Internet Governance Blog
Submission by the Centre for Internet and Society on Draft New ICANN By-laws
The Centre for Internet & Society sent its comments on the Draft New ICANN Bylaws. The submission was prepared by Pranesh Prakash, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Swati Muthukumar. Special thanks to Sunil Abraham for his input and feedback.
Comments on Draft Electronic Health Records Standards
The Centre for Internet & Society submitted its comments on the Draft Electronic Health Records Standards to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Women's Safety? There is an App for That
“After locking ourselves in a room for more than 6 days, this is what we came out [sic] with. Join us in helping make WOMEN feel SAFE,” read a gloating press release about a smartphone app for women to notify their near ones that they were in distress. It was one among many such PRs frequently landing in my mailbox after the rape and murder of a young student on board a private bus in Delhi in 2012.
Draft Law Would Prohibit Showing ‘Disputed Areas’ on Maps of India
Maps that label geographic areas of conflict as “disputed” territories in India could put one behind bars for seven years with 1B Indian Rupees (US$15M) penalty if a recently proposed bill becomes law.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Delhi University
This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in Delhi University.
Identity of the Aadhaar Act: Supreme Court and the Money Bill Question
A writ petition has been filed by former Union minister Jairam Ramesh on April 6 challenging the constitutionality and legality of the treatment of this Act as a money bill. The Supreme Court heard the matter on April 25 and invited the Union government to present its view. It is our view that the Supreme Court can not only review the Lok Sabha speaker’s decision, but should also ask the government to draft the Aadhaar Bill again, this time with greater parliamentary and public deliberation. Vanya Rakesh and Sumandro Chattapadhyay wrote this article on The Wire.
Facebook: A Platform with Little Less Sharing of Personal Information
As Facebook becomes less personal, what happens to digital friendship?
Privacy Issues with DRM
This post has been written by Jalaj Pandey interning at CIS. It elaborates upon the various privacy issues with the Digital Rights Management. The author talks about the various ways in which content producers use DRM as a tool to infringe the privacy of the end users.
Cyber Security of Smart Grids in India
An integral component of the ambitious flagship programme of the Indian Government- Digital India, which paves way for a digital data avalanche in the country, is a well-designed digital infrastructure ensuring high connectivity and integration of services, the potential areas being smart cities, smart homes, smart energy and smart grids, to list a few. Likewise, the 100 Smart Cities Mission envisions changing the face of urbanization in India, to manage the exponential growth of population in the cities by creating smart cities with ICT driven solutions, along with big data analytics. Smart grid technologies are key for both these schemes.
The Aadhaar Act is Not a Money Bill
While the authority of the Lok Sabha Speaker is final and binding, Jairam Ramesh’s writ petition may allow the Supreme Court to question an incorrect application of substantive principles. This article by Amber Sinha was published by The Wire on April 24, 2016.
Can the Matters Dealt with in the Aadhaar Act be the Objects of a Money Bill?
In this infographic, we highlight the matters dealt with in the Aadhaar Act 2016, recently tabled in and passed by the Lok Sabha as a money bill, and consider if these can be objects of a money bill. The infographic is designed by Pooja Saxena, based on information compiled by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber Sinha.
Can the Aadhaar Act 2016 be Classified as a Money Bill?
In this infographic, we show if the Aadhaar Act 2016, recently tabled in and passed by the Lok Sabha as a money bill, can be classified as a money bill. The infographic is designed by Pooja Saxena, based on information compiled by Amber Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
RTI regarding Smart Cities Mission in India
Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) had filed an RTI on 3 February 2016 before the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) regarding the Smart Cities Mission in India. The RTI sought information regarding the role of various foreign governments, private industry, multilateral bodies that will provide technical and financial assistance for this project and information on Government agreements regarding PPP’s for financing the project.
The Last Chance for a Welfare State Doesn’t Rest in the Aadhaar System
Boosting welfare is the message, which is how Aadhaar is being presented in India. The Aadhaar system as a medium, however, is one that enables tracking, surveillance, and data monetisation. This piece by Sumandro Chattapadhyay was published in The Wire on April 19, 2016.
Online Censorship on the Rise: Why I Prefer to Save Things Offline
As governments use their power to erase what they do not approve of from the web, cloud storage will not be enough.
Aadhaar Act and its Non-compliance with Data Protection Law in India
This post compares the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, with India's data protection regime as articulated in the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011.
FAQ on the Aadhaar Project and the Bill
This FAQ attempts to address the key questions regarding the Aadhaar/UIDAI project and the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 (henceforth, Bill). This is neither a comprehensive list of questions, nor does it contain fully developed answers. We will continue to add questions to this list, and edit/expand the answers, based on our ongoing research. We will be grateful to receive your comments, criticisms, evidences, edits, suggestions for new answers, and any other responses. These can either be shared as comments in the document hosted on Google Drive, or via tweets sent to the information policy team at @CIS_InfoPolicy.
Surveillance Project
The Aadhaar project’s technological design and architecture is an unmitigated disaster and no amount of legal fixes in the Act will make it any better.
A Large Byte of Your Life
With the digital, memory becomes equated with storage. We commit to storage to free ourselves from remembering.
Mapping MAG: A study in Institutional Isomorphism
The paper is an update to a shorter piece of MAG analysis that had been conducted in July 2015. At that time our analysis was limited by the MAG membership data that was made available by the Secretariat. Subsequently we wrote to the Secretariat and this paper is based on the data shared by them including for the years for which membership details were previously not available.
