Balkans reaffirm commitment to data protection

It should come as no surprise that the EU considers the protection of personal data as a fundamental right guaranteed by a number of international and national legal acts. These laws cover the right to have private and family life respected, the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data, and the free movement of such data. Read More »

Know your politicians! Ukrainian website issues reports on MPs’ integrity

Knowing who your representatives are has never been easier in Ukraine, thanks to the Chesno (Honest) civic movement. The organization has launched a website where anyone can monitor Ukrainian parliamentary members and their level of integrity. Read More »

Russia’s top social media site to allow same-sex relationships

Russia’s largest social media site, Vkontakte, will now allow users to show that they are in a same-sex relationship on their profile page, according to The Moscow Times. The feature was announced just days after the social network told a user that it had no plans to do such, Radio Free Europe reports. Read More »

Can an Internet poll save the Russian opposition?

Russian opposition leaders are hoping a nationwide, online poll will help the country’s disparate political groups coalesce into a movement big enough to take on President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, according to Reuters.

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Central Asia & Caucasus: The Promise and Pitfalls of New Election Technologies

In announcing that Georgia’s parliamentary elections would take place October 1, President Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration affirmed its commitment to conduct what one official said would be an “exemplary” vote. New technologies are helping election monitors hold officials to such pledges, but they still have limitations, experts say. Read More »

Georgia’s restricted access to satellite dishes

In the past month, Georgian officials have seized thousands of satellite dishes from the pro-opposition Maestro and Global TV stations, accusing the companies to be involved in vote bribery in an operation linked to opposition party Georgian Dream’s leader Bidzina Ivanishvili. Read More »

Fear and self-censorship on the Uzbek Internet

Uzbekistan has the most severe restrictions on Internet use in Central Asia, according to a recent report on the state of Internet and politics in the country. Read More »

Bulgaria e-gov project to shine light on government spending

Bulgaria will start publishing daily data on government spending in August as part of the country’s Open Government Initiative. The Ministry of Finance will post .xls spreadsheets with information on fund transfers to ministries, municipalities, universities, and other public organizations. Read More »

Belarusian blogger signs up for election, turns to VK for help

Ihar Slucak, the blogger who inspired the “State in Belarusian” campaign, is planning to stand for the Belarusian parliamentary elections in September 2012. His team, as well as the district he would run in, has been picked through VKontakte, the the biggest Russian-speaking social network ,which claims to host at least 4,000,000 accounts from Belarus. Read More »

Russia investing millions in high-tech campus near Moscow

Russia intends to diversify its economy away from dependence on the export of raw materials by funding its own version of Silicon Valley an hour outside of Moscow. While this project isn’t exactly new, Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov announced earlier this week that state-owned companies will start transferring billions of rubles into an endowment fund for a flagship research institute at Skolkovo.

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Bulgarian PM Boyko invites “Boykometer” creators for a chat

A few days ago, the web site Politikat.net (The Politician; bg), created by prominent Bulgarian bloggers Komitata(Konstantin Pavlov) and Asen Genov, became the subject of the government’s attention. Komitata wrote about it here [bg]. Read More »

ElectBy returns for elections in Belarus

ElectBy.org, an Ushahidi-based platform for monitoring electoral violations, has returned to Belarus after a 16-month absence. The platform, created on the eve of the 2010 elections, collected nearly 650 reports of irregularities by December 19. On election day, the website received more than 8,000 visitors. Read More »

Russia’s human rights council, Wikipedia protest internet ‘censorship’ bill

A bill proposing a single blacklist of illegal websites came under fire from the Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council because it could potentially lead to censorship on the Runet (Russian internet), according to RIA Novosti. Head Mikhail Fedotov, along with twenty other members of the council, expressed concern that, “the bill envisions the introduction of real censorship in the Russian sphere of the internet,” in a signed statement. Read More »

Tajikistan restores access to blocked news website

The authorities have removed a restriction on Internet access to Tajikistan’s main independent news agency Asia-Plus on Thursday, according to its website. Read More »