Access To Knowledge (A2K)

Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul

praskrishna — 2015-12-29T15:32:19Z

Facebook's media onslaught to garner support for its controversial Free Basics program is almost inescapable. Multi-page ads in national dailies, outdoor hoardings, television spots and perhaps the most effective of them all - Facebook notifications.

The blog post was published in IBN Live on December 29, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took out time during his paternity leave to pen an op-ed in The Times of India in which he tried to drum up support for the Free Basics service that offers people without the Internet free access to a handful of websites through mobile phones.

"If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services," Zuckerberg wrote, comparing the Internet to a library, public health care and education.

Zuckerberg said he was surprised that there is such a big debate around Free Basics in India.

The debate on Net neutrality stirred across India after Airtel decided to charge separately for Internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested. Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for 'Airtel Zero' service along with Facebook's Internet.org service, later renamed as 'Free Basics.'

Net neutrality implies that equal treatment be accorded to all Internet traffic and no priority be given to an entity or company based on payment to content or service providers such as telecom companies, which is seen as discriminatory.

Zuckerberg's personal appeal comes amid fierce criticism from Net neutrality activists who say Free Basics violates the principle that the whole Internet should be available to all and unrestricted by any one company.

In an op-ed response in The Times of India by Medianama's Nikhil Pahwa, who is also a volunteer with savetheinternet.in that is spearheading the campaign for Net neutrality and against Free Basics, asked why Facebook didn't opt for an option that doesn't violate Net neutrality and "why has Facebook chosen the current model for Free Basics, which gives users a selection of around a hundred sites (including a personal blog and a real estate company homepage), while rejecting the option of giving the poor free access to the open, plural and diverse web?"

Countries like the US, Chile, Netherlands and Brazil have already adopted Net Neutrality that doesn't allow discrimination of Internet content or charge users differently based on the content, site, or platform they consume, the debate is still raging in India with the last date for comments on a paper floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that is open for comments till December 30 and counter comments till January 7.

Facebook is using the might of its about 140 million user base in India urging them to send messages to TRAI supporting Free Basics.

A few companies such as Truecaller is attempting to counter Facebook's push by sending out messages to its millions of users in India asking them to petition TRAI against Facebook's Free Basics.

Earlier this month the TRAI ordered Reliance Communications, the sole mobile operator for the Free Basics in India, to suspend it temporarily.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, believes that Free Basics isn't exactly the evil that opponents picture it as. "In the absence of free Internet, Free Basics is a great enabler of freedom of speech. We ought to keep that in mind when asking for a ban," he said.

Meanwhile, Facebook's Internet.org vice president Chris Daniels, in a Reddit AMA said that Facebook was open to scrutiny of the process by any third party agency like IAMAI or NASSCOM and "We'd also be happy to have Twitter, Google+, etc on the platform which many people have asked for."

Earlier, in July this year the Department of Telecom panel on net neutrality has opposed projects like Facebook's Internet.org, which allow access to certain websites without mobile data charges, while suggesting that similar plans such as Airtel Zero be allowed with prior clearance from TRAI.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-goes-out-all-guns-blazing-in-push-for-free-basics-net-neutrality-advocates-cry-foul

Facebook Free Basics: Gatekeeping Powers Extend to Manipulating Public Discourse

vidushi — 2016-01-09T13:43:56Z

15 million people have come online through Free Basics, Facebook's zero rated walled garden, in the past year. "If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services. Who could possibly be against this?" asks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent op-ed defending Free Basics.

The article was published in Catchnews on January 6, 2015. For more info click here.

This rhetorical question however, has elicited a plethora of answers. The network neutrality debate has accelerated over the past few weeks with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) releasing a consultation paper on differential pricing.

While notifications to "Save Free Basics in India" prompt you on Facebook, an enormous backlash against this zero rated service has erupted in India.

The policy objectives that must guide regulating net neutrality are consumer choice, competition, access and openness. Facebook claims that Free Basics is a transition to the full internet and digital equality. However, by acting as a gatekeeper, Facebook gives itself the distinct advantage of deciding what services people can access for free by virtue of them being "basic", thereby violating net neutrality.

Amidst this debate, it's important to think of the impact Facebook can have on manipulating public discourse. In the past, Facebook has used it's powerful News Feed algorithm to significantly shape our consumption of information online.

In July 2014, Facebook researchers revealed that for a week in January 2012, it had altered the news feeds of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users to control how many positive and negative posts they saw. This was done without their consent as part of a study to test how social media could be used to spread emotions online.

Their research showed that emotions were in fact easily manipulated. Users tended to write posts that were aligned with the mood of their timeline.

Another worrying indication of Facebook's ability to alter discourse was during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in July and August, 2014. Users' News Feeds were flooded with videos of individuals pouring a bucket of ice over their head to raise awareness for charitable cause, but not entirely on its merit.

The challenge was Facebook's method of boosting its native video feature which was launched at around the same time. Its News Feed was mostly devoid of any news surrounding riots in Ferguson, Missouri at the same time, which happened to be a trending topic on Twitter.

Each day, the news feed algorithm has to choose roughly 300 posts out of a possible 1500 for each user, which involves much more than just a random selection. The posts you view when you log into Facebook are carefully curated keeping thousands of factors in mind. Each like and comment is a signal to the algorithm about your preferences and interests.

The amount of time you spend on each post is logged and then used to determine which post you are most likely to stop to read. Facebook even keeps into account text that is typed but not posted and makes algorithmic decisions based on them.

It also differentiates between likes - if you like a post before reading it, the news feed automatically assumes that your interest is much fainter as compared to liking a post after spending 10 minutes reading it.

Facebook believes that this is in the best interest of the user, and these factors help users see what he/she will most likely want to engage with. However, this keeps us at the mercy of a gatekeeper who impacts the diversity of information we consume, more often than not without explicit consent. Transparency is key.

(Vidushi Marda is a programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/catchnews-january-6-2016-vidushi-marda-facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse

Facebook Free Basics vs Net Neutrality: The top arguments in the debate

praskrishna — 2016-01-07T02:26:16Z

On Twitter, there's a whole conversation around Facebook Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here's a look at the debate.

The article was published in the Indian Express on December 31, 2015. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash were quoted.

Facebook’s Free Basics app, which aims to provide ‘free Internet access’ to users who can’t afford data packs, has run into trouble in India over the last two weeks. After regulator TRAI issued a paper questioning the fairness of zero-rating platforms, it also asked Reliance Communications (the official telecom partner for Free Basics) to put the service on hold.

Facebook on its part has gone for an aggressive campaign, both online and offline, to promote Free Basics and ensure that its platform is not banned permanently. For Net Neutrality activists, zero-rating platforms are in violation of the principle as it restricts access to free, full Internet for users.

On Twitter too, there’s a serious debate unfolding around Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here’s a look at some of the prominent voices around this Net Neutrality vs Free Basics debate.

Watch our video

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of news website MediaNama, has been campaigning for quite some time against zero-rating platforms in general and Net Neutrality. On Twitter, Pahwa points out that the problem with the zero-rating apps is that it gives telecos right to play kingmaker, and get into a direct relationship between a website and a user.

Pahwa also wrote a counter-blog to Mark Zuckerberg’s column in The Times of India questioning why Facebook is going with this restricted version of the web on Free Basics, rather than giving access to all websites.

He posted recently on Twitter, “Why hasn’t Facebook tried any model other than on which gives it a competitive advantage?”

