pakistan, has issue directives to all its ISP providers to block a list of six web pages on the grounds that they were "harmful for the integrity of the country."

Why do we care if a mother wants to show photos of herself breastfeeding on Facebook? Isn’t Facebook private enough that a user should be able to show pretty much any photo they want? Facebook doesn’t think so. After Heather Farley was told to remove a photo of her breast-feeding, she sent an email to Facebook requesting an explanation.

Film-style age ratings could be applied to websites to protect children from harmful and offensive material, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said.

Australia's hugely controversial ISP filtering plan received a lump of Christmas coal in its stocking with the release this week of a new report that points out the many difficulties with such a scheme. The current government's response is to make clear that the report was commissioned by the previous government—which apparently makes it a bit suspect. A live trial of the filtering system has been delayed into January, but it is still going ahead.