If passed, Ethiopia's Telecom Fraud Offense bill will make it an offence to using VOIP services such as Skype and Google Talk for commercial purposes. This has been felt as a dangerous threat to freedom of speech.

Encryption is essential for anyone collecting and handling evidence, but encryption tools tend to stay in the hands of techies and geeks. Enter Cryptoparty. Cryptoparty describes itself as a "decentralized, global initiative to introduce basic cryptography tools - such as the Tor anonymity network, public key encryption (PGP/GPG), and OTR (Off The Record messaging) - to the general public". To make encryption more accesible, "CryptoParties" have been happening around the world.

Disaster-related mobile apps from Japan (Image: European Journalism Centre)

Has a politician, a business or union leader, a health association or environmental group said something that you suspect is untrue or misleading? Africa Check is a new non-profit, crowd-sourced, fact-checking organisation which checks, refutes and confirms claims made in the public sphere in Africa.

So many newspaper articles are published with missing or too-vague references to their original sources. "Unsourced" is a tool to help us fill in the gaps in the news articles we read; to provide the background information that newspapers should be including - but aren't.

(Image: Investigative Dashboard)

The Investigative Dashboard contains tools and support for investigating corporations around the world. It includes a catalogue of the world's databases containing company data, as well as a selection of ready-to-use company datasets, and tools to extract and analyse data.

The same tools that advocates use to investigate and expose abuse can be used by their opponents to spy on and punish them. Business Week looks at the Syrian Electronic Army's sophisticated methods of spying, tracking, tracing and spreading disinformation.

Hackers pose a threat that often marginally affects the public but the idea and perceived threat of them has resulted in a large battle against their potential attach rather then preventing more common data-security problems. Private data is more at risk through common mistakes than through hacking and malware attempts but law makers perceive hackers to be the bigger threat. Read the complete article here.

(Image by Liberate Tate) 

See the video of Liberate Tate, a group of artists and environmental activists, who are  opposed to oil giant BP's  sponsorship of the Tate Modern Museum, which humorously delivers a personal gift to the Museum as a uninvited installation for the gallery.

Transparency International surveyed 105 of the worlds biggest companies to shine a light on transparency in Corporate reporting. The report examines how much information on earning and taxes are disclosed and what measures companies have in place to fight corruption.