China's official news agency Xinhua says the British government has "recognized that a balance needs to be struck between freedom and the monitoring of social media tools." Xinhua added, "We may wonder why western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet."

Europe has some of the world's strongest policies on privacy rights. But Kurt Roemer says, like other western governments, they have not clearly defined their policies on new technologies.

KURT ROEMER: “China calling that out really shows that we have some issues to address here from a policy perspective, in addition to technology.” :08

One debate involves an action in San Francisco on August eleventh by the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. BART disabled wireless service in some of its underground stations for three hours. It says protesters were planning to use mobile devices to organize activities to disrupt train service. BART has faced protests over what activists say is police abuse by transit officers.

BART says it acted to protect public safety. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California says the decision was in effect an effort by a government agency "to silence its critics." The Federal Communications Commission says it is collecting information about BART's actions.

And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report, written by June Simms. You can find part one of our report on facial recognition systems at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.