Pahwa adds, “With zero rating, telcos insert themselves into a previously direct relationship between a site and user. Some sites made cheaper versus others. Said it earlier, saying it again. Problem with zero rating is that it gives telcos the right to play kingmaker through pricing. So Net Neutrality battle isn’t just about Facebook. It’s about telcos lobbying for differential pricing+revenue share from Internet companies.”

Check out some of this tweets on the issue of Net Neutrality:

Pranesh Prakash, the director for policy at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore, has said that a total ban might not be the ideal solution and one should look at the platforms on a case by case basis.

He writes on Twitter, “My position: We should ban some zero-rating, allow some zero-rating, and deal w/ middle category either w/ +ve obligation or case-by-case. I’m all for banning Free Basics if it harms people more than it benefits them. I’ve even proposed tests for determining this. The regulator needs more data on a) conversion rates to full-Internet; b) cost of subsidy & c) QoE (speed, etc.) of Free Basics.”

Check out Pranesh's tweets below

Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre for Internet and Society, has however questioned Free Basics on Twitter. He also posted counter-points to Pranesh’s tweets about data on conversion being used to create regulations around zero-ratings. He’s also called for a ban on Free Basics.

Check out his tweets below

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-december-31-2015-facebook-free-basics-vs-net-neutrality-the-top-arguments-in-the-debate

Facebook Data for Good in New Delhi

Admin — 2019-07-31T02:10:23Z

When data is shared responsibly with the communities that need it, it can improve well being and save lives. Anubha Sinha participated in a session organized by Facebook on 29 July 2019 at University of Chicago Center in New Delhi.

Click to download the brochure

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-data-for-good-delhi

Facebook Data for Good in Bangalore

Admin — 2019-07-31T02:14:06Z

When data is shared responsibly with the communities that need it, it can improve well being and save lives. Shweta Mohandas participated in a session organized by Facebook on 25 July 2019 at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-data-for-good-in-bangalore

Facebook breach: Privacy advocates in India seek stronger data laws

Admin — 2018-03-20T23:37:04Z

Privacy advocates in India underlined the urgent need for stronger data privacy laws in India with the debate coming under focus after reports alleged that British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica had tapped into the profiles of more than 50 million Facebook users, without their permission, during the last US elections.

The article by Surabhi Agarwal and Devina Sengupta was published in the Economic Times on March 20, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Advocates of data privacy told ET that even in India — where issues around data privacy have been on the boil — voter opinion may be targeted by using their personal information without their approval. “The government has not moved with necessary pace on data protection,” said advocate Apar Gupta.

“Election commission (EC) has not taken up this issue of data protection for regulatory scrutiny. EC has in the past issued guidelines to protect election integrity and restrained exit polls and also required candidates to disclose social media handles. However, much more needs to be done,” he added.

His concerns around India’s voting process being potentially vulnerable to similar influence like in the US come amid a “case study” on the Cambridge Analytica website said the company had worked for Indian political parties as well.

It said that the British firm was “contracted to undertake an indepth electorate analysis for the Bihar Assembly Election in 2010…Our client achieved a landslide victory, with over 90% of total seats targeted by CA being won”.

Media reports quoted sources at Cambridge Analytica, and its Indian partner, Oveleno Business Intelligence, as saying that the local company was in talks with leading Indian political parties for a pact for their 2019 parliamentary poll campaigns.

“This shows integrity of elections and voter trust may be undermined through data analytics and target voters on the basis of their personal data,” said Gupta Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Center for Internet and Society, said India urgently needs a strong data protection regulation, that require companies to have oversight and pin liabilities on them if they fail to have oversight over data they transact with.

“So, in this case for instance, the companies that provided Cambridge Analytica DATA are seriously culpable and Facebook --right now it is unclear if under any current law it is culpable --there are some discussions in the US etc. Regardless of it, they should be required to exercise greater diligence when it comes to personable data that they have taken consent for,” said Prakash.

“Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook. If these reports are true, it's a serious abuse of our rules.

All parties involved — including the SCL Group/Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie and Aleksandr Kogan — certified to us that they destroyed the data in question. In light of new reports that the data was not destroyed, we are suspending these three parties from Facebook, pending further information. We will take whatever steps are required to see that the data in question is deleted once and for all —and take action against all offending parties.”

In a statement to ET, Facebook said there was no breach of its data base and that protecting people’s information was core to the company. “Like all app developers, Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent. People knowingly provided their information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked,” Paul Grewal, VP & Deputy General Counsel, Facebook said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-march-20-2018-surabhi-agarwal-devina-sengupta-facebook-breach-privacy-advocates-in-india-seek-stronger-data-laws

Facebook Arrests Ignite Free-Speech Debate In India

praskrishna — 2013-01-07T10:16:39Z

Shaheen Dhada is an unlikely looking protagonist in the battle under way in India to protect free speech from government restrictions in the new media age.

This article by Julie McCarthy was published in npr on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Slight and soft-spoken, Dhada perches on the edge of her bed in a purple-walled room that has been her own for the past 20 years. Outside, police officers are posted for her protection in the town of Palghar, 2 1/2 hours outside Mumbai.

The 21-year-old management science grad's Facebook post last week triggered her arrest and the wrath of local residents. Her "crime" was questioning the shutdown of Mumbai as mourners gathered for the cremation of Bal Thackeray, who had dominated the city's political stage for decades with cagey intimidation tactics.

In a Facebook post on Nov. 18, Dhada wrote: "Every day thousands of people die, but still the world moves on. ... Today, Mumbai shuts down out of fear, not out of respect."

Within minutes, she got a call from a stranger. "And he told me, 'Do you really think whatever you posted is right?' " Dhada says. "I was actually confused about what he was asking for."

She hung up and deleted her comment. But by then a mob had gathered at her uncle's medical clinic around the corner, smashing windows and equipment, and vandalizing the operating room.

"Within 10 minutes, the police came and told me to come to the police station. I had to apologize in a written statement," says Dhada, who was held until 2 a.m. and then released on bail. A friend of hers, Renu Srinivasan, who "liked" the post, had been detained with her. A mob descended on the station. Dhada says she couldn't see it, but heard: "They were shouting, and at that time I was really very scared."

Meanwhile, Dhada's father, Farooq Dhada, says his family cowered inside their home for hours in the darkness, afraid the mob would come for them next.

The episode has shaken the Muslim father of two, who says he never expected things to escalate to such a frightening pitch. Reflecting on the incident days later, he says freedom of speech in India "exists only on paper." He says he doubts the common person feels any sense of security — no matter what religion they are.

Shiv Sena's Legacy Of Violence

Shaheen Dhada's post had angered followers of Thackeray, a political cartoonist turned Hindu hard-liner. His Hindu party, Shiv Sena, won popular appeal in the state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located. Exploiting enmity against migrants from other states, the party encouraged brute force to win jobs and opportunities.

Journalist Naresh Fernandes says when Hindu nationalism became a potent force, Shiv Sena turned its ire on Mumbai's Muslims — igniting riots that killed 900 people in 1992 and '93.

Thackeray fanned the violence, Fernandes says, by "making extremely provocative statements essentially calling upon his followers to attack Muslims."

Vaibhav Purandare, author of The Shiv Sena Story, says the party's legacy of violence has cost it support over the years.

"They refused to believe that the India of the 21st century was very different from the India of the 20th century ... when a section [of the population] would not mind the use of violence," Purandare says. The bust-up of the medical clinic "shows they continue with violence tactics," he adds.

