I had the pleasure and privilege to attend yesterday’s meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors as a member of the public. The session featured two fascinating presentations and discussions. First, Voice of America Director David Ensor gave an inspirational presentation on the mission, goals, accomplishments, and challenges facing the Voice of America.

Surveillance and spying on world leaders and the general public across the globe have crushed people’s trust in the Internet and other high-tech equipment. More importantly, these actions have infringed on human rights. There was skepticism last week when the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee issued a resolution to protect the people’s right to privacy against massive and unlawful surveillance.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Digital Diplomacy Open House held at the Canadian Embassy by the Digital Diplomacy Coalition. The event featured small booths and presentations by various countries with embassies in DC. During their presentations, I noticed a few trends with regards to the conduct of digital diplomacy as practiced by the participating organizations.

The Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., opened its doors last week to the city’s digital diplomats for an event where they could brag about their use of social media and pick up some tips. A dozen embassies and international organizations, including the World Bank and European Union delegation, participated in the “Digital Diplomacy Open House” that was held in partnership with the Digital Diplomacy Coalition.

A handful of young hackers looked up from their laptops when Jorge Soto burst into the upstairs office they shared in an old Mexico City house one morning last spring. Soto wanted to be sure they'd seen the front-page headline then flying across Twitter: Mexico's congress was set to spend 115 million pesos (then US $9.3 million) on a mobile app that would let 500 lawmakers track legislative affairs from their cellphones -- more than a hundred times what such software could cost.

As Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, noted in the wake of the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program reached in Geneva on Saturday, the effort by Tehran’s negotiating team to explain and justify the country’s push for atomic energy behind closed doors was accompanied by a public diplomacy campaign conducted online.

This week, Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, was quoted as saying during a speech in Washington: "We can end government censorship in a decade. The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything." Earlier this week, we at greatfire.org successfully unblocked the Reuters Chinese website, which had been blocked on 15 November. We also unblocked the China Digital Times website, which has been blocked in China for years and earlier this month created mirrors for our FreeWeibo project.

The world's largest social network Facebook has listed Kosovo as a country more than five years after the breakaway territory proclaimed independence from Serbia, officials said Tuesday. "Facebook recognises Kosovo as a state," Minister for EU Integration Vlora Citaku wrote on Twitter. And Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said in a statement that he "was informed (on Monday) by senior Facebook executives... about including Kosovo in the global social network".