Access To Knowledge (A2K)

Privacy and Surveillance in India

praskrishna — 2013-09-13T09:49:25Z

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director from the Centre for Internet and Society will give a talk on privacy and surveillance in India at this event organised by the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia on September 18, 2013. The talk will be held at Network Governance Lab, CCMG, Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi at 11.30 a.m.

Click to read the brochure

Abstract

The talk will cover the development of privacy policy in India over the last 3 years, particularly in relation to projects such as NATGRID, CMS and UID. Special attention will be paid to the Justice A.P. Shah committee report, the last leak of the privacy bill from the DoPT and also the citizen draft of the privacy bill developed by the Centre for Internet and Society. International experiences such as Snowden's disclosures and the development of communication surveillance principles developed by EFF and others will be compared and contrasted with the Indian context.

About the Speaker

Sunil is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore. CIS is a 4 year old policy and academic research organisation that focuses on accessibility by the disabled, intellectual property rights policy reform, openness [Free/Open Source Software, Open Standards, Open Content, Open Access and Open Educational Resources], internet governance, telecom, digital natives and digital humanities.

He is also the founder of Mahiti, a social enterprise aiming to reduce the cost and complexity of information and communication technology for the voluntary sector by using free software. Sunil continues to serve on the board of Mahiti. He is an Ashoka fellow and was elected for a Sarai FLOSS Fellowship. For three years, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Sunil currently serves on the advisory boards of Open Society Foundations - Information Programme, Mahiti, Samvada and International Centre for Free/Open Source Software.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/jamia-millia-islamia-new-delhi-september-18-2013-privacy-and-surveillance-in-india

Transparency Reports — A Glance on What Google and Facebook Tell about Government Data Requests

prachi — 2013-09-13T09:44:53Z

Transparency Reports are a step towards greater accountability but how efficacious are they really?

Prachi Arya examines the transparency reports released by tech giants with a special focus on user data requests made to Google and Facebook by Indian law enforcement agencies.

The research was conducted as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is doing with Privacy International and IDRC.

According to a recent comScore Report India has now become the third largest internet user with nearly 74 million citizens on the Internet, falling just behind China and the United States. The report also reveals that Google is the preferred search engine for Indians and Facebook is the most popular social media website followed by LinkedIn and Twitter. While users posting their photos on Facebook can limit viewership through privacy settings, there isn’t much they can do against government seeking information on their profiles. All that can be said for sure in the post-Snowden world is that large-scale surveillance is a reality and the government wants it on their citizen’s online existence. In this Orwellian scenario, transparency reports provide a trickle of information on how much our government finds out about us.

The first transparency report was released by Google three years ago to provide an insight into ‘the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe’. Since then the issuance of such reports is increasingly becoming a standard practice for tech giants. An Electronic Frontier Foundation Report reveals that major companies that have followed Google’s lead include Dropbox, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Twitter with Facebook and Yahoo! being the latest additions . Requests to Twitter and Microsoft from Indian law enforcement agencies were significantly less than requests to Facebook and Google. Twitter revealed that Indian law enforcement agencies made less than 10 requests, none of which resulted in sharing of user information. Out of the 418 requests made to Microsoft by India (excluding Skype), 88.5 per cent were complied with for non-content user data. The Yahoo! Transparency Report revealed that 6 countries surpassed India in terms of the number of user data requests. Indian agencies requested user data 1490 times from 2704 accounts for both content and non-content data and over 50 per cent of these requests were complied with.

The following is a compilation of what the latest transparency reports issued by Facebook and Google.

Google

"The information we share on the Transparency Report is just a sliver of what happens on the internet"
Susan Infantino, Legal Director for Google

Beginning from December 2009, Google has published several biannual transparency reports:

It discloses traffic data of Google services globally and statistics on removal requests received from copyright owners or governments as well as user data requests received from government agencies and courts. It also lays down the legal process required to be followed by government agencies seeking data.

There was a 90 per cent increment in the number of content removal requests received by Google from India. The requests complied with included:
- Restricting videos containing clips from the controversial movie “Innocence of Muslims” from view.
- Many YouTube videos and comments as well as some Blogger blog posts being restricted from local view for disrupting public order in relation to instability in North East India.
For User Data requests, the Google report details the number of user data requests and users/accounts as well as percentage of requests which were partially or completely complied with. In India the user data requests more than doubled from 1,061 in the July-December 2009 period to 2,431 in the July-December 2012 period. The compliance rate decreased from 79 per cent in the July-December 2010 period to 66 per cent in the last report.
Jurisdictions outside the United States can seek disclosure using Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties or any ‘other diplomatic and cooperative arrangement’. Google also provides information on a voluntary basis if requested following a valid legal process if the requests are in consonance with international norms, U.S. and the requesting countries' laws and Google’s policies.

Facebook

"We hope this report will be useful to our users in the ongoing debate about the proper standards for government requests for user information in official investigations."
Colin Stretch, Facebook General Counsel

Facebook inaugurated its first ever transparency report last Tuesday with a promise to continue releasing these reports.

The ‘Global Government Requests Report’ provides information on the number of requests received by the social media giant for user/account information by country and the percentage of requests it complied with. It also includes operational guidelines for law enforcement authorities.

The report covers the first six months of 2013, specifically till June 30. In this period India made 3,245 requests from 4,144 users/accounts and half of these requests were complied with.

Jurisdictions outside the United States can seek disclosure by way of mutual legal assistance treaties requests or letter rogatory. Legal requests can be in the form of search warrants, court orders or subpoena. The requests are usually made in furtherance of criminal investigations but no details about the nature of such investigations are provided.

Broad or vague requests are not processed. The requests are expected to include details of the law enforcement authority issuing the request and the identity of the user whose details are sought.

The Indian Regime

Section 69 and 69 B of the Information Technology (Amended) Act, 2008 prescribes the procedure and sets safeguards for the Indian Government to request user data from corporates. According to section 69, authorized officers can issue directions to intercept, monitor or decrypt information for the following reasons:

Sovereignty or integrity of India,
Defence of India,
Security of the state,
Friendly relations with foreign states,
Maintenance of public order,
Preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to the above, or
For investigation of any offence.

Section 69 B empowers authorized agencies to monitor and collect information for cyber security purposes, including ‘for identification, analysis and prevention of intrusion and spread of computer contaminants’. Additionally, there are rules under section 69 and 69 B that regulate interception under these provisions.

Information can also be requested through the Controller of Certifying Authority under section 28 of the IT Act which circumvents the stipulated procedure. If the request is not complied with then the intermediary may be penalized under section 44.

The Indian Government has been increasingly leaning towards greater control over online communications. In 2011, Yahoo! was slapped with a penalty of Rs. 11 lakh for not complying with a section 28 request, which called for email information of a person on the grounds of national security although the court subsequently stayed the Controller of Certifying Authorities' order. In the same year the government called for pre-screening user content by internet companies and social media sites to ensure deletion of ‘objectionable content’ before it was published. Similarly, the government has increasingly sought greater online censorship, using the Information Technology Act to arrest citizens for social media posts and comments and even emails criticizing the government.

What does this mean for Privacy?

The Google Transparency Report has thrown light on an increasing trend of governmental data requests on a yearly basis. The reports published by Google and Facebook reveal that the number of government requests from India is second only to the United States. Further, more than 50 per cent of the requests from India have led to disclosure by nearly all the companies surveyed in this post, with Twitter being the single exception.

Undeniably, transparency reports are important accountability mechanisms which reaffirm the company’s dedication towards protecting its user’s privacy. However, basic statistics and vague information cannot lift the veil on the full scope of surveillance. Even though Google’s report has steadily moved towards a more nuanced disclosure, it would only be meaningful if, inter alia, it included a break-up of the purpose behind the requests. Similarly, although Google has also included a general understanding of the legal process, more specifics need to be disclosed. For example, the report could provide statistics for notifications to indicate how often user’s under scrutiny are not notified. Such disclosures are important to enhance user understanding of when their data may be accessed and for what purposes, particularly without prior or retrospective intimation of the same. Till such time the report can provide comprehensive details about the kind of surveillance websites and internet services are subjected to, it will be of very limited use. Its greatest limitation, however, may lie beyond its scope.

The monitoring regime envisioned under the Information Technology Act effectively lays down an overly broad system which may easily lead to abuse of power. Further, the Indian Government has become infamous for their need to control websites and social media sites. Now, with the Indian Government’s plan for establishing the Central Monitoring System the need for intermediaries to conduct the interception may be done away with, giving the government unfettered access to user data, potentially rendering corporate transparency of data requests obsolete.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/what-google-and-facebook-tell-about-govt-data-requests

A dangerous trend: social media adds fire to Muzaffarnagar clashes

praskrishna — 2013-09-12T10:50:26Z

As access to the Internet grows, especially in small Indian towns and cities, social media has revealed a darker side as a hatred-mongering tool capable of setting off serious violence.

