Centre for Internet & Society

UID: Questions without Answers – A Talk by Usha Ramanathan

by Natasha Vaz

UID enrolment is in full swing, providing an official identification to millions of Indians, yet there are numerous unanswered questions. A public talk on UID was held at the Institute of Science, Bangalore on September 6, 2011. Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher on jurisprudence, poverty and rights, discussed the questions that plague the UID project and the veil of silence enveloping the answers.

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Understanding the Right to Information

by Elonnai Hickok

Elonnai Hickok summarises the Right to Information Act, 2005, how it works, how to file an RTI request, the information that an individual can request under the Act, the possible responses and the challenges to the citizen and the government. She concludes by saying that there are many structural changes that both citizens and governmental officers can make to improve the system.

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Bye Bye email?

by Nishant Shah

Email might be the default method of communication for most of us, but could it be going the telegram way.

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Whole Body Imaging and Privacy Concerns that Follow

by Srishti Goyal

Law student at the National University of Juridical Sciences, and intern for Privacy India, Srishti Goyal compares, contrasts, and critiques the Whole Body Imaging practices found in the US, the UK, and Australia, and makes recommendations for an Indian regime.

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IP Addresses and Expeditious Disclosure of Identity in India

by Prashant Iyengar

In this research, Prashant Iyengar reviews the statutory mechanism regulating the retention and disclosure of IP addresses by Internet companies in India. Prashant provides a compilation of anecdotes on how law enforcement authorities in India have used IP address information to trace individuals responsible for particular crimes.

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Cyber Crime & Privacy

by Merlin Oommen

India is a growing area in the field of active Internet usage with 71 million Internet users.

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Financial Inclusion and the UID

by elonnai hickok

Since 2009, when Nandan Nilekani began to envision and implement the Unique Identification Project, the UID authority has promoted the UID/Aadhaar scheme as a tool of development for India - arguing that an identity will assist in bringing benefits to the poor, promote financial inclusion in India, and allow for economic and social development. In this blog entry I will focus on the challenges and possibilities of the UID number providing the residents of India a viable method of access to financial services across the country.

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CCTV in Universities

by Merlin Oommen

Basic Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Infrastructure is used to observe movements from a central room, and consists of one or more video cameras that transmit video and audio images to a set of monitors or video recorders.

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Re-thinking Key Escrow

by Natasha Vaz

Would you make duplicates of your house keys and hand them over to the local police authority? And if so, would you feel safe? Naturally, one would protest this invasion of privacy. Similarly, would it be justified for the government to have a copy of the private key to intercept and decrypt communications? This is the idea behind key escrow; it enables government ‘wiretapping’.

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UID: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear?

by Shilpa Narani

Isn’t it interesting that authorities ask you about your identity and you end up showing your proof of existence! Isn’t this breaching into one’s personal life? Why so much transparency only from the public side? Why can’t the government be equally transparent to the public?, asks Shilpa Narani.

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