Anil Desai, the secretary of Shiv Sena, says it is not a matter of disowning the violence. "It was an emotional outburst," he says, "and the incidents ... were blown out of proportion, that much I say."

Inciting Religious Enmity

At a restaurant in Palghar on Friday night, the talk among locals turned to the Facebook row. Sunil Mahendrakar said Dhada should be prohibited from posting comments critical of Thackeray because he was considered a father figure to many, if not to her.

"Talking cheap or bad about somebody's father should be denied, anywhere in the world. In India ... in America," he said. "It's wrong."

Retired Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju says every freedom is subject to "reasonable restrictions in the public interest." But he says in the case of Dhada, her post actually underscores a Supreme Court ruling that bringing a city to a standstill is illegal.

"You can mourn a death in whichever way you want, but you can't bring a whole city to a stoppage. So what this girl wrote was in consonance with the verdict of the Supreme Court — nothing illegal," Katju says.

Nonetheless, police charged Dhada under a statute that makes it a crime to promote "religious enmity" between groups. The initial police report refers to her as a Muslim. But Dhada says she does not believe she was singled out for her faith.

Writer Fernandes says it's more likely police were scrambling for a convenient hook on which to hang a charge.

"They needed to find a cause of anger and suggested that she, as a Muslim girl, had insulted them, who were Hindus," he says. "That's ridiculous. She questioned why a city shut down after Bal Thackeray's death — and Bal Thackeray is not a religion; he's a leader of a political party."

The general consensus seems to be that the police not only misapplied the law but also succumbed to the will of the mob.

"There were thousands of guys outside their police station and inside the station house who were doing what the Shiv Sena has always done — threatening to burn the town up," Fernandes says. "They just wanted to get them off their backs and wanted to make sure that order was maintained even as they didn't quite uphold the law."

Communal Harmony

The case also throws a harsh light on India's new Information Technology Act that governs electronic speech. Police charged Dhada with violating a section of the law, which prohibits speech that, among other things, causes "annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will."

Pranesh Prakash, the director of the Centre for Internet and Society, says it's a poorly drafted catchall. Under such a sweeping statute, Prakash says, 95 percent of India's Internet users could well be imprisoned.

"I have 3,500 followers on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure I annoy 100 of them on a daily basis," he says.

Tackling issues of communal harmony is a serious issue in India, but, Prakash says, "it should not lead to forsaking fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution."

The government conferred Thursday over problems with the IT Act, while the Supreme Court is hearing challenges to it.

Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan are not expected to face prosecution under the country's controversial IT Act or any other law. Following a public outcry, two senior officials from the local Palghar police have been suspended and a magistrate transferred.

From her self-imposed house arrest, Dhada says she'll venture back onto Facebook, but her experience is certain to color her musings.

"I don't want this to happen again," she says, laughing, "but I'll be careful next time."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/npr-julie-mccarthy-november-29-2012

Eye on Mumbai

praskrishna — 2016-10-02T10:22:20Z

The feeds will be beamed to a video wall that stretches 21 feet across at the police’s command and control room.

The article by Tariq Engineer was published in Mumbai Mirror today. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

When seven bombs exploded on local trains between Khar and Borivali killing 209 people and injuring 714 in 2006, the Maharashtra police looked for CCTV footage but couldn’t find any because no cameras existed at railway stations back then.

When terrorists landed near Machimar colony in Cuffe Parade in 2008 and proceeded to slaughter hundreds of people in the city, CCTV footage was found only at the Taj and Trident hotels, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and near the Times of India building. Places like Cama Hospital, Nariman House and Leopold Café were simply off the grid.

When Mumbai journalist J Dey was gunned down in Powai in 2011, the police obtained CCTV footage from a shopping centre nearby but it was so blurry, it was useless.

In each of these situations, a fully functioning high-definition CCTV system could have altered the outcome or aided the investigation in critical ways. That glaring gap in Mumbai’s security has now been filled by the Mumbai City Surveillance Project, which officially goes live today.

Over the last 20 months, a total of 4697 cameras have been installed at 1510 locations around Mumbai city. In addition to these, another 146 will survey the Bandra Kurla Complex. The tender for the project was issued in 2015 and won by a consortium led by construction major Larsen & Toubro with MTNL, CMS Computers and Infinova, which supplied the cameras, as partners.

The project is actually an outcome of the 26/11 attacks, having been recommended by the Ram Pradhan Committee, which was appointed to evaluate the city administration’s responses to the terror strike. According to Additional Chief Secretary (Home) KP Bakshi these cameras will ensure roughly 80 per cent of Mumbsi will be watched 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The city’s inhabitants will now have to be on their best behaviour.

“It was the police’s call to decide what they want to observe,” Bakshi said. “Do they want to look at the traffic or at a place where people gamble or do a lot of drinking?” The policeman in charge of selection of spots for installation of cameras was former additional commissioner of police Vasant Dhoble. Calling him a “game-changer”, one of the project managers said it was thanks to Dhoble that all the locations were surveyed in just twoand-a-half months. Dhoble was also instrumental in ensuring that the cameras were installed at the appropriate angles.

While the initial estimate was for 6,000 cameras, it was eventually determined that 4,697 were sufficient at this stage. The cameras have been placed on poles similar to street lights — 2290 of them — some with multiple cameras. “Let’s say there is a pole at Haji Ali Juice Center,” Bakshi said. “It may have three cameras — one looking towards Heera Panna, the other looking towards Mahalaxmi, the third looking towards Worli.”

The vast majority of the cameras — roughly 4200 — will be fixed and stare unblinkingly in one direction. The other 500 will be PTZ, or pan/tilt/zoom cameras, so those watching can scan an area or take a closer look at something that seems suspicious. All of the cameras can see in high definition, with visibility ranging from 50m to 120m. Some of them also have thermal imaging and night vision.

According to those involved in the project, the cameras have been built to withstand the rigours of Mumbai’s weather — specifically the heat and rain. Larsen & Toubro and CMS Computers are responsible for the maintenance of the system. Once the system is fully operational, the target is to have 99% of the cameras live at all times barring accidents. The responsibility for this lies with the service providers.

A smart system

The software that runs the cameras includes a Picture Intelligence Unit (PIU) that will conduct facial recognition analysis. If there is an image of a wanted person in the database, the program will scan the footage for matches and send a signal if it finds any. It will also send an alert if it notices a suspicious object, say one that has been left unattended for a pre-specified amount of time, so the cops can check it out. Tracking police vehicles — like you can follow the path of an Uber or Ola — is yet another feature, so if there is trouble, the nearest vehicle can be dispatched.

By Bakshi’s reckoning, if it is a small crime, then the police should be on the scene in five to ten minutes. If it is something like a bomb blast, then a Quick Response Team will be deployed, which will take a little longer – say 10 to 15 minutes.

Who will be watching you?

The feeds from these cameras will be fed to a video wall that stretches 21 feet across in a control room that has been set up in the Commissioner of Police Headquarters at Crawford Market. The footage will be monitored by about 20 observers who have been specially trained for the job.

However, a project manager said, watching the wall for more than eight minutes “would make anyone mad” because it is so chaotic. Therefore, each observer has his own workstation with three computer screens where he can only watch the feeds he has been assigned.

Entry to the control room is also strictly monitored. It requires five fingerprint access just to get in the room and a thumb print to turn individual workstations on. Mobile phones and personal effects are banned and the computers have no USB ports, so data can’t be copied.