This article by Zia Haq was published in the Hindustan Times on September 9, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Malicious content, such as fake YouTube videos and morphed photographs, are usually spread rapidly to trigger rioting.

In UP’s Muzzafarnagar, a video clip purportedly showing a Muslim mob lynching two boys, which police now suspect is from neighboring Pakistan or Afghanistan, was used to stir unease, deepening hatred between Muslims and Hindus.

A series of rioting in western UP district has left at least 41 dead. The circulation of the video had led to violence spreading to new areas. The fake video that escalated clashes portends a new trend in India’s discordant politics.

“From word of mouth, communal polarization, especially by Hindutva organisations, is now moving online. This is a dangerous trend since the Internet is very potent,” said Prof Badri Narayan of the GB Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad.

Research shows social media sites, including sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are more persuasive than television ads. Nearly 100 million Indians use the Internet each day, more than Germany’s population. Of this, 40 million have assured broadband, the ones who mostly subscribe to social-media accounts.

The country also has about 87 million mobile-Internet users, according to Internet and Mobile Association of India.

UP’s police have blocked the video, invoking sections under 420 (forgery), 153-A (promoting enmity on religious grounds) and 120-B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, along with section 66 of the Information Technology Act.

Section 66, however, is the heart of a free-speech debate. Activists say section 66 has been used at the drop of a hat.

Last November, two Mumbai girls faced arrests for questioning the city’s shutdown for Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s funeral. The arrests were declared illegal after being roundly criticised, including by the Supreme Court.

“In this case, the government has a legitimate reason to censor speech. However, this requires the authorities to very focused and action should be targeted, rather than sweeping,” said Sunil Abraham of the Bangalore-based The Centre for Internet and Society.

The government’s action, Abraham said, tended to be broad-based. He said in such situations, the government could use public-service messaging to present the alternate view.

“Legal provisions could be made whereby Twitter users from India, for example, (compulsorily) see the public service message by default when they log in,” Abraham said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-september-9-2013-zia-haq-a-dangerous-trend

Privacy Law Must Fit the Bill

sunil — 2013-09-12T06:25:35Z

The process of updating Indian privacy policy has gained momentum ever since the launch of the UID project and also the leak of the Radia tapes. The Department of Personnel and Training has lead the drafting of privacy bill for the last three years. This bill will ideally articulate privacy principles and establish the office of the privacy commissioner and most importantly have an over-riding effect over 50 odd existing laws, rules and policies with privacy implications.

The article was published in the Deccan Chronicle on September 9, 2013.

Given the harmonizing impact of the proposed privacy bill, we must ensure that rigorous debate and discussion happens before the bill is finalized otherwise there may be terrible consequences.

Here is a short list of what can possibly go wrong:

One, the privacy bill ignores the massive power asymmetry in Indian societies undermining the right to information – in other jurisdictions referred to as freedom of information and access to information. The power asymmetry is addressed via a public interest test. The right to privacy would be the same for everyone except when public interest is at stake. This enables protection of the right to privacy to be inversely proportionate to power and almost conversely the requirement of transparency to be directly proportionate to power. In other words, the poor would have greater privacy than a middle-class citizens who in turn would have greater privacy than political and economic elites. And transparency requirements would be greatest for economic and political elites and lower for middle-class citizens and lowest for the poor. If this is not properly addressed in the language of the bill – privacy activists would have undone the significant accomplishments of the right to information or transparency movement in India over the last decade.

Two, the privacy bill has chilling effect on free speech. This can happen either by denying the speaker privacy, or by affording those who are spoken about too much privacy. For the speaker - Know Your Customer (KYC) and data retention requirements for telecom and internet infrastructure necessary to participate in the networked public sphere can result in the death of anonymous and pseudonymous speech. Anonymous and pseudonymous speech must be protected as it is a necessary for good governance, free media, robust civil society, and vibrant art and culture in a democracy. For those spoken about - privacy is clearly required in certain cases to protect the victims of certain categories of crimes. However, the right to privacy could be abused by those occupying public office and those in public life to censor speech that is in the public interest. If for example a sport person does not publicly drink the aerated drink that he or she endorses in advertisements then the public has a right to know.

Three, the privacy bill has a limited scope. Jurisprudence in India derives the right to privacy from the right to life and liberty through several key judgments including Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi decided by the Delhi High Court. The right to life and liberty or Article 21 unlike other constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. As a consequence the privacy bill must also protect residents, visitors and other persons who may never visit India, but whose personal information may travel to India as part of the global outsourcing phenomena. Also the obligations and safeguards under the privacy bill must equally apply to both the state and the private sector entities that could potentially infringe upon the individual's right to privacy. Different levels of protection may be afforded to citizens, residents, visitors and everybody else. Government and private sector data controllers may be subject to different regulations – for ex. an intelligence agency may not require 'consent' of the data subject to collect personal information and may only provide 'notice' after the investigation has cleared the suspect of all charges.

Four, the privacy bill is expected to fix poorly designed technology. There are two diametrically opposite definitions of projects like NATGRID, CMS and UID. The government definition is that all these systems will allow only for targeted interception and surveillance, however the majority of civil society believes that these system will be used for blanket surveillance. If these systems are indeed built in a manner that supports blanket surveillance then legal band-aid in the form of a new law or provision that prohibits blanket surveillance will be a complete failure. The principle of 'privacy by design' is the only way to address this. For ex. shutters of digital cameras are silent and this allows for a particular form of voyeurism called upskirt. Almost a decade ago, the Korean government enacted a law that requires camera and mobile phone manufacturers to ensure that audio recording of a mechanical shutter is played every time the camera function is used. It is also illegal for the user to circumvent or disable this feature. In this example, the principle of notice is hardwired within the technology itself. To remix Spiderman's motto – with great power comes great temptation. We know that a rogue NTRO official installed a spy camera in the office toilet to make recording female colleagues and most recently that NSA officers confessed to spying on their love interests. If the technology can be abused it will be abused. Therefore legal safeguards are a poor substitute for technological safeguards. We need both simultaneously.

Five, the bill does not require compliance with internationally accepted privacy principles including the ones discussed so far 'consent', 'notice' and 'privacy by design'. Apart from human rights considerations – the most important imperative to modernize India privacy laws is trade. We have a vibrant ITES, BPO and KPO sector which handles personal information of foreigners mostly from the North American and European continents. The Justice AP Shah committee in October 2012 identified privacy principle that required for India - notice, choice and consent, collection limitation, purpose limitation, access and correction, disclosure of information, security, openness and accountability. A privacy bill that does include all these principles will increase the regulatory compliance overhead for Indian enterprise with foreign clients and for multinationals operating in India. There is also the risk that privacy regulators in these jurisdictions will ban outsourcing to Indian firms because our privacy laws are not adequate by their standards.

To conclude, it is not sufficient for India to enact a privacy law it is essential that we get it right so that there are no unintended consequences on other equally important rights and dimensions of our democracy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/deccan-chronicle-september-9-2013-sunil-abraham-privacy-law-must-fit-the-bill

Young Scholar Tutorials

praskrishna — 2013-09-30T11:21:25Z

Communication Policy Research South organised this workshop on September 3 and 4, 2013. Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event organised by CPR South.

Rohan Samarajiva, Christoph Stork, Marcio Aranha, Ang Peng Hwa, and Sujata Gamage were the speakers. Unedited notes from the workshop can be accessed by clicking on the links below:

CPR South Tutorial Note (1)
CPR South Tutorial Note (2)

Click to read the original here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/young-scholar-tutorials

An Interview with Suresh Ramasubramanian

elonnai — 2013-09-06T09:37:47Z

Suresh Ramasubramanian is the ICS Quality Representative - IBM SmartCloud at IBM. We from the Centre for Internet and Society conducted an interview on cybersecurity and issues in the Cloud.

You have done a lot of work around cybersecurity and issues in the Cloud. Could you please tell us of your experience in these areas and the challenges facing them?
a. I have been involved in antispam activism from the late 1990s and have worked in ISP / messaging provider antispam teams since 2001. Since 2005, I expanded my focus to include general cyber security and privacy, having written white papers on spam and botnets for the OECD, ITU and UNDP/APDIP. More recently, have become a M3AAWG special advisor for capacity building and outreach in India.

