The following are editorial opinions from newspapers from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers.

The Telegraph, London, –on the UN Security Council

The future global economic order hit the United Nations with full force on October 12 as the new members of the Security Council were announced. India and South Africa — emerging and potentially powerful representatives of Asia and Africa in the 21st century — will join Germany and Brazil among the council's impermanent members. They are to sit alongside the permanent and veto-wielding UK, US, France, China and Russia.

It is an important moment for the world's newest economic powers, the first time that they have all been fully represented in a global institution that was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. India has not sat on the council since 1992, and will no doubt take advantage of the opportunity to push hard for reform and a permanent seat. The council has multiple failings and the UN is frequently inept and inefficient. It is entirely possible that expansion could make the council even more sclerotic. The UN is supposed to be sorting out Haiti, yet the disaster zone is still a disaster. The UN is meant to be bringing peace to Sudan, but there are warnings of a fresh civil war. The council imposed fresh sanctions on Iran, but they were weakened by the need to accommodate Russia and China.

Still, the infusion of new blood at the Security Council could be an opportunity to improve its effectiveness. The UN is hardly perfect, but it is what we have, and its members tend rightly to take its standing and pronouncements seriously. The emerging economies often point to the unfairness of a world still run from structures created more than 60 years ago, and claim the ineffectual council is a reflection of its composition. Now they have an opportunity to demonstrate that they can make the body more relevant to the modern age.

Canon City Colorado Daily Record –on wiretap surveillance

The Obama administration is proposing new regulations for the Internet to make it easier to conduct wiretap surveillance of suspects. As terrorists and criminals increasingly put down their phones and turn to their keyboards to chat, federal law enforcement officials say changing technology is hindering their ability to monitor suspect communications. They want to require communication companies to have the technological ability to provide them with wiretap access and unencrypted versions of the communications.

Critics labelled the proposal as a sweeping new mandate that would be costly to communications companies and might even establish back doors that could be exploited by the wrong people. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, however, framed it simply as a way for law enforcement to keep up with evolving technology. "We're talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority," she was quoted as saying. In that light, the proposal is reasonable and necessary. The problem is that it follows years of abuses of the expanded authority granted federal law enforcement officials after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and passage of the Patriot Act.

In 2007 it was revealed that the FBI violated the law or government policies possibly 3,000 times in conducting searches of records. Earlier this year we learned the FBI violated legal procedures in collecting call records in more than 3,500 cases. ... All this makes us wary when federal officials ask for broad new abilities to conduct surveillance. ... Whatever the final form of the administration's proposal, there must be safeguards against such abuse.