All Blogs
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.
Labouring (on) the app: agency and organisation of work in the platform economy
Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan published an academic paper highlighting the importance of women’s networks of information sharing and care in navigating opaque platform design. The paper is part of an issue of Gender and Development on ‘Women, Work and the Digital Economy’. Gender and Development is one of the few academic journals that priorities practitioners' experiences over theoretical contributions.
Gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy: Experiences of on-demand beauty workers in India
Abhishek Sekharan, Chiara Furtado, and Ambika Tandon contributed an essay on gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy in India, reflecting on the experiences of women beauty workers who organised India’s first women-led movement of platform workers. The essay has been published as part of an online collection of essays from contributors across the world and has been curated by the Digital Future Society Think Tank (Barcelona, Spain).
Metaphors of Work, from ‘Below’
Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon authored a chapter that describes platforms as more than technological interfaces. The chapter invokes some of the metaphors that gig workers use to make sense of platforms. This chapter was part of an edited volume published by Springer. This chapter forms part of the ‘Labour Futures’ research project, hosted at the Centre for Internet and Society, India, and supported by the Internet Society Foundation.
WIPO SCCR 43: Notes from Day 1
Member states delivered opening statements and deliberated on the progress, substantive provisions, and method of work on the draft broadcasting treaty text. This blog post summarises positions and contentions that supported: 1)The need for balance between rights of broadcasters and that of users and researchers 2) Questions around fixation and signal piracy 3) Need for consensus and towards a diplomatic conference
Securing Our Dependence on Code Reuse in Software
Dividing and breaking up a software project into smaller modules with functionality that can be reused to build other software is an increasingly common practice in software development today. We examine our infrastructural dependence on reuse of open-source software (OSS) components, examine the unique security risks posed by the widespread reuse of code, and survey systemic solutions to securing code reuse.