In fact capacity building and outreach has been the focus of my career for a long time now. I have been putting relevant stakeholders from ISPs, government and civil society in India in touch with their counterparts around the world, and, at a small level, enabling an international exchange of ideas and information around antispam and security.

This was a challenge over a decade back when I was a newbie to antispam and it still is. People in India and other emerging economies, with some notable exceptions, are not part of the international communities that have grown in the area of cyber security and privacy.

There is a prevalent lack of knowledge in this area, which combined with gaps in local law and its enforcement. There is a tendency on the part of online criminals to target emerging and fast growing economies as a rich source of potential victims for various forms of online crime, and sometimes as a safe haven against prosecution.
In a recent public statement Google said "Cloud users have no legitimate expectation of privacy. Do you agree with this statement?
a. Let us put it this way. All email received by a cloud or other Internet service provider for its customers is automatically processed and data mined in one form or the other. At one level, this can be done for spam filtering and other security measures that are essential to maintain the security and stability of the service, and to protect users from being targeted by spam, malware and potential account compromises.

The actual intent of automated data mining and processing should be transparently provided to customers of a service, with a clearly defined privacy policy, and the deployment of such processing, and the “end use” to which data mined from this processing is put, are key to agreeing or disagreeing with such a statement.

It goes without saying that such processing must stay within the letter, scope and spirit of a company’s privacy policy, and must actually be structured to be respectful of user privacy.

Especially where mined data is used to provide user advertising or for any other commercial purpose (such as being aggregated and resold), strict adherence to a well written privacy policy and periodic review of this policy and its implementation to examine its compliance to laws in all countries that the company operates in are essential.

There is way too much noise in the media for me to usefully add any more to this issue and so I will restrict myself to the purely general comments above.
What ways can be privacy of an individual be compromised on the cloud? What can be done to prevent such instances of compromise?
a. All the recent headlines about companies mining their own users’ data, and yet more headlines about different countries deploying nationwide or even international lawful intercept and wiretap programs, aside, the single largest threat to individual privacy on the cloud is, and has been for years before the word “cloud” came into general use, the constant targeting of online users by online criminals with a variety of threats including scams, phish campaigns and data / account credential stealing malware.

Poor device security is another threat – one that becomes even more of a serious problem when the long talked about “internet of things” seems set to become reality, with cars, baby monitors, even Bluetooth enabled toilets, and more dangerously, critical national infrastructure such as power plants and water utilities becoming accessible over the Internet but still running software that is basically insecure and architected with assumptions that date back to an era when there was no conception or need to connect these to the Internet.

Someone in Bluetooth range with the appropriate android application being able to automatically flush your toilet and even download a list of the dates and times when you last used it is personally embarrassing. Having your bank account broken into because your computer got infected with a virus is even more damaging. Someone able to access a dam’s control panel over the internet and remotely trigger the dam’s gates to open can cause far more catastrophic damage.

The line between security and privacy, between normal business practice and unacceptable, even illegal behaviour, is sometimes quite thin and in a grey area that may be leveraged to the hilt for commercial and/or national security interests. However, scams, malware, exploits of insecure systems and similar threats are well on the wrong side of the “criminal” spectrum, and are a clear and present danger that cause far more than an embarrassing or personally damaging loss of privacy.
How is the jurisdiction of the data on the cloud determined?
This is a surprisingly thorny question. Normally, a company is based in a particular country and has an end user agreement / terms of service that makes its customers / users accept that country’s jurisdiction.

However, a cloud based provider that does business around the world may, in practice, have to comply to some extent at least, with that country’s local laws – at any rate, in respect to its users who are citizens of that country. And any cloud product sold to a local business or individual by a salesman from the vendor’s branch in the country would possibly fall under a contract executed in the country and therefore, subject to local law.

The level of compliance for data retention and disclosure in response to legal processes will possibly vary from country to country – ranging from flat refusals to cooperate (especially where any law enforcement request for data are for something that is quite legal in the country the cloud provider is based in) to actual compliance.

In practice this may also depend on what is at stake for the cloud vendor in complying or refusing to comply with local laws – regardless of what the terms of use policies or contract assert about jurisdiction. The number of users the cloud vendor has in the country, the extent of its local presence in the country, how vulnerable its resident employees and executives are to legal sanctions or punishment.

In the past, it has been observed that a practical balance [which may be based on business economics as much as it is based on a privacy assessment] may be struck by certain cloud vendors with a global presence, based on the critical mass of users it stands to gain or lose by complying with local law, and the risks it faces if it complies, or conversely, does not comply with local laws – so the decision may be to fight lawsuits or prosecutions on charges of breaking local data privacy laws or not complying with local law enforcement requests for handover of user data in court, or worst case, pulling out of the country altogether.
Currently, big cloud owners are US corps, yet US courts do not extend the same privacy rights to non US citizens. Is it possible for countries to use the cloud and still protect citizen data from being accessed by foreign governments? Do you think a "National Cloud" is a practical solution?
a. The “cloud” in this context is just “the internet”, and keeping local data local and within local jurisdiction is possible in theory at any rate. Peering can be used to keep local traffic local instead of having it do a roundtrip through a foreign country and back [where it might or might not be subject to another country’s intercept activities, no comment on that].

A national cloud demands local infrastructure including bandwidth, datacenters etc. that meet the international standards of most global cloud providers. It then requires cloud based sites that provide an equivalent level of service, functionality and quality to that provided by an international cloud vendor. And then after that, it has to have usable privacy policies and the country needs to have a privacy law and a sizeable amount of practical regulation to bolster the law, a well-defined path for reporting and redress of data breaches. There are a whole lot of other technical and process issues before having a national cloud becomes a reality, and even more before such a reality makes a palpable positive difference to user privacy.
What audit mechanisms of security and standards exist for Cloud Service Providers and Cloud Data Providers?
a. Plenty – some specific to the country and the industry sector / kind of data the cloud handles. The Cloud Security Alliance has been working for quite a while on CloudAudit, a framework developed as part of a cross industry effort to unify and automate Assertion, Assessment and Assurance of their infrastructure and service.

Different standards bodies and government agencies have all come out with their own sets of standards and best practices in this area (this article has a reasonable list - http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/cloud-security-standards-what-youshould-know.html). Some standards you absolutely have to comply with for legal reasons.

Compliance reasons aside, a judicious mix of standards, and considerable amounts of adaptation in your process to make those standards work for you and play well together.

The standards all exist – what varies considerably, and is a major cause of data privacy breaches, are incomplete or ham handed implementations of existing standards, any attempt at “checkbox compliance” to simply implement a set of steps that lead to a required certification, and a lack of continuing initiative to keep the data privacy and securitymomentum going once these standards have been “achieved”, till it is time for the next audit at any rate.
What do you see as the big challenges for privacy in the cloud in the coming years?
a. Not very much more than the exact same challenges for privacy in the cloud over the past decade or more. The only difference is that any threat that existed before has always amplified itself because the complexity of systems and the level of technology and computing power available to implement security, and to attempt to breach security, is exponentially higher than ever before – and set to increase as we go further down the line.
Do you think encryption the answer to the private and public institutions snooping?
a. Encryption of data at rest and in transit is a key recommendation of any data privacy standard and cloud / enterprise security policy. Companies and users are strongly encouraged to deploy and use strong cryptography for personal protection. But to call it “the answer” is sort of like the tale of the blind men and the elephant.

There are multiple ways to circumvent encryption – social engineering to trick people into revealing data (which can be mitigated to some extent, or detected if it is tried on a large cross section of your userbase – it is something that security teams do have to watch for), or just plain coercion, which is much tougher to defend against.

As a very popular XKCD cartoon that has been shared around social media and has been cited in multiple security papers says -

“A crypto nerd’s imagination”

“His laptop’s encrypted. Let us build a million dollar cluster to crack it”
“No good! It is 4096 bit RSA”
“Blast, our evil plan is foiled”

“What would actually happen”
“His laptop’s encrypted. Drug him and hit him with this $5 wrench till he tells us the password”
“Got it”
Spam is now consistently used to get people to divulge their personal data or otherwise compromise a persons financial information and perpetuate illegal activity. Can spam be regulated? If so, how?
a. Spam has been regulated in several countries around the world. The USA has had laws against spam since 2003. So has Australia. Several other countries have laws that specifically target spam or use other statutes in their books to deal with crime (fraud, the sale of counterfeit goods, theft..) that happens to be carried out through the medium of spam.

The problems here are the usual problems that plague international enforcement of any law at all. Spammers (and worse online criminals including those that actively employ malware) tend to pick jurisdictions to operate in where there are no existing laws on their activities, and generally take the precaution not to target residents of the country that they live in. Others send spam but attempt to, in several cases successfully, skate around loopholes in their country’s antispam laws.