In addition, there are viewing screens in each of the additional commissioner’s zonal offices and in all 23 police stations and roughly 200 observers will eventually be required to operate them. A project manager said he hoped to have a 60-40 or 50-50 split between male and female observers. The observers are monitored by the police, who will decide what actions to take depending on what alerts are generated.

The manpower is being provided by CMS Computers, with applicants having their resumes verified by the police. Observers will spend anywhere from four to six weeks in training before they get on the job, one of the project managers said.

Keeping the data secure

The images from the standard cameras will be stored for 90 days, while those taken with PTZ cameras will be stored for 30 days. “If you store for longer periods, it involves more cost,” Bakshi said. “We feel that if something has to be reported to us, it will be reported within 90 days.”

MTNL has set up a data centre in Worli and a disaster recovery centre in Belapur. If something goes wrong in Worli, there will still be connectivity via Belapur. Both centres have been “tied-up” to make the data as safe as possible. At the test lab at Larsen & Toubro’s project headquarters in Mallet Bunder, they even have a rodent detection device that broadcasts an ultrasonic frequency to drive away rats and stop them from chewing up the wires.

False starts

The project took some time to get off the ground because getting the details worked out was a painstaking elaborate process, former Maharashtra chief secretary ( home) Amitabh Rajan, told Mumbai Mirror. The committee wanted to make sure everything was transparent and that there were no allegations against the project. Control and security were also zealously guarded. “No compromise on security, not even cost,” Rajan said. “Like titration in chemistry, we eventually got the right concentration.”

There was also a battle between a lobby that wanted the system to be set up using dedicated fibre optic cables, and a lobby of technology providers that wanted to use wireless technology. The cops backed cables, which are not only safer but make it easy to add additional bandwidth, whereas wireless networks have limited bandwidth. It was a battle the cops would eventually win but at the cost of time.

The tender process didn’t go smoothly either. Larsen and Toubro were actually the winners of the fourth tender the Maharashtra government put forward. The first tender had to be cancelled because the winning consortium had not properly disclosed its ownership structure — one of the companies turned out to be controlled by a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. The second was cancelled when the vendor’s bank guarantee cheque of Rs 2 crore bounced and the owner disappeared. He was eventually found and arrested two years later.

The third tender received no bidders because it did not offer up-front payment for capital expenditure, according to then IT secretary Rajesh Aggarwal, who was part of the committee. It was finally on the fourth occasion, when the committee decided to offer a certain percentage of the project cost at the start and the rest over the remaining five years as maintenance fees, that a deal could be sealed.

Coordination headache

The next hurdle was coordinating the work between all the different organisations that populate Mumbai. The final total was around 35 or 40 bodies, including the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), BEST and Reliance Power, the police, MMRDA, the Government of India and the High Court. “To explain to everyone that it is a security project and please don’t go by normal rules, you have to give concessions for all these things, all this co-ordination was a big job,” Bakshi said.

It led to delays, which is why the project had to take the extraordinary step of getting permission from the MCGM to dig up roads during the monsoon to lay the fibre-optic cables. It was the only way the project could make its deadline.

“If we had done it like a normal project, it would have taken five years,” an engineer said.

A question of privacy

Two experts in privacy issues that Mirror spoke to said that such a system is in the public interest, but safeguards must be built to prevent abuse. “If the data falls into the wrong hands, it can create havoc,” said Pavan Duggal, an expert in the field of cyber law. “Large scale surveillance of the public should not be the norm, it should be the exemption to the norm.” he said. “It can create unease and lessen the enjoyment of living in a democratic society.”

According to Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, the biggest problem is that India does not have an “omnibus privacy law”.

Instead, it has about 50 different laws across sectors and therefore privacy regulations are not consistent, which has created a legal thicket. “110 countries have passed privacy laws to European Union standards. India is really far behind,” he said.

He also listed a number of principles that he hoped the project would abide by, such as the principles of notice (CCTV cameras should be advertised as such), of openness (details of the system should be made public), security (“if you don’t have security, you can’t ensure privacy”) and of access (“we should have a right to get the footage of ourselves”). He also warned against the footage being shared between different security agencies without due process.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Bakshi said most of these principles were part of the system. There would be boards demarcating the CCTV cameras, the system would be publicly launched, it was being made as secure as possible and footage could be handed over depending on the circumstances. “If it is your own, then no problem,” Bakshi said. “If it is someone else’s then there are privacy issues. Is it because of criminal intent or you want to track your girlfriend’s other boyfriend to see if he is following her? These are issues. If you want yours, on merit we can give. No issue.”

Another concern Abraham raised is unique to India and the Aadhaar card, which uses biometric data as passwords, not identification. Since the CCTV cameras are high resolution, it raises the risk of someone recreating your iris or finger prints from a captured image and then “somebody could empty your Aadhaarlinked bank accounts,” Abraham said.

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Abraham pointed out that in 2014 a member of the Chaos Collective Club, the largest association of hackers in Europe, recreated the finger print of a German minister from a photograph they took of her hand.

“Other risks are smaller, a revealing photograph or someone trying to blackmail you,” Abraham said.

Not just for crime

The camera feed has other applications too, beginning with traffic management. An automatic number plate recognition system will be installed as well. If you look around the corner, don’t see a cop and jump a light, you could still get in trouble. “6000 [sic] police in the sky are watching you and you will get a challan sitting at home,” Aggarwal said. Other uses include tracking of encroachments by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai which will have an additional viewing centre. Also garbage disposal and other civic issues such as water logging and a subject dear to Mumbai citizens — potholes. “Somebody complains that this road has a pothole, immediately you can zoom in and see that yes, there is a pothole on this road,” Bakshi said.

There is also a provision to allow a further 103 locations to plug-in and play. For example, if the Taj Mahal Hotel wants the police to survey the hotel for a period of time, the hotel’s CCTV system can be hooked up to the main control room within 48 hours. The same goes for the airport or the railway stations.

Effect of CCTV surveillance

Worldwide the academic literature on CCTV surveillance suggests its effectiveness, especially on crime prevention, is uncertain or limited. “Post crime it really, really helps,” Aggarwal said, “but for prevention, we have to wait and watch. If it reduces sexual harassment for example, then that is priceless. Time will tell how people try to beat the system and how the system tries to catch up.”

Joint Commissioner of Police, Law and Order, Deven Bharti said he was already seeing an improvement in traffic management and in prevention and detection of crimes thanks to the 3000-plus cameras that were live when Mirror spoke to him two days ago, though he said he could not provide details. “The system is working to our satisfaction,” Bharti said.

Bakshi said the effects of the system should start showing roughly a month after the project is fully operational. “In Pune, results started being seen within a month. Once all 4700 [cameras] are live, you will start seeing the results on traffic violations, street crimes, and at general discipline level. [First] Let the people know they are under surveillance, that they are completely covered in Mumbai by CCTV.”

The total cost of the project is Rs 1008 crore. Out of this, about Rs 400 crore has already been spent. The balance will be paid out in regular installments until October 2021. At that point the Maharashtra government and Mumbai police will take complete control of the project. “We presume that in five years’ time, we will have enough trained people to run it ourselves,” Bakshi said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mumbai-mirror-tariq-engineer-october-2-2016-eye-on-mumbai

Extra-Territorial Surveillance and the Incapacitation of Human Rights

Arindrajit Basu — 2020-01-02T11:02:26Z

This paper was published in Volume 12 (2) of the NUJS Law Review.

