We are anonymous, we are legion

A Privacy Round Table in Delhi

praskrishna — 2013-04-12T09:33:46Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry cordially invite you to a "Privacy Round Table" at the FICCI Federation House in Tansen Marg, New Delhi on April 13, 2013, from 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

To discuss, in furtherance of Internet Governance Initiatives and Dialogue in 2013, the “Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy” by the Justice AP Shah Committee, and the text of the Citizens’ Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013, drafted by the Centre for Internet and Society.

The discussions and recommendations from the meeting will be published into a compilation, and presented at the Internet Governance meeting planned for October 2013.

Time	Detail
10.30 11.30	Overview of Justice AP Shah report: Purpose, principles, and framework
11.30 12.00	Tea
12.00 13.00	Overview, explanation, and discussion on the Citizens’ Privacy Protection Bill 2013
13.00 14.00	Lunch
14.00 16.00	In depth explanation and discussions regarding the Citizens’ Privacy Protection Bill 2013 (time for review and comments)
16.00 16.30	Tea

Confirmations and RSVP

Please send your email confirmations for attending the first New Delhi Roundtable on April 13, 2013, to Snehashish Ghosh at snehashish@cis-india.org, mobile no. +91- 9902763325,latest by end-of-business 5:30 p.m. on Friday April 5, 2013. As the conference is a roundtable dialogue, we request that attendees submit a brief introduction about themselves and their interest in the topic.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-round-table

Parliament panel blasts govt over ambiguous internet laws

praskrishna — 2013-03-28T08:37:30Z

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation has come out with a report in which it has lambasted the government and asked it to make changes to IT rules that govern internet-related cases in India.

This article by Ishan Srivastava was published in the Times of India on March 28, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

It said in the report that multiple clauses in the laws had inherent ambiguity and that discrepancies exist in the government's stand on whether some rules are mandatory or only of advisory nature.

The committee said that inherent ambiguity of words like 'blasphemy' and `disparaging', among others, could lead to harassment of people as has happened with Section 66A of the IT Act repeatedly in recent times. Incidents include the arrest of two girls over 'liking' a Facebook post and a defamation case against an individual for an 'offensive' tweet. It has also been used by multiple politicians to suppress voices of dissent by branding them as 'defamatory'.

These ambiguous terms are used in the Intermediary Guidelines rules, passed in April 2011, which the committtee said could lead to legitimate speech being removed. Also, the Standing Committee noted that many categories of speech prohibited by the Intermediary Guidelines rules were not prohibited by any statute, and hence could not be prohibited by the government through these rules. The Standing Committee has asked the government to ensure that "no new category of crimes or offences is created" by these rules.

The committee also said that discrepancies exist in the nature of implementation of these laws. While the government's stand is that Intermediary Guidelines are only "of advisory nature and self-regulation" and that "it is not mandatory for the Intermediary to disable the information", the wording of the laws suggest otherwise. In many of the laws, terms like "shall act" within 36 hours are used. The committee said that there was a "need for clarity on the aforesaid contradiction" and "safeguards to protect against any abuse" since it could lead to censorship.

"The government has told the Committee that the rules are for "self-regulation", but they in fact aren't. The rules dictate what content cannot be hosted. And our research found that intermediaries react to fake takedown requests too, just to avoid being liable for their users' content. This is not self-regulation, but government-mandated private censorship," said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). CIS is a Bangalore-based non-profit body looking at issues of public accountability, privacy, free expression, and openness, and has consistently argued that many parts of the IT Act are unconstitutional.

The committee also suggested that all evidence relating to foreign websites refusing to honour Indian laws should be made public and a public debate should be encouraged as the internet is a global phenomena. Recently there have been instances of issues between the Indian government and tech giants like Facebook and Google related to censorship and taking down of 'offensive' and 'defamatory' content.

While the government's stand is that Intermediary Guidelines are only "of advisory nature and self-regulation" and that "it is not mandatory for the Intermediary to disable the information," the wording of the laws suggest otherwise.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-ishan-srivastava-march-28-2013-parliament-panel-blasts-govt-over-ambiguous-internet-laws

Microsoft releases its first report on data requests by law enforcement agencies around the world

maria — 2013-07-12T12:19:31Z

In this post, the Centre for Internet and Society presents Microsoft´s report on law enforcement requests, with a focus on data requested by Indian law enforcement agencies.

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

Last week, Microsoft released its first report with data on the number of requests received from law enforcement agencies around the world relating to Microsoft online and cloud services. Microsoft´s newly released 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report depicts the company's willingness to join the ranks of Google, Twitter and other Web businesses that publish transparency reports.