Still others fully exploit the anonymity that the Internet provides, with privately registered domain names, anonymizing proxy servers (when they are not using botnets of compromised machines), as well as a string of shell companies and complex international routing of revenue from their spam campaigns, to quickly take money offshore to a more permissible jurisdiction.

Their other advantage is that law enforcement and regulatory bodies are generally short staffed and heavily tasked, so that even a spammer who operates in the open may continue his activities for a very long time before someone manages to prosecute him.

Some antispam laws allow recipients of spam to sue the spammer in small claims courts – which, like regulatory action, has also previously led to judgements being handed out against spammers and their being fined or possibly imprisoned in case their spam has criminal aspects to it, attracting local computer crime laws rather than being mere violations of civil antispam laws.
There has been a lot of talk about the use of malware like FinFisher and its ability to compromise national security and individual security. Do you think regulation is needed for this type of malware - and if so what type - export controls? privacy regulation? Use control?
a. Malware used by nation states as a part of their surveillance activities is a problem. It is further a problem if such malware is used by nation states that are not even nominally democratic and that have long standing records of human rights violations.

Regulating or embargoing their sale is not going to help in such cases. One problem is that export controls on such software are not going to be particularly easy and countries that are on software export blacklists routinely manage to find newer and more creative ways to attempt to get around these and try to purchase embargoed software and computing equipment of all kinds.

Another problem is that such software is not produced just by legitimate vendors of lawful intercept gear. Criminals who write malware that is capable of, say, stealing personal data such as bank account credentials are perfectly capable of writing such software, and there is a thriving underground economy in the sale of malware and of “take” from malware such as personal data, credit cards and bank accounts where any rogue nation state can easily acquire products with an equivalent functionality.

This is going to apply even if legitimate vendors of such products are subject to strict regulations governing their sale and national laws exist regulating the use of such products. So while there is no reason not to regulate / provide judicial and regulatory oversight of their sale and intended use, it should not be seen as any kind of a solution to this problem.

User education in privacy and access to secure computing resources is probably going to be the bedrock of any initiative that looks to protect user privacy – a final backstop to any technical / legal or other measure that is taken to protect them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/interview-with-suresh-ramasubramanian

Indien: Regierung will Nutzung von US-Mailprovidern in Verwaltungen verbieten

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T10:59:51Z

Die indische Regierung wird in Kürze all ihre Mitarbeiter auffordern, keine US-amerikanischen Mailprovider, allen voran Gmail, für ihre offizielle Kommunikation zu nutzen.

This was published in Netzpolitik (German Newspaper) on September 3, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Ziel der Regierung ist es, die Sicherheit von vertraulichen Information der Regierung zu erhöhen. Die indische Regierung sieht sich zu diesem Schritt gezwungen, nachdem die flächendeckende Überwachung des Internets durch die USA bekannt wurde, an dem auch amerikanische Unternehmen gezwungenermaßen beteiligt sind.

Wie The Times of India berichtet, gab ein leitender Beamter der indischen Regierung an, dass die Regierung plane rund 500.000 Angestellte darüber zu informieren, dass die Nutzung amerikanischer Mailprovider zur offiziellen Kommunikation nicht mehr gestattet sei. Stattdessen sollen die Angestellten zum offiziellen Mailservice des indischen National Informatics Center wechseln.

“Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data,” said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology.

Dass Angestellte der indischen Regierung und selbst Minister in Indien die Dienste von Gmail in Anspruch nehmen, statt auf Lösungen der eigenen Regierung zu setzen scheint nach Aussagen der Times of India keine Seltenheit zu sein.

Several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications & IT Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, have their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

Ein Grund hierfür scheint die einfache und unbürokratische Anmeldung bei solchen Diensten zu sein. Wer eine offizielle Adresse der indischen Regierung haben wolle, müsse diese erst beantragen und in einem langwierigen Prozess seine tatsächliche Identität beweisen. Bei Gmail und anderen Mailprovidern hingegen sei eine Anmeldung oftmals mit wenigen Klicks durchführbar, wie ein leitender Angestellter im IT-Ministerium sagte.

Eine Pressesprecherin von Google Indien gab an, dass der Konzern bisher nicht von dem Verbot erfahren habe und es sich daher um reine Spekulation handele, auf die der Konzern nicht weiter eingehen wolle.

Erst in der letzten Woche gab der indische IT-Minister Kapil Sibal neue Richtlinien für im Ausland lebende Mitarbeiter der indischen Regierung bekannt. The Times of India berichtete:

[...] the new policy will make it mandatory for all government officials stationed in Indian missions abroad to use only static IP addresses, virtual private networks and one-time passwords for accessing Indian government email services.

Sibal ergänzte, dass alle Mails automatisch verschlüsselt würden und nur über indische Server des National Informatics Centers abgewickelt würden.

“All Indian missions will use NIC servers which are directly linked to a server in India and that will keep government information safe”

Sunil Abraham, Direktor des indischen Centre for Internet & Soceity in Bangalore nannte den Entschluss der Regierung “eine späte Reaktion”, begrüßte den Schritt aber dennoch:

“Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives. Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/netzpolitik-indien-regierung-will-nutzung-von-us-mailprovidern-in-verwaltungen-verbieten

Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course”

praskrishna — 2013-10-24T03:56:31Z

A five-day course is being offered by LIRNEasia in collaboration with Myanmar ICT Development Organization, with support from the Open Society Foundation and the International Development Research Centre of Canada in Myanmar from September 28 to October 5, 2013.

Sunil Abraham will be supporting Prof. Samarajiva on the last optional day of this course in Yangon. Read about the Introductory course on “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar”

Goal

To enable members of Myanmar civil-society groups (including academics and those from the media) to marshal available research and evidence for effective participation in policy and regulatory processes, thereby improving policy processes and helping achieve the government’s objective of providing ICT access to all.

Outcomes

The objective of the course is to produce discerning and knowledgeable consumers of research who are able to engage in an informed manner in ICT policy and regulatory processes in Myanmar. The course will benefit those working in government and operators as well.

At the end of the course attendees will:

Have an understanding of telecom policy and regulatory processes
Be able to find and assess relevant research & evidence
Be able to summarize the research in a coherent and comprehensive manner
Have the necessary tools to improve their communication skills

- Have some understanding of how media functions and how to effectively interact with media

Assignments

Participants will be formed into teams on Day1. Each group will work on an assignment that addresses both substantive and procedural aspects of law, policy and regulation. Teams will be assigned topic areas that are being developed into regulations under the new Act. They will have to make presentations on what the desirable provisions should be. We will emphasize the procedural aspects as well as the substantive. Disciplined and focused team presentations, preferably using slides, are required.

It is necessary to use the Internet for the assignments. All who have laptops are encouraged to bring them. Arrangements will be made for Internet connectivity at the hotel.

Tentative topic areas

Licensing and authorization regulations
Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices
Universal service policy
Price and quality regulation
Independence of regulatory agency

Course schedule

	Day 1 (September 28)	Day 2 (September 29)	Day 3 (September 30)	Day4 (October 1)	Day 5 (October 2) (optional)
09:00-10:30	S1 Introduction to course: What have been the results of reform & rationale for regulation. Rohan Samarajiva (RS)	S5 Regulatory legitimacy, including procedural legitimacy (RS)	S10 Challenges of monitoring complex license commitments (HG)	S14 How does the Internet work? (TBA)	S16 Internet governance The big picture. Sunil Abraham (SA)
10:30-11:00	Break	Break	Break	Break
11:00-12:00	S2 Interrogating supply-side indicators & research based on them. Helani Galpaya (HG)	S6 Current status of telecom law and policy in Myanmar (RS)	S11 How evidence is used in policy & regulation (panel discussion, KS, RS	S15 The art of media interaction (RS)	S17 Economic & technical interface with telecom industry (RS)
12:00-13:00	S3 Finding information on the web. Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne (RLG)	S7 Presenting evidence in slides & written submissions (HG)	S12 Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices (RS)	A3 Mock public hearing (RS & panel)	S18 How Internet is governed within India (SA)
13:00-14:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
14:00-15:00	A1 Group formation; Assignment explained (HG and RLG)	S8 Licensing and authorization (RS)	A2 Midpoint check on assignment/group work (HG and RLG)	A4 Mock public hearing & critique (RS & panel)	S19 Content regulation (TBA)
15:00-15:30	Break	Break	Break
15:30-17:00	S4 Demand-side research (RS)	S9 Price and quality regulation (RS & HG)	S13 Universal service subsidies: Theory & practice (RS & KS)	Reflection on the course	S20 Surveillance & privacy (SA & RS)
17:00	Group work	Group work	Group work
19:00	Welcome dinner Speaker: TBA

Faculty

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Helani Galpaya is LIRNEasia’s Chief Executive Officer. Helani leads LIRNEasia’s 2012-2014 IDRC funded research on improving customer life cycle management practices in the delivery of electricity and e-government services using ICTs. She recently completed an assessment of how the poor in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use telecenters to access government services. For UNCTAD and GTZ she authored a report on how government procurement practices can be used to promote a country’s ICT sector and for the World Bank/InfoDev Broadband Toolkit, a report on broadband strategies in Sri Lanka. She has been an invited speaker at various international forums on topics ranging from m-Government to ICT indicators to communicating research to policy makers. Prior to LIRNEasia, Helani worked at the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, implementing the World-Bank funded e-Sri Lanka initiative. Prior to her return to Sri Lanka, she worked in the United States at Booz & Co., Marengo Research, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. Helani holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.

Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne is a Research Manager at LIRNEasia and is currently managing the Ford Foundation Funded project on Giving Broadband Access to the Poor in India. She is also contributing to the IDRC Customer Lifecycle Management Practices Project by conducting research on customer lifecycle management practices in telecommunication sector in Bangladesh. Before joining LIRNEasia, Roshanthi worked at the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Geneva, Switzerland as a Strategic Information Officer. She contributed to the process of defining the Global Fund Key Performance Indicators, and also worked on improving the performance measurements of their grants. Prior to that, she worked as a telecom project manager at Dialog Telecom, and Suntel Ltd in Sri Lanka. As Suntel she managed the design and implementation of corporate customer projects. She holds a MBA from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK and a BSc. Eng (Hons) specializing in Electronics and Telecommunication from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.

Rajat Kathuria, PhD

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think tank active across emerging Asian and Pacific economies. He was Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology (2002-04) responsible for infrastructure reforms, including participation in the design of the USD 83 million e-Sri Lanka Initiative. He was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka (1998-99), a founder director of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2003-05), Honorary Professor at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (2003-04), Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2000-03) and Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US (1987-2000). Dr. Samarajiva was also Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Post and Telecom in Bangladesh (2007-09).

Koesmarihati Sugondo

Resource Material

infodev, ICT regulation toolkit. http://www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/en/Index.html

infoDev. Broadband strategies toolkit. http://broadbandtoolkit.org/en/toolkit/contents

infoDev (2011). Tenth anniversary telecom regulation handbook. http://www.infodev.org/En/Publication.1057.html

ITU (2011). The role of ICT in advancing growth in least developed countries: Trends, challenges and opportunities. Geneva: ITU. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ldc/turkey/docs/The_Role_of_ICT_in_Advancing_Growth_in_LDCs_Trends_Challenges_and_Opportunities.pdf

Samarajiva, Rohan (2000). The role of competition in institutional reform of telecommunications: Lessons from Sri Lanka, Telecommunications Policy, 24(8/9): 699-717. http://www.comunica.org/samarajiva.html

Samarajiva, Rohan (2002). Why regulate?, chapter 2 of Effective regulation: Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2002. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union.

Samarajiva, Rohan (2006). Preconditions for effective deployment of wireless technologies for development in the Asia-Pacific, Information Technology and International Development, 3(2): 57-71. http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/224/94

Samarajiva, Rohan & Zainudeen, Ayesha (2008). ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia: Policy and regulatory roadblocks, New Delhi & Ottawa: Sage & IDRC http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-117916-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/policy-and-regulation-conducive-to-rapid-ict-growth-in-myanmar

Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication

praskrishna — 2013-09-02T04:19:53Z

The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US.

This article was published in the Times of India on August 30, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology.

Snowden fallout

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a programme called PRISM.

Documents leaked by Snowden showed that NSA may have accessed network infrastructure in many countries, causing concerns of potential security threats and data breaches. Even as the new policy is being formulated, there has been no mention yet of how compliance will be ensured.

Several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications & IT Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, have their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

A Google India spokeswoman said the company has not been informed about the ban, and hence it cannot comment on speculation. "Nothing is documented so far, so for us, it is still speculation," Google said in an email response.

A senior official in the IT department admitted on condition of anonymity that employees turn to service providers such as Gmail because of the ease of use compared with official email services, as well as the bureaucratic processes that govern creation of new accounts.

"You can just go and create an account in Gmail easily, whereas for a government account, you have to go through a process because we have to ensure that he is a genuine government user."

Last week, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that are directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services. Sibal said there has been no evidence of the US accessing Internet data from India.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agrees with the government's decision to ban Gmail for official communication and that any official violating this needs to be punished.

"After Snowden's revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he said. Abraham, however, called the government's decision a "late reaction", as the use of Gmail and other free email services by bureaucrats has increased in the past.

"Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives. Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-august-30-2013-cyberspying-govt-may-ban-gmail-for-official-communication

Gmail ban looms for Indian gov't workers

praskrishna — 2013-09-19T07:19:11Z

Government workers in India will soon be banned from using Google’s Gmail service for official communication in a move said to be in response to revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US, a national paper reported.

Beatrice Thomas's blog post was published in Arabian Business.com on September 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Two weeks after Dubai announced a ban on private emails by Government staff, a senior official in India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the crackdown would apply to 500,000 government employees, according to The Times of India.

They would be banned from using providers such as Gmail, which had servers based in the US, and instead asked to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside," J Satyanarayana, secretary in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, told the Times.

“Currently, we are looking to address this in the Government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data.”

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple through a program called PRISM.

The Times said several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications and IT, Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, had their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

However, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said last week there had been no evidence of the US accessing internet data from India.

The newspaper quoted a senior official in the IT Department saying Gmail was preferred by employees because, compared to official email services, it was easy to set up.

Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that were directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agreed with the ban.

“After Snowden’s revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he told the Times.

It emerged last month that Dubai government employees had been banned from sending and receiving private emails at work, including the use of independent email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.

The new regulations announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, specifically referred to religious and political communication as well as messages relating to charitable causes.

Workers are also not allowed to open unsolicited mail, spam or emails that contain viruses, or alter the date, time, source of destination information on an email.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/arabian-business-september-1-2013-beatrice-thomas-gmail-ban-looms-for-indian-govt-workers

Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T09:52:17Z

US-based email services seen as too risky.

This article by Neil McAllister was published in the Register on August 30, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The government of India is reportedly planning to bar its employees from using Gmail and other foreign-based email services, amid concerns over surveillance by US spy agencies.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside," J Satyanarayana, India's secretary of electronics and information technology, told the Times of India. "Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data."

The Indian government currently employs some 500,000 people, many of whom use Gmail for their primary email addresses. A quick glance at the contact page for the country's Department of Electronics and Information Technology reveals at least eight senior officials using Gmail, and still others with Yahoo! addresses.

Under the new directive, government employees will be asked to stick to official email addresses provided by India's National Informatics Centre (NIC). But an unnamed senior government IT official told the Times of India that many government workers choose Gmail and other foreign services because they are easier to use, and setting up accounts is much faster than working within the bureaucratic process of the NIC.

The move toward locally run email for Indian government workers comes in the wake of a string of revelations from documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Among the recent disclosures has been details of US electronic surveillance of foreign governments on US soil, where the National Security Agency even went as far as to snoop encrypted communications from United Nations headquarters in New York City.

No doubt equally concerning was a motion filed by Google in a US district court earlier this month, in which the Chocolate Factory asserted that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties" such as Gmail.

But Sunil Abraham of the Bangalore-based think tank the Centre for Internet and Society said that foreign spying wasn't the only reason why government officials should be required to use a homegrown email.

"Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives," Abraham told the paper. "Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance."

When contacted for comment, a spokeswoman for Google India said the company had not been informed of the proposed ban, adding, "Nothing is documented so far, so for us, it is still speculation." ®

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-register-neil-mc-allister-august-30-2013-indian-govt-to-bar-politicians-from-using-gmail-for-official-business

August 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-09-13T06:26:30Z

Our newsletter for the month of August 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the eighth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we are glad to bring you the final report on banking and accessibility submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, a research paper on India’s obligations under bilateral investment treaties, a report from a Wikipedia workshop held at the Konkani Department in Goa University, a report on the sixth privacy roundtable held in New Delhi, recent news coverage, and updates on our upcoming events.

Archives of our newsletters are here. Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use and Travel can be accessed here.

