We are anonymous, we are legion

Zuckerberg's India Backlash Imperils Free Global Web Vision

praskrishna — 2016-01-06T14:51:42Z

When Facebook's co-founder proposed bringing free Web services to India, his stated aim was to help connect millions of impoverished people to unlimited opportunity. Instead, critics have accused him of making a poorly disguised land grab in India's burgeoning Internet sector. The growing backlash could threaten the very premise of Internet.org, his ambitious, two-year-old effort to connect the planet.

The blog post by Bhuma Shrivastava was published by NDTV on January 4, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Indian authorities are circumspect because the Facebook initiative provides access to only a limited set of websites -- undermining the equal-access precepts of net neutrality. The telecommunications regulator is calling for initial comments by Jan 7, extending the deadline from today, on whether wireless carriers can charge differently for data usage across websites, applications and platforms.

Losing this fight could imperil Facebook's Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and select services such as Messenger and Microsoft's Bing without a data plan.

"The India fight is helping shape debates elsewhere," said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit advocacy group. "Activists in other countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia are watching this debate and will seize the momentum created in India."

Zuckerberg's argument for free Web access is based in part on Deloitte research showing that for every 10 people who are connected to the Web, one is lifted out of poverty and one job is created.

Facebook argues that by giving people free access to a small slice of the Internet, they will quickly see the value in paying for the whole thing. Zuckerberg has said his biggest challenge in connecting people to the Web isn't access to cellular networks, but a social hurdle: he needs to prove to people who have never been online that the Internet is useful.

"Who could possibly be against this?" Zuckerberg wrote in an impassioned op-ed in the Times of India this week. "Surprisingly, over the last year there's been a big debate about this in India."

Zuckerberg's pleas underscore what's at stake. Facebook already attracts 1.55 billion people monthly, or about half of the Internet-connected global population. To keep growing, the world's largest social network needs to get more people online. Hence the billions of dollars Facebook is spending on projects to deliver the Web to under-served areas via drones, satellites and lasers. And Internet.org, which now spans 37 nations.

India, as the world's second most populous nation, is arguably the most important piece of Zuckerberg's Free Basics strategy. But the opposition is fierce. Critics note that the Facebook service doesn't offer Web favorites such as Google's search. Facebook has said it would be open to adding more features from competitors, but critics are skeptical of giving the social-networking giant such influence on the Internet.

Critics also say that by offering a limited swath of the Internet at comparatively slow speeds, the company is creating a diluted version of the Web. That could stifle innovation by causing disadvantages for Indian startups building rival apps, or allow Facebook and its telecommunications carrier-partners to act as Internet gatekeepers.

In a sign of the importance he attaches to the issue, Zuckerberg on Tuesday called one of India's most prominent entrepreneurs to make his case.

One97 Communications, the mobile payments startup backed by Alibaba Group Holding, is one of several tech companies that have come out against Facebook's plans.

"We are totally against telcos preferring one developer over another," One97 founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a phone interview before that call. "We are asking for access neutrality. We are hoping that all startups will be treated equally."

Sonia Dhawan, a spokeswoman for One97's payment website Paytm, said the call took place but didn't describe the conversation further. Sharma wasn't available for further comment.

Facebook is now scrambling to drum up support. It's started a "Save Free Basics In India" campaign, asking Indian users to support "digital equality" by filling out a form that shoots an e-mail to regulators. That also has the effect of sending notifications to user's friends unless they opt out.
Facebook has also taken out full-page advertisements, including one featuring a smiling Indian farmer and his family who the ads say used new techniques to double his crop yield.

While countries such as the Philippines have embraced Free Basics, India has been "the outlier and more challenging," Chris Daniels, vice president of Internet.org, said in a Dec. 26 chat on Reddit.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-january-4-2016-zuckerberg-india-backlash-imperils-free-global-web-vision

Reply to RTI Application under RTI Act of 2005 from Vanya Rakesh

vanya — 2016-01-13T02:40:57Z

Unique Identification Authority of India replied to the RTI application filed by Vanya Rakesh.

Madam,

Please refer to your RTI application dated 3.12.2015 received in the Division on 10.12.2015 on the subject mentioned above requesting to provide the information in electronic form via the email address vanya@cis-india.org, copies of the artwork in print media released by UIDAI to create awareness about use of Aadhaar not being mandatory.
I am directed to furnish herewith in electronic form, copy of the artwork in print media released / published in the epapers edition of the Times of India and Dainik Jagran in their respective editions of dated 29.8.2015 in a soft copy, about obtaining of Aadhaar not being mandatory for a citizen, as desired.
In case, you want to go for an appeal in connection with the information provided, you may appeal to the Appellate Authority indicated below within thirty days from the date of receipt of this letter.
Shri Harish Lal Verma,
Deputy Director (Media),
Unique Identification Authority of India
3nd Floor, Tower – II, Jeevan Bharati Building,
New Delhi – 110001.

Yours faithfully,

(T Gou Khangin)
Section Officer & CPIO Media Division

Copy for information to: Deputy Director (Establishment) & Nodal CPIO

Below scanned copies:

RTI Reply

Coverage in Dainik Jagran

Download the coverage in the Times of India here. Read the earlier blog entry here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/reply-to-rti-application-under-rti-act-of-2005-from-vanya-rakesh

Facebook’s Free Basics Shuts Down In Egypt, Continuing Troubled Run

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T06:11:51Z

The report was published by TV Newsroom on January 1, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

“This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests – there aren’t even any ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics”, he said. Initiatives like Internet.org are attempting to change that, but not without backlash. A similar proposal called zero internet was put forward later by Airtel.

Facebook now has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

“The India fight is helping shape debates elsewhere”, said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based nonprofit advocacy group.

That prompted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to write an op-ed piece published in the Times of India that asks, “Who could possibly be against this?” There was fulsome praise for Modi from the young internet billionaire. Etisalat Egypt could not be reached for comment at this time. “For example, Facebook can just provide 50 or 100 megabytes for their data connection free every month”.

On Wednesday, Trai extended the last date for submission of comments and counter comment to 7 and 14 January, respectively.

But Zuckerberg is not having a walk in the park with this Free Basics proposition. It sounds a perfectly good idea.

Internet.org is a partnership, led by Facebook and including Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera, Nokia and Qualcomm. Through a deal between Facebook and local mobile operators, the data to access those services is free.

The coalition has said that Facebook is misleading users and cautioned that the free service could be replete with advertising if and when it’s implemented. Similarly, signature drives are going on by those staunchly opposed to it. Now the problem for this is that we had asked for response to the specific question of differential pricing… instead we have got responses on supporting Free Basics.

Those campaigning to protect net neutrality in India suggest data providers should not favour some online services over others by offering cheaper or faster access.

The founders and executives mention that the difference in pricing through zero rating “affects the ability of new players to compete” with well-established companies. A situation where the haves can access the Internet and enjoy its tremendous opportunities and the have nots are kept out. Zuckerberg said that India’s progress depends on providing Web access to the 1 billion Indians without it.

Listing three main flaws within the programme, the scientists urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to “completely reject” Facebook’s “free fundamentals” proposal. Such as providing a tiered system of broad band access.

It would make sense for the government to target free Internet services while it clamps down on physical gathering places.

Read the original here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook2019s-free-basics-shuts-down-in-egypt-continuing-troubled-run

Free Basics: Negating net parity

sunil — 2016-01-03T05:58:00Z

Researchers funded by Facebook were apparently told by 92 per cent of Indians they surveyed from large cities, with Internet connection and college degree, that the Internet “is a human right and that Free Basics can help bring Internet to all of India.” What a strange way to frame the question given that the Internet is not a human right in most jurisdictions.

The article was published in the Deccan Herald on January 3, 2016.

Free Basics is gratis service offered by Facebook in partnership with telcos in 37 countries. It is a mobile app that features less than a 100 of the 1 billion odd websites that are currently available on the WWW which in turn is only a sub-set of the Internet. Free Basics violates Net Neutrality because it introduces an unnecessary gatekeeper who gets to decide on “who is in” and “who is out”. Services like Free Basics could permanently alienate the poor from the full choice of the Internet because it creates price discrimination hurdles that discourage those who want to leave the walled garden.

Inika Charles and Arhant Madhyala, two interns at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), surveyed 1/100th of the Facebook sample, that is, 30 persons with the very same question at a café near our office in Bengaluru. Seventy per cent agreed with Facebook that the Internet was a human right but only 26 per cent thought Free Basics would achieve universal connectivity. My real point here is that numbers don’t matter. At least not in the typical way they do. Facebook dismissed Amba Kak’s independent, unfunded, qualitative research in Delhi, in their second public rebuttal, saying the sample size was only 20.

That was truly ironical. The whole point of her research was the importance of small numbers. Kak says, “For some, it was the idea of an ‘emergency’ which made all-access plans valuable.” A respondent stated: “But maybe once or twice a month, I need some information which only Google can give me... like the other day my sister needed to know results to her entrance exams.” If you consider that too mundane, take a moment to picture yourself stranded in the recent Chennai flood. The statistical rarity of a Black Swan does not reduce its importance. A more neutral network is usually a more resilient network. When we do have our next national disaster, do we want to be one of the few countries on the planet who, thanks to our flawed regulation, have ended up with a splinternet?

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman R S Sharma rightly expressed some scepticism around numbers when he said “the consultation paper is not an opinion poll.” He elaborated: “The issue here is some sites are being offered to one person free of cost while another is paying for it. Is this a good thing and can operators have such powers?” Had he instead asked “Is this the best option?” my answer would be “no”. Given the way he has formulated the question, our answer is a lawyerly “it depends”. The CIS believes that differential pricing should be prohibited. However, it can be allowed under certain exceptional standards when it is done in a manner that can be justified by the regulator against four axes of sometimes orthogonal policy objectives. They are increased access, enhanced competition, increased user choice and contribution to openness. For example, a permanent ban on Free Basics makes sense in the Netherlands but regulation may be sufficient for India.

Gatekeeping powers

To the second and more important part to Trai chairman’s second question on gatekeeping powers of operators, our answer is a simple “no”. But then, do we have any evidence that gatekeeping powers have been abused to the detriment of consumer and public interest? No. What do we do when we cannot, like Russell’s chicken, use induction to explain our future? Prof Simon Wren-Lew says, “If Bertrand Russell’s chicken had been an economist ...(it would have)... asked a crucial additional question: Why is the farmer doing this? What is in it for him?” There were five serious problems with Free Basics that Facebook has at least partially fixed, thanks mostly to criticism from consumers in India and Brazil. One, exclusivity with access provider; two, exclusivity with a set of web services; three, lack of transparency regarding retention of personal information; four, misrepresentation through the name of the service, Internet.org and five, lack of support for encrypted traffic. But how do we know these problems will stay fixed? Emerging markets guru Jan Chipchase tweeted asking “Do you trust Facebook? Today? Tomorrow? When its share price is under pressure and it wants to wring more $$$ from the platform?”

Zero. Facebook pays telecom operators zero. The operators pay Facebook zero. The consumers pay zero. Why do we need to regulate philanthropy? Because these freebies are not purely the fruit of private capital. They are only possible thanks to an artificial state-supported oligopoly dependent on public resources like spectrum and wires (over and under public property). Therefore, these oligopolies much serve the public interest and also ensure that users are treated in a non-discriminatory fashion.

Also provision of a free service should not allow powerful corporations to escape regulation–in jurisdictions like Brazil it is clear that Facebook has to comply with consumer protection law even if users are not paying for the service. Given that big data is the new oil, Facebook could pay the access provider in advertisements or manipulation of public discourse or by tweaking software defaults such as autoplay for videos which could increase bills of paying consumers quite dramatically.

India needs a Net Neutrality regime that allows for business models and technological innovation as long as they don’t discriminate between users and competitors. The Trai should begin regulation based on principles as it has rightly done with the pre-emptive temporary ban. But there is a need to bring “numbers we can trust” to the regulatory debate. We as citizens need to establish a peer-to-peer Internet monitoring infrastructure across mobile and fixed lines in India that we can use to crowd source data.

