They've already done battle with Facebook. And now Azerbaijani officials have identified yet another online "wascally wascal" -- Internet-based telephone network Skype.
"This system creates a definite risk to the electronic security of many countries, and Azerbaijan is not an exception," Communications and Information Technology Minister Ali Abbasov asserted on May 3. (Blackberries, however, get the all-clear.)
Taking e-security matters in hand, Azerbaijan plans to update its criminal code with some thoughts on "cyber crimes." The amendments are "expected to be adopted in the near future," according to one security official.
What exactly those crimes will entail is not clear, but, already, steps are being taken to address the needs of the most frequent of Facebook and Skype users -- youth.
A selection of student activists and young Azerbaijanis "who succeeded in different fields" gathered "the most pleasant impressions" from an April 21 meeting with President Ilham Aliyev, News.az tells us.
(Not among their number was opposition youth activist Jabbar Savalan, who was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on May 4 for alleged possession of narcotics, Contact.az reports. )
The chitchat focused on a youth program that plans to bolster employment, make home mortgages affordable, encourage physical activity, and, now, for good measure, "amend" Azerbaijan's history textbooks.
"We need young people [to have] deeply mastered the history and the national idea of Azerbaijan," Elnur Aslanov, director of the presidential administration's Political Analysis and Information Department, elaborated on May 3.
Mastering the art of spin control, however, does not appear to be on the program agenda.
In a debate about the program, the education ministry on May 3 called for guns to be allowed back into Azerbaijani schools to provide youngsters with the rudiments of military training.
The proposal may ring a tad off-key to many who remember the 2009 shooting spree at Baku State Oil Academy that left 13 people dead, but, if so, officials did not address the disharmony.
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