March 2017 Newsletter
Welcome to March 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS).
Dear readers,
Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.
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CIS in the news:
- The 12-digit conundrum (Richa Mishra; Hindu Businessline; March 13, 2017)
- EVMs: How transparent is the Indian election process? (Smriti Sharma Vasudeva; The Statesman; March 14, 2017).
- Nasscom chief saying full data protection isn’t possible should wake us from our digital slumber (First Post; March 16, 2017).
- Privacy concerns multiply for Aadhaar, India’s national biometric identity registry (One World Identity; March 17, 2017).
- No ID, no benefits: thousands could lose lifeline under India’s biometric scheme (Guardian; March 21, 2017).
- Why We Should All Worry About The Mandatory Imposition Of Aadhaar (Rimin Dutt and Ivan Mehta; Huffington Post; March 24, 2017).
- India’s biometric ID scans make sci-fi a reality (Amy Kazmin; Financial Times; March 27, 2017).
- क्या आधार पर जल्दबाज़ी में है सरकार? (NDTV; March 27, 2017).
- Get an Aadhaar card if you don't have one (Priya Nair and Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; March 27, 2017).
- The Aadhaar of all things (Shriya Mohan; Hindu Businessline; March 31, 2017).
CIS members wrote the following articles
- Digital native: Lie Me a River (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; March 19, 2017).
- It’s the technology, stupid (Sunil Abraham; Hindu Businessline; March 31, 2017).
- How Aadhaar compromises privacy? And how to fix it? (Sunil Abraham; Hindu; March 31, 2017).
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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 the draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules (Nirmita Narasimhan; March 29, 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.
►Pervasive Technologies
Blog Entry
- Intellectual Property Rights and Mobile Apps (Anubha Sinha; March 6, 2017).
►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 Bhasha Gaurav Din" celebrations in Maharashtra (Manasa Rao; March 7, 2017).
- Women’s History Month: Sambad collaborates with Odia Wikipedia for a Two Day Edit-a-thon (Sailesh Patnaik; March 16, 2017).
- Wikisource:Internship Project at New Law College, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; March 28, 2017).
Events Organized
- Women's Day Edit-a-thon (Co-organized by Sterlite Tech Foundation, Jnana Prabhodhini, and CIS-A2K; Pune; March 10, 2017). Subodh Kulkarni was one of the trainers.
- Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Environment Management (Organized by CSIBER College and CIS-A2K; Kolhapur; March 30, 2017). Subodh Kulkarni was a trainer.
►Openness
Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.
Participation in Events
- National Consultation on OER for Higher Education (Organized by Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia; New Delhi; March 3, 2017). Anubha Sinha attended the event.
- Open Development Book - Authors' Workshop (Organized by International Development Research Centre and Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching; University of Cape Town, South Africa; March 11 - 12, 2017). The workshop gathered the contributers to an upcoming book by IDRC on open development. Elonnai Hickok, Gus Hosein from Privacy International and Sumandro Chattapadhyay are writing a chapter for this book.
- Indo - French Perspectives on Digital Studies (Organized by Digital Studies Group; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; March 15, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.
Blog Entries
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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
Submission
- Comments on Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules, 2017 (Udbhav Tiwari, Pranesh Prakash, Abhay Rana, Amber Sinha and Sunil Abraham; March 23, 2017).
Participation in Events
- WISER Lecture : Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Deregulation by Code (Organized by the University of the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg; March 8, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay gave a talk.
- Conference on Safety Against Online Child Sexual Abuse (Organized by CID, Telangana and the Department for Women Development and Child Welfare, Telangana; March 16 - 17, 2017). Japreet Grewal was a speaker.
- State of Digital Rights in India (Organized by Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi and the Internet Freedom Foundation, in association with Access Now; India International Centre, New Delhi; March 24, 2017). Japreet Grewal and Sumandro Chattapadhyay took part in panel discussions.
- Hangout on Technology and Jobs (Organized by Google; March 24, 2017). Vanya Rakesh was a speaker.
Blog Entry
- Analysis of Key Provisions of the Aadhaar Act Regulations (Amber Sinha and edited by Elonnai Hickok; March 31, 2017).
►Cyber Security
Upcoming Event
- Digital Forensics and Cyber Investigations (CIS; New Delhi; April 7, 2017). IPS officer Dr. Madan M. Oberoi will give a talk.
►Big Data
Blog Entry
- Benefits, Harms, Rights and Regulation: A Survey of Literature on Big Data (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh, Vidushi Marda and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu; edited by Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Leilah Elmokadem; March 23, 2017).
Participation in Event
- The Fintech Disruption - Innovation, Regulation, and Transformation (Organized by Carnegie India; March 28, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay attended the event.
►Freedom of Expression
Event Organized
- Essentials of building internet tools for inclusion (Valencia, Spain; March 6, 2017). A talk jointly proposed by Chinmayi SK and Rohini Lakshané was selected for the Internet Freedom Festival.
- From Virtual to Reliable: Exploring Freedom and Facts in the World of WWW (World Wide Web) (Organized by Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands and Adaan Foundation; March 21, 2017). Saikat Datta and Amber Sinha were panelists.
- Internet Freedom Festival 2017 (Organized by IFF; Valencia, Spain; March 6 - 10, 2017). Vidushi Marda participated in the event. Vidushi also attended these sessions: Data Protection Law and its Different Manifestations; Using the Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index for Advocacy & Research; The identity we can't change: a new wave of biometric policies around the world and Enabling free speech online by legal defence: the need for skilled lawyers to secure the free flow of information online: Vidushi channeled a discussion about Shreya Singhal v. Union of India as an important case study in understanding how legal defence has been used to secure rights online.
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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:
Newspaper Column
- Organisational Hurdles in Telecom (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 1, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; March 2, 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:
Research Paper
- Exploring Big Data for Development: An Electricity Sector Case Study from India (Ritam Sengupta, Dr. Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Dr. Christopher Foster; Global Development Institute, University of Manchester; March 29, 2017).
Blog Entry
- Evaluating Safety Buttons on Mobile Devices: Preview (Rohini Lakshané and Chinmayi S.K.; March 27, 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
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- 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.