(The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. He says CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/deccan-herald-january-3-2016-sunil-abraham-free-basics-negating-net-parity

December 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-01-13T14:07:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of December 2015 is below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share the twelfth issue of CIS newsletter (December 2015). Previous editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
The 4th edition of the Global Congress themed around "Three Decades of Openness, Two Decades of TRIPS" was organized in New Delhi from December 15 - 17, 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Congress was jointly organised by CIS, NLU-D, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University. Nehaa Chaudhari summarized the developments of the 4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest in a blog post that was originally published on the Global Congress blog. Sunil Abraham wrote a blog entry stating the institutional position of CIS on the Net Neutrality discussion going on in India. Catch News interviewed Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics" . Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'. Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das has recently permitted 30 volumes of his notable works to be re-license under an open license (Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0) . Subhashish Panigrahi wrote a blog post on this in Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal in Odisha. CIS has established institutional partnerships with University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs for furthering Wikipedia growth. Tanveer Hasan analyses the developments and lists out the possible future plans in this regard. CIS along with Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and Internet Policy Observatory organized an event in New Delhi on Net Neutrality across South Asia . Today the quantity of data being generated is expanding at an exponential rate. From smartphones and televisions, trains and airplanes, sensor-equipped buildings and even the infrastructures of our cities, data now streams constantly from almost every sector and function of daily life, stated Scott Mason in a blog post. The Government of India is in the process of developing 100 smart cities in India which it sees as the key to the country's economic and social growth. Vanya Rakesh gave an overview of the Smart Cities project currently underway in India in a blog post. For the second part of the Smart City podcast series, Sruthi Krishnan and Harsha K from Fields of View spoke with Sumandro Chattapadhyay on data, people, and smart cities. Fields of View has produced and shared the recording. An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken last year. The 'mapping digital humanities in India' enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. P.P Sneha published the third,fourth, and fifth sections of the study this month. The RAW programme has initiated a new annual conference series titled Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC). The first edition of the Conference, organised around the theme of "studying internet in India" will be held in Delhi in February 2016

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

● December 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; December 31, 2015).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entries

Abuse of Dominant Position in Indian Competition Law: A Brief Guide (Sarthak Sood; December 9, 2015).
GCIP2015: Notes from the Inaugural Session (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 14, 2015).
GCIP Day 1 Session 3: Challenges in Re-Articulating Public Interest (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).
GCIP 15 Day 2: Discussions on Health Technology, Innovation and Access (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).
Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions in abeyance (Anubha Sinha; Anubha Sinha; December 21, 2015).
4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest: Statement of Conclusion for the IP and Development track (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 25, 2015). This was also published on the Global Congress Blog.

Event Organized

Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (Organized by National Law University, Delhi, American Assembly, Columbia University, Open A.I.R., American University, and CIS; New Delhi, December 15 - 17, 2015).

Participation in Event

CODE Session (Organized by IDRC; December 17, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Media Coverage

NLSIU Conference on Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability: An enriching experience (Abolee Vaidya and Nuhar Bansal; SINAPSE; December 14, 2015). This is an event report on a one-day national conference on the 'Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability' for which Pranesh Prakash was a speaker .

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Articles

30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource (Subhashish Panigrahi; Discover Bhubaneswar; December 4, 2015).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର (Subhashish Panigrahi; Sambad; December 6, 2015).

Blog Entries

Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books (Subhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav Garule; December 3, 2015). This was published on Wikimedia Blog.
Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional Partnership (Tanveer Hasan; December 3, 2015).
Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada Wikisource (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ University and St. Aloysius College, Mangalore (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
TTT 2015 (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon at Mangaluru (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; December 29, 2015).

Events Organized

Talk on bringing 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi Wikipedia (The Energy and Resources Institute; Bangalore; December 1, 2015). Avinash Chaphekar, Joint Secretary, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha gave a talk.
Odia Wikimedia community meetup (Organized by Odia Wikipedia Community and CIS; Cuttack; December 3, 2015).
Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Edit-a-thon (Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune; December 3, 2015).

Participation in Events

Telugu Wikipedia Day 2015, Photo Walk (Organized by Telugu Wikipedians; Dr. YSR State Archaeological Museum, Hyderabad; December 13, 2015). Pavan Santhosh attended the event. One of the popular Telugu news channel TV9 covered the event and telecasted the same. Eenadu published a special item on photo walk on December 13, 2015.
English Wikipedia and the Telugu Wikipedia joint meetup and edit-a-thon (Organized by Wikipedia community; Golden Threshold, Hyderabad; December 20, 2015). The event was covered inSakshi and Andhra Jyoti.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia (Indian Express; Mangaluru edition; December 12, 2015).

A Kannada Wikipedia Editathon was conducted in Mangalore on December 10, 2015. The following are the media coverage for the same:

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Udayavani; December 7, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Vijayavani; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Vijaya Karnataka; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Udayavani; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Prajavani; December 10, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Prajavani; December 13, 2015).

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Free Speech and Expression

Interview

Facebook shares 10 key facts about Free Basics. Here's what's wrong with all 10 of them (Shweta Sengar; Catch News; December 24, 2015).

Blog Entry

CIS's Position on Net Neutrality (Sunil Abraham; December 4, 2015).

Event Organized

Net Neutrality across South Asia (Organized by Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Internet Policy Observatory and CIS; New Delhi; December 12, 2015).

Participation in Event

Consultation on "Understanding the Freedom of Expression Online and Offline" (Organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation and Association for Progressive Communications; YMCA, New Delhi; December 10, 2015). Jyoti Panday was a speaker at this event.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Benefits and Harms of "Big Data" (Scott Mason; December 30, 2015).

►Cyber Security

Blog Entry

Ground Zero Summit (Amber Sinha; December 22, 2015).

Participation in Events

Second Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation (Organized by International Telecommunications Society, IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; New Delhi; December 13 - 15, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Event Organized

Bangalore Chapter Meet - DSCI (CIS, Bangalore; December 1, 2015). CIS hosted the Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI. Pronab Mohanty, Inspector General of Police gave a talk on Cybercrimes. Sunil Abraham presented the outcome of his study "Anonymity in Cyberspace".

►Privacy

Blog Entries

UID Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
DNA Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Privacy Policy Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Sectoral Privacy Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Security Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 3, 2015).
Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015 (Amber Sinha; December 31, 2015).

Participation in Events

Kick Off Meeting for the Politics of Data Project (Organized by Tactical Tech; Phnom Penh; December 7-8, 2015). Amber Sinha participated in the event.
Unbundling Issues of Privacy, Data Security, Identity Matrics, for Financial Inclusion (Organized by Indicus Foundation and MicroSave; December 10, 2015; Metropolitan Hotel and Spa, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

►Miscellaneous

Blog Entry

Smart Cities in India: An Overview (Vanya Rakesh; December 21, 2015).

Participation in Event

Elite Capture of Governance (Organized by Forum for Urban Governance and Commons; December 16, 2015; Bangalore). Vanya Rakesh participated in the event.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Articles

The Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality (Sunil Abraham; FirstPost; December 24, 2015).
Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's 'Free Basics' App (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 29, 2015).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Upcoming Events

A.I. Hype Cycles and Artistic Subversions (CIS, Bangalore; January 22, 2016). Gene Kogan will give a talk.
First Edition of Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; February 25 - 27, 2016).

Blog Entries

RAW Lecture #01: Nishant Shah on 'Stories and Histories of Internet in India' - Video (P.P. Sneha; December 1, 2015).
FOV Podcast - Data, People, and Smart Cities (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; December 2, 2015).
Reading from a Distance - Data as Text (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).
The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).
Living in the Archival Moment (P.P. Sneha; December 14, 2015).

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

India's net neutrality debate is unique and complex (Pratap Vikram Singh; Governance Now; December 14, 2015).
Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics (Anita Babu; Business Standard; December 22, 2015).
A Scam Masquerading as Santa (Apurva Venkat & Vandana Kamath; Bangalore Mirror; December 25, 2015).
Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul (IBN Live; December 29, 2015).
Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash (Bhuma Shrivastava; NDTV; December 30, 2015).
Mark Zuckerberg's India backlash imperils vision for free global web (Bhuma Shrivastava; Livemint; December 30, 2015).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Offices

Bengaluru - No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. Location on Google Map .

Delhi - First floor, B 1/8, Hauz Khas, near G Block market, after Crunch, New Delhi, 110016. Location on Google Map.

► Follow Us

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560 071.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2015-bulletin

Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015

Amber Sinha — 2016-01-03T05:43:42Z

As the year draws to a close, we are enumerating some of the key privacy related events in India that transpired in 2015. Much like the last few years, this year, too, was an eventful one in the context of privacy.

While we did not witness, as one had hoped, any progress in the passage of a privacy law, the year saw significant developments with respect to the ongoing Aadhaar case. The statement by the Attorney General, India's foremost law officer, that there is a lack of clarity over whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right, and the fact the the matter is yet unresolved was a huge setback to the jurisprudence on privacy. [1] However, the court has recognised a purpose limitation as applicable into the Aadhaar scheme, limiting the sharing of any information collected during the enrollment of residents in UID. A draft Encryption Policy was released and almost immediately withdrawn in the face of severe public backlash, and an updated Human DNA Profiling Bill was made available for comments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's much publicised project "Digital India" was in news throughout the year, and it also attracted its' fair share of criticism in light of the lack of privacy safeguards it offered. Internationally, a lawsuit brought by Maximilian Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, dealt a body blow to the fifteen year old Safe Harbour Framework in place for data transfers between EU and USA. Below, we look at what were, according to us, the eight most important privacy events in India, in 2015.

1. August 11, 2015 order on Aadhaar not being compulsory

In 2012, a writ petition was filed by Judge K S Puttaswamy challenging the government's policy in its attempt to enroll all residents of India in the UID project and linking the Aadhaar card with various government services. A number of other petitioners who filed cases against the Aadhaar scheme have also been linked with this petition and the court has been hearing them together. On September 11, 2015, the Supreme Court reiterated its position in earlier orders made on September 23, 2013 and March 24, 2014 stating that the Aadhaar card shall not be made compulsory for any government services. [2] Building on its earlier position, the court passed the following orders:

a) The government must give wide publicity in the media that it was not mandatory for a resident to obtain an Aadhaar card,

b) The production of an Aadhaar card would not be a condition for obtaining any benefits otherwise due to a citizen,

c) Aadhaar card would not be used for any purpose other than the PDS Scheme, for distribution of foodgrains and cooking fuel such as kerosene and for the LPG distribution scheme.

d) The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a Court for the purpose of criminal investigation.[3]

Despite this being the fifth court order given by the Supreme Court[4] stating that the Aadhaar card cannot be a mandatory requirement for access to government services or subsidies, repeated violations continue. One of the violations which has been widely reported is the continued requirement of an Aadhaar number to set up a Digital Locker account which also led to activist, Sudhir Yadav filing a petition in the Supreme Court.[5]

2. No Right to Privacy - Attorney General to SC

The Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi argued before the Supreme Court in the Aadhaar case that the Constitution of India did not provide for a fundamental Right to Privacy.[6] He referred to the body of case in the Supreme Court dealing with this issue and made a reference to the 1954 case, MP Sharma v. Satish Chandra[7] stating that there was "clear divergence of opinion" on the Right to Privacy and termed it as "a classic case of unclear position of law." He also referred to the discussion on this matter in the Constitutional Assembly Debates and pointed to the fact the framers of the Constitution did not intend for this to be a fundamental right. He said the matter needed to be referred to a nine judge Constitution bench.[8] This raises serious questions over the jurisprudence developed by the Supreme Court on the right to privacy over the last five decades. The matter is currently pending resolution by a larger bench which needs to be constituted by the Chief Justice of India.

3. Shreya Singhal judgment and Section 69A, IT Act

In the much celebrated judgment, Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, in March 2015, the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 as unconstitutional and laid down guidelines for online takedowns under the Internet intermediary rules. However, significantly, the court also upheld Section 69A and the blocking rules under this provision. It was held to be a narrowly-drawn provision with adequate safeguards. The rules prescribe a procedure for blocking which involves receipt of a blocking request, examination of the request by the Committee and a review committee which performs oversight functions. However, commentators have pointed to the opacity of the process in the rules under this provisions. While the rules mandate that a hearing is given to the originator of the content, this safeguard is widely disregarded. The judgment did not discuss Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which deal with decrypting of electronic communication, however, the Department of Electronic and Information Technology brought up this issue subsequently, through a Draft Encryption Policy, discussed below.

