Censorship of Facebook has occurred because of the open nature of Facebook; several countries have interfered with or banned access to it, including Syria,^[1] China,^[2] Iran,^[3] Vietnam^[4] and the United Kingdom.^[5]

Censorship by country[link]

Australia[link]

Facebook has 10 million Australian users - almost half the population - and requires people to state at sign-up that they are at least 13 years of age. But, because there is currently no way to formally enforce the age limit, in July 2011 Australia began considering giving parents access to their children's pages, requiring proof of age at sign-up, and increasing the age limit to 18.^[6]

China[link]

In Mainland China, Facebook was blocked following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots^[2] because Xinjiang independence activists were using Facebook as part of their communications network.^[7] Some Chinese users also believed that Facebook would not succeed in China after Google China's problems.^[8] The popular Renren social network (formerly Xiaonei) has many features similar to Facebook, and complies with PRC Government regulations regarding content filtering.

Egypt[link]

Facebook was blocked for a few days in Egypt during the 2011 Egyptian protests.^[9]

Denmark[link]

The Facebook censorship robots Websense blocks webpages as "abusive" and "insecure" if the word freemason appears on a page.

Iran[link]

During the 2009 election in Iran, the website was banned because of fears that opposition movements were being organized on the website.^[3]

Mauritius[link]

The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) of Mauritius, ordered Internet Service Providers(ISPs) of the country to ban Facebook on immediate effect, on the 8th November 2007 because of a fake profile page of the Prime Minister. Access to Facebook was restored on the next day. ^{[10][11][12][13][14]}

Morocco[link]

On February 5, 2008, Fouad Mourtada, a citizen of Morocco, was arrested for the alleged creation of a faked Facebook profile of Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco.^[15][16]

Syria[link]

The Syrian government explained their ban by claiming the website promoted attacks on authorities.^[1][17] The government also feared Israeli infiltration of Syrian social networks on Facebook.^[1] Facebook was also used by Syrian citizens to criticize the government of Syria, and public criticism of the Syrian government is punishable by imprisonment.^[1] But most of the people reach to Facebook by internetebak.com which is a gate to banned websites. Syria claims that they do not want to have a prominent website created by a Jew to have presence in the country.

United Kingdom[link]

In the United Kingdom on April 28, 2011, the day before the Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, a number of politically motivated Facebook groups and pages were removed or suspended from the website as part of a nationwide crackdown on political activity. The groups and pages were mostly concerned with opposition to government spending cuts, and many were used to organize demonstrations in a continuation of the 2010 UK student protests.^[18][19][20] The censorship of the pages coincided with a series of pre-emptive arrests of known activists.^[21] Amongst the arrestees were a street theater group planning a performance in opposition to the monarchy, whose members included a 66-year-old professor of anthropology,^[22] and five people dressed as zombies who were drinking tea in Starbucks at the time of the arrest.^[21]

Vietnam[link]

In Vietnam, an unauthenticated document supposedly issued by the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security dating August 27, 2009 instructing ISPs to block Facebook sparked shutdown fears. Access to Facebook became intermittent in mid-November and major ISPs were swamped by complaints. Some technicians confirmed being ordered by the government to block access to Facebook while government officials denied it.^[4]

References[link]

v t e Censorship and websites Censorship of websites Facebook · Twitter · Wikipedia · YouTube Censorship by websites Google · Yahoo · Cisco

Feroze Varun Gandhi (born 13 March 1980, Delhi, India) is an Indian politician, he is a member of Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament of India, representing the Pilibhit constituency. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party National Executive and the youngest National Secretary in the history of the party.^[1][2]

Formative years and education[link]

Varun Gandhi was born in Delhi on 13 March 1980 to Sanjay Gandhi and Maneka Gandhi, he is the grandson of the former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi and the great-grandson of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. His father died in a plane crash when he was three months old. His grandmother was assassinated when Varun was four-years-old. Indira Gandhi is said to have been very fond of Varun and was greatly distressed when his mother left the household.^[3]

He attended Rishi Valley School and completed his A levels from the British School, New Delhi, where he was elected secretary of the student council. According to a press statement released by Sumantra Bose, Professor of International and Comparative Politics at London School of Economics, Varun completed his Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics via the University of London External System in the year 2002.^[4] He also completed his Master of Science in Public Policy from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2004 also through correspondence.

