February 2017 Newsletter
Welcome to the February 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS).
Dear readers,
We are pleased to bring you the Centre for Internet & Society's February newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.
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CIS in the news:
- India WhatsApp Privacy Fight May Affect Multinationals (Nayanima Basu; Bloomberg BNA; February 1, 2017).
- Crowdsourced innovation for government projects and services is easier said than done (Kunal Talgeri; The Times of India; February 3, 2017).
- Giving out your fingerprint for Aadhar payments is as bad as telling the seller your banking password (Nimish Sawant; First Post Tech 2; February 3, 2017).
- Don't dive headlong into money-making schemes on the internet (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; February 7, 2017).
- Indian public concerned about fingerprint payment scheme (Rawlson King; Biometricupdate.com; February 9, 2017).
- India's Aadhaar with biometric details of its billion citizens is making experts uncomfortable (Mashable India; February 14, 2017).
- No Genie At Your Fingertips (Arindam Mukherjee; Outlook; February 20, 2017).
- LinkedIn will help people in India train for semi-skilled jobs (John Riberio; IDG News Service and mirrored on CIO Blog; February 21, 2017).
- India To Let Private Companies Access Citizens’ Biometric Data (Joshua Kopstein; Vocativ; February 21, 2017).
- Is Your Aadhar Biometrics Safe? Firms Accused Of Storing Biometrics And Using Them Illegally (Outlook; February 24, 2017).
CIS members wrote the following articles:
- Digital Native: Do not go Gently into the Good Night (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; February 9, 2017).
- Digital Native: Who will Watch the Watchman? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; February 19, 2017).
- Can the Judiciary Upturn the Lok Sabha Speaker’s Decision on Aadhaar? (Amber Sinha; Wire; February 21, 2017).
Jobs
- Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
- Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
- Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
- Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood
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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.
Submission
- Comments on Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities 'Vision Document 2030' (Nirmita Narasimhan; February 28, 2017).
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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.
►Wikipedia
As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).
Blog Entries
- Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon (Subodh Kulkarni; February 8, 2017)
- Only 8.5pc of Wikipedia Editors are Women. How do we fix the Gender Gap on the Internet? (Ting-Yi Chang; February 9, 2017).
- WikiTungi: Bhubaneswar City Wiki Community Turns 1 (Sailesh Patnaik; February 27, 2017).
Event Organized
- Marathi Wikisource & Digitisation Workshop (Organized by CIS, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited and Jnana Prabhodini; Jnana Prabodhini, Sadashiv Peth, Pune; February 17, 2017 and C Trade Tower, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune; February 18, 2017).
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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.
►Privacy
Research Papers
- Comparison of General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Directive (Aditi Chaturvedi and Edited by Leilah Elmokadem; February 7, 2017).
- Ranking Digital Rights in India (Divij Joshi and Aditya Chawla; February 12, 2017).
- Privacy Gaps in India's Digital India Project (Anisha Gupta; edited by Amber Sinha; February 21, 2017).
Survey
- Survey on Data Protection Regime (Aditi Chaturvedi and Elonnai Hickok; February 10, 2017).
Participation in Events
- Surveillance in India: Policy and Practice (Organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; New Delhi; February 9, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.
- T20 Mumbai 2017: Dialogue on the Emerging World Economy (Organized by Gateway House, Indian Council on Global Relations; Mumbai; February 13 - 14, 2017). Elonnai Hickok attended the event.
►Big Data
Research Paper
- Big Data in Governance in India: Case Studies (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh and Vidushi Marda and Edited by Elonnai Hickok, Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Sunil Abraham; February 19, 2017).
►Freedom of Expression and Cyber Security
Participation in Event
- Digital Security for Journalists (February 2 and 3, 2017). Pranesh Prakash conducted two workshops on consecutive days. The first one organized by IndiaSpend was held in their office. The second one organized by a fellow with the International Center Journalists was held in the Hindustan Times office.
- Securing Digital Payments: Imperatives for a Growing Ecosystem (Organized by ORF and Koan Advisory; The Claridges, New Delhi; February 3, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the round-table conference.
- Fake News, Rumors & Online Content Regulation (Organized by Medianama and Mint; India Habitat Centre; February 22, 2017). Japreet Grewal and Amber Sinha attended the event.
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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:
Article
- A Pathfinding Approach for Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 31, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; February 1, 2017).
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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:
Event Organized
- Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (Organized by the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy and CIS; International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru; March 3 - 5, 2017).
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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.
► Follow us elsewhere
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
- Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
- Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
- Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
- E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: [email protected]
- E-Mail - Researchers at Work: [email protected]
- List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers
► Support Us
Please help us defend consumer and 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, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at [email protected] (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at [email protected] (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at [email protected].
CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.
