The Internet in Asia

Caricatures blocked in Pakistan

The Pakistani Supreme Court has ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block all those web sites carrying the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Dr Imran Uppal  first submitted the petition to the Supreme Court under article 184 (3) of Constitution of Pakistan. Earlier, counsel for the petitioner, Malik Qamar Afzal also sought direction from the Supreme Court to direct ISP providers based at United States to immediately suspend such publications from its services.

Terrorism and online communities

According to the reports of some on-line terrorism experts, Al-Qaeda supporters are using social networking programs to promote terrorism and recruit non-Arabic-speaking Westerners, and to rally support for Osama bin Laden. Previously, such activities were hosted on more traditional websites  in Arabic, that users needed to know off before gaining access to it. Orkut,   popular on-line social networking service owned by Google (and has 13 million registered members worldwide) is similar to other social networking services such as Friendster, and My Spaces.

These free services allow members to  create personal profiles and associate with "communities" based on shared interests. Upon becoming a member of the community, they can gain access to other members' 'homes'. On Orkut, at least 10 communities are devoted to praising bin Laden, AL-Qaeda or jihad (holy war) against the United States.  The largest has more than 2,000 members according to Orkut tracking data. These 'homes' can be found by using a simple English language search function provided by Orkut.

According to Rita Katz, director of SITE Institute, a Washington non-profit that tracks terrorist activity on-line for government and private clients, these sites provide videos of attacks, see pictures of dead U.S. soldiers and read an English translation of the Iraq-based wing of AL-Qaeda's latest communications long before they are available on other English media. For example, translated communications from AL-Qaeda in Iraq have been appearing, four or five at a time, on a message board forum within an Orkut community since Dec. 26,

Number of Indians using online banking increasing.

12% of the 38.5 million Internet users in India are using online banking, and this figure is expected to increase to close to 50% of Indian Internet users in the next two years. The study conducted late last year with 6,365 respondent's views were solicited of which 35% (2,240 respondents) had used Internet banking. Currently, very few banks in India offer Internet banking services. One of the biggest barriers that this industry is facing there is the issue of trust and security.

Unchecked Freedom in the Web of China

Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project of the University of California, Berkeley commented that the Web of China has become a wild place when it comes to things that are outside of politics. One is free to access just about anything on the Web.

On paper, the government's Internet regulations forbid the display of any information that damages state security, harms the dignity of the state, promotes pornography and gambling, or "spreads evil cults" and "feudal superstitions." In the real world however, the Web in China has also become a thriving marketplace for everyone, including scam artists and hard-core criminals.

It is ironical that while China's Internet police force is busy deleting phrases like "free speech" and "human rights" from online bulletin boards, the sales of pirated musics and movies and the peddling drugs and sex and other illegal activities in the web are mostly left unchecked. These unchecked freedoms on the Web, analysts say, are perhaps unwittingly ushering in an age of startling social change.

Singapore plans for super-fast broadband network by 2012

Singapore plans to create and put in place its Next Generation National Broadband Network by the year 2012. The main reason for this nation wide upgrade is that it is expected that the country's current broadband infrastructure will not be able to cope with surging demand for data access in the years ahead. The second goal of this program is to develop wireless access that is available at an affordable price.

It is expected that this broadband facility will will include both wired and wireless components, and will provide data transfer speeds of 100MB to 1GB per second to 85% of households in the country. A wireless broadband network will also blanket the city-state. The new network is also expected to have large social impacts. For example, it will allow Singaporeans to make video calls to stay in touch with relatives and friends overseas.

The government hopes to complete this project without help from the private sector, with contracts awarded for the project in early 2007, which will allow 50% of the network to be rolled out within three years, and the other 50% to be complete by 2012.

South Korean President participate in an online debate on poverty

South Korea has one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world, and South Koreans viewed as the earliest adopters of ICT technology. Their president, Roh Moo-hyun is aware of this and is scheduled to hold an unprecedented live-on line debate on poverty with the public according to a statement issued by the presidential Blue House. He has just passed his three year mark of a single five-year presidency term and has promised to focus the remainder of his term on reducing social disparity and on reaching a free trade agreement with the United States.

Mobile phones and protests in the Philippines

In 2001, Filipinos used text messages to organize a massive street protest that led to the downfall of former President Joseph Estrada on corruption allegations, replacing him with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. This time, Arroyo is the target of the latest mobile phone aided protest- from disseminating information and spreading rumors to mobilizing protesters after she declared a state of emergency last Friday to quell a coup plot against her. Thousands of opposition protesters responded to the declaration by marching along Manila's main as they continued to spread messages as quickly as they received them. Arroyo's camp has tried to crack down on text messages before, saying they were being used to incite sedition, but hasn't really figured out a way to do it without sparking a public outcry.

Korea fights back against China's web attacks

The Korean government has decided to block the backdoor Internet pathway from abroad, to help reduce the problem of identity theft. One of the main problems they faced before blocking the Internet pathway is personal data leakage especially to China. Since implementing this measure, they have been able to block 2,600 illegal IPs, which were found to be the main routes for penetrating the Korean network. One of the main problems faced with identity theft was the stealing of resident registration numbers, from Koreans in order to subscribe to ``Lineage,'' the popular
on-line game. To prevent the recurrence of massive personal data leakage, the ministry also unveiled a package of measures including propagation of security
patches as well as firewalls.

India's latest and largest e-government program launched

India's latest e-government initiative, MCA-21  is also its largest, and is aimed at making e-filing easier with a comprehensive on-line portal. This project is jointly executed by the Indian Ministry of CompanyAffairs and TCS.  TCS will be responsible for designing and implementing the project and will then own, operate and maintain the system for a period of six years after successful roll-out at all sites.  In the event of a man-made or natural disaster, the system is designed to switch over to the disaster recovery system within 12 hours.