As of 30 June 2012, 137 million Indians are regular Internet users, many of which use Microsoft services including Skype, Hotmail, Outlook.com, SkyDrive and Xbox Live. Yet, until recently, it was unclear whether Indian law enforcement agencies were requesting data from our Skype calls, emails and other Microsoft services. Thus, Microsoft's release of a report on law enforcement requests is a decisive step in improving transparency in regards to how many requests for data are made by law enforcement agencies and how many requests are granted by companies. Brad Smith, an executive vice president and Microsoft´s general counsel, wrote in his blog post:

“As we continue to move forward, Microsoft is committed to respecting human rights, free expression and individual privacy.”

Microsoft 2012 Law Enforcement Requests

Democratic countries requested the most data during 2012, according to Microsoft´s report. The law enforcement agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Turkey accounted for 69 percent of the 70, 665 requests Microsoft (excluding Skype) received last year. Although India did not join the rank of the countries which made the fewest requests from Microsoft, it did not join the top-five league which accounted for the most requests, despite the country having one of the world´s highest number of Internet users.

Out of the 70,665 requests to Microsoft by law enforcement agencies around the world, only about 0.6 percent of the requests were made by Indian law enforcement agencies. These 418 requests specified 594 accounts and users, which is significantly low in comparison to the top-five and other countries, such as Taiwan, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Brazil and Australia. Indian law enforcement requests accounted for about 0.5 percent of the total 122, 015 accounts and user data that was requested by law enforcement agencies around the world.

Content data is defined by Microsoft as what customers create, communicate and store on or through their services, such as words in an e-mail or photographs and documents stored on SkyDrive or other cloud offerings. Non-content data, on the other hand, refers to basic subscriber information, such as the e-mail address, name, location and IP address captured at the time of registration. According to Microsoft´s 2012 report, the company did not disclose any content data to Indian law enforcement agencies. In fact, only 2.2 percent of requests from law enforcement agencies around the world resulted in the disclosure of content data, 99 percent of which were in response to warrants from courts in the United States. Microsoft may have not disclosed any of our content data, but 370 requests from Indian law enforcement agencies resulted in the disclosure of our non-content data. In other words, 88.5 percent of the requests by India resulted in the disclosure of e-mail addresses, IP addresses, names, locations and other subscriber information.

Out of the 418 requests made to Microsoft by Indian law enforcement agencies, only 4 were rejected (1 percent) and no data was found for 44 requests (10.5 percent). In total, Microsoft rejected the disclosure of 1.2 percent of the requests made by law enforcement agencies around the world, while data was not found for 16.8 percent of the international requests. Thus, the outcome of the data shows that the majority of the requests by Indian law enforcement agencies resulted in the disclosure of non-content data, while very few requests were rejected by Microsoft (excluding Skype). The following table summarizes the requests by Indian law enforcement agencies and their outcome:

Total number of requests	418 (0.6%)
Accounts/Users specified in requests	594 (0.5%)
Disclosure of content	0 (0%)
Disclosure of non-content data	370 (88.5%)
No data found	44 (10.5%)
Requests rejected	4 (1%)

Skype 2012 Law Enforcement Requests

Microsoft acquired Skype towards the end of 2011 and the integration of the two companies advanced considerably over the course of 2012. According to the Microsoft 2012 report, Indian law enforcement agencies made 53 requests for Skype user data and 101 requests for specified accounts on Skype. In other words, out of the total 4,715 requests for Skype user data by law enforcement agencies around the world, the requests by Indian law enforcement accounted for about 0.1 percent. 15,409 international requests were made for specified accounts on Skype, but Indian law enforcement requests only accounted for about 0.6 percent of those.

The report appears to be extremely reassuring, as it states that Skype did not disclose any content data to any law enforcement agencies around the world. That essentially means that, according to the report, that all the content we created and communicated through Skype during 2012 was kept private from law enforcement. Although Microsoft claims to not have disclosed any of our content data, it did disclose non-content data, such as SkypeID, name, email account, billing information and call detail records if a user subscribed to the Skype In/Online service, which connects to a telephone number. However, Microsoft did not report how many requests the company received for non-content data, nor how much data was disclosed and to which countries.

Microsoft reported that data was not found for 47 of India´s law enforcement requests, which represents 88.6 percent of the requests. In total, Microsoft reported that data was not found for about half the requests made by law enforcement agencies on an international level. Out of the 53 requests, Microsoft provided guidance to Indian law enforcement agencies for 10 requests. In particular, such guidance was provided either in response to a rejected request or general questions about the process for obtaining Skype user data. Yet, the amount of rejected requests for Skype user data was not included in the report and the guidance provided remains vague. The following table summarizes the requests by Indian law enforcement agencies for Skype user data and their outcome:

Total of requests	53 (0.1%)
Accounts/identifiers specified in requests	101 (0.6%)
Requests resulting in disclosure of content	0 (0%)
No data found	47 (88.6%)
Provided guidance to law enforcement	10 (18.8%)