Our networked data trails dictate, define, and modulate societies in hitherto inconceivable ways. The ability to access and manipulate that data is a product of stark power asymmetry in geo-politics, leading to a dynamic that privileges the interests of a few over the right to privacy and dignity of the many. I argue that the persistent de facto violation of human rights norms through extraterritorial surveillance conducted by western intelligence agencies, compounded by the failure of judicial intervention in the West has lead to the incapacitation of international human rights law. Despite robust jurisprudence including case law, comments by the United Nations, and widespread state practice on the right to privacy and the application of human rights obligations to extraterritorial stakeholders, extraterritorial surveillance continues with aplomb. Procedural safeguards and proportionality tests regularly sway towards a ‘ritual incantation’ of national security even in scenarios where a less intrusive option is available. The vulnerable citizen abroad is unable to challenge these processes and becomes an unwitting victim of nefarious surveillance practices that further widens global power asymmetry and entrenches geo-political fissures.

The full article can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/extra-territorial-surveillance-and-the-incapacitation-of-human-rights

Extending Aadhaar to more areas is a hare-brained idea, it should be dropped

praskrishna — 2016-08-24T03:05:01Z

News reports that the mandatory use of Aadhaar could be extended to a host of new areas are extremely disturbing. According to these reports, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has identified 20 new areas for which Aadhaar can be made mandatory. This includes registration of companies and NGOs, insurance, competitive examinations and property and vehicle registration.

The article by Seetha was published in First Post on August 23, 2016. CIS article by Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha was quoted.

If this happens, then it confirms the worst suspicions of all those who are opposed to Aadhaar – and this spans ideological divides – that it can be used to seriously compromise individual privacy.

A villager scanning fingerprint for Aadhaar. Reuters file photo

The defenders of Aadhaar – mainly the previous and current governments, the UIDAI and Nandan Nilekani, the father of the Aadhaar – have always argued that these concerns are exaggerated. They have pointed out that Aadhaar does not take any details that are not already in the public domain – name, date of birth and permanent address – and that the biometric data is not shared with any of the authorities that seek verification by Aadhaar. That data remains with the UIDAI and it only confirms that a person with a particular Aadhaar number is who he claims he is.

But Aadhaar’s opponents have argued that the extensive use of Aadhaar allows disparate bits of information to be linked and this could become a genuine concern if this hare-brained idea gets official approval.

Now, there is certainly no doubt that Aadhaar is, in the absence of anything better, the best technological tool for establishing identity. It is not entirely fool-proof – there are issues relating to the fingerprints of manual labourers and iris scan of aged people or those with cataract – a solution needs to be found for this. According to this report by the Centre for Internet and Society, there was fingerprint authentication failure in 290 of 790 ration card holders in Andhra Pradesh who did not lift rations, and there was an ID mismatch in 93 instances. These problems notwithstanding, there is no denying that Aadhaar has helped in significantly containing (perhaps not entirely eliminating) the problem of identity theft for diversion of government doles and other benefits.

So making Aadhaar compulsory for such cases is perfectly justifiable. Indeed, the Act giving legal status to Aadhaar is called Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.

Mandatory quoting of Aadhaar can even be justified in the cases where duplication or falsification of identity can be used by criminals or those who fall foul of the law. Passports, for example, can be brought under the ambit of Aadhaar. Or even driving licences. A person whose licence has been suspended for repeated traffic violations should not be allowed to get another one under the same name or an assumed name.

But why should it be mandatory for bank accounts, if an individual is not interested in getting government doles? The quoting of Aadhaar for property transactions also does not make sense. If the idea is to prevent fraudulent transactions, it will not be foolproof. A person intending to sell an already sold property or one he does not own can do so even with an Aadhaar number, since people are allowed to own more than one piece of property. What will prevent this from happening is compulsory registration and digitisation of records as well as mandatory property titling; there has been little progress on both.

When filing of income tax returns is not possible without a PAN, there is little rationale for making Aadhaar mandatory for filing returns and even for PAN. It is not clear how quoting of Aadhaar is going to help in ensuring that fly-by-night companies and NGOs do not get established.

The insistence of Aadhaar on purchase of vehicles, landline and mobile phone connections and demat accounts is seriously violative of individual privacy and has enormous potential for misuse. The Act does give the government unbridled power to access data in the name of national security. This itself is worrying, since it can allow security agencies to go an random fishing expeditions to access personal financial transactions. Making it mandatory for even buying cars and phone connections (even though it is not illegal to own more than one vehicle or telephone connection) makes it even riskier – private agencies get access to one’s Aadhaar number. Forget security agencies, even unscrupulous private persons can track an individual’s personal activities, especially financial transactions.

As it is, investigating agencies want to tap Aadhaar and biometric data at the drop of a hat. The UIDAI had to approach the Supreme Court in 2014 against a Goa High Court order ordering it to share biometric details of everyone enrolled in the state for solving a gang rape case. Even after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of UIDAI, a Kerala special investigation team wanted it to share biometric details to solve another rape case. If Aadhaar now becomes mandatory for a host of financial and other transactions, the points of potential privacy breaches only increase.

The move to extend the mandatory use of Aadhaar has to be stopped in its tracks. The mandatory use should be limited to delivery of government welfare benefits and doles (after ensuring that glitches are eliminated) and security-related services like passports. For everything else, it should be purely voluntary. There can be no compromise on this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/first-post-august-23-2016-seetha-extending-aadhaar-to-more-areas-is-a-hare-brained-idea-it-should-be-dropped

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism

praskrishna — 2011-12-29T13:31:12Z

Tactical Tech and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) organised a public discussion on the intersection of Art and Activism at the CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Videos of the event are now online. Ward Smith (Lecturer, University of California, LA), Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszinsky (Co-founders, Tactical Technology Collective), Ayisha Abraham (Film maker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society) spoke in this event.

In the information societies that we live in, data is the new currency. While data – objective enumerations of life – has been around as the basis of providing evidence in research, practice and art, there is a renewed attention on data as the digital technologies start mediating our everyday lives. Digitization (like electronification in earlier times) is a process by which messy, chaotic, everyday life can be sorted, classified, arranged and built into clean taxonomies that flatten the experiential and privilege the objective. In many ways, the process of ubiquitous digitization goes back to the Cartesian dualism of the immaterial mind over the emergent materiality of the body. Historically, different disciplines and practices within the social and natural sciences, humanities, arts, development work, and governmentality, etc. have established protocols to create robust, rigorous, efficient and reliable data that can be used as evidence for thought and action. These protocols are not permanent and are often questioned within the disciplinary framework but especially with interdisciplinary dialogues where conflicting methodologies and reading practices often render the same data sets unintelligible to each other.

With the rise of the digital, these disciplines and practices start new negotiations with the world of databases, networks and archives. There is a growing anxiety that data, which was supposed to be an objective representation of reality, is increasingly becoming opaque in how it is structured. There is also an increasing awareness that the work that we make the —‘idea of data’— is not transparent. The Exposing Data Project came as a response to these anxieties, as we seek to unpack the processes, methodologies, challenges and implications of living in a data-rich, data-based world mediated by digital and internet technologies through a cross-disciplinary multi-sectoral dialogue.

Exposing Data is a curated practice of bringing together differently located researchers, academics, practitioners, policy actors, artists and public interlocutors to tease out the tensions and conflicts that digital data brings to their own practice and thought, especially when talking to people who are ‘not like us’.