Jobs
CIS is inviting applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project). To apply for this post, send in your resume to Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org). CIS is also seeking applications for the post of Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

As part of its project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India with the Hans Foundation, we bring you three new draft chapters on Assam, Manipur and Puducherry. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 21 states and 3 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the below chapters:

The Assam Chapter (by CLPR, August 28, 2013)
The Manipur Chapter (by CLPR, August 29, 2013)
The Puducherry Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, August 31, 2013)

Note: All the chapters published on the website are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Reports

Banking and Accessibility in India: A Report by CIS (by Vrinda Maheshwari, August 12, 2013). This is the final report submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Opening New Avenues for Empowerment (by UNESCO, August 31, 2013). UNESCO has published a global report on higher education titled “Opening New Avenues for Empowerment”. Nirmita Narasimhan was the coordinating author for the Asia Pacific region.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

As part of its project on developing the growth of Indic language communities with Wikimedia Foundation, CIS-A2K held six Wikipedia workshops. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge
Research Paper

India's Obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties (Part A): “Bilateral Inhibiting Treaty?” — Investigating the Challenges that Bilateral Investment Treaties pose to the Compulsory Licensing of Pervasive Technology Patent Pools (by Gavin Pereira, August 31, 2013).

Column

Copyrights and Copywrongs Why the Government Should Embrace the Public Domain (by Pranesh Prakash, Yojana, Issue: August 2013).

Media Coverage

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry (by C.H. Unnikrishnan, Livemint, August 26, 2013). CIS work on Access to Knowledge is mentioned.

Blog Entries

Are Indian Consumer Laws Ready for the Digital Age? (by Vipul Kharbanda, August 8, 2013).
Do You Have the Right to Unlock Your Smart Phone? (by Puneeth Nagaraj, August 7, 2013).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

The A2K team consists of four members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Syed Muzammiluddin, and one team member Nitika Tandon who works from Delhi.

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013.
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013. Thirty-eight students took part in the wiki editing workshop.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Hosted

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated for the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).
Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 – 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is teaching a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".
You too can write on Wikipedia! — Orientation Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, September 15, 2013).

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).

Openness

Event Hosted

Open Hardware Lab: Play & Invent + Bonus Film Screening (CIS, Bangalore, August 4, 2013). A hangout was done with CIS Lab Community and with members of the Computer Club of India and Arduino enthusiasts.

Event Participated

e-DIRAP Google+ Hangout on Open Government (organised by Google, July 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Beyond Property Rights: Thinking About Moral Definitions of Openness (by David Eaves, Tech President, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share (by Glyn Moody, Techdirt, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Internet Governance

CIS began two projects earlier this year. The first one on facilitating research and events on surveillance and freedom of expression is with Privacy International and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The second one on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia is with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada:

SAFEGUARDS Project

Event Report

Sixth Privacy Roundtable (co-organised by CIS, FICCI and DSCI, New Delhi, August 24, 2013). Bhairav Acharya and Prachi Arya participated in this event. The discussions and recommendations from the six round table meetings will be presented at the Internet Governance meeting in October 2013.

Newspaper / Magazine Columns

Freedom from Monitoring: India Inc Should Push For Privacy Laws (by Sunil Abraham, Forbes India Magazine, August 21, 2013).
Out of the Bedroom (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, August 25, 2013).

Blog Entries

'Ethical Hacker' Saket Modi Calls for Stronger Cyber Security Discussions (by Kovey Coles, August 5, 2013).
Ethical Issues in Open Data (by Kovey Coles, August 7, 2013).
FinFisher in India and the Myth of Harmless Metadata (by Maria Xynou, August 13, 2013).

Events Organised

The Hackers Way of Reshaping Policies (CIS, Bangalore, August 2, 2013). Bernadette Langle gave a talk on different ways to reshape policies.
Chennai: Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (Asian College of Journalism, Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013). A Crypto Party was organised.
The Phishing Society: Why 'Facebook' is more dangerous than the Government Spying on You - A Talk by Maria Xynou (CIS, Bangalore, August 7, 2013). Maria Xynou gave a talk on phishing society.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (ACJ - Asian College of Journalism, Second Main Road (Behind M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation), Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013).
Privacy Meeting: Brussels – Bangalore (CIS, Bangalore, August 14, 2013). Gertjan Boulet and Dariusz Kloza gave a talk on privacy.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (CIS, Bangalore, August 17, 2013). A Crypto Party was held at CIS.

Events Participated In

Summer School 2013 (organized by the Research Center of Media and Communication at the University of Hamburg, Germany, July 29 – August 2, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session on "Guilty until Proven Innocent: Pirates, Pornographers, Terrorists and the IT Act in India".
Meeting of a Sub-committee on DNA Profiling Bill (Hyderabad, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting for discussing the draft bill.
Surveillance: Privacy Vs Security (organized by the Foundation for Media Professionals, India International Centre, New Delhi, August 17, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Crypto Night (by Rahul M., Caravan, August 1, 2013). Pranesh Prakash and Bernadette Langle are quoted.
Facebook: Limiting access to social media can restrict freedom of speech (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Token disclosures? (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, August 4, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Memeâ€™s the word now (by Padmaparna Ghosh, The Times of India, August 4, 2013). Nishant Shah is quoted.
Chinese hackers baiting Indian govt, corporate employees: report (by Moulishree Srivastava and Anirban Sen, Livemint, August 9, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests (NDTV, August 16, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui discussed the grey areas of the IT Act.
Balancing vigilance and privacy (by Prashant Jha, The Hindu, August 18, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
How Next-Gen Smartphone Users are Being Bought and Sold (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 13, 2013, and IBN Live, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Dear Milind Deora, Prakash Javadekar Deserved The Truth (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India, August 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Election campaign: parties draw battle lines on media platforms (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, August 26, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
India's Internet Privacy Woes (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 26, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication (The Times of India, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business (by Neil McAllister, The Register, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interview

Part 9: Interview with Saikat Datta (August 5, 2013).

Telecom

CIS has published one newspaper column in the Business Standard and also made a submission to TRAI:

Newspaper Column

Breaking into the Closed Circle: Domestic High-Tech Manufacturing Needs Access To Markets (by Shyam Ponappa, originally published in the Business Standard, July 31, 2013 and also mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot, August 1, 2013).

Submission

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum (by Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa, August 31, 2013). The submission was made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 21, 2013.

Digital Humanities

We are building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Blog Entries

Digital Humanities Talk (by Sara Morais, August 1, 2013). Sara wrote about her talk in this blog entry.
Theorizing the Digital Subaltern (by Sara Morais, August 2, 2013).

Event Organised

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised by CIS-A2K, HEIRA, CSCS, Tumkur University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CCS-Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013). Errata: We had got the name of one of the co-organisers wrong in our previous newsletter. We have corrected this now.

Event Participated In

South Asia Conference on Higher Education (organised by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Ford Foundation Office, New Delhi, August 5 – 7, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this conference.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
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Visit us at http://cis-india.org

*Support Us*

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2013-bulletin

The Personal Data (Protection) Bill, 2013

prachi — 2013-08-30T14:53:11Z

Below is the text of the Personal Data (Protection) Bill, 2013 as discussed at the 6th Privacy Roundtable, New Delhi held on 24 August 2013. Note: This version of the Bill caters only to the Personal Data regime. The surveillance and privacy of communications regime was not discussed at the 6th Privacy Roundtable.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-personal-data-protection-bill-2013

Report on the Sixth Privacy Roundtable Meeting, New Delhi

prachi — 2013-08-30T15:04:51Z

In 2013 the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) drafted the Privacy Protection Bill as a citizens' version of a privacy legislation for India. Since April 2013, CIS has been holding Privacy Roundtables in collaboration with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and DSCI, with the objective of gaining public feedback to the Privacy Protection Bill and other possible frameworks for privacy in India. The following is a report on the Sixth Privacy Roundtable held in New Delhi on August 24, 2013.

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

Introduction

A series of seven multi-stakeholder roundtable meetings on "privacy" were conducted by CIS in collaboration with FICCI from April 2013 to August 2013 under the Internet Governance initiative. DSCI joined CIS and FICCI as a co-organizer on April 20, 2013.

CIS was a member of the Justice A.P. Shah Committee which drafted the "Report of Groups of Experts on Privacy". CIS also drafted a Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Bill’), with the objective of establishing a well protected privacy regime in India. CIS has also volunteered to champion the session/workshops on "privacy" in the final meeting on Internet Governance proposed for October 2013.

At the roundtables the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy and the text of the Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013 will be discussed. The discussions and recommendations from the six round table meetings will be presented at the Internet Governance meeting in October 2013.