4. Circulation and recall of Draft Encryption Policy

On October 19, 2015, the Department of Electronic and Information Technology (DeitY) released for public comment a draft National Encryption Policy. The draft received an immediate and severe backlash from commentators, and was withdrawn by September 22, 2015. [9] The government blamed a junior official for the poor drafting of the document and noted that it had been released without a review by the Telecom Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad and other senior officials.[10] The main areas of contention were a requirement that individuals store plain text versions of all encrypted communication for a period of 90 days, to be made available to law enforcement agencies on demand; the government's right to prescribe key-strength, algorithms and ciphers; and only government-notified encryption products and vendors registered with the government being allowed to be used for encryption.[11] The purport of the above was to limit the ways in which citizens could encrypt electronic communication, and to allow adequate access to law enforcement agencies. The requirement to keep all encrypted information in plain text format for a period of 90 days garnered particular criticism as it would allow for creation of a 'honeypot' of unencrypted data, which could attract theft and attacks.[12] The withdrawal of the draft policy is not the final chapter in this story, as the Telecom Minister has promised that the Department will come back with a revised policy. [13] This attempt to put restrictions on use of encryption technologies is not only in line with a host of surveillance initiatives that have mushroomed in India in the last few years,[14] but also finds resonance with a global trend which has seen various governments and law enforcement organisations argue against encryption. [15]

5. Privacy concerns raised about Digital India

The Digital India initiative includes over thirty Mission Mode Projects in various stages of implementation. [16] All of these projects entail collection of vast quantities of personally identifiable information of the citizens. However, most of these initiatives do not have clearly laid down privacy policies.[17] There is also a lack of properly articulated access control mechanisms and doubts over important issues such as data ownership owing to most projects involving public private partnership which involves private organisation collecting, processing and retaining large amounts of data. [18] Ahead of Prime Minister Modi's visit to the US, over 100 hundred prominent US based academics released a statement raising concerns about "lack of safeguards about privacy of information, and thus its potential for abuse" in the Digital India project. [19] It has been pointed out that the initiatives could enable a "cradle-to-grave digital identity that is unique, lifelong, and authenticable, and it plans to widely use the already mired in controversy Aadhaar program as the identification system." [20]

6. Issues with Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2015

The Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2015 envisions the creation of national and regional DNA databases comprising DNA profiles of the categories of persons specified in the Bill.[21] The categories include offenders, suspects, missing persons, unknown deceased persons, volunteers and such other categories specified by the DNA Profiling Board which has oversight over these banks. The Bill grants wide discretionary powers to the Board to introduce new DNA indices and make DNA profiles available for new purposes it may deem fit. [22] These, and the lack of proper safeguards surrounding issues like consent, retention and collection pose serious privacy risks if the Bill becomes a law. Significantly, there is no element of purpose limitation in the proposed law, which would allow the DNA samples to be re-used for unspecified purposes.[23]

7. Impact of the Schrems ruling on India

In Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner, the Court of Justice in European Union (CJEU) annulled the Commission Decision 2000/520 according to which US data protection rules were deemed sufficient to satisfy EU privacy rules enabling transfers of personal data from EU to US, otherwise known as the 'Safe Harbour' framework. The court ruled that broad formulations of derogations on grounds of national security, public interest and law enforcement in place in the US goes beyond the test of proportionality and necessity under the Data Protection rules.[24] This judgment could also have implications for the data processing industry in India. For a few years now, a framework similar to the Safe Harbour has been under discussion for transfer of data between India and EU. The lack of a privacy legislation has been among the significant hurdles in arriving at a framework.[25] In the absence of a Safe Harbour framework, the companies in India rely on alternate mechanisms such as Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) or Model Contractual Clauses. These contracts impose the obligation on the data exporters and importers to ensure that 'adequate level of data protection' is provided. The Schrems judgement makes it clear that 'adequate level of data protection' entails a regime that is 'essentially equivalent' to that envisioned under Directive 95/46.[26] What this means is that any new framework of protection between EU and other countries like US or India will necessarily have to meet this test of essential equivalence. The PRISM programme in the US and a host of surveillance programmes that have been initiated by the government in India in the last few years could pose problems in satisfying this test of essential equivalence as they do not conform to the proportionality and necessity principles.

8. The definition of "unfair trade practices" in the Consumer Protection Bill, 2015

The Consumer Protection Bill, 2015, tabled in the Parliament towards the end of the monsoon session[27] has introduced an expansive definition of the term "unfair trade practices." The definition as per the Bill includes the disclosure "to any other person any personal information given in confidence by the consumer."[28] This clause exclude from the scope of unfair trade practices, disclosures under provisions of any law in force or in public interest. This provision could have significant impact on the personal data protection law in India. Currently, the only law governing data protection law are the Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011[29] prescribed under Section 43A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Under these rules, sensitive personal data or information is protected in that their disclosure requires prior permission from the data subject. [30] For other kinds of personal information not categorized as sensitive personal data or information, the only recourse of data subjects in case to claim breach of the terms of privacy policy which constitutes a lawful contract. [31] The Consumer Protection Bill, 2015, if enacted as law, could significantly expand the scope of protection available to data subjects. First, unlike the Section 43A rules, the provisions of the Bill would be applicable to physical as well as electronic collection of personal information. Second, disclosure to a third party of personal information other than sensitive personal data or information could also have similar 'prior permission' criteria under the Bill, if it can be shown that the information was shared by the consumer in confidence.

What we see above are events largely built around a few trends that we have been witnessing in the context of privacy in India, in particular and across the world, in general. Lack of privacy safeguards in initiatives like the Aadhaar project and Digital India is symptomatic of policies that are not comprehensive in their scope, and consequently fail to address key concerns. Dr Usha Ramanathan has called these policies "powerpoint based policies" which are implemented based on proposals which are superficial in their scope and do not give due regard to their impact on a host of issues. [32] Second, the privacy concerns posed by the draft Encryption Policy and the Human DNA Profiling Bill point to the motive of surveillance that is in line with other projects introduced with the intent to protect and preserve national security. [33] Third, the incidents that championed the cause of privacy like the Schrems judgment have largely been initiated by activists and civil society actors, and have typically entailed the involvement of the judiciary, often the single recourse of actors in the campaign for the protection of civil rights. It must be noted that jurisprudence on the right to privacy in India has not moved beyond the guidelines set forth by the Supreme Court in PUCL v. Union of India.[34] However, new mass surveillance programmes and massive collection of personal data by both public and private parties through various schemes mandated a re-look at the standards laid down twenty years ago. The privacy issue pending resolution by a larger bench in the Aadhaar case affords an opportunity to revisit those principles in light of how surveillance has changed in the last two decades and strengthen privacy and data protection.

^{^[1]} Right to Privacy not a fundamental right, cannot be invoked to scrap Aadhar: Centre tells Supreme Court, available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-07-23/news/64773078_1_fundamental-right-attorney-general-mukul-rohatgi-privacy

^{^[2]} SC allows govt to link Aadhaar card with PDS and LPG subsidies, available at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/SC-allows-govt-to-link-Aadhaar-card-with-PDS-and-LPG-subsidies/articleshow/48436223.cms

^{^[3]} http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=42841

^{^[4]} Five SC Orders Later, Aadhaar Requirement Continues to Haunt Many, available at http://thewire.in/2015/09/19/five-sc-orders-later-aadhaar-requirement-continues-to-haunt-many-11065/

[5] Digital Locker scheme challenged in Supreme Court, available at http://www.moneylife.in/article/digital-locker-scheme-challenged-in-supreme-court/42607.html

^{^[6]} Privacy not a fundamental right, argues Mukul Rohatgi for Govt as Govt affidavit says otherwise, available at http://www.legallyindia.com/Constitutional-law/privacy-not-a-fundamental-right-argues-mukul-rohatgi-for-govt-as-govt-affidavit-says-otherwise

^{^[7]} 1954 SCR 1077.

^{^[8]} Supra Note 1.

^{^[9]} Government to withdraw draft encryption policy, available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/govt-to-withdraw-draft-encryption-policy/article7677348.ece

^{^[10]} Encryption policy poorly worded by officer: Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, available at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/49068406.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

^{^[11]} Updated: India's draft encryption policy puts user privacy in danger, available at http://www.medianama.com/2015/09/223-india-draft-encryption-policy/

^{^[12]} Bhairav Acharya, The short-lived adventure of India's encryption policy, available at http://notacoda.net/2015/10/10/the-short-lived-adventure-of-indias-encryption-policy/

^{^[13]} Supra Note 9.

^{^[14]} Maria Xynou, Big democracy, big surveillance: India's surveillance state, available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/maria-xynou/big-democracy-big-surveillance-indias-surveillance-state

^{^[15]} China passes controversial anti-terrorism law to access encrypted user accounts, available at http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/27/10670346/china-passes-law-to-access-encrypted-communications ; Police renew call against encryption technology that can help hide terrorists, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/16/paris-terror-attacks-renew-encryption-technology-s/?page=all .

^{^[16]} http://www.mmp.cips.org.in/digital-india/

[17] http://slides.com/cisindia/big-data-in-indian-governance-preliminary-findings#/

^{^[18]} Indira Jaising, Digital India Schemes Must Be Preceded by a Data Protection and Privacy Law, available at http://thewire.in/2015/07/04/digital-india-schemes-must-be-preceded-by-a-data-protection-and-privacy-law-5471/

^{^[19]} US academics raise privacy concerns over 'Digital India' campaign, available at http://yourstory.com/2015/08/us-digital-india-campaign/

^{^[20]} Lisa Hayes, Digital India's Impact on Privacy: Aadhaar numbers, biometrics, and more, available at https://cdt.org/blog/digital-indias-impact-on-privacy-aadhaar-numbers-biometrics-and-more/

^{^[21]} http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media//draft/Draft%20Human%20DNA%20Profiling%20Bill%202015.pdf

^{^[22]} Comments on India's Human DNA Profiling Bill (June 2015 version), available at http://www.genewatch.org/uploads/f03c6d66a9b354535738483c1c3d49e4/IndiaDNABill_FGPI_15.pdf

^{^[23]} Elonnai Hickok, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda, CIS Comments and Recommendations to the Human DNA Profiling Bill, June 2015, available at http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-and-recommendations-to-human-dna-profiling-bill-2015

^{^[24]} http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-10/cp150117en.pdf

^{^[25]} Jyoti Pandey, Contestations of Data, ECJ Safe Harbor Ruling and Lessons for India, available at http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/contestations-of-data-ecj-safe-harbor-ruling-and-lessons-for-india

^{^[26]} Simon Cox, Case Watch: Making Sense of the Schrems Ruling on Data Transfer, available at https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/case-watch-making-sense-schrems-ruling-data-transfer

^{^[27]} http://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the-consumer-protection-bill-2015-3965/

^{^[28]} Section 2(41) (I) of the Consumer Protection Bill, 2015.

^{^[29]} http://www.ijlt.in/pdffiles/IT-%28Reasonable%20Security%20Practices%29-Rules-2011.pdf

^{^[30]} Rule 6 of Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011

^{^[31]} Rule 4 of Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011

^{^[32]} http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/communication-rights-in-the-age-of-digital-technology

^{^[33]} Supra Note 11.

^{^[34]} Chaitanya Ramachandra, PUCL V. Union of India Revisited: Why India's Sureveillance Law must be redesigned for the Digital Age, available at http://nujslawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Chaitanya-Ramachandran.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/eight-key-privacy-events-in-india-in-the-year-2015

India’s net neutrality debate is unique and complex

praskrishna — 2015-12-30T16:38:45Z

Connectivity to millions in India is main issue

The article by Pratap Vikram Singh was published in Governance Now on December 14, 2015.

The net neutrality debate has perplexed layman and policy experts alike. For a developing country like India, where a majority of the population doesn’t have access to internet, whether government should stick to the core principles or should it allow flexibility in network management practices to operators is still not clear yet. Whether India should go for an overarching, prophylactic regulation (ex ante), prohibiting any kind of zero rating, or should it adopt evidence-based, contextual regulation (ex post facto)? Whether zero rating should be allowed and if allowed then on what conditions? This is what experts from telecom industry and civil society deliberated in a round table on network neutrality jointly organised by Observer Research Foundation and Centre for Internet and Society on Saturday.

Neutrality refers to open and non-discriminatory nature of internet; information (or say data packets) has always flown freely on the network. Facebook, Google and many other internet businesses have emerged as a result of free and non discriminatory nature of internet.

Warning against taking a 'doctrinaire' approach to net neutrality, a telecom industry expert said that regulators must have flexibility to respond to market demand in the telecom industry. Adding that Indian market is unique with more than seven-ten telecom operators providing internet facility, the expert said that net neutrality will play differently in developing countries.

