All Blogs
India’s parental control directive and the need to improve stalkerware detection
We analyse a child-monitoring app being developed by the Indian government and question whether it is an effective way to enact parental controls. We highlight how such monitoring apps are often repurposed for digital stalking and play a role in intimate partner violence. We also evaluate the protection provided by antivirus tools in detecting such stalkerware apps and describe how we collected technical evidence to help improve the detection of these apps.
Understanding Feminist Infrastructures: An Exploratory Study of Online Feminist Content Creation Spaces in India
This report explores the growth of feminist infrastructures (including the various interpretations of the term), through research on feminist publishing, content creation and curation spaces and how they have informed the contemporary discourse on feminism, gender, and sexuality in India. The rise of online feminist publications, and related digital media content creation and curation spaces, has engendered new forums for debate, networking, and community-building. This report looks at some of the challenges of developing such publications and platforms, and the role of digital infrastructures in mediating contemporary feminist work and politics.
How the Telecom Act undermines personal liberties
In this article, Prof. Rajat Kathuria and Isha Suri analyse whether the law has enough safeguards and an independent regulatory architecture to protect the rights of citizens. The authors posit that the current version leaves the door open for an overenthusiastic enforcement machinery to suppress fundamental rights without any meaningful checks and balances.
Reconfiguring Data Governance: Insights from India and the EU
This policy paper is the result of a workshop organised jointly by the Tilburg Institute of Law, Technology and Society, Netherlands, the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University Delhi, India and the Centre for Internet & Society, India in January, 2023. The workshop brought together a number of academics, researchers, and industry representatives in Delhi to discuss a range of issues at the core of data governance theory and practice.
Workers’ experiences in app-based taxi and delivery sectors: Key initial findings from multi-city quantitative surveys
In 2021-22, the labour research vertical at CIS conducted quantitative surveys with over 1,000 taxi and delivery workers employed in the app-based and offline sectors. The surveys covered key employment indicators, including earnings and working hours, initial investments and work-related cost burdens, income and social security, platform policies and management, and employment arrangements. The surveys were part of the ‘Labour Futures’ project supported by the Internet Society Foundation.
Open Movement in India (2013-23): The Idea and Its Expressions
This report identifies some broad patterns that have materialized in the Open Movement in the country in the last decade. The report is based on a reading of the available literature on selected projects and conversations with academicians and advocates of the Open. The rough outline of the Open initiatives is accompanied by reflections on the nature of the Open here and the need to envision it differently from what it currently is.
Using the Wikimedia sphere for the revitalization of small and underrepresented languages in India
This report explores opportunities within the Wikimedia movement and projects to help revitalise small and underrepresented languages in India and provide recommendations to CIS’s Access to Knowledge team in furthering this effort. The report is mainly based on a roundtable conversation on Digital Access in Bhubaneswar with a diverse range of backgrounds and professions, including independent researchers, representatives from non-profit organizations, retired government officials, Wikimedia contributors (both Odia and Santali), ecological activists, directors of research institutes, consultants, and journalists. This was organized by the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in collaboration with Vasundhara, Bhubaneswar.
Commemorating Ulo Senthamizh Kodai (1945 - 2024): A Luminary of Tamil Open Knowledge Movement
பயன்தூக்கார் செய்த உதவி நயன்தூக்கின் நன்மை கடலின் பெரிது. (௱௩ - 103) திருவள்ளுவர் (Payandhookkaar Seydha Udhavi Nayandhookkin Nanmai Katalin Peridhu (Transliteration). The contribution made without weighing the return, When weighed, outweighs the sea. - Thiruvalluvar
Information Disorders and their Regulation
The Indian media and digital sphere, perhaps a crude reflection of the socio-economic realities of the Indian political landscape, presents a unique and challenging setting for studying information disorders.
Your economy, our livelihoods: A policy brief by the All India Gig Workers’ Union
In this policy brief, the All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU) presents its critique on NITI Aayog’s report on India’s platform economy. Through experiences from over 3 years of organising gig workers across India, they highlight fallacies in the report that disregard workers’ experiences and realities. They present alternative recommendations that are responsive to these realities, and offer pathways towards rights-affirming futures for workers in the platform economy.
Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures: Mapping the Data Supply Chain in the Healthcare Industry in India
The Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures project, supported by a grant from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, aims to study the Al data supply chain infrastructure in healthcare in India, and aims to critically analyse auditing frameworks that are utilised to develop and deploy AI systems in healthcare. It will map the prevalence of Al auditing practices within the sector to arrive at an understanding of frameworks that may be developed to check for ethical considerations - such as algorithmic bias and harm within healthcare systems, especially against marginalised and vulnerable populations.
Comments to the Telecommunications Bill, 2023
The Parliament has passed the Telecommunications Bill, 2023 which seeks to replace the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) submits its comments to the bill.
User Experiences of Digital Financial Risks and Harms
The reach and use of digital financial services has risen in recent years without a commensurate increase in digital literacy and access. Through this project, supported by a grant from Google(.)org, we will examine the landscape of potential risks and harms posed by digital financial services, and the disproportionate risk that information asymmetry and barriers to access pose for users, especially certain marginalised communities.
Strategies to Organise Platform Workers
In 2022, the Centre for Internet and Society hosted a panel with Akkanut Wantanasombut, Ayoade Ibrahim, Rikta Krishnaswamy, and Sofía Scasserra at RightsCon, an annual summit on technology and human rights.
Digital Delivery and Data System for Farmer Income Support
This report, jointly published by the Centre for Internet & Society and Privacy International, highlights the digital systems deployed by the government to augment farmer income. It analyses the PM-Kisan and Kalia schemes in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
Detecting Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) Blocking
A new internet protocol makes it harder for internet service providers to censor websites. We made a technical intervention to check if censors are interfering with its deployment.
Deceptive Design in Voice Interfaces: Impact on Inclusivity, Accessibility, and Privacy
This article was commissioned by the Pranava Institute, as part of their project titled Design Beyond Deception, supported by the University of Notre Dame - IBM's Tech Ethics Lab.” The article examines the design of voice interfaces (VI) to anticipate potential deceptive design patterns in VIs. It also presents design and regulatory recommendations to mitigate these practices.
Health Data Management Policies - Differences Between the EU and India
Through this issue brief we would like to highlight the differences in approaches to health data management taken by the EU and India, and look at possible recommendations for India, in creating a privacy preserving health data management policy.
CoWIN Breach: What Makes India's Health Data an Easy Target for Bad Actors?
Recent health data policies have failed to even mention the CoWIN platform.
