Australia's spy agencies have attempted to listen in on the personal phone calls of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and have targeted the mobile phones of his wife, senior ministers and confidants, a top secret document from whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals. The document, dated November 2009, names the president and nine of his inner circle as targets of the surveillance, including the vice-president, Boediono, who last week visited Australia.

India has 4G wireless service in a handful of cities, Afghanistan has 3G nationwide, Bangladesh is rolling out a nationwide 3G network, and even Nepal has 3G in major cities. That leaves Pakistan as the only country in South Asia without a high-speed mobile network. The country’s notoriously activist supreme court is trying to force the government into holding the spectrum auction needed to launch 3G services in early 2014—but the country’s equally notorious bureaucracy looks likely to delay things.

North Korea has long been shrouded in a haze of seclusion and mystery. But over the past year, the country has eased up on some of its restrictions by allowing visitors to carry phones and even access a 3G network. Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder has been quick to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to disseminate information — and, of course, photos — from within North Korea’s borders.

Nearly 50 people were killed in the Muzaffarnagar sectarian riots last month. According to media reports, a fake video passed around through social media, contributed to flaming religious passions. This prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say that while people should have freedom to express their opinions, social media cannot be misused “to create communal tension and spread hatred”.

One thing we learned about Twitter this week: its user base is very international and growing more so by the day. That's not an inherent problem; it may indeed be an opportunity as most global ad growth is happening outside the U.S. But this is a problem: Twitter appears to be reaching full penetration in the U.S.

Abukar Abdulle Mohamed is a busy man. His three phones keep beeping away as he negotiates and shakes hands with a group of mainly middle-aged men. Fifty-four-year-old Mohamed is a livestock trader with more than thirty years experience and has just sold his tenth goat of the day at Hawl Wadaag livestock market in Mogadishu. But he isn’t holding wads of cash in his hands to show for the day’s sales.

On Monday, Google became one of the first American companies to take advantage of newly loosened U.S. sanctions against Iran. With a Google Plus post, the search giant announced that it was offering its Play store to Iranian citizens, allowing them to download free apps from its app marketplace. The Treasury Department, which sets the export restrictions, issued the new rules back in May. But the recent easing is actually part of a longer process that doesn’t just change U.S.

Should we have democracy on demand? Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt have experienced forms of it. What other country might be next to feel the wrath of people power? In the past few years, TV news cameras have gone from capital to capital to film the anger of people demanding change from their governments.