He said if implemented properly, the zero-rating approach or sponsored content followed by TSPs, “can be one of the ways to scale up internet access” to the unconnected regions.

Another industry expert said that the regulations on network neutrality has to be contextualized in terms of geography. He criticized the ‘savetheinternet’ movement, which galvanised support of one million internet users in favour of strict neutrality, for preventing one billion people from accessing ‘free’ internet. He said that telecom operators’ revenue from zero rating plans is less than one percent.

He was also against bringing net neutrality under the purview of competition commission of India. He said that there are already several laws related to consumer protection, information technology and monopoly to deal with situations arising out of neutrality issue.

An internet freedom activist said that zero rating can be allowed under stringent conditions of transparency, non-exclusivity and reasonability. He said that one way of setting the neutrality debate would be to allow zero rating with an amount of equal rating. This means that telecom players can offer toll free access to certain websites but they would also have to provide free 100 Mb or 200 Mb data connectivity within which a user can access any website or app for free.

“Countries like the US can afford to debate on net neutrality as almost 90 percent of their population are connected to internet. Here (in India) we should first worry about providing internet access to our people,” an ORF researcher said, speaking on the sidelines of the roundtable discussion.

The neutrality debate is getting momentum again with TRAI’s consultation paper being released on December 9. In its second paper, TRAI suggested, “that TSPs could provide initial data consumption for free, without limiting it to any particular content. Current examples of this approach include allowing free browsing or discounted tariffs for specified time windows, or giving away a certain amount of data for free.”

The regulator also called for regulation that “must seek a balance between ensuring wider access to the internet,” and in the manner that does not allow discrimination in charging tariffs from the users consuming varied content. The regulator has asked all stakeholders in telecom industry to come up with alternative methods in order to provide free access of internet to the consumers, and keep competition and innovation in the market intact.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/india2019s-net-neutrality-debate-is-unique-and-complex

Mark Zuckerberg’s India backlash imperils vision for free global web

praskrishna — 2015-12-30T15:25:08Z

The growing backlash against Facebook’s Free Basics could threaten the very premise of Internet.org, Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to connect the planet.

The article by Bhuma Shrivastava was published in Livemint on December 30, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Mumbai: Mark Zuckerberg didn’t see this coming.

When Facebook Inc.’s co-founder proposed bringing free Web services to India, his stated aim was to help connect millions of impoverished people to unlimited opportunity. Instead, critics have accused him of making a poorly disguised land grab in India’s burgeoning Internet sector. The growing backlash could threaten the very premise of Internet.org, his ambitious, two-year-old effort to connect the planet.

Indian authorities are circumspect because the Facebook initiative provides access to only a limited set of websites—undermining the equal access precepts of net neutrality. The telecommunications regulator is calling for initial comments by today on whether wireless carriers can charge differently for data usage across websites, applications and platforms. Losing this fight could imperil Facebook’s Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and select services such as Messenger and Microsoft’s Bing without a data plan.

“The India fight is helping shape debates elsewhere,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit advocacy group. “Activists in other countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia are watching this debate and will seize the momentum created in India.”

Zuckerberg’s argument for free Web access is based in part on Deloitte research showing that for every 10 people who are connected to the Web, one is lifted out of poverty and one job is created.

Facebook argues that by giving people free access to a small slice of the Internet, they will quickly see the value in paying for the whole thing. Zuckerberg has said his biggest challenge in connecting people to the Web isn’t access to cellular networks, but a social hurdle: he needs to prove to people who have never been online that the Internet is useful.

“Who could possibly be against this?” Zuckerberg wrote in an impassioned op-ed in the Times of India this week. “Surprisingly, over the last year there’s been a big debate about this in India.”

Zuckerberg’s plea underscores what’s at stake. Facebook already attracts 1.55 billion people monthly, or about half of the Internet-connected global population. To keep growing, the world’s largest social network needs to get more people online. Hence the billions of dollars Facebook is spending on projects to deliver the Web to under-served areas via drones, satellites and lasers. And Internet.org, which now spans 37 nations.

India, as the world’s second most populous nation, is arguably the most important piece of Zuckerberg’s Free Basics strategy. But the opposition is fierce. Critics note that the Facebook service doesn’t offer Web favourites such as Google Inc.’s search. Facebook has said it would be open to adding more features from competitors, but critics are skeptical of giving the social-networking giant such influence on the Internet.

Critics also say that by offering a limited swath of the Internet at comparatively slow speeds, the company is creating a poor-man’s or diluted version of the Web. That could stifle innovation by disadvantaging Indian startups building rival apps, or allow Facebook and its telecommunications carrier- partners to act as Internet gatekeepers.

One97 Communications Ltd, a mobile payment startup backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is one of several Indian tech companies that have come out against Facebook’s plans.

“We are totally against telcos preferring one developer over another,” One97 founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a phone interview. “We are asking for access neutrality. We are hoping that all startups will be treated equally.”

Facebook is now scrambling to drum up support. It’s started a ‘Save Free Basics In India’ campaign, asking Indian users to support ‘digital equality’ by filling out a form that shoots an e-mail to regulators. That also has the effect of sending notifications to user’s friends unless they opt out.

Facebook has also taken out full-page advertisements, including one featuring a smiling Indian farmer and his family who the ads say used new techniques to double his crop yield. Bloomberg

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mark-zuckerberg2019s-india-backlash-imperils-vision-for-free-global-web

Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T09:20:41Z

The blog post was published in NDTV on December 30, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-december-30-2015-foreign-media-on-zukerberg-india-backlash

Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's ‘Free Basics’ App

subha — 2015-12-30T14:37:09Z

It has been less than two months since the nationwide launch of the Free Basics app in India. The smart phone application (formerly known as Internet.org) offers free access to Facebook, Facebook-owned products like WhatsApp, and a select suite of other websites for users who do not pay for mobile data plans.

This was published in Global Voices on December 29, 2015.

But the app has already been suspended, at least temporarily, as the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority considers new rules governing network neutrality. Depending on how they're written, the rules could render Free Basics a violation of the policy.

Free Basics, which has been deployed in 30 developing countries across the globe, gives users free access to websites that meet Facebook's technical standards for the application. The application does not give users access to the Internet at large. For open Internet advocates, this undercuts consumer choice and violates the principle of network neutrality, under which Internet providers are to treat all Internet traffic equally. Net neutrality allows users equal access to any website they want to visit, and gives website operators equal opportunities to attract visitors.

Facebook has responded to the pending regulation with an aggressive ad campaign both online and off. Over the last week, Facebook users across India (and some in the US) upon logging into the site have been greeted with notifications urging them to take action. The Free Basics page on Facebook now leads to a pleading form that asks users to contact the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and voice their support for making Free Basics available in India. The company has also purchased a smattering of billboard advertisements across the country and taken out numerous two-page ads in leading national newspapers, as seen above.

The Indian Internet bites back

Indian netizens and activists have spoken out against the company's actions en masse, protesting heavily on social media, blogs and newspapers.

The grassroots open Internet group, SavetheInternet.in, that has been advocating for net neutrality in India throughout 2015, has launched an email campaign asking users to send letters to TRAI explaining how Free Basics violates net neutrality principles and propagates an inaccurate picture of the Internet for new users by placing it inside the confines of Facebook's application.

Multiple stand-up comedy groups have created videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality, which have gone viral:

Above, the third in a series of videos created by All India Bakchod, in partnership with SavetheInternet.in. Below, a video by East India Comedy.

The issue has also been hotly debated on Twitter, with technology and law experts leading the way.

Internet policy expert and lead staff member of the Center for Internet and Society in Bengaluru Pranesh Prakash tweeted:

New Delhi-based technology lawyer Mishi Choudhary, who leads the legal team at the Software Freedom Law Center, tweeted:

The Free Software Movement of India, a non-profit promoting use of free software and its philosophy in India via their local chapters, also has taken the campaign to the streets where the volunteers raised public awareness about Free Basic's adverse side.

Apart from local experts and activists, companies like Reddit, Truecaller and Indian e-commerce platform Paytm have publicly shared their opposition to Facebook's actions.

Facebook targets open Web activists

Facebook is paying close attention to civil society opposition to its activities in India. Across the globe, the company's Free Basics page now opens to a plea for users to contact TRAI, and includes a statement that directly targets open Internet advocates, suggesting that their motives are somehow driven by financial incentives:

…Free Basics is in danger in India. A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis of net neutrality. Instead of giving people access to some basic internet services for free, they demand that people pay equally to access all internet services – even if that means 1 billion people can't afford to access any services.

SavetheInternet.in explicitly states in their About page that they are entirely volunteer-run and have no affiliation with any political party in India or elsewhere.

Users also have tweeted screenshots alleging that Facebook is restricting access for individuals sending messages opposing Free Basics. This has not been confirmed, but the tweets have only further stoked public frustration with the company.

Zuckerberg vs. SavetheInternet

On December 28, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg penned a piece in the Times of India arguing that Free Basics will help “achieve digital equality for India,” and claiming that the initiative “isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests.” India represents the world's largest market of Internet users after the US and China, where Facebook remains blocked.

In response, Nikhil Pawa, founder of online portal MediaNama and a volunteer with Savetheinternet.in, authored a critical opinion piece in the same newspaper:

[…] Why hasn’t Facebook chosen the options that do not violate Net Neutrality? For example, in India, Aircel has begun providing full internet access for free at 64 kbps download speed for the first three months….In Bangladesh, Grameenphone users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. In Africa, Orange users get 500 MB of free access on buying a $37 handset…

[…]

Facebook is being disingenuous — as disingenuous as the company’s promotional programmes for Free Basics to its Indian users — when it says that Free Basics is in conformity with Net Neutrality.

Pawa also quoted Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Indian state of Odisha, who wrote to TRAI supporting net neutrality. “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them,” he wrote.

“If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them.”

Writing for Quartz, technology critic Alice Truong expressed similar sentiment: “Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.”

For Mahesh Murthy, an Indian venture capitalist and self-described net neutrality activist, it all comes down to revenue. On the Wire, Murthy offered untempered criticism of Facebook and Zuckerberg's efforts to appease the country's leaders:

[..] Unlike Facebook, who tried to silently slime this thing through last year when it was called Internet.org, and then are spending about Rs. 100 crores on ads – a third of its India revenue? – to try and con us Indians this year again. This is after we’d worked hard to ban these kind of products, technically called “zero rating apps” last year.[..] This Facebook ad [spread] doesn’t include the full-on Mark Zuckerberg love event put up for our Prime Minister when he visited the US, aimed again at greasing the way for this Free Basics thing through our government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-2018free-basics2019-app

Benefits and Harms of "Big Data"

Scott Mason — 2015-12-30T02:48:08Z

Today the quantity of data being generated is expanding at an exponential rate. From smartphones and televisions, trains and airplanes, sensor-equipped buildings and even the infrastructures of our cities, data now streams constantly from almost every sector and function of daily life.

Introduction

In 2011 it was estimated that the quantity of data produced globally would surpass 1.8 zettabyte[1]. By 2013 that had grown to 4 zettabytes[2], and with the nascent development of the so-called 'Internet of Things' gathering pace, these trends are likely to continue. This expansion in the volume, velocity, and variety of data available[3] , together with the development of innovative forms of statistical analytics, is generally referred to as "Big Data"; though there is no single agreed upon definition of the term. Although still in its initial stages, Big Data promises to provide new insights and solutions across a wide range of sectors, many of which would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago.

Despite enormous optimism about the scope and variety of Big Data's potential applications however, many remain concerned about its widespread adoption, with some scholars suggesting it could generate as many harms as benefits[4]. Most notably these have included concerns about the inevitable threats to privacy associated with the generation, collection and use of large quantities of data [5]. However, concerns have also been raised regarding, for example, the lack of transparency around the design of algorithms used to process the data, over-reliance on Big Data analytics as opposed to traditional forms of analysis and the creation of new digital divides to just name a few.

The existing literature on Big Data is vast, however many of the benefits and harms identified by researchers tend to relate to sector specific applications of Big Data analytics, such as predictive policing, or targeted marketing. Whilst these examples can be useful in demonstrating the diversity of Big Data's possible applications, it can nevertheless be difficult to gain an overall perspective of the broader impacts of Big Data as a whole. As such this article will seek to disaggregate the potential benefits and harms of Big Data, organising them into several broad categories, which are reflective of the existing scholarly literature.

What are the potential benefits of Big Data?

