Internet Governance Blog
A Privacy Meeting with the Federal Trade Commission in New Delhi
On September 20, the Centre for Internet and Society held a roundtable meeting with Betsy Broder, Counsel for International Consumer Protection, and Sarah Schroeder, Attorney, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), United States. The meeting took place at the Imperial, Janpath, New Delhi and discussed both the U.S framework to privacy and potential frameworks and challenges to privacy in India.
Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013: Updated Third Draft
The Centre for Internet and Society has been researching privacy in India since 2010 with the objective of raising public awareness around privacy, completing in depth research, and driving a privacy legislation in India. As part of this work, we drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013.
The National Cyber Security Policy: Not a Real Policy
Cyber security in India is still a nascent field without an organised law and policy framework. Several actors participate in and are affected by India's still inchoate cyber security regime. The National Cyber Security Policy (NCSP) presented the government and other stakeholders with an opportune moment to understand existing legal limitations before devising a future framework. Unfortunately, the NCSP's poor drafting and meaningless provisions do not advance the field.
CIS and International Coalition Calls upon Governments to Protect Privacy
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) along with the International Coalition has called upon governments across the globe to protect privacy.
The Central Monitoring System: Some Questions to be Raised in Parliament
The following are some model questions to be raised in the Parliament regarding the lack of transparency in the central monitoring system.
The National Privacy Roundtable Meetings
The Centre for Internet & Society ("CIS"), the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry ("FICCI"), the Data Security Council of India ("DSCI") and Privacy International are, in partnership, conducting a series of national privacy roundtable meetings across India from April to October 2013. The roundtable meetings are designed to discuss possible frameworks to privacy in India.
Transparency Reports — A Glance on What Google and Facebook Tell about Government Data Requests
Transparency Reports are a step towards greater accountability but how efficacious are they really?
Privacy Law Must Fit the Bill
The process of updating Indian privacy policy has gained momentum ever since the launch of the UID project and also the leak of the Radia tapes. The Department of Personnel and Training has lead the drafting of privacy bill for the last three years. This bill will ideally articulate privacy principles and establish the office of the privacy commissioner and most importantly have an over-riding effect over 50 odd existing laws, rules and policies with privacy implications.
An Interview with Suresh Ramasubramanian
Suresh Ramasubramanian is the ICS Quality Representative - IBM SmartCloud at IBM. We from the Centre for Internet and Society conducted an interview on cybersecurity and issues in the Cloud.
Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business
US-based email services seen as too risky.
Report on the Sixth Privacy Roundtable Meeting, New Delhi
In 2013 the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) drafted the Privacy Protection Bill as a citizens' version of a privacy legislation for India. Since April 2013, CIS has been holding Privacy Roundtables in collaboration with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and DSCI, with the objective of gaining public feedback to the Privacy Protection Bill and other possible frameworks for privacy in India. The following is a report on the Sixth Privacy Roundtable held in New Delhi on August 24, 2013.
Out of the Bedroom
We have shared it with our friends. We have watched it with our lovers. We have discussed it with our children and talked about it with our partners. It is in our bedrooms, hidden in sock drawers. It is in our laptops, in a folder marked "Miscellaneous". It is in our cellphones and tablets, protected under passwords. It is the biggest reason why people have learned to clean their browsing history and cookies from their browsers.
Freedom from Monitoring: India Inc Should Push For Privacy Laws
More surveillance than absolutely necessary actually undermines the security objective.
FinFisher in India and the Myth of Harmless Metadata
In this article, Maria Xynou argues that metadata is anything but harmless, especially since FinFisher — one of the world's most controversial types of spyware — uses metadata to target individuals.
Ethical Issues in Open Data
On August 1, 2013, I took part in a web meeting, organized and hosted by Tim Davies of the World Wide Web foundation. The meeting, titled “Ethical issues in Open Data,” had an agenda focused around privacy considerations in the context of the open data movement.
'Ethical Hacker' Saket Modi Calls for Stronger Cyber Security Discussions
Twenty-two year old Saket Modi is the CEO and co-founder of Lucideus, a leading cyber security company in India which claims to have worked with 4 out of 5 top global e-commerce companies, 4 out of 10 top IT companies in the world, and 3 out of 5 top banks of the Asia Pacific.
Guidelines for the Protection of National Critical Information Infrastructure: How Much Regulation?
July has been a busy month for cyber security in India. Beginning with the release of the country’s first National Cyber Security Policy on July 2 and followed just this past week by a set of guidelines for the protection of national critical information infrastructure (CII) developed under the direction of the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO), India has made respectable progress in its thinking on national cyber security.
More than a Hundred Global Groups Make a Principled Stand against Surveillance
For some time now there has been a need to update understandings of existing human rights law to reflect modern surveillance technologies and techniques.
India's National Cyber Security Policy in Review
Earlier this month, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology released India’s first National Cyber Security Policy. Years in the making, the Policy sets high goals for cyber security in India and covers a wide range of topics, from institutional frameworks for emergency response to indigenous capacity building.
The Audacious ‘Right to Be Forgotten’
There has long been speculation over the permanency of our online presence. Posting about excessively-personal details, commenting in a way which is later embarrassing, being caught in unflattering public photos; to our chagrin, all of these unfortunate situations often persist on the web, and can continue to haunt us in future years.