For its first conversation titled ‘Art Slash Activism’, we decided to look at the tensions that often split communities and practices across historically drawn battle lines. There has been a huge tension between artists and activists, who, even though they often use same kind of data sets, are often at logger-heads when it comes to using that data for their practice. Artists, especially those dealing with public and community art projects, often work in the same spaces and communities as the activists, in making strong political statements and working towards a progressive liberal ideology. Activism has depended on artistic expressions – especially those around free speech, censorship, surveillance, human rights, etc. – in order to not only find peer support but also to oppose authoritarian forces that often seek to quell artistic voices. And yet, within the larger communities, the idea of political art – art that makes direct political statements – or activism as an art form – activism that takes the form of cultural production and overt subversion – often emerges as problematic. ‘Art Slash Activism’ brought together four people, identified (reluctantly, because they wear so many different hats) as an academic, as a researcher, as an activist and as an artist, who all straddle these chasms in their own work, to unpack the tensions through the lens of digital data.

Zainab Bawa, who is a research fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, working on a monograph that deals with politics of transparency in Indian e-governance systems, set out the terms of the debate as she questioned the very meaning of the word ‘data’. Zainab, by looking at case-studies of land-record digitization in the country, started to look at how the word ‘data’, despite its apparent transparency and objectivity, is actually an opaque concept that eclipsed the politics of data formation – what gets identified as data? What gets discarded as noise? Who gets to identify something as data? What happens to things which are not data? What happens to people who cannot be identified through data? What are the systems of rationality that we inherit to talk of data?

Video of Zainab Bawa Talk

These questions persisted through the different conversations but were brought into plain site when Ayisha Abraham, a film and video artist who also teaches at the Sristhi School of Art Design, showed us a digitally restored piece of an old film that disintegrated even as it was being saved. Heidegger in his Basic Writings had proposed that “Art assumes that the truth that discloses itself in the work can never be derived from outside.” Ayisha built on this idea to look at material historicity and physical presence of data to question the easy availability of data that has been established for data in art practices. When does data come into being? What precedes data? What happens to data when it decays beyond belief? How do we restructure reality in the absence of data? She mapped the role of affective restructuring, historical reconstruction and creative fictions in our everyday life when we deal with realities which cannot be supported by data.

Video of Ayisha Abraham Talk

Ward Smith added a layer of complication in his questioning of the established cause-effect relationship that data has with Reality. Within activism as well as in development and policy work, there is an imagination that data always followed reality – that it is a distilled set of abstractions based on experiences, information, knowledge, analyses, etc. However, Ward presented us with a case-study that shows that data is not benign. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Often, the creation of data sets and databases leads to construction of alternative and new material realities. Even within existing realities, the introduction of a data set or an attempt to account for the reality using data, produces new and evolved forms of reality. Drawing partly from the discussions within digital taxanomies and partly from conversations in quantum philosophy (remember Schrodinger’s Cat?) Ward showed how data realities need to be unpacked to reveal what lies underneath.

Video of Ward Smith Talk

Marek Tuszinsky rounded up the conversations by introducing us to different ways of looking at data. Drawing from a rich ethnographic and experience data set at the Tactical Technology Collective, Marek questioned how our relationships and reading practices – looking at data side-ways, for example – influences the shape, form, structure and meaning of the data under consideration. What came up was a compendium questions around data ethics, data values, our own strategies and reflectivity in dealing with a data-mediated and data-informed world. What are the kinds of imperatives that lead us to produce data? What methodologies do we deploy to render data intelligible? What kind of data manipulations do we engage in, in order to make it comprehensible to digital systems of archives and storage?

Video of Marek Tuzinsky Talk

What are the politics of exclusion, inclusion and making invisible of data sets?

The conversation further opened up to the other participants in the conversation to crystalise around three areas of concern:

Data Decay

An audience member pointed out that one is always confronted with the physical decay of data. While old film is an incredibly fragile medium, it has survived over 70 years to become a part of Ayisha’s work. A digital format, on the other hand, would likely become inaccessible within six years due to format changes and problems with compatibility. The discussion shifted to the temporary aspect of data. The digitization of data allows one to illuminate it in significant ways by adding new components and blowing up details of focus. Such options are not available in analogue form.

However, the fact that digital media has a limited lifespan is something that one must consider. Are we depicting data for immediate attention and action, or for future reference? How far down the timeline of history do we want our records to stretch? Regardless of whether the producers of the film that turned out to be a hidden treasure for Ayisha asked these questions, the persistence of the film 70 years later served to illuminate an important moment in history and spoke of lives and stories the knowledge of which is still of interest and inspiration in our time. The future accessibility of data can be seen as our legacy and the inheritance of the generations to come.

Data Realities / Subjects

At the same time, can we be sure of the factual nature of recovered and existing data? It is important to ask who commissioned the source of information, who collected the data, who depicted and disseminated it? When asking “who”, one should also ask what their motives were, what resources they had and what settings they were working in. These are only several factors that influence the accuracy, message and understanding of the presented data.

Data has political power, being used as a catalyst and a justifying factor for various policies and interventions. However, data that is collected and presented by policy makers, research organizations, NGO’s, and other institutions may not reflect the realities as they are experienced by the population represented by the data. Researchers may be asking the wrong questions, or seeking answers in the wrong places, as it was the case in the Atlanta homeless programs discussed in Ward’s presentation. Inaccurate or incomplete data can confuse cause and effect, as well as become the cause in and of itself by feeding into stereotypes and creating faulty convictions that shape conventional views and social action.

Data Values

The importance of deconstructing the nature of how data is presented was remarked on by an audience member. The question posed was how, in the process of data collection and presentation, one can make data more reflective of reality as it is experienced by the studied population through incorporating grassroots efforts to create a community-based ownership of data.

To tackle this question, Marek brought up the example of mapping out the Kibera slum in Kenya. An open source approach was used in the project, where locals actively participated in the process of mapping. However, as Marek pointed out, it was still an intervention from outside the community. Somebody funded the project, someone gave the equipment, and they followed a certain methodology for reasons of their own. A completely unbiased and neutral representation of the slum was not possible due to the various agendas and perspectives of the parties involved, the dominant agenda being that of the project funders. Complete objectivity, even when efforts are made, is impossible.

Is it really more data that we need then? Even though information exists, it may not be accurate and not everyone within the society has an equal reach to it. A worker from a village lacking in literacy skills has significantly less access to data than a PHD student from a renowned university, even though they both navigate within the same system. Access to data stems farther than what is put up on a website or a file that can be picked up from a government office. More important than having access to open data, Zainab believes that one should look for relationships and systems where there is responsiveness and responsibility of negotiating.

However, what came clear from the discussion is that there are existent infrastructures that enable researchers and activists in their quest for information and its fair representation. People, in their interactions with each other, in the institutions and ad hoc organizations we develop, take part in creating these enabling infrastructures. Being embedded in the system within which one is collecting information allows one to understand and manoeuvre the necessary avenues. Questions of data collection, representation, and dissemination are multidisciplinary, spanning across issues that touch all members of our society. From land property records, old abandoned film, government statistics, classifications, and artists’ quest for truth, data takes many forms and defines our lives in ways we cannot always control. Through revaluation and questioning of these processes we gain a better understanding of what shapes societal views, government action, and how we can take control and use data to illuminate the unseen and wheel social change.

This has been the first of our experiments at creating dialogues around Exposing Data. We invite people interested in these questions, to not only participate in the future conversations, but also help us draw upon different disciplines, questions and concerns around the subject of Data. The next conversation seeks to address the question of “Whose data is it anyway?” and we hope that the momentum of talk carries on.