From politicians to business leaders, recent years have seen Big Data confidently proclaimed as a potential solution to a diverse range of problems from, world hunger and diseases, to government budget deficits and corruption. But if we look beyond the hyperbole and headlines, what do we really know about the advantages of Big Data? Given the current buzz surrounding it, the existing literature on Big Data is perhaps unsurprisingly vast, providing innumerable examples of the potential applications of Big Data from agriculture to policing. However, rather than try (and fail) to list the many possible applications of Big Data analytics across all sectors and industries, for the purposes of this article we have instead attempted to distil the various advantages of Big Data discussed within literature into the following five broad categories; Decision-Making, Efficiency & Productivity, Research & Development, Personalisation and Transparency, each of which will be discussed separately below.

Decision-Making

Whilst data analytics have always been used to improve the quality and efficiency of decision-making processes, the advent of Big Data means that the areas of our lives in which data driven decision- making plays a role is expanding dramatically; as businesses and governments become better able to exploit new data flows. Furthermore, the real-time and predictive nature of decision-making made possible by Big Data, are increasingly allowing these decisions to be automated. As a result, Big Data is providing governments and business with unprecedented opportunities to create new insights and solutions; becoming more responsive to new opportunities and better able to act quickly - and in some cases preemptively - to deal with emerging threats.

This ability of Big Data to speed up and improve decision-making processes can be applied across all sectors from transport to healthcare and is often cited within the literature as one of the key advantages of Big Data. Joh, for example, highlights the increased use of data driven predictive analysis by police forces to help them to forecast the times and geographical locations in which crimes are most likely to occur. This allows the force to redistribute their officers and resources according to anticipated need, and in certain cities has been highly effective in reducing crime rates [6]. Raghupathi meanwhile cites the case of healthcare, where predictive modelling driven by big data is being used to proactively identify patients who could benefit from preventative care or lifestyle changes[7].

One area in particular where the decision-making capabilities of Big Data are having a significant impact is in the field of risk management [8]. For instance, Big Data can allow companies to map their entire data landscape to help detect sensitive information, such as 16 digit numbers - potentially credit card data - which are not being stored according to regulatory requirements and intervene accordingly. Similarly, detailed analysis of data held about suppliers and customers can help companies to identify those in financial trouble, allowing them to act quickly to minimize their exposure to any potential default[9].

Efficiency and Productivity

In an era when many governments and businesses are facing enormous pressures on their budgets, the desire to reduce waste and inefficiency has never been greater. By providing the information and analysis needed for organisations to better manage and coordinate their operations, Big Data can help to alleviate such problems, leading to the better utilization of scarce resources and a more productive workforce [10].

Within the literature such efficiency savings are most commonly discussed in relation to reductions in energy consumption [11]. For example, a report published by Cisco notes how the city of Olso has managed to reduce the energy consumption of street-lighting by 62 percent through the use of smart solutions driven by Big Data[12]. Increasingly, however, statistical models generated by Big Data analytics are also being utilized to identify potential efficiencies in sourcing, scheduling and routing in a wide range of sectors from agriculture to transport. For example, Newell observes how many local governments are generating large databases of scanned license plates through the use of automated license plate recognition systems (ALPR), which government agencies can then use to help improve local traffic management and ease congestion[13].

Commonly these efficiency savings are only made possible by the often counter-intuitive insights generated by the Big Data models. For example, whilst a human analyst planning a truck route would always tend to avoid 'drive-bys' - bypassing one stop to reach a third before doubling back - Big Data insights can sometimes show such routes to be more efficient. In such cases efficiency saving of this kind would in all likelihood have gone unrecognised by a human analyst, not trained to look for such patterns[14].

Research, Development, and Innovation

Perhaps one of the most intriguing benefits of Big Data is its potential use in the research and development of new products and services. As is highlighted throughout the literature, Big Data can help businesses to gain an understanding of how others perceive their products or identify customer demand and adapt their marketing or indeed the design of their products accordingly[15]. Analysis of social media data, for instance, can provide valuable insights into customers' sentiments towards existing products as well as discover demands for new products and services, allowing businesses to respond more quickly to changes in customer behaviour[16].

In addition to market research, Big Data can also be used during the design and development stage of new products; for example by helping to test thousands of different variations of computer-aided designs in an expedient and cost-effective manner. In doing so, business and designers are able to better assess how minor changes to a products design may affect its cost and performance, thereby improving the cost-effectiveness of the production process and increasing profitability.

Personalisation

For many consumers, perhaps the most familiar application of Big Data is its ability to help tailor products and services to meet their individual preferences. This phenomena is most immediately noticeable on many online services such as Netflix; where data about users activities and preferences is collated and analysed to provide a personalised service, for example by suggesting films or television shows the user may enjoy based upon their previous viewing history[17]. By enabling companies to generate in-depth profiles of their customers, Big Data allows businesses to move past the 'one size fits all' approach to product and services design and instead quickly and cost-effectively adapt their services to better meet customer demand.

In addition to service personalisation, similar profiling techniques are increasingly being utilized in sectors such as healthcare. Here data about a patient's medical history, lifestyle, and even their gene expression patterns are collated, generating a detailed medical profile which can then be used to tailor treatments to meet their specific needs[18]. Targeted care of this sort can not only help to reduce costs for example by helping to avoid over-prescriptions, but may also help to improve the effectiveness of treatments and so ultimately their outcome.

Transparency

If 'knowledge is power', then, - so say Big Data enthusiasts - advances in data analytics and the quantity of data available can give consumers and citizens the knowledge to hold governments and businesses to account, as well as make more informed choices about the products and services they use. Nevertheless, data (even lots of it) does not necessarily equal knowledge. In order for citizens and consumers to be able to fully utilize the vast quantities of data available to them, they must first have some way to make sense of it. For some, Big Data analytics provides just such a solution, allowing users to easily search, compare and analyze available data, thereby helping to challenge existing information asymmetries and make business and government more transparent[19].

In the private sector, Big Data enthusiasts have claimed that Big Data holds the potential to ensure complete transparency of supply chains, enabling concerned consumers to trace the source of their products, for example to ensure that they have been sourced ethically [20]. Furthermore, Big Data is now making accessible information which was previously unavailable to average consumers and challenging companies whose business models rely on the maintenance of information asymmetries.The real-estate industry, for example, relies heavily upon its ability to acquire and control proprietary information, such as transaction data as a competitive asset. In recent years, however, many online services have allowed consumers to effectively bypass agents, by providing alternative sources of real-estate data and enabling prospective buyers and sellers to communicate directly with each other[21]. Therefore, providing consumers with access to large quantities of actionable data . Big Data can help to eliminate established information asymmetries, allowing them to make better and more informed decisions about the products they buy and the services they enlist.

This potential to harness the power of Big Data to improve transparency and accountability can also be seen in the public sector, with many scholars suggesting that greater access to government data could help to stem corruption and make politics more accountable. This view was recently endorsed by the UN who highlighted the potential uses of Big Data to improve policymaking and accountability in a report published by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on the "Data Revolution for Sustainable Development". In the report experts emphasize the potential of what they term the 'data revolution', to help achieve sustainable development goals by for example helping civil society groups and individuals to 'develop data literacy and help communities and individuals to generate and use data, to ensure accountability and make better decisions for themselves' [22].

What are the potential harms of Big Data?

Whilst it is often easy to be seduced by the utopian visions of Big Data evangelists, in order to ensure that Big Data can deliver the types of far-reaching benefits its proponents promise, it is vital that we are also sensitive to its potential harms. Within the existing literature, discussions about the potential harms of Big Data are perhaps understandably dominated by concerns about privacy. Yet as Big Data has begun to play an increasingly central role in our daily lives, a broad range of new threats have begun to emerge including issues related to security and scientific epistemology, as well as problems of marginalisation, discrimination and transparency; each of which will be discussed separately below.

Privacy

By far the biggest concern raised by researchers in relation to Big Data is its risk to privacy. Given that by its very nature Big Data requires extensive and unprecedented access to large quantities of data; it is hardly surprising that many of the benefits outlined above in one way or another exist in tension with considerations of privacy. Although many scholars have called for a broader debate on the effects of Big Data on ethical best practice ^{^[23]}, a comprehensive exploration into the complex debates surrounding the ethical implications of Big Data go far beyond the scope of this article. Instead we will simply attempt to highlight some of the major areas of concern expressed in the literature, including its effects on established principles of privacy and the implication of Big Data on the suitability of existing regulatory frameworks governing privacy and data protection.

1. Re-identification

Traditionally many Big Data enthusiasts have used de-identification - the process of anonymising data by removing personally identifiable information (PII) - as a way of justifying mass collection and use of personal data. By claiming that such measures are sufficient to ensure the privacy of users, data brokers, companies and governments have sought to deflect concerns about the privacy implications of Big Data, and suggest that it can be compliant with existing regulatory and legal frameworks on data protection.

However, many scholars remain concerned about the limits of anonymisation. As Tene and Polonetsky observe 'Once data-such as a clickstream or a cookie number-are linked to an identified individual, they become difficult to disentangle'[24]. They cite the example of University of Texas researchers Narayanan and Shmatikov, who were able to successfully re-identify anonymised Netflix user data by cross referencing it with data stored in a publicly accessible online database. As Narayanan and Shmatikov themselves explained, 'once any piece of data has been linked to a person's real identity, any association between this data and a virtual identity breaks anonymity of the latter' [25]. The quantity and variety of datasets which Big Data analytics has made associable with individuals is therefore expanding the scope of the types of data that can be considered PII, as well as undermining claims that de-identification alone is sufficient to ensure privacy for users.

2. Privacy Frameworks Obsolete?

In recent decades privacy and data protection frameworks based upon a number of so-called 'privacy principles' have formed the basis of most attempts to encourage greater consideration of privacy issues online[26]. For many however, the emergence of Big Data has raised question about the extent to which these 'principles of privacy' are workable in an era of ubiquitous data collection.

Collection Limitation and Data Minimization : Big Data by its very nature requires the collection and processing of very large and very diverse data sets. Unlike other forms scientific research and analysis which utilize various sampling techniques to identify and target the types of data most useful to the research questions, Big Data instead seeks to gather as much data as possible, in order to achieve full resolution of the phenomenon being studied, a task made much easier in recent years as a result of the proliferation of internet enabled devices and the growth of the Internet of Things. This goal of attaining comprehensive coverage exists in tension however with the key privacy principles of collection limitation and data minimization which seek to limit both the quantity and variety of data collected about an individual to the absolute minimum[27].

Purpose Limitation: Since the utility of a given dataset is often not easily identifiable at the time of collection, datasets are increasingly being processed several times for a variety of different purposes. Such practices have significant implications for the principle of purpose limitation, which aims to ensure that organizations are open about their reasons for collecting data, and that they use and process the data for no other purpose than those initially specified [28].

Notice and Consent: The principles of notice and consent have formed the cornerstones of attempts to protect privacy for decades. Nevertheless in an era of ubiquitous data collection, the notion that an individual must be required to provide their explicit consent to allow for the collection and processing of their data seems increasingly antiquated, a relic of an age when it was possible to keep track of your personal data relationships and transactions. Today as data streams become more complex, some have begun to question suitability of consent as a mechanism to protect privacy. In particular commentators have noted how given the complexity of data flows in the digital ecosystem most individuals are not well placed to make truly informed decisions about the management of their data[29]. In one study, researchers demonstrated how by creating the perceptions of control, users were more likely to share their personal information, regardless of whether or not the users had actually gained control [30]. As such, for many, the garnering of consent is increasingly becoming a symbolic box-ticking exercise which achieves little more than to irritate and inconvenience customers whilst providing a burden for companies and a hindrance to growth and innovation [31].

Access and Correction: The principle of 'access and correction' refers to the rights of individuals to obtain personal information being held about them as well as the right to erase, rectify, complete or otherwise amend that data. Aside from the well documented problems with privacy self-management, for many the real-time nature of data generation and analysis in an era of Big Data poses a number of structural challenges to this principle of privacy. As x comments, 'a good amount of data is not pre-processed in a similar fashion as traditional data warehouses. This creates a number of potential compliance problems such as difficulty erasing, retrieving or correcting data. A typical big data system is not built for interactivity, but for batch processing. This also makes the application of changes on a (presumably) static data set difficult'[32].