Varun is married to Yamini Roy, daughter of late diplomat Sunil Roy Chowdhury and film enthusiast Dr. Aruna Vasudev.^[5][6]

Career[link]

The nature of his profession and ideological affiliations, coupled with the inexperience of his age, have invited criticisms about him and his ways.^{[clarification needed][7]} In an interview to Stephen Sackur in BBC's HARDtalk in October 2005, Gandhi answered questions about the reasons behind his political affiliation and defended his father as someone who had helped revive the industrialisation of India by starting Maruti Udyog and whose strategy helped the Congress party's comeback after the first ever non-Congress Janata Dal government following an electoral routing for the Indira Gandhi-government after Emergency, among many other things.^[8]

In the 2009 general election, the BJP decided to field Varun Gandhi as its candidate from the Pilibhit constituency instead of his mother Menaka Gandhi.^[9] He won the seat by receiving 419,539 votes and defeated his nearest contending candidate, V.M. Singh, by a margin of 281,501 votes.^{[10][11][12][13][14]} The victory was the strongest of any of the four Gandhi family candidates in the election: his mother Maneka Gandhi, aunt Sonia Gandhi and first cousin Rahul Gandhi. The security deposits of all other candidates, including those of V.M. Singh of the Indian National Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Ganga Charan Rajput were forfeited.^[15] During election campaign, a controversial speech by him resulted in his judicial custody prior to the election.^[16] On 6 March 2011 he got married to Yamini Rai Choudhuri at Varanaasi.

Jan Lokpal Bill[link]

In August 2011, Varun Gandhi strongly pitched for the Jan Lokpal Bill. Gandhi offered his official residence to Hazare to hold his fast, after Hazare was denied permission by the government.^[17] When Hazare was jailed, Gandhi offered to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament.^[18] On August 24, he went to Ramlila Maidan as a common man to support the cause of Anna Hazare, becoming the first politician to openly support the anti-corruption cause.^[19]

Controversies[link]

Mr Gandhi has repudiated the movement which gave his dynasty its place in India's halls of power. During one campaign rally, he taunted Muslims over their tradition of circumcision, called a Muslim rival "Osama bin Laden" and swore that he would "cut off the hand" of any follower of Islam who dared to threaten a Hindu.."^[20]

See also[link]

• Political families

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Bioprofile at Parliament of India of Varun Gandhi
• Official website of Varun Gandhi
• Profile at Govt. of India website

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

Kapil Sibal
Kapil Sibal at 2007 World Economic Forum
Minister of Human Resource Development
Incumbent
Assumed office 22 May 2009
Preceded by	Arjun Singh
Minister of Communications and Information Technology
Incumbent
Assumed office 15 November 2010
Preceded by	A. Raja
Minister of Science and Technology
In office 22 May 2004 – 2010
Succeeded by	Pawan Kumar Bansal
Minister of Earth Sciences
In office 22 May 2004 – 2010
Succeeded by	Pawan Kumar Bansal
Member of Lok Sabha
Incumbent
Assumed office 2004
Constituency	Chandni Chowk
Personal details
Born	(1948-08-08) 8 August 1948 (age 63) Jalandhar, Punjab
Nationality	Indian
Political party	Indian National Congress
Spouse(s)	Nina Sibal (deceased)(1973-2000) Promila Sibal
Children	2 sons
Residence	New Delhi
Alma mater	University of Delhi (M.A./LL.B.) Harvard Law School (LL.M.)
Profession	Politician, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Religion	Hindu
Signature	Kapil Sibal's signature
Website	Kapil Sibal
As of 5 June, 2011

Kapil Sibal (Punjabi: ਕਪਿਲ ਸਿਬਲ, Hindi: कपिल सिब्बल; born 14 Feb 1950,is a lawyer and an Indian politician. He is currently the Minister of Human Resource Development and Minister of Communications and Information Technology.^[1] He also held the two positions of Minister of Science and Technology and Minister of Earth Sciences in the First Manmohan Singh Cabinet.