Nishant Shah
Maya Ganesh
Yelena Gulkhandanyan

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/art-slash-activism

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism

yelena — 2013-03-01T05:44:23Z

Tactical Tech and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invite you to the first round of discussions on the intersection of Art and Activism at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith (Lecturer, University of California, LA), Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski (Co-founders, Tactical Technology Collective), Ayisha Abraham (Film maker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society) are leading the conversations.

The Exposing Data Project

An NGO sets up a database to track elected representatives’ participation in the Parliament, the spending for their constituency, and keeping a track of their political mandates and promises.

A geographer tracks the movements of US Government satellites and visualises their paths to form curious visuals of ‘State secrets’.

A photographer travels to an island in the Pacific Ocean to take pictures of the plastic debris found in the stomach of a Laysan albatross carcass.

Each of these examples is about how data that serves as evidence can be collected and visualised in different formats. The NGO can output its data as infographics, the geographer creates non-cartographic maps and the photographer’s images serve as testimony to increased pollution levels. We live in database times. Never before in human history have we consumed, produced and shared as much data as we do now in bits and bytes through our digital devices, coded as images and graphs and spreadsheets. The power to do so has allowed individuals and communities around the world to expose and reveal things that have been invisibilised and obscured, robbed of language and articulation.

At the same time, the visual immediacy of such data sets and the ability to manipulate it to construct new ways of looking at our reality, often hides the fact that the production and use of data as evidence is not benign or neutral. While data itself claims a certain objective fact value, the politics involved in identifying something as data are subject to strong power confluences.

The Centre for Internet and Society and Tactical Technology Collective, Bangalore, propose the Exposing Data Project as a series of conversations between people working across art, activism, politics, information science, cartography, geography, social sciences, humanities and technology science to share, learn, discuss, debate and explore processes, methods, challenges and implications of what it means to live in a data-rich world.

Art Slash Activism

The first round of discussions will be looking at the intersections of Art and Activism, but without falling into the usual traps of looking at art as the vehicle of activism or activism as a form of art. Hence, instead of Art and Activism, we are looking at Art Slash Activism exploring how data visualisation, data representation, and new forms of data mapping re-articulate what it means to be political.

The event will bring together professionals such as Ward Smith (Lecturer, University of California, LA), Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski (Co-founders, Tactical Technology Collective), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society). Rather than being a seminar to instil practical knowledge, the aim of Art Slash Activism is to engage participants in a curated conversation on the use of data as evidence and its dissemination through visual depiction as a catalyst for change. We are seeking a variety of perspectives when answering questions such as whether data can have a universal reach through visual presentation; how we can utilize various forms of representation to spread awareness; and what happens when information cannot be represented as data.

Art Slash Activism is a multidisciplinary learning experience that will involve members of the art community, open data activists, designers, and others active in the processes of social change in a creative, playful and innovative manner that will result in textual and visual documentation which will serve as a knowledge corpus for researchers and practitioners interested in these questions.

Bio of the Speakers

Zainab Bawa
Zainab is a PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore. Zainab primarily works as an independent researcher on issues of governance, politics, property and how technology is embedded in state-citizen interactions and society. In the course of her work, she is associated with the Centre for Internet and Society and the Centre de Sciences Humaines - New Delhi. Zainab is also a designated partner at HasGeek Media LLP, Bangalore.

Ayisha Abraham
Ayisha Abraham lives and works in Bangalore as an installation artist and short filmmaker. She works at the Srishti School of Art, Design, Technology, as a visual arts consultant and is a member of the BAR1 (Bengaluru Artists Residency).

Stephanie Hankey
CO-founder & executive director, Stephanie has been working to strengthen the use of technology by civil society in the global South since 1998, initially working with the Open Society Institute establishing their Technology Support for Civil Society Program, before co-founding Tactical Tech in 2003. Stephanie has a background in information design, was editor-in-chief of Pulp and worked as a creative director and producer for a number of London-based multimedia companies. She has a Masters in Information and Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art London, and a certificate in Campaigning and Lobbying from NCVO.

Marek Tuszynski
Co-founder & director of programmes & technology, Marek has been working to help advocates use technology since 1995. In the mid-nineties he co-founded the International Network of Contemporary Art Centres and worked with others to create a television programme about independent culture in Poland. He was director of the Stefan Batory Foundation’s Internet programme (Warsaw), sat on the board of Klon/Jawor (a research and infrastructure NGO) and The Second Hand Bank. Marek worked as a consultant to many funding agencies focusing on information and communication strategies for civil society in Central Asia.

Ward Smith
Ward Smith is a librarian who works with academics, activists and artists to design and implement information systems that aid in the development and documentation of their work. He has recently worked with the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, the Arts, Computation, Engineering program at UC Irvine, the Southern California Library, the 2009 Digital Arts and Culture Conference, and rhizome.org.

This event is free and open to everyone. However, we would appreciate a confirmation of attendance ahead of time so as to ensure that your space is reserved. To confirm your attendance please write to: yelena.gyulkhandanyan@gmail.com

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/art-activism

Explore money apps but watch your data

praskrishna — 2017-06-08T12:46:11Z

Financial apps may appear to be free but before you install them, read their privacy policies to know what you may be signing away.

The article by Shaikh Zoaib Saleem was published in Livemint on June 8, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

With the increasing usage of smartphones and other smart devices, our use of and dependence on mobile applications also increases. These apps, while being installed on your device, ask for a lot of permissions. Most users do not take a detailed look at all the permissions being granted to any particular app’s publisher. Moreover, even fewer users look at the privacy policies and terms of use of apps, which detail how the publisher intends to utilize the data you share.

In most cases, the data collected is analysed and used for targeted marketing campaigns by the apps’ publishers, based on the users’ profiles and habits. Read more about it here: bit.ly/2q3ByA3. While this phenomena is spread across the board for all categories of apps, we take a look at the privacy policies and terms of use of the top 10 Android financial apps in India (top 10 as of June 1, according to App Annie, a mobile apps market research company based in California). The 10 apps are: PhonePe, BHIM, SBI Anywhere Personal, Kotak – 811 and Mobile Banking, JioMoney Wallet, Money View Money Manager, State Bank Buddy, Bank Balance Check, All Bank Balance Enquiry, iMobile by ICICI Bank.

Collecting information

The common theme across privacy policies of these apps is that the information is collected to enhance customer experience while using an app, respond to customer complaints and resolve disputes. Another theme is tracking consumer behaviour. For instance, PhonePe, in its privacy policy states, “We may automatically track certain information about you based upon your behaviour on our app. We use this information to do internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand, protect and serve our users. This information is compiled and analysed on an aggregated basis.”

Similarly, the privacy policy of BHIM app says, “…once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. We may automatically track certain information about you based upon your behaviour on our app to the extent we deem fit.” It further adds that if you choose to transact on the app, then “we collect information about your transaction behaviour.” All the apps collect some or the other information like device IDs and location.

Sharing Information

The information gathered by the apps is not just used by these companies themselves, but also shared with third parties, subsidiaries, parent companies and agents of the companies. iMobile by ICICI Bank, for instance, in its privacy policy states that the bank will limit the collection and use of customer information only on a need-to-know basis to deliver better service to the customers. “ICICI Bank may use and share the information provided by the customers with its affiliates and third parties for providing services and any service-related activities such as collecting subscription fees for such services, and notifying or contacting the customers regarding any problem with, or the expiration of, such services. In this regard, it may be necessary to disclose the customer information to one or more agents and contractors of ICICI Bank and their sub-contractors, but such agents, contractors, and sub-contractors will be required to agree to use the information obtained from ICICI Bank only for these purposes,” the policy reads.

