Centre for Internet & Society

Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights - Workshop Report

by Vidushi Marda, Akash Deep Singh and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu

The Centre for Internet and Society held a one-day workshop on “Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms and Human Rights” at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 1st of October, 2016. This report is a compilation of the the issues discussed, ideas exchanged and challenges recognized during the workshop. The objective of the workshop was to discuss aspects of big data technologies in terms of harms, opportunities and human rights. The discussion was designed around an extensive study of current and potential future uses of big data for governance in India, that CIS has undertaken over the last year with support from the MacArthur Foundation.

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Privacy after Big Data: Compilation of Early Research

by Saumyaa Naidu

Evolving data science, technologies, techniques, and practices, including big data, are enabling shifts in how the public and private sectors carry out their functions and responsibilities, deliver services, and facilitate innovative production and service models to emerge. In this compilation we have put together a series of articles that we have developed as we explore the impacts – positive and negative – of big data. This is a growing body of research that we are exploring and is relevant to multiple areas of our work including privacy and surveillance. Feedback and comments on the compilation are welcome and appreciated.

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ICANN Begins its Sojourn into Open Data

by Padmini Baruah and Sumandro Chattapadhyay

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently announced that it will now set up a pilot project in order to introduce an Open Data initiative for all data that it generates. We would like to extend our congratulations to ICANN on the development of this commendable new initiative, and would be honoured to support the creation of this living document to be prepared before ICANN 58.

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How Workstream 2 Plans to Improve ICANN's Transparency

by Asvatha Babu

The Centre for Internet and Society has worked extensively on ICANN’s transparency policies. We are perhaps the single largest users of the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy. Our goal in doing so is not to be a thorn in ICANN’s side, but to try and ensure that ICANN, the organisation, as well as the ICANN community have access to the data required to carry out the task of regulating the global domain name system.

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Internet's Core Resources are a Global Public Good - They Cannot Remain Subject to One Country's Jurisdiction

by Vidushi Marda

This statement was issued by 8 India civil society organizations, supported by 2 key global networks, involved with internet governance issues, to the meeting of ICANN in Hyderabad, India from 3 to 9 November 2016. The Centre for Internet & Society was one of the 8 organizations that drafted this statement.

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How Long Have Banks Known About The Debit Card Fraud?

by tiwari

The recent security breach in an Indian payment switch provider, confirmed earlier this week by the National Payments Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), has forced domestic banks into damage control mode over the past few days.

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RBI Directions on Account Aggregators

by Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok

The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Directions for account aggregator services in India seem to lay great emphasis on data security by allowing only direct access between institutions and do away with data scraping techniques.

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MLATs and the proposed Amendments to the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act

by Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok

In continuance of our blog post on mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), we examine a new approach to international bilateral cooperation being suggested in the United States, by creating a mechanism for certain foreign governments to directly approach the data controllers.

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Request for Specifics: Rebuttal to UIDAI

by Hans Varghese Mathews

Responding to the Unique Identification Authority of India’s article that found “serious mathematical errors” in “Flaws in the UIDAI Process” (EPW 12 March 2016), the main mathematical argument used to arrive at the number of duplicates in the biometric database is explained.

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