Sibal was first nominated in July 1988, as a Member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, from the State of Bihar and served as Additional Solicitor General of India (December 1989 – December 1990) and President of the Supreme Court Bar Association on three occasions (1995–96, 1997–98 and 2001–2002).^[2]

Career[link]

Kapil Sibal joined the Bar association in 1970.In 1973, he qualified for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), and was offered an appointment, but declined the offer. Instead he decided to set up his own law practice.^[2][3] He was designated as a Senior Lawyer in 1983. He was also the Additional Solicitor General of India between 1989 and 1990.^[2][4]

In August 2008, an anthology of Kapil Sibal's poems titled I Witness: Partial Observation was published by Roli Books, New Delhi.^[5] He has also contributed several articles on various prominent issues such as security, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism in national dailies and periodicals. In the 2004 general elections, Sibal became an MP by winning the Chandni Chowk constituency in the National Capital Territory representing the Congress Party and was inducted into the Cabinet under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Union Minister for Science, Technology and Earth Sciences. He won the constituency of Chandni Chowk for the second time for the Indian National Congress in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 against TV actor Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Over the years, he has held several important positions in the Government of India and the Society, such as: Additional Solicitor General of India (December 1989 – 1990); Member, Board of Management, Indira Gandhi National Open University (1993); President, Supreme Court Bar Association (1995–96, 1997–98 and 2001–2002); Member, Rajya Sabha (July 1998); Member, Executive Council, Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies (July, 2001); Member, Business Advisory Committee (August, 2001); Member, Committee on Home Affairs (January, 2002); Co-chairman, Indo-US Parliamentary Forum (2002); Member, Board of International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (2002); Member, Programme Board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Indian AIDS initiative (2003); Member, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention set up by the Human Rights Commission, Geneva.

He represented India in the Annual Meetings of the World Economic Forum in 2005 and 2009 held at Davos, Switzerland. He led the Indian delegation to the Annapolis Conference, USA, held to gather International support for establishment of a Palestinian state and the realization of Israeli–Palestinian peace during November 2007. He led the Indian delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Bali in December 2007.

Minister Sibal has recently approved the creation of an Indian Institute of Technology Muddenahalli as part of the 11th 5 year plan.^[6] He is also the person who introduced the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system in India for Class IX and Class X and he has also started the changes in the IIT JEE pattern. He has laid the foundation stone for IIT Patna

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and $35 Laptop[link]

He has also announced an Indian touchscreen tablet computer, Akash which will be co-developed with private partnership. It may be available to students for 1,500 (US$29.93). Satish Jha, chairman of OLPC India, the leading competitor to this venture, questioned his claim that a $35 laptop could be created in a year.^[7] Five state Chief Ministers endorsed the OLPC initiative and the Chief Minister of Rajasthan himself inaugurated the project on the day Sibal showcased his future laptop. The event was attended by two members of the Union Cabinet.^[8][9] This also lead to an open letter by Nicholas Negroponte offering him complete access to MIT and OLPC technologies to help realise India's dream to create a laptop of its own.^[10] Though Sibal demonstrated the laptop in a TV interview and suggested that his tablet was for university students and not for the school children as yet, there were questions about India's contribution to it that may be open to scrutiny once the laptop reaches university students.

Controversy[link]

Kapil Sibal has come under criticism from the students of several IIT's who call his move of abolishing IIT-Joint Entrance Examination and introducing 40% weightage for Class 12 marks and the proposal for a Common Engineering Entrance Exam as a move which was uncalled for. After the HRD Ministry confirmed the news of abolishing IIT-JEE.^[11]

During his tenure as Telecom Minister his comment about the loss in the 2G spectrum scam being only notional and causing "zero loss"^[12] created a public outcry^[13] and he had to clarify it later.^[14] Kapil Sibal was indicted by CAG for favoring M/S Phoenix Rose LLC by overlooking rules and regulations and handpicking that company for creating a database for over 5 lakh working professionals of People of Indian Origin settled in the US. CAG's report said that the project’s cost was $1,20,000 but three years after the initiation, the company has dumped the networking site, completing just over 16% of the targeted work.^[15]

His move to regulate internet content^[16] was strongly criticized across many social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.^[17]

Personal life[link]

Kapil Sibal was married to Nina Sibal from 1973. But she died due to breast cancer in 2000.^[18] Amit and Akhil, Sibal's two sons from his first marriage, are both lawyers.^[19]

In 2005, Sibal married social activist Promila Sibal.^[20][21]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kapil Sibal

• In Conversation: Kapil Sibal, HRD Minister Business Standard
• Profile at Ministry of Science and Technology, Official website
• Kapil Sibal Update