Source: Blic

Our country is party to the CoE Convention on Cyber-crime. We have also enacted a Law on “Cyber-crime” and recently specialized departments have been set up within the police force, courts and public attorney's offices. While these first steps are not yet firm and resolute, they nevertheless bespeak a government determined to counter cyber-evil and to approach the major global phenomenon of out time in a responsible way.     

Source: Danas

Serbia has still not complied with the Ruling of the UN Human Rights Committee of 2005.

In late October 2005, the UN Human Rights Committee, in its first deliberation of a complaint filed by anyone from Serbia, and even from the whole ex-Yugoslavia, if my memory serves me, ruled that the decision of a Serbian court constituted a violation of the freedom of expression, guaranteed under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Source: Blic

Good news is that the Government has included the right of free access to information in the skills upgrading program for civil servants in 2007. Namely, problems in the exercise of freedom of information are not caused only by the illegitimate interests and needs of groups and individuals to have “discretion', but, to a no lesser extent, by the lack of awareness of their new rights among the citizens and their unfamiliarity with the procedure, all of which should urge the government to take a more responsible approach to the public. It is now almost two years since the Commissioner for Information launched an initiative to include the right of free access to information in the staff training programs of public authorities. The Commissioner emphasized this problem in all three reports presented to the Parliament. However, all these efforts have been futile until now.    

Source: Danas

By the beginning of March, information has been published that the Government of Serbia has sold the Mining-Smelting Complex  Bor to Rumanian company Kuprom. The information  wasn't surprising, because closing of the Sales and Purchase Agreement has been preceded by negotiations lasting for months. 

Source: Danas

Journalists between the requirements of profession and inactive state

World Day of Press Freedom, May 3rd, for the societies that do not pay necessary attention to media freedom issue, is a good chance for them to do that, at least for a moment.  During this spring, at least in our country, it wasn't that way. During this spring,  volens-nolens , the attention of our public to the position of journalists and media in our society has been attracted by another, especially brutal event. The public has been in fact, completely literally, shaken by explosion of the bomb on the window sill of the flat where a journalist of one Belgrade weekly edition lives with his family.