In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.

The latest example is You Tube’s compliance w…

Geotime software, bought by the Met, collates data from social networking sites, satnavs, mobiles and financial transactions

Britain's largest police force is using software that can map nearly every move suspects and their associates make in the digital world, prompting an outcry from civil liberties groups.

The Metropolitan police has bought Geotime, a security programme used by the US milit…

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at usi…

If you ask anyone on the street, "what business is Google in?", they'll answer without hesitation, "they are in the search business." Google is seen primarily as a search company. It gives us, the public, internet search services for free, out of the generosity of its corporate heart. It also happen to give a us a whole pile of other great services: Gmail, YouTube, Gtalk, and the Android mobi…

The first Hyperactive Summit was held this past weekend, 7-9 May 2010. The meeting was a mix of politics and technology centering around issues of free code, autonomous/anarchist social movements, grassroots reporting, and state and corporate surveillance. It had a special focus on the Hyperactive content management system used by London Indymedia, which was built by the London collective over the…

A California court has issued a subpoena demanding Google reveal the IP addresses of journalists writing for a corruption busting journal from the Caribbean. [...]

According to the notifying letter from Google to the Journal, Google intends to hand over the requested records in just over two weeks, without any defense, and states that the Journal may file a counter-motion with the Santa-Clara co…