Opt In-Out: The notion that the provision of data should be a matter of personal choice on the part of the individual and that the individual can, if they chose decide to 'opt-out' of data collection, for example by ceasing use of a particular service, is an important component of privacy and data protection frameworks. The proliferation of internet-enabled devices, their integration into the built environment and the real-time nature of data collection and analysis however are beginning to undermine this concept. For many critics of Big Data the ubiquity of data collection points as well as the compulsory provision of data as a prerequisite for the access and use of many key online services is making opting-out of data collection not only impractical but in some cases impossible. [33]

3. "Chilling Effects"

For many scholars the normalization of large scale data collection is steadily producing a widespread perception of ubiquitous surveillance amongst users. Drawing upon Foucault's analysis of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon and the disciplinary effects of surveillance, they argue that this perception of permanent visibility can cause users to sub-consciously 'discipline' and self- regulate of their own behavior, fearful of being targeted or identified as 'abnormal' [34]. As a result, the pervasive nature of Big Data risks generating a 'chilling effect' on user behavior and free speech.

Although the notion of "chilling effects" is quite prevalent throughout the academic literature on surveillance and security, the difficulty of quantifying the perception and effects of surveillance on online behavior and practices means that there have only been a limited number of empirical studies of this phenomena, and none directly related to the chilling effects of Big Data. One study, conducted by researchers at MIT however, sought to assess the impact of Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA surveillance programs on Google search trends. Nearly 6,000 participants were asked to individually rate certain keywords for their perceived degree of privacy sensitivity along multiple dimensions. Using Google's own publicly available search data, the researchers then analyzed search patterns for these terms before and after the Snowden revelations. In doing so they were able to demonstrate a reduction of around 2.2% in searchers for those terms deemed to be most sensitive in nature. According to the researchers themselves, the results 'suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behaviour from government surveillance on the Internet'[35]. Although this study focussed on the effects on government surveillance, for many privacy advocates the growing pervasiveness of Big Data risks generating similar results. [36]

4. Dignitary Harms of Predictive Decision-Making

In addition to its potentially chilling effects on free speech, the automated nature of Big Data analytics also possess the potential to inflict so-called 'dignitary harms' on individuals, by revealing insights about themselves that they would have preferred to keep private [37].

In an infamous example, following a shopping trip to the retail chain Target, a young girl began to receive mail at her father's house advertising products for babies including, diapers, clothing, and cribs. In response, her father complained to the management of the company, incensed by what he perceived to be the company's attempts to "encourage" pregnancy in teens. A few days later however, the father was forced to contact the store again to apologies, after his daughter had confessed to him that she was indeed pregnant. It was later revealed that Target regularly analyzed the sale of key products such as supplements or unscented lotions in order to generate "pregnancy prediction" scores, which could be used to assess the likelihood that a customer was pregnant and to therefore target them with relevant offers[38]. Such cases, though anecdotal illustrate how Big Data if not adopted sensitively can lead to potential embarrassing information about users being made public.

Security

In relation to cybersecurity Big Data can be viewed to a certain extent as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the unique capabilities of Big Data analytics can provide organizations with new and innovative methods of enhancing their cybersecurity systems. On the other however, the sheer quantity and diversity of data emanating from a variety of sources creates its own security risks.

5. "Honey-Pot"

The larger the quantities of confidential information stored by companies on their databases the more attractive those databases may appear to potential hackers.

6. Data Redundancy and Dispersion

Inherent to Big Data systems is the duplication of data to many locations in order to optimize query processing. Data is dispersed across a wide range of data repositories in different servers, in different parts of the world. As a result it may be difficult for organizations to accurately locate and secure all items of personal information.

Epistemological and Methodological Implications

In 2008 Chris Anderson infamously proclaimed the 'end of theory'. Writing for Wired Magazine, Anderson predicted that the coming age of Big Data would create a 'deluge of data' so large that the scientific methods of hypothesis, sampling and testing would be rendered 'obsolete' [39]. 'There is now a better way' Anderson insisted, 'Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot'[40].

In spite of these bold claims however, many theorists remain skeptical of Big Data's methodological benefits and have expressed concern about its potential implications for conventional scientific epistemologies. For them the increased prominence of Big Data analytics in science does not signal a paradigmatic transition to a more enlightened data-driven age, but a hollowing out of the scientific method and an abandonment of casual knowledge in favor of shallow correlative analysis[41].

7. Obfuscation

Although Big Data analytics can be utilized to study almost any phenomena where enough data exists, many theorists have warned that simply because Big Data analytics can be used does not necessarily mean that they should be used[42]. Bigger is not always better and indeed the sheer quantity of data made available to users may in fact act to obscure certain insights. Whereas traditional scientific methods use sampling techniques to identify the most important and relevant data, Big Data by contrast encourages the collection and use of as much data as possible, in an attempt to attain full resolution of the phenomena being studied. However, not all data is equally useful and simply inputting as much data as possible into an algorithm is unlikely to produce accurate results and may instead obscure key insights.

Indeed, whilst the promise of automation is central to a large part of Big Data's appeal, researchers observe that most Big Data analysis still requires an element of human judgement to filter out the 'good' data from the 'bad', and to decide what aspects of the data are relevant to the research objectives. As Boyd and Crawford observe, 'in the case of social media data, there is a 'data cleaning' process: making decisions about what attributes and variables will be counted, and which will be ignored. This process is inherently subjective"^{^[43]}.

Google's Flu Trend project provides an illustrative example of how Big Data's tendency to try to maximise data inputs can produce misleading results. Designed to accurately track flu outbreaks based upon data collected from Google searches, the project was initially proclaimed to be a great success. Gradually however it became apparent that the results being produced were not reflective of the reality on the ground. Later it was discovered that the algorithms used by the project to interpret search terms were insufficiently accurate to filter out anomalies in searches, such as those related to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. As such, despite the great promise of Big Data, scholars insist it remains critical to be mindful of its limitations, remain selective about the types of data included in the analysis and exercise caution and intuition whenever interpreting its results ^{^[44]}.

8. "Apophenia"

In complete contrast to the problem of obfuscation, Boyd and Crawford observe how Big Data may also lead to the practice of 'apophenia', a phenomena whereby analysts interpret patterns where none exist, 'simply because enormous quantities of data can offer connections that radiate in all directions" ^{^[45]}. David Leinweber for example demonstrated that data mining techniques could show strong but ultimately spurious correlations between changes in the S&P 500 stock index and butter production in Bangladesh [46]. Such spurious correlation between disparate and unconnected phenomena are a common feature of Big Data analytics and risks leading to unfounded conclusions being draw from the data.

Although Leinweber's primary focus of analysis was the use of Data-Mining technologies, his observations are equally applicable to Big Data. Indeed the tendency amongst Big Data analysts to marginalise the types of domain specific expertise capable of differentiating between relevant and irrelevant correlations in favour of algorithmic automation can in many ways be seen to exacerbate many of the problems Leinweber identified.

9. From Causation to Correlation

Closely related to the problem of Aphonenia is the concern that Big Data's emphasis on correlative analysis risks leading to an abandonment of the pursuit of causal knowledge in favour of shallow descriptive accounts of scientific phenomena[47].

For many, Big Data enthusiasts 'correlation is enough', producing inherently meaningful results interpretable by anyone without the need for pre-existing theory or hypothesis. Whilst proponents of Big Data claim that such an approach allows them to produce objective knowledge, by cleansing the data of any kind of philosophical or ideological commitment, for others by neglecting the knowledge of domain experts, Big Data risks generating a shallow type of analysis, since it fails to adequately embed observations within a pre-existing body of knowledge.

This commitment to an empiricist epistemology and methodological monism is particularly problematic in the context of studies of human behaviour, where actions cannot be calculated and anticipated using quantifiable data alone. In such instances, a certain degree of qualitative analysis of social, historical and cultural variables may be required in order to make the data meaningful by embedding it within a broader body of knowledge. The abstract and intangible nature of these variables requires a great deal of expert knowledge and interpretive skill to comprehend. It is therefore vital that the knowledge of domain specific experts is properly utilized to help 'evaluate the inputs, guide the process, and evaluate the end products within the context of value and validity'[48].

As such, although Big Data can provide unrivalled accounts of "what" people do, it fundamentally fails to deliver robust explanations of "why" people do it. This problem is especially critical in the case of public policy-making since without any indication of the motivations of individuals, policy-makers can have no basis upon which to intervene to incentivise more positive outcomes.

Digital Divides and Marginalisation

Today data is a highly valuable commodity. The market for data in and of itself has been steadily growing in recent years with the business models of many online services now formulated around the strategy of harvesting data from users^{^[49]}. As with the commodification of anything however, inequalities can easily emerge between the haves and have not's. Whilst the quantity of data currently generated on a daily basis is many times greater than at any other point in human history, the vast majority of this data is owned and tightly controlled by a very small number of technology companies and data brokers. Although in some instances limited access to data may be granted to university researchers or to those willing and able to pay a fee, in many cases data remains jealously guarded by data brokers, who view it as an important competitive asset. As a result these data brokers and companies risk becoming the gatekeepers of the Big Data revolution, adjudicating not only over who can benefit from Big Data, but also in what context and under what terms. For many such inconsistencies and inequalities in access to data raises serious doubts about just how widely distributed the benefits of Big Data will be. Others go even further claiming that far from helping to alleviate inequalities, the advent of Big Data risks exacerbating already significant digital divides that exist as well as creating new ones ^{^[50]}.

10. Anti-Competitive Practices

As a result of the reluctance of large companies to share their data, there increasingly exists a divide in access between small start-ups companies and their larger and more established competitors. Thus, new entrants to the marketplace may be at a competitive disadvantage in relation to large and well established enterprises, being as they are unable to harness the analytical power of the vast quantities of data available to large companies by virtue of their privileged market position. Since the performance of many online services are today often intimately connected with the collation and use of users data, some researchers have suggested that this inequity in access to data could lead to a reduction in competition in the online marketplace, and ultimately therefore to less innovation and choice for consumers[51].

As a result researchers including Nathan Newman of New York University have called for a reassessment and reorientation of anti-trust investigations and regulatory approaches more generally to 'to focus on how control of personal data by corporations can entrench monopoly power and harm consumer welfare in an economy shaped increasingly by the power of "big data"'[52]. Similarly a report produced by the European Data Protection Supervisor concluded that, 'The scope for abuse of market dominance and harm to the consumer through refusal of access to personal information and opaque or misleading privacy policies may justify a new concept of consumer harm for competition enforcement in digital economy' [53].

11. Research

From a research perspective barriers to access to data caused by proprietary control of datasets are problematic, since certain types of research could become restricted to those privileged enough to be granted access to data. Meanwhile those denied access are left not only incapable of conducting similar research projects, but also unable to test, verify or reproduce the findings of those who do. The existence of such gatekeepers may also lead to reluctance on the part of researchers to undertake research critical of the companies, upon whom they rely for access, leading to a chilling effect on the types of research conducted[54].

12. Inequality

Whilst bold claims are regularly made about the potential of Big Data to deliver economic development and generate new innovations, some critics of remain concerned about how equally the benefits of Big Data will be distributed and the effects this could have on already established digital divides [55].

Firstly, whilst the power of Big Data is already being utilized effectively by most economically developed nations, the same cannot necessarily be said for many developing countries. A combination of lower levels of connectivity, poor information infrastructure, underinvestment in information technologies and a lack of skills and trained personnel make it far more difficult for the developing world to fully reap the rewards of Big Data. As a consequence the Big Data revolution risks deepening global economic inequality as developing countries find themselves unable to compete with data rich nations whose governments can more easily exploit the vast quantities of information generated by their technically literate and connected citizens.

Likewise, to the extent that the Big Data analytics is playing a greater role in public policy-making, the capacity of individuals to generate large quantities of data, could potentially impact upon the extent to which they can provide inputs into the policy-making process. In a country such as India for example, where there exist high levels of inequality in access to information and communication technologies and the internet, there remain large discrepancies in the quantities of data produced by individuals. As a result there is a risk that those who lack access to the means of producing data will be disenfranchised, as policy-making processes become configured to accommodate the needs and interests of a privilege minority [56].

Discrimination

13. Injudicious or Discriminatory Outcomes

Big Data presents the opportunity for governments, businesses and individuals to make better, more informed decisions at a much faster pace. Whilst this can evidently provide innumerable opportunities to increase efficiency and mitigate risk, by removing human intervention and oversight from the decision-making process Big Data analysts run the risk of becoming blind to unfair or injudicious results generated by skewed or discriminatory programming of the algorithms.