Similarly, PhonePe in its privacy policy has said that the company may share personal information with its other corporate entities and affiliates. “We and our affiliates will share/sell some or all of your personal information with another business entity should we (or our assets) plan to merge with, or be acquired by that business entity, or re-organization, amalgamation, restructuring of business. Should such a transaction occur that other business entity (or the new combined entity) will be required to follow this privacy policy with respect to your personal information,” it reads.

While installing, the Kotak app seeks your “irrevocable consent” to its privacy policy, which, among others things, states: “We may disclose the customer information to third parties for following, among other purposes, and will make reasonable efforts to bind them to obligation to keep the same secure and confidential and an obligation to use the information for the purpose for which the same is disclosed, and you hereby give your irrevocable consent for the same.”

JioMoney Wallet, while disclosing upfront that the publishing company and its affiliates do not sell or rent personal information to any third-party entities, also adds that the company “engages a number of vendors, consultants, contractors and takes support of our group companies or affiliates. We may provide our partners access to or share your personal information to enable them to provide the services subscribed by you.” Terms and conditions of the BHIM app state: “For the protection of both the parties, and as a tool to correct misunderstandings, the user understands, agrees and authorises NPCI, at its discretion, and without further prior notice to the user, to monitor and record any or all telephone conversations between the user(s) and NPCI only.”

It is imperative to note that most of these apps announce it upfront in their privacy policies that the policy could change anytime without prior information to the users. At the same time, it should be noted that sharing of some data is required for proper functioning of many apps. While most app publishers may not misuse the data being gathered, you should know exactly what data is being used.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society said that their research outputs show that laws to deal with misuse of personal data are very weak in India. “We need a strong privacy law to address these issues, of which we have proposed a citizens’ draft. Clearly, the prevailing situation shows that the industry is not taking enough initiative on self-regulation. At the same time, even the government isn’t taking much interest in consumer protection.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-june-8-2017-shaikh-zoaib-saleem-explore-money-apps-but-watch-your-data

Experts' committee moots law to protect privacy

praskrishna — 2012-10-22T10:18:34Z

In its report submitted to the Planning Commission on Thursday, the first ever experts’ group to identify the privacy issues and prepare a report to facilitate authoring of the privacy bill, has said that existing laws have created an ‘unclear regulatory regime’ which allows a state to be intrusive.

Saikat Datta's article was published in DNA on October 19, 2012

The report has been prepared by experts led by justice AP Shah, former chief justice of the Delhi high court.

In its exceptions to the proposed law on privacy, the experts’ group has recommended that national security, public order and disclosures made in ‘public interest’ will be exempted from the limitations of privacy. Several members of the group unsuccessfully argued to bring in the Intelligence agencies which are empowered to legally tap phones, intercept emails and conduct surveillance on citizens under the ambit of the Privacy Act.

The report, a copy of which is available with DNA, recognises that there are major differences in the existing laws that permit intrusive phone-tapping or surveillance of private citizens by the government.The group feels that “these differences have created an unclear regulatory regime that is inconsistent, non-transparent, and prone to misuse and does not provide remedy or compensation to aggrieved individuals.”

Therefore, the group has recommended that when the government conducts any intrusive surveillance like phone tapping, it must adhere to the principles of proportionality, legality and remain within the boundaries of a democratic state.

“The limitation (on tapping phones, etc) should be in proportion to the harm that has been caused or will be caused,” the report states.

Interestingly, the report also exempts the disclosure of personal or private information for journalistic or historical and scientific purposes from being curbed under the proposed Privacy Act. Interestingly, this will give journalists a legal cover from being hauled up under the proposed privacy laws when they file stories.

The government is keen to enact a privacy law quickly because of two major issues. The fallout of the leakage of the tapes of Niira Radia speaking to industry heads like Ratan Tata which led to a renewed clamour for a comprehensive Privacy Act. Ironically, anything related to phone-tapping has now been left out of the provisions of such an Act.

The other reason was the pressure from the industry that is keen to get business from abroad that deals with sensitive personal data. In the absence of any personal data protection laws, Indian companies were not getting any business from European or American firms. With this law, India can look forward to getting substantial business that involves personal data.

With this framework in mind the experts’ group has recommended that notice be given to any individual from whom personal information will be sought. With intrusive government projects like the UID or the NATGRID, the group was worried that this kind of massive data in the hands of the government could turn this into a police state.

It has also mandated that the choice and consent of the individual must be taken before collecting this information. Also, there has to be a limitation on collecting this information and anything that has been collected will use the data for only a limited purpose. A data controller should be appointed to collect, maintain and use the data under strict stipulations.

Therefore, the data controller will be made accountable for any lapse in handling or disclosure of the data. To ensure that this kind of control can be exercised, the group has suggested the appointment of privacy commissioners who will adjudicate on any matter of illegal disclosures and mete out server punishment.

Recommendations

National security, public order and disclosures made in ‘public interest’ will be exempted from the limitations of privacy
The limitation (on tapping phones, etc) should be in proportion to the harm caused or will be caused
Disclosure of personal or private information for journalistic or historical and scientific purposes should be exempted from being curbed under the proposed Act
Notice be given to individual from whom information has to be sought
A data controller should be appointed to collect, maintain and use the data
Privacy commissioners who will adjudicate on any matter of illegal disclosures be appointed

Note: The Centre for Internet & Society was part of the expert committee even though not explicitly mentioned.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-india-october-19-2012-saikat-datta-experts-committee-moots-law-to-protect-privacy

Experts stress on need for enhanced security

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T06:13:19Z

With more and more people falling prey to phishing scams, experts believe that lack of adequate security features in online payment systems will only increase the number of such cases in the coming days. While admitting that the rise in such crimes would be hard to stop or control, cyber security consultants also blame the lack of preparedness before taking the digital economy route as a cause for such problems.

The article was published in the New Indian Express on May 6, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Speaking to Express, Dr A Nagarathna of the Advanced Centre on Cyber Law and Forensics, National Law School of India University, said that apart from the push for digital payment solutions, the merger of various State Bank entities also provided chances for criminals to exploit gullible people.

“People tend to give away critical information since cyber criminals seem so convincing. But they should remember that banks never collect such information over phone,” she said.

The cyber security features of banks and e-wallets are also questionable. Banks and e-wallet service providers should be held accountable for such crimes, so that they make an effort to ensure necessary safety measures, she said.

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, noted that there were security concerns with e-wallets. “Many e-wallet apps compromise on security in favour of convenience, but, at the same time, have terms of service that hold customers liable for financial losses. There have been many reports of criminals working with rogue telecom company employees to clone SIM cards and steal money via UPI and BHIM,” he said.

He also criticised the use of biometrics as the only factor for authorising payments to merchants using Aadhaar Pay. He noted, “Your fingerprints cannot be changed, unlike a PIN. So, if a merchant clones your fingerprint, you cannot revoke it or replace it the way you can with a debit card and a PIN.”

Another activist said the recommendations of Watal Committee, which looked into digital payments, should be implemented. “As of now, the law does not focus on the need for consumer protection in digital payments. The Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, needs to be updated,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/new-indian-express-may-6-2017-experts-stress-on-need-for-enhanced-security