The dates of the six Privacy Round Table meetings are enlisted below:

New Delhi Roundtable: April 13, 2013
Bangalore Roundtable: April 20, 2013
Chennai Roundtable: May 18, 2013
Mumbai Roundtable: June 15, 2013
Kolkata Roundtable: July 13, 2013
New Delhi Roundtable: August 24, 2013
New Delhi Final Roundtable and National Meeting: October 19, 2013

This Report provides an overview of the proceedings of the Sixth Privacy Roundtable (hereinafter referred to as 'the Roundtable'), conducted at FICCI, Federation House in Delhi on August 24, 2013. The Personal Data (Protection) Bill, 2013 was discussed at the Roundtable.

The Sixth Privacy Roundtable began with reflections on the evolution of the Bill. In its penultimate form, the Bill stands substantially changed as compared to its previous versions. For the purpose of this Roundtable, which entailed participation largely from industry organizations and other entities who handle personal data, only the personal data regime was discussed. This debate was distinguished from the general and specific discussion relating to privacy, surveillance and interception of communications as it was felt that greater expertise was required to deal adequately with such a vast and nuanced area. After further discussion with security experts, the provisions on surveillance and privacy of communications will be reincorporated resulting in omnibus privacy legislation. To reflect this alteration in the ambit of the Bill in its current form, its title was changed to Personal Data (Protection) Bill from the more expansive – Privacy (Protection) Bill.

Chapter I – Preliminary

Section 2 of the first chapter enumerates various definitions including ‘personal data’, which is defined as any data that can lead to identification and ‘sensitive personal data’; a subset of personal data defined by way of a list. The main contentions arose in relation to the latter definition.

Religion and Caste

A significant modification is found in the definition of ‘sensitive personal data’, which has expanded to include two new categories, namely, (i) ethnicity, religion, race or caste, and (ii) financial and credit information. Although discussed previously, these two categories have hitherto been left out of the purview of the definition as they are fraught with issues of practicality. In the specific example of caste, the government has historically indulged in large-scale data collection for the purpose of census, for example as conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. Further, in the Indian scenario, various statutory benefits accrue from caste identities under the aegis of affirmative action policies. Hence, categorizing it as sensitive personal data may not be considered desirable. The problem is further exacerbated with respect to religion as even a person’s name can be an indicator. In light of this, some issues under consideration were –

Whether religion and caste should be categorized as sensitive personal data or personal data?
Whether it is impracticable to include it in either category?
If included as sensitive personal data, how should it be implemented?

The majority seemed to lean towards including it under the category of sensitive personal data rather than personal data. It was argued that the categorization of some personal data as sensitive was done on the basis of higher potential for profiling or discrimination. In the same vein, caste and religious identities were sensitive information, requiring greater protection as provided under section 16 of the Bill. Regarding the difficulties posed by revealing names, it was proposed that since it was not an indicator by default, this consideration could not be used as a rationale to eliminate religion from the definition. Instead, it was suggested that programmes sensitizing the populous to the implications of names as indicators of religion/caste should be encouraged. With regard to the issue of census, where caste information is collected, it was opined that the same could be done in an anonymously as well. The maintenance of public databases including such information by various public bodies was considered problematic for privacy as they are often easily accessible and hence have a high potential for abuse. Overall, the conclusion was that the potential for abuse of such data could be better curtailed if greater privacy requirements were mandated for both private and public organizations. The collection of this kind of data should be done on a necessity basis and kept anonymous wherever possible. However, it was acknowledged that there were greater impracticalities associated with treating religion and caste as sensitive personal data. Further, the use and disclosure of indicative names was considered to be a matter of choice. Often caste information was revealed for affirmative action schemes, for example, rank lists for admissions or appointments. In such cases, it was considered to be counter-productive to discourage the beneficiary from revealing such information. Consequently, it was suggested that they could be regulated differently and qualified wherever required. The floor was then thrown open for discussing the other categories included under the definition of ‘sensitive personal data’.

Political Affiliation

Another contentious issue discussed at the Roundtable was the categorization of ‘political affiliation’ as ‘sensitive personal data’. A participant questioned the validity of including it in the definition, arguing that it is not an issue in India. Further, it was argued that one’s political affiliation was also subject to change and hence did not mandate higher protection as provided for sensitive personal data. Instead, if included at all, it should be categorized as ‘personal data’. This was countered by other participants who argued that revealing such information should be a matter of choice and if this choice is not protected adequately, it may lead to persecution. In light of this, changing one’s political affiliation particularly required greater protection as it may leave one more vulnerable. Everyone was in agreement that the aggregation of this class of data, particularly when conducted by public and private organizations, was highly problematic, as evidenced by its historic use for targeting dissident groups. Further, it was accepted unanimously that this protection should not extend to public figures as citizens had a right to know their political affiliation. However, although there was consensus on voting being treated as sensitive personal data, the same could not be reached for extending this protection to political affiliation.

Conviction Data

The roundtable also elicited a debate on conviction data being enumerated as sensitive personal data. The contention stemmed from the usefulness of maintaining this information as a matter of public record. Inter alia, the judicial practice of considering conviction history for repeat offenders, the need to consider this data before issuing passport and the possibility of establishing a sex offenders registry in India were cited as examples for the same.

Financial and Credit Information

From the outset, the inclusion of Financial and Credit information as sensitive personal data was considered problematic as it would clash directly with existing legislations. Specifically, the Reserve Bank of India mandates on all issues revolving around this class of data. However, it was considered expedient to categorize it in this manner due to grave mismanagement associated with it, despite existing protections. In this regard, the handling of Credit Information was raised as an issue. Even though it is regulated under the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005, its implementation was found to be wanting by some participants. In this context, the harm sought to be prevented by its inclusion in the Bill was unregulated sharing of credit-worthiness data with foreign banks and organs of the state. Informed consent was offered as the primary qualifier. However, some participants proposed that extending a strong regime of protection to such information would not be economically viable for financial institutions. Thus, it was suggested that this category should be categorized as personal data with the aim of regulating unauthorized disclosures.

Conclusion

The debate on the definition of sensitive personal data concluded with the following suggestions and remarks:

The categories included under sensitive personal data should be subject to contextual provisions instead of blanket protection.
Sensitive personal data mandates greater protection with regard to storage and disclosure than personal data.
While obtaining prior consent is important for both kinds of data, obtaining informed consent is paramount for sensitive personal data.
Both classes of data can be collected for legitimate purposes and in compliance with the protection provided by law.

Chapter II – Regulation of Personal Data

This chapter of the Bill establishes a negative statement of a positive right under Section 3 along with exemptions under Section 4, as opposed to the previous version of the Bill, discussed at the fifth Privacy Roundtable, which established a positive right. Thus, in its current form, the Bill provides a stronger regime for the regulation of personal data. The single exemption provided under this part is for personal or domestic use.

The main issues under consideration with regard to this part were –

The scope of the protection provided
Whether the exemptions should be expanded or diminished.

A participant raised a doubt regarding the subject of the right. In response, it was clarified that the Bill was subject to existing Constitutional provisions and relevant case law. According to the apex court, in Kharak Singh v. The State of U.P. (1964), the Right to Privacy arose from the Right to Life and Personal Liberty as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Since the Article 21 right is applicable to all persons, the Right to Privacy has to be interpreted in conjunction. Consequently, the Right to Privacy will apply to both citizens and non-citizens in India. It would also extend to information of foreigners stored by any entity registered in India and any other entity having an Indian legal personality irrespective of whether they are registered in India or not.

The next issue that arose at the Roundtable stemmed from the exemption provided under Section 4 of the Bill. A participant opined that excluding domestic use of such data was unadvisable as often such data was used maliciously during domestic rows such as divorce. With regard to the how ‘personal and domestic use’ was to be defined it was proposed that the same had to cater existing cultural norms. In India, this entailed that existing community laws had to be followed which does not recognize nuclear families as a legal entity. It was also acknowledged that Joint Hindu Families had to be dealt with specially and their connection with large businesses in India would have to be carefully considered.

Another question regarding exemptions brought up at the Roundtable was whether they should be broadened to include the information of public servants and the handling of all information by intelligence agencies. Similarly, some participants proposed that exemptions or exceptions should be provided for journalists, private figures involved in cases of corruption, politicians, private detective agencies etc. It was also proposed that public disclosure of information should be handled differently than information handled in the course of business.

Conclusion

The overall conclusion of the discussion on this Chapter was –

All exemptions and exceptions included in this Chapter should be narrowly tailored and specifically defined.
Blanket exemptions should be avoided. The specificities can be left to the Judiciary to adjudicate on as and when contentions arise.

Chapter III – Protection of Personal Data

This chapter seeks to regulate the collection, storage, processing, transfer, security and disclosure of personal data.