There currently exists a large number of automated decision-making algorithms in operation across a broad range of sectors including most notably perhaps those used to asses an individual's suitability for insurance or credit. In either of these cases faults in the programming or discriminatory assessment criteria can have potentially damaging implications for the individual, who may as a result be unable to attain credit or insurance. This concern with the potentially discriminatory aspects of Big Data is prevalent throughout the literature and real life examples have been identified by researchers in a large number of major sectors in which Big Data is currently being used[57].

Yu for instance, cites the case of the insurance company Progressive, which required its customers to install 'Snapsnot' - a small monitoring device - into their cars in order to receive their best rates. The device tracked and reported the customers driving habits, and offered discounts to those drivers who drove infrequently, broke smoothly, and avoided driving at night - behaviors that correlate with a lower risk of future accidents. Although this form of price differentiation provided incentives for customers to drive more carefully, it also had the unintended consequence of unfairly penalizing late-night shift workers. As Yu observes, 'for late night shift-workers, who are disproportionately poorer and from minority groups, this differential pricing provides no benefit at all. It categorizes them as similar to late-night party-goers, forcing them to carry more of the cost of the intoxicated and other irresponsible driving that happens disproportionately at night'[58].

In another example, it is noted how Big Data is increasingly being used to evaluate applicants for entry-level service jobs. One method of evaluating applicants is by the length of their commute - the rationale being that employees with shorter commutes are statistically more likely to remain in the job longer. However, since most service jobs are typically located in town centers and since poorer neighborhoods tend to be those on the outskirts of town, such criteria can have the effect of unfairly disadvantaging those living in economically deprived areas. Consequently such metrics of evaluation can therefore also unintentionally act to reinforce existing social inequalities by making it more difficult for economically disadvantaged communities to work their way out of poverty[59].

14. Lack of Algorithmic Transparency.

If data is indeed the 'oil of the 21^st century'[60] then algorithms are very much the engines which are driving innovation and economic development. For many companies the quality of their algorithms is often a crucial factor in providing them with a market advantage over their competitor. Given their importance, the secrets behind the programming of algorithms are often closely guarded by companies, and are typically classified as trade secrets and as such are protected by intellectual property rights. Whilst companies may claim that such secrecy is necessary to encourage market competition and innovation, many scholars are becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding the design of these most crucial tools.

In particular there is a growing sentiment common amongst many researchers that there currently exists a chronic lack of accountability and transparency in terms of how Big Data algorithms are programmed and what criteria are used to determine outcomes ^{^[61]}. As Frank Pasquale observed,

' hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy'[62].

As such, without increased transparency in algorithmic design, instances of Big Data discrimination may go unnoticed as analyst are unable to access the information necessary to identify them.

Conclusion

Today Big Data presents us with as many challenges as it does benefits. Whilst Big Data analytics can offer incredible opportunities to reduce inefficiency, improve decision-making, and increase transparency, concerns remain about the effects of these new technologies on issues such as privacy, equality and discrimination. Although the tensions between the competing demands of Big Data advocates and their critics may appear irreconcilable; only by highlighting these points of contestation can we hope to begin to ask the types of important and difficult questions necessary to do so, including; how can we reconcile Big Data's need for massive inputs of personal information with core principles of privacy such as data minimization and collection limitation? What processes and procedures need to be put in place during the design and implementation of Big Data models and algorithms to provide sufficient transparency and accountability so as to avoid instances of discrimination? What measures can be used to help close digital divides and ensure that the benefits of Big Data are shared equitably? Questions such as these are today only just beginning to be addressed; each however, will require careful consideration and reasoned debate, if Big Data is to deliver on its promises and truly fulfil its 'revolutionary' potential.

[1] Gantz, J., &Reinsel, D. Extracting Value from Chaos, IDC, (2011), available at: http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-extracting-value-from-chaos-ar.pdf

[2] Meeker, M. & Yu, L. Internet Trends, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, (2013), http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-internet-trends-2013 .

[3] Douglas, L. "3D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity and Variety" . Gartner, (2001)

[4] Boyd, D., and Crawford, K. 'Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon', Information, Communication & Society,Vol 15, Issue 5, (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878, Tene, O., &Polonetsky, J. Big Data for All: Privacy and User Control in the Age of Analytics, 11 Nw. J. Tech. &Intell. Prop. 239 (2013) http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol11/iss5/1

[5] Ibid.,

[6] Joh. E, 'Policing by Numbers: Big Data and the Fourth Amendment', Washington Law Review, Vol. 85: 35, (2014) https://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1319/89WLR0035.pdf?sequence=1

[7] Raghupathi, W., &Raghupathi, V. Big data analytics in healthcare: promise and potential. Health Information Science and Systems, (2014)

[8] Anderson, R., & Roberts, D. 'Big Data: Strategic Risks and Opportunities, Crowe Horwarth Global Risk Consulting Limited, (2012) https://www.crowehorwath.net/uploadedfiles/crowe-horwath-global/tabbed_content/big%20data%20strategic%20risks%20and%20opportunities%20white%20paper_risk13905.pdf

[9] Ibid.

[10] Kshetri. N, 'The Emerging role of Big Data in Key development issues: Opportunities, challenges, and concerns'. Big Data & Society (2014)http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2053951714564227.abstract,

[11] Tene, O., &Polonetsky, J. Big Data for All: Privacy and User Control in the Age of Analytics, 11 Nw. J. Tech. &Intell. Prop. 239 (2013) http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol11/iss5/1

[12] Cisco, 'IoE-Driven Smart Street Lighting Project Allows Oslo to Reduce Costs, Save Energy, Provide Better Service', Cisco, (2014) Available at: http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/m/en_us/ioe/public_sector/pdfs/jurisdictions/Oslo_Jurisdiction_Profile_051214REV.pdf

[13] Newell, B, C. Local Law Enforcement Jumps on the Big Data Bandwagon: Automated License Plate Recognition Systems, Information Privacy, and Access to Government Information. University of Washington - the Information School, (2013) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2341182

[14] Morris, D. Big data could improve supply chain efficiency-if companies would let it, Fortune, August 5 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/08/05/big-data-supply-chain/

[15] Tucker, Darren S., & Wellford, Hill B., Big Mistakes Regarding Big Data, Antitrust Source, American Bar Association, (2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2549044

[16] Davenport, T., Barth., Bean, R. How is Big Data Different, MITSloan Management Review, Fall (2012), Available at, http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-big-data-is-different/

[17] Tucker, Darren S., & Wellford, Hill B., Big Mistakes Regarding Big Data, Antitrust Source, American Bar Association, (2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2549044

[18] Raghupathi, W., &Raghupathi, V. Big data analytics in healthcare: promise and potential. Health Information Science and Systems, (2014)

[19] Brown, B., Chui, M., Manyika, J. 'Are you Ready for the Era of Big Data?', McKinsey Quarterly, (2011), Available at, http://www.t-systems.com/solutions/download-mckinsey-quarterly-/1148544_1/blobBinary/Study-McKinsey-Big-data.pdf ; Benady, D., 'Radical transparency will be unlocked by technology and big data', Guardian (2014) Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/radical-transparency-unlocked-technology-big-data

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] United Nations, A World That Counts: Mobilising the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, Report prepared at the request of the United Nations Secretary-General,by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolutionfor Sustainable Development. (2014), pg. 18, see also, Hilbert, M. Big Data for Development: From Information- to Knowledge Societies (2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2205145

[23] Greenleaf, G. Abandon All Hope? Foreword for Issue 37(2) of the UNSW Law Journal on 'Communications Surveillance, Big Data, and the Law' ,(2014) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2490425##, Boyd, D., and Crawford, K. 'Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon', Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 15, Issue 5, (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

[24] Tene, O., &Polonetsky, J. Big Data for All: Privacy and User Control in the Age of Analytics, 11 Nw. J. Tech. &Intell. Prop. 239 (2013) http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol11/iss5/1

[25] Narayanan and Shmatikov quoted in Ibid.,

[26] OECD, Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data, The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, (1999); The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, EU Data Protection Directive, "Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data," (1995)

[27] Barocas, S., &Selbst, A, D., Big Data's Disparate Impact,California Law Review, Vol. 104, (2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2477899

[28] Article 29 Working Group., Opinion 03/2013 on purpose limitation, Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, (2013) available at: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2013/wp203_en.pdf

[29] Solove, D, J. Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 1880 (2013), Available at: http://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2093&context=faculty_publications

[30] Brandimarte, L., Acquisti, A., & Loewenstein, G., Misplaced Confidences:

Privacy and the Control Paradox, Ninth Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) June 7-8 2010, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, (2010), available at: https://fpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Misplaced-Confidences-acquisti-FPF.pdf

[31] Solove, D, J., Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 1880 (2013), Available at: http://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2093&context=faculty_publications

[32] Yu, W, E., Data., Privacy and Big Data-Compliance Issues and Considerations, ISACA Journal, Vol. 3 2014 (2014), available at: http://www.isaca.org/Journal/archives/2014/Volume-3/Pages/Data-Privacy-and-Big-Data-Compliance-Issues-and-Considerations.aspx

[33] Ramirez, E., Brill, J., Ohlhausen, M., Wright, J., & McSweeny, T., Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability, Federal Trade Commission (2014) https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/data-brokers-call-transparency-accountability-report-federal-trade-commission-may-2014/140527databrokerreport.pdf

[34] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, (1977)

[35] Marthews, A., & Tucker, C., Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior (2015), available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2412564

[36] Boyd, D., and Crawford, K. 'Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon', Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 15, Issue 5, (2012)

[37] Hirsch, D., That's Unfair! Or is it? Big Data, Discrimination and the FTC's Unfairness Authority, Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. 103, available at: http://www.kentuckylawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/103KyLJ345.pdf

[38] Hill, K., How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Didhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

[39] Anderson, C (2008) "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete", WIRED, June 23 2008, www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/

[40] Ibid.,

[41] Kitchen, R (2014) Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts, Big Data & Society, April-June 2014: 1-12

[42] Boyd D and Crawford K (2012) Critical questions for big data. Information, Communication and Society 15(5): 662-679

[43] Ibid

[44] Lazer, D., Kennedy, R., King, G., &Vespignani, A. " The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis ." Science 343 (2014): 1203-1205. Copy at http://j.mp/1ii4ETo

[45] Boyd, D., and Crawford, K. 'Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon', Information, Communication & Society,Vol 15, Issue 5, (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

[46] Leinweber, D. (2007) 'Stupid data miner tricks: overfitting the S&P 500', The Journal of Investing, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 15-22. http://m.shookrun.com/documents/stupidmining.pdf

[47] Boyd D and Crawford K (2012) Critical questions for big data. Information, Communication and Society 15(5): 662-679

[48] McCue, C., Data Mining and Predictive Analysis: Intelligence Gathering and Crime Analysis, Butterworth-Heinemann, (2014)

[49] De Zwart, M. J., Humphreys, S., & Van Dissel, B. Surveillance, big data and democracy: lessons for Australia from the US and UK. Http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/issue/volume-37-No-2. (2014) Retrieved from https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/90048

[50] Boyd, D., and Crawford, K. 'Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon', Information, Communication & Society,Vol 15, Issue 5, (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878; Newman, N., Search, Antitrust and the Economics of the Control of User Data, 31 YALE J. ON REG. 401 (2014)

[51] Newman, N., The Cost of Lost Privacy: Search, Antitrust and the Economics of the Control of User Data (2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2265026, Newman, N. ,Search, Antitrust and the Economics of the Control of User Data, 31 YALE J. ON REG. 401 (2014)

[52] Ibid.,

[53] European Data Protection Supervisor, Privacy and competitiveness in the age of big data:

The interplay between data protection, competition law and consumer protection in the Digital Economy, (2014), available at: https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/shared/Documents/Consultation/Opinions/2014/14-03-26_competitition_law_big_data_EN.pdf

[54] Boyd, D., and Crawford, K. 'Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon', Information, Communication & Society,Vol 15, Issue 5, (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

[55] Schradie, J., Big Data Not Big Enough? How the Digital Divide Leaves People Out, MediaShift, 31 July 2013, (2013), available at: http://mediashift.org/2013/07/big-data-not-big-enough-how-digital-divide-leaves-people-out/

[56] Crawford, K., The Hidden Biases in Big Data, Harvard Business Review, 1 April 2013 (2013), available at: https://hbr.org/2013/04/the-hidden-biases-in-big-data

[57] Robinson, D., Yu, H., Civil Rights, Big Data, and Our Algorithmic Future, (2014) http://bigdata.fairness.io/introduction/

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid

[60] Rotellla, P., Is Data The New Oil? Forbes, 2 April 2012, (2012), available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/perryrotella/2012/04/02/is-data-the-new-oil/

[61] Barocas, S., &Selbst, A, D., Big Data's Disparate Impact,California Law Review, Vol. 104, (2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2477899; Kshetri. N, 'The Emerging role of Big Data in Key development issues: Opportunities, challenges, and concerns'. Big Data & Society(2014) http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2053951714564227.abstract

[62] Pasquale, F., The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, Harvard University Press , (2015)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/benefits-and-harms-of-big-data

Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics

praskrishna — 2015-12-29T15:54:30Z

Facebook launched its "Save Free Basics" campaign last week, asking users to support "digital equality" in India.

