Centre for Internet & Society

A look at two problematic provisions of the draft Anti-trafficking bill

This post examines two badly drafted provisions of the new Anti-Trafficking bill that have the potential to severely impinge upon the Freedom of Expression, including through a misunderstanding of intermediary liability.

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Artificial Intelligence in Governance: A Report of the Roundtable held in New Delhi

Posted by Saman Goudarzi and Natallia Khaniejo at Apr 19, 2018 01:30 PM |

This Report provides an overview of the proceedings of the Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Governance, conducted at the Indian Islamic Cultural Centre, in New Delhi on March 16, 2018. The main purpose of the Roundtable was to discuss the deployment and implementation of AI in various aspects of governance within the Indian context. This report summarises the discussions on the development and implementation of AI in various aspects of governance in India. The event was attended by participants from academia, civil society, the legal sector, the finance sector, and the government.

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Government gives free publicity worth 40k to Twitter and Facebook

Posted by Akriti Bopanna at Apr 10, 2018 01:55 AM |

We conducted a 2 week survey of newspapers for links between government advertisement to social media giants. As citizens, we should be worried about the close nexus between the Indian government and digital behemoths such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. It has become apparent to us after a 2 week print media analysis that our Government has been providing free publicity worth Rs 40,000 to these entities. There are multiple issues with this as this article attempts at pointing out.

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Digital Native: Delete Facebook?

Posted by Nishant Shah at Apr 08, 2018 08:00 PM |

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

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Cambridge Analytica scandal: How India can save democracy from Facebook

Posted by Sunil Abraham at Mar 28, 2018 03:44 PM |

Hegemonic incumbents like Google and Facebook need to be tackled with regulation; govt should use procurement power to fund open source alternatives.

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Analysis of ICANN revenue shows ambiguity in their records

Posted by Sunil Abraham, Arjun Venkatraman and Akriti Bopanna at Mar 15, 2018 06:55 AM |
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We, The Centre for Internet and Society, have been instrumental in having ICANN become transparent about their revenue with our persistent requests for their sources of revenue.

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People Driven and Tech Enabled – How AI and ML are Changing the Future of Cyber Security in India

Posted by Shweta Mohandas at Mar 11, 2018 03:30 PM |

On the 27th of February, Peter Sparkes the Senior Director, Cyber Security Services, Symantec conducted a webinar on the ‘5 Essentials of Every Next-Gen SOC’. In this webinar, he evaluated the problems that Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are currently facing, and explored possible solutions to these problems. The webinar also put emphasis on AI and ML as tools to improve cyber security. This blog draws key insights from the webinar, and explains how AI and ML can improve the cyber security process of Indian enterprises.

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A Series of Op-eds on Data Protection

Posted by Amber Sinha at Feb 19, 2018 02:08 AM |

I wrote a short series of three op-eds for Asia Times this week.

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The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide

Posted by Amber Sinha at Feb 16, 2018 05:31 AM |

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. This visual guide to the story of privacy law in India and the recent judgement of the Puttaswamy v. Union of India case is developed by Amber Sinha (research and content) and Pooja Saxena (design and conceptualisation).

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Unpacking Data Protection Law: A Visual Representation

Posted by Amber Sinha at Feb 15, 2018 01:20 PM |

This visual explainer unpacking data protection law was developed by Amber Sinha (research) and Pooja Saxena (design), and published as part of the Data Privacy Week celebrations on the Privacy International blog. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.

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AI and Manufacturing and Services in India: Looking Forward

Posted by Shweta Mohandas and Pranav M. Bidare at Feb 13, 2018 02:20 PM |

This Report provides an overview of the proceedings of the Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Manufacturing and Services: Looking Forward (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Roundtable’), conducted at The Energy Resource Institute (TERI), in Bangalore on January 19, 2018.

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CIS Submission to the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India

Posted by Amber Sinha at Feb 05, 2018 01:45 PM |

This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India (“CIS”) on the ‘White Paper of the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India’ (“White Paper”) released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The White paper was drafted by a Committee of Expert (“Committee”) constituted by the Ministry. CIS has conducted research on the issues of privacy, data protection and data security since 2010 and is thankful for the opportunity to put forth its views. The submission was made on January 31, 2018.

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Artificial Intelligence in India: A Compendium

Posted by Centre for Internet & Society at Jan 26, 2018 01:45 AM |

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast emerging as a key technological paradigm in different sectors across the globe including India.

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Data Protection: We can innovate, leapfrog

Posted by Sunil Abraham at Jan 22, 2018 01:45 AM |

About 27% of India's population is still illiterate or barely literate. Most privacy policies and terms of services for web and mobile applications are in English and therefore it is only 10% of us who can actually read them before we provide our consent.

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Mobile net ban during peaceful protest leaves farmers confused

Posted by Shruti Jain at Jan 19, 2018 03:20 PM |

Strap: Administration says it was done to prevent rumours from spreading, protesters insist they needed internet to fight it.

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‘Hurt sentiments’ cost Udaipur internet access for four days

Posted by Shruti Jain at Jan 19, 2018 01:51 PM |

Strap: Authorities suggest it was more than a Facebook post that led to shutdown.

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Another Step towards Privacy Law

Posted by Elonnai Hickok at Jan 18, 2018 01:50 AM |

A comparison between the 2012 experts’ report and the 2017 white paper on data protection.

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Internet Governance Forum Report 2017

Posted by Shweta Mohandas at Jan 11, 2018 02:13 AM |

The twelfth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017, on the theme, Shape Your Digital Future!

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Fixing Aadhaar: Security developers' task is to trim chances of data breach

Posted by Sunil Abraham at Jan 10, 2018 04:45 PM |

The task before a security developer is not only to reduce the probability of identity breach but to eliminate certain occurrences.

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New Recommendations to Regulate Online Hate Speech Could Pose More Problems Than Solutions

Posted by Amber Sinha at Jan 02, 2018 03:06 AM |

The T.K. Viswanathan committee’s recommendations could prove to be dangerous for free speech if acted upon without resolving its flaws.

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