Collection of Personal Data

Sections 5, 6 and 7 of the Bill regulate the collection of personal data. While section 5 establishes a broad bar for the collection of personal data, Section 6 and 7 provide for deviations from the same, for collecting data with and without prior informed consent respectively.

Collection of Data with Prior Informed Consent

Section 6 establishes the obligation to obtain prior informed consent, sets out the regime for the same and by way of 2 provisos allows for withdrawal of consent which may result in denial of certain services.

The main issues discerned from this provision involved (i) notice for obtaining consent, (ii) mediated data collection, and (iv) destruction of data.

Regarding notice, some participants observed that although it was a good practice it was not always feasible. A participant raised the issue of the frequency of obtaining consent. It was observed that services that allowed its users to stay logged in and the storage of cookies etc. were considered benefits which would be disrupted if consent had to be obtained at every stage or each time the service was used. To solve this problem, it was unanimously accepted that consent only had to be obtained once for the entirety of the service offered except when the contract or terms and conditions were altered by the service provider. It was also decided that the entity directly conducting the collection of data was obligated to obtain consent, even if the same was conducted on behalf of a 3^rd party.

Mediated date collection proved to be a highly contentious issue at the Roundtable. The issue was determining the scope and extent of liability in cases where a mediating party collects data for a data controller for another subject who may or may not be a user. In this regard, two scenarios were discussed – (i) uploading pictures of a 3^rd party by a data subject on social media sites like Facebook and (ii) using mobile phone applications to send emails, which involves, inter alia, the sender, the phone manufacturer and the receiver. The ancillary issues recognized by participants in this regard were – (i) how would data acquired in this manner be treated if it could lead to the identification of the 3^rd party?, and (ii) whether destruction of user data due to withdrawal of consent amount to destruction of general data, i.e. of the 3^rd party. The consensus was that there was no clarity on how such forms of data collection could be regulated, even though it seemed expedient to do so. The government’s inability to find a suitable solution was also brought to the table. In this regard it was suggested by some participants that the Principle of Collection Limitation, as defined in the A.P. Shah Committee Report, would provide a basic protection. Further the extent to which this would be exempted for being personal use was suggested as a threshold. A participant observed that it would be technically unfeasible for the service provider to regulate such collection, even if it involved illicit data such as pornographic or indecent photographs. Further, it was opined that such an oversight by the service provider could be undesirable since it would result in the violation of the user’s privacy. Thus, any proposal for regulation had to balance the data subject’s rights with that of the 3^rd party. In light of this, it was suggested that the mediating party should be made responsible for obtaining consent from the 3^rd party.

Another aspect of this provision which garnered much debate was the proviso mandating destruction of data in case of withdrawal of consent. A participant stated the need for including broad exceptions as it may not always be desirable. Regarding the definition of ‘destroy’, as provided for under Section 2, it was observed that it mandated the erasure/deletion of the data in its entirety. Instead, it was suggested, that the same could be achieved by merely anonymising the information.

Collection of Data without Consent

Section 7 of the Bill outlines four scenarios which entail collection of personal data without prior consent, which are reproduced below -

“(a) necessary for the provision of an emergency medical service to the data subject;
(b) required for the establishment of the identity of the data subject and the collection is authorised by a law in this regard;
(c) necessary to prevent a reasonable threat to national security, defence or public order; or
(d) necessary to prevent, investigate or prosecute a cognisable offence”

Most participants at the Roundtable found that the list was too large in scope. The unqualified inclusion of prevention in that last two sub clauses was found to be particularly problematic. It was suggested that Section 7 (c) was entirely redundant as its provisions could be read into Section 7 (d). Furthermore, the inclusion of ‘national security’ as a basis for collecting information without consent was rejected almost unanimously. It was suggested that if it was to be included then a qualification was desirable, allowing collection of information only when authorized by law. Some participants extended this line of reasoning to Section 7 (c) as state agencies were already authorized to collect information in this manner. It was opined that including it under the Bill would reassert their right to do so in broader terms. For similar reasons, Section 7 (b) was found objectionable as well. It was further suggested that if sub clauses (b), (c) and (d) remained in the Bill, it should be subject to existing protections, for example those established by seminal cases such as Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) and PUCL v. Union of India (1997).

Storage and Processing of Personal Data

Section 8 of the Bill lays down a principle mandating the destruction of the information collected, following the cessation of the necessity or purpose for storage and provides exceptions to the same. It sets down a regime of informed consent, purpose specific storage and data anonymization.

The first amendment suggested for this provision was regarding the requirement of deleting the stored information ‘forthwith’. It was proposed by a participant that deleting personal data instantaneously had practical constraints and a reasonability criteria should be added. It was also noticed that in the current form of the Bill, the exception of historical, archival and research purposes had been replaced by the more general phrase ‘for an Act of Parliament’. The previous definition was altered as the terms being used were hard to define. In response, a participant suggested a broader phrase which would include any legal requirement. Another participant argued that a broader phrase would need to me more specifically defined to avoid dilution.

Section 9 of the Bill sets out two limitations for processing data in terms of (i) the kind of personal data being processed and (ii) the purpose for the same. The third sub clause enumerates exceptions to the abovementioned principles in language similar to that found in Section 7.

With regard to the purpose limitation clause it was suggested by many participants that the same should be broadened to include multiple purposes as purpose swapping is widespread in existing practice and would be unfeasible and undesirable to curtail. Sub clause 3 of this Section was critiqued for the same reasons as Section 7.

Section 10 restricts cross-border transfer of data. It was clarified that different departments of the same company or the same holding company would be treated as different entities for the purpose of identifying the data processor. However, a concern was raised regarding the possibility of increased bureaucratic hurdles on global transfer of data in case this section is read too strictly. At the same time, to provide adequate protection of the data subject’s rights certain restrictions on the data controller and location of transfer.

The regime for disclosure of personal data without prior consent is provided for by Section 14. The provision did not specify the rank of the police officer in charge of passing orders for such disclosure. It was observed that a suitable rank had to be identified to ensure adequate protection. Further, it was suggested that the provision be broadened to include other competent agencies as well. This could be included by way of a schedule or subsequent notifications.

Conclusion

Mediated collection of data should be qualified on the basis of purpose and intent of collection.
The issue of cost to company (C2C) was not given adequate consideration in the Bill.
The need to lay down Procedures at all stages of handling personal data.
Special exemptions need to be provided for journalistic sources.

Meeting Conclusion

The Sixth Privacy Roundtable was the second to last of the stakeholder consultations conducted for the Citizens’ Personal Data (Protection) Bill, 2013. Various changes made to the Bill from its last form were scrutinized closely and suitable suggestions were provided. Further changes were recommended for various aspects of it, including definitions, qualifications and procedures, liability and the chapter on offences and penalties. The Bill will be amended to reflect multi-stakeholder suggestions and cater to various interests.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-the-sixth-privacy-roundtable-meeting-new-delhi

International Summer School: "Digitization and its Impact on Society"

praskrishna — 2013-11-20T10:00:59Z

Dr. Nishant Shah will be the key note speaker in the session "Social Networks and the Revolution of Political Communication". The event is being hosted by the Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics from September 29 to October 5, 2013.

Click to read the full programme schedule published by the Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics. More details on the program here.

The Summer School takes place on the TUD campus, mainly in the buildings of the Faculty of Computer Science (Nöthnitzer Straße 46) and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (Nöthnitzer Straße 38).

Co - Conveners and Scientific Committee

Noah Bubenhofer, Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics, TU Dresden
Thomas Bürger, Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB)
Wolfgang Donsbach, Chair of Communication Studies I, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Katrin Etzrodt, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Horst - Peter Götting, Chair of Civil Law and Intellectual Property Law, Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Media Law, TU Dresden
Lutz Hagen, Chair of Communications Studies II, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Thomas Köhler, Professorship for Educational Technology, Institute for Vocational Education, TU Dresden
Holger Kuße,Chair of Linguistics and History of Slavonic Languages, Institute of Slavonic Studies, TU Dresden
Claudia Lange, Chair of English Linguistics, Institute of English and American Studies, TU Dresden
Rebecca Renatus, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Anne Lauber-Rönsberg, Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Media Law, TU Dresden
Joachim Scharloth, Chair of Applied Linguistics, Institute of German Studies, TU Dresden
Eric Schoop, Chair of Business Informatics, esp Information Management, Faculty of Business and Economics
Marcel Thum, Chair of Public Economics, TU Dresden

Coordination: Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics, Joachim Scharloth, Noah Bubenhofer, Yvonne Krämer

Website: http://linguistik.zih.tu-dresden.de/digitization/
Email: summerschool.gsw@tu-dresden.de

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/digitization-and-its-impact-on-society