The article by Anita Babu was published in Business Standard on December 22, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Nearly a week after Facebook launched its controversial "Save Free Basics" campaign in India, the net neutrality debate has come to the fore again. This time around, India's star internet entrepreneurs such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive of Paytm, and Dippak Khurana of Vserv have joined the crusade for free internet.

"Oh my fellow Indians, either choose this and do a jihad for independent internet later or pick net neutrality today," Sharma of Paytm, India's largest digital wallet, tweeted on Tuesday. "Digital world war heads! We have to load http://www.savetheinternet.in for #NetNeutrality," said Sharma in another tweet. Savetheinternet.in, a volunteer group, has urged people to lend their support for an unfettered internet in India.

Facebook launched its "Save Free Basics" campaign last week, asking users to support "digital equality" in India, in response to a paper by the telecom regulator which is seeking comments on differential pricing practices like Airtel Zero of Facebook's Free Basics, which was earlier called Internet.org.

Facebook launched a print and digital media campaign for a "connected India" asking users to give a missed call, automatically sending a message to the regulator in support of Free Basics.

Facebook has also been asking its users to send an e-mail to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) supporting "essential internet for all". The social network claims to have gained support from 3.2 million of its 130 million users in India.

On Tuesday, the social media giant earned flak for soliciting support from international users for the campaign. Later, Facebook withdrew the campaign outside India claiming it was an "accident".

However, some net neutrality volunteers said that many of Facebook's 3.2 million supporters for Free Basics were non-Indians.

Activists and tech leaders are calling the Facebook campaign "misleading" and "destructive".

"People are being tricked into supporting Free Basics under the guise of digital equality," wrote Amol Malviya, former chief technology officer at Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce firm, on his blog. "Notice the language on the page? It makes any critic of Free Basics appear to be an enemy of digital equality. People will listen to the critics' arguments much lesser when there's a question mark on their intent."

Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of MediaNama, said India should question the intent of Facebook and its campaign. "There is misrepresentation in the language they have used. It makes people assume that we can't have universal internet access without net-neutrality violating services such as Free Basics. It is important for a country to take note of how much power a platform with as much reach as Facebook has to influence an important government process," said Pahwa, who led a fight against TRAI's move to allow telecom firms charge for internet services like WhatsApp and Hike.

The basic premise of net neutrality is that of freedom - an open internet that protects and enables free communication. Anything that takes away this freedom violates the fundamentals of free Internet. "Facebook's Free Basics is neither free nor basic - it is a cleverly disguised way of walling a garden, and hardly the philanthropic initiative that it is marketed to be," said Khurana of Vserv. He urged internet users to uninstall the Facebook App from their mobile phones in protest.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said, "Facebook, a foreign company, is allowed to campaign with impunity, but NGOs receiving funding from foreign trusts are subject to all manners of restrictions and may not campaign in India."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-anita-babu-december-23-2015-start-up-india-turns-the-heat-on-facebook-free-basics

Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul

praskrishna — 2015-12-29T15:32:19Z

Facebook's media onslaught to garner support for its controversial Free Basics program is almost inescapable. Multi-page ads in national dailies, outdoor hoardings, television spots and perhaps the most effective of them all - Facebook notifications.

The blog post was published in IBN Live on December 29, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took out time during his paternity leave to pen an op-ed in The Times of India in which he tried to drum up support for the Free Basics service that offers people without the Internet free access to a handful of websites through mobile phones.

"If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services," Zuckerberg wrote, comparing the Internet to a library, public health care and education.

Zuckerberg said he was surprised that there is such a big debate around Free Basics in India.

The debate on Net neutrality stirred across India after Airtel decided to charge separately for Internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested. Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for 'Airtel Zero' service along with Facebook's Internet.org service, later renamed as 'Free Basics.'

Net neutrality implies that equal treatment be accorded to all Internet traffic and no priority be given to an entity or company based on payment to content or service providers such as telecom companies, which is seen as discriminatory.

Zuckerberg's personal appeal comes amid fierce criticism from Net neutrality activists who say Free Basics violates the principle that the whole Internet should be available to all and unrestricted by any one company.

In an op-ed response in The Times of India by Medianama's Nikhil Pahwa, who is also a volunteer with savetheinternet.in that is spearheading the campaign for Net neutrality and against Free Basics, asked why Facebook didn't opt for an option that doesn't violate Net neutrality and "why has Facebook chosen the current model for Free Basics, which gives users a selection of around a hundred sites (including a personal blog and a real estate company homepage), while rejecting the option of giving the poor free access to the open, plural and diverse web?"

Countries like the US, Chile, Netherlands and Brazil have already adopted Net Neutrality that doesn't allow discrimination of Internet content or charge users differently based on the content, site, or platform they consume, the debate is still raging in India with the last date for comments on a paper floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that is open for comments till December 30 and counter comments till January 7.

Facebook is using the might of its about 140 million user base in India urging them to send messages to TRAI supporting Free Basics.

A few companies such as Truecaller is attempting to counter Facebook's push by sending out messages to its millions of users in India asking them to petition TRAI against Facebook's Free Basics.

Earlier this month the TRAI ordered Reliance Communications, the sole mobile operator for the Free Basics in India, to suspend it temporarily.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, believes that Free Basics isn't exactly the evil that opponents picture it as. "In the absence of free Internet, Free Basics is a great enabler of freedom of speech. We ought to keep that in mind when asking for a ban," he said.

Meanwhile, Facebook's Internet.org vice president Chris Daniels, in a Reddit AMA said that Facebook was open to scrutiny of the process by any third party agency like IAMAI or NASSCOM and "We'd also be happy to have Twitter, Google+, etc on the platform which many people have asked for."

Earlier, in July this year the Department of Telecom panel on net neutrality has opposed projects like Facebook's Internet.org, which allow access to certain websites without mobile data charges, while suggesting that similar plans such as Airtel Zero be allowed with prior clearance from TRAI.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-goes-out-all-guns-blazing-in-push-for-free-basics-net-neutrality-advocates-cry-foul

Second Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation

praskrishna — 2015-12-27T16:16:09Z

This conference organized by the International Telecommunications Society, IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad was held in New Delhi from December 13 to 15, 2015. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Going beyond Cybersecurity: Internet Governance Issues".

Click to read the conference details published by International Telecommunications Society here. Download the Agenda here.

The wide availability of Internet/broadband has been a significant driver of economic growth especially in developed countries. On the contrary, emerging economies lag far behind in Internet/broadband penetration even in urban areas. Further, as emerging economies have poor infrastructure as well as physical service deployment platforms, higher penetration of Internet/broadband could serve as an effective platform for social programmes' delivery. However, the increasing gap in penetration, speed and adoption of Internet/broadband between developed and emerging economies is likely to reduce the ability of the latter to participate in an equitable way in the global knowledge and service economy. As the gap increases, the ability of emerging economies to bridge the digital divide becomes more significantly daunting and is a major cause of concern for policymakers.

The challenges for connectivity in the developed and emerging economies are diverse. While developed countries face issues in providing higher speeds, bandwidth and connectivity among devices to large parts of their population who have basic Internet/broadband, emerging economies still struggle for establishing universal access and providing basic Internet/broadband to their citizens. Even where Internet/broadband is available, adoption may not be adequate especially in the rural and remote areas.

The wired infrastructure in emerging economies is poor, however, the mobile phones are ubiquitous. Therefore, mobile Internet/broadband could be an effective way for increasing Internet/broadband penetration. Technological and regulatory changes, especially those related to spectrum, are necessary to leverage these opportunities.

A related aspect of growth in Internet/broadband is the increasing role of Internet governance frameworks at national, regional and international levels. The challenge for nations is how to leverage this framework for growth of Internet/broadband and play a greater role in Internet governance.

A multi-pronged approach is required to address these diverse issues. A supportive environment for policy, regulatory and technology development is required. This conference provides a platform for dialogue between researchers, industry practitioners, government and regulatory bodies to search for collaborative solutions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/second-regional-conference-on-connectivity-for-all-future-technologies-markets-and-regulation

A Scam Masquerading as Santa

praskrishna — 2015-12-26T01:23:56Z

Christmas is here and social media is abuzz with celebrations of its spirit.

The article by Apurva Venkat & Vandana Kamath was published in Bangalore Mirror on December 25, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

Lurking in the dark though, is an online scam that has been turning expectations of those participating in it into heartache. Secret Santa, a gift exchange programme, has lured many people into its fold. The exchange programme invites people to join a chain of gift givers (and hopeful receivers) through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The promised deal is that every person in the chain stands to get 36 gifts against one that they make.

A person interested in being part of the chain, has to post their agreement on their wall, and invite six more participants. The scheme encourages the person to send a gift valued below Rs 600 to a person whose name and address is at the top of a long list of participants that is sent as a private message. Once they have made the gift, they remove the name of the person in first place, and replace it with the person in the second place. The new recruit then puts their name in the second place of the list.

Social media experts call it as nothing but a pyramid scheme scam. While this has gone viral in the city only recently, the UK and USA governments have already warned their citizens against falling prey to such scams and termed them illegal. While most victims of the scam are sending books as gifts to strangers, there are others who have been gifting cosmetics, chocolates or Christmas gift packs. Of course, most are doing it in the hope of getting back similar gifts.

Chaitanya KM, Kannada film director, who sent a book as a gift under the scheme, told Bangalore Mirror, "I sent one book and seven people have asked me for my address but I have not received anything in return. I haven't heard about this scam but I do not mind gifting a book anyways without getting anything in return." Some hope that Secret Santa will work as an eye opener for city social media users.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society, said, "This seems to be a rumour to which many are falling prey. This will work like net-user education, and people will get wiser after they are cheated. Some form of awareness needs to be done because at least two per cent of people will respond to this."

Facebook bars it
According to Facebook rules, multi-level marketing on the platform is prohibited. The Facebook agreement terms state that engaging in things like pyramid schemes is not allowed. Also posting personal details on Facebook makes one vulnerable to many more identity fraud that can follow.

IT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

Not only are pyramid schemes like this one mathematically impossible, they're also against Facebook's terms of use. The list of theoretical participants multiplies into millions of people in just a few steps of Secret Santa. The idea sounds feasible but it is not. Going from step one it starts with six people, who each invite six more, who all send gifts to the person in the number one spot before they're moved off the list. However, as it spreads, the number of people involved increases far more than would ever take part — if the 36 each invite six people then the total number of participants is 216 going on to 1,296 and so on. Only those who start the schemes or enter in the second round stand a chance of receiving something in return and even in that case it is just one gift not 36 as the post claims. Those who join later never ever reach the top of the list.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/a-scam-masquerading-as-santa

We are anonymous, we are legion

Zuckerberg's India Backlash Imperils Free Global Web Vision

Reply to RTI Application under RTI Act of 2005 from Vanya Rakesh

Facebook’s Free Basics Shuts Down In Egypt, Continuing Troubled Run

Free Basics: Negating net parity

Gatekeeping powers

December 2015 Bulletin

Highlights

Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015

India’s net neutrality debate is unique and complex

Mark Zuckerberg’s India backlash imperils vision for free global web

Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash

Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's ‘Free Basics’ App

The Indian Internet bites back

Facebook targets open Web activists

Zuckerberg vs. SavetheInternet

Benefits and Harms of "Big Data"

Introduction

What are the potential benefits of Big Data?

What are the potential harms of Big Data?

Privacy

Security

Epistemological and Methodological Implications

Digital Divides and Marginalisation

Discrimination

Conclusion

Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics

Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul

Second Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation

A Scam Masquerading as Santa