News

A grand jury in the US is investigating the source of a leak that led to the public unmasking of a CIA agent in 2003. The leak formed part of the wide-ranging controversy about the US administration's justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It sparked a major political row in 2003 that has refused to subside. The BBC News website looks at key issues in the case. What is the grand jury...

New York, September 30, 2005–The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved that New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been freed after spending 85 days in a U.S. prison for refusing to disclose a confidential source. But CPJ is deeply troubled by the long-term damage that the federal prosecutor’s investigation has had on the free flow of information, and the message sent worldwide by...

There’s a new sort of Internet colossus on the rise, and it is poised to wreak havoc on what might be called the world’s legacy business infrastructure–meaning many of the world’s important businesses big and small. If you’re a banker in Greece, a telecom executive in Thailand, or a retailer in Reno, watch your back. In the first phase of the Internet era, the worry was that brick-and-mortar...

Reporters Without Borders today hailed the release yesterday of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who had been in prison since 6 July for refusing to reveal a source, but the organisation regretted that, in order to obtain her freedom, she has been forced to violate the principle that journalists’ sources are confidential. "Miller’s release is obviously good news in itself, but she recovered...

THE WORLD has a problem. Its biggest communication tool is controlled by the most powerful superpower. There is an argument, usually made by Americans, that this is not such a bother. The Americans invented the thing, and besides the Internet is running OK. However the fact the US military splashed out cash to develop the Internet does not mean that it has the right to run it. It has grown bigger...

Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the CIA leak case, was released from a Virginia detention centre on Thursday after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the matter. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with...

GENEVA -- A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium's principal overseer. "We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international...

Talks on regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century ended without agreement on Friday, but the United States won some backing for its refusal to cede its sole control to an international body from groups representing ordinary Internet users. Many Web surfers may not like the effective control the United States has over the Internet through its supervision of the Internet addressing system...

The US has rejected calls by European Union (EU) officials to give control of the net over to a more representative United Nations (UN) body. Wrangling over who should essentially be the net police, managing domain names and net traffic routing fairly, has been going on for some time. The matter is supposed to be discussed at November's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia. But at a...

The United Nations' International Telecommunications Union is ready to take over the governance of the Internet from the United States, ITU head Yoshio Utsumi said on Friday. The United States has clashed with the European Union and much of the rest of the world over the future of the Internet. It currently manages the global information system through a partnership with California-based Internet...