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) supports the publication of Microsoft´s 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report and encourages Microsoft (including Skype) to continue releasing such reports which can provide an insight on how much user data is being shared with law enforcement agencies around the world. In order to ensure that such reports adequately provide transparency, they should be broadened in the future to include more data, such as the amount of non-content data requests disclosed by Skype, the type of guidance provided to law enforcement agencies and the amount of requests rejected by Skype. Nonetheless, this report is a decisive first step in increasing transparency and further, more detailed reports are strongly encouraged.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/microsoft-releases-first-report-on-data-requests-by-law-enforcement-agencies

CIS Welcomes Standing Committee Report on IT Rules

pranesh — 2013-04-03T10:54:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes the report by the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation, in which it has lambasted the government and has recommended that the government amend the Rules it passed in April 2011 under section 79 of the Information Technology Act.

Click to read the Parliamentary Standing Committee Report on the IT Rules. A modified version was published in CiOL on March 27, 2013.

These rules have been noted by many, including CIS, Software Freedom Law Centre, and Society for Knowledge Commons, and many eminent lawyers, as being unconstitutional. The Standing Committee, noting this, has asked the government to make changes to the Rules to ensure that the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and privacy are safeguarded, and that the principles of natural justice are respected when a person’s freedom of speech or privacy are curtailed.

Ambiguous and Over-reaching Language

The Standing Committee has noted the inherent ambiguity of words like "blasphemy", "disparaging", etc., which are used in the Intermediary Guidelines Rules, and has pointed out that unclear language can lead to harassment of people as has happened with Section 66A of the IT Act, and can lead to legitimate speech being removed. Importantly, the Standing Committee recognizes that many categories of speech prohibited by the Intermediary Guidelines Rules are not prohibited by any statute, and hence cannot be prohibited by the government through these Rules. Accordingly, the Standing Committee has asked the government to ensure "no new category of crimes or offences is created" by these Rules.

Government Confused Whether Rules Are Mandatory or Advisory

The Standing Committee further notes that there is a discrepancy in the government’s stand that the Intermediary Guidelines Rules are not mandatory, and are only "of advisory nature and self-regulation", and that "it is not mandatory for the Intermediary to disable the information, the rule does not lead to any kind of censorship". The Standing Committee points out the flaw in this, and notes that the language used in the rules is mandatory language (“shall act” within 36 hours). Thus, it rightly notes that there is a "need for clarity on the aforesaid contradiction". Further, it also notes that there is "there should be safeguards to protect against any abuse", since this is a form of private censorship by intermediaries."

Evidence Needed Against Foreign Websites

The government has told the Standing Committee that "foreign websites repeatedly refused to honour our laws", however, it has not provided any proof for this assertion. The government should make public all evidence that foreign web services are refusing to honour Indian laws, and should encourage a public debate on how we should tackle this problem in light of the global nature of the Internet.

Cyber Cafes Rules Violate Citizens’ Privacy

The Standing Committee also pointed out that the Cyber Cafe Rules violated citizens’ right to privacy in requiring that "screens of the computers installed other than in partitions and cubicles should face open space of the cyber café". Unfortunately, the Standing Committee did not consider the privacy argument against retention of extensive and intrusive logs. Under the Cyber Cafe Rules, cyber cafes are required to retain (for a minimum of one year) extensive logs, including that of "history of websites accessed using computer resource at cyber café" in such a manner that each website accessed can be linked to a person. The Committee only considered the argument that this would impose financial burdens on small cybercafes, and rejected that argument. CIS wishes the Committee had examined the provision on log maintenance on grounds of privacy as well."

Government’s Half-Truths

In one response, the government notes that "rules under Section 79 in particular have undergone scrutiny by High Courts in the country. Based on the Rules, the courts have given reliefs to a number of individuals and organizations in the country. No provision of the Rules notified under Sections 43A and 79 of the IT Act, 2000 have been held ultra vires."

What the government says is a half-truth. So far, courts have not struck down any of the IT Rules. But that is because none of the High Court cases in which the vires of the Rules have been challenged has concluded. So it is disingenuous of the government to claim that the Rule have "undergone scrutiny by High Courts". And in those cases where relief has been granted under the Intermediary Guidelines, the cases have been ex-parte or have been cases where the vires of the Rules have not been challenged. The government, if it wants to defend the Rules, should point out to any case in which the vires of the Rules have been upheld. Not a single court till date has declared the Rules to be constitutional when that question was before it.

Lack of Representation of Stakeholders in Policy Formulation

Lastly, the Standing Committee noted that it is not clear whether the Cyber Regulatory Advisory Committee (CRAC), which is responsible for policy guidance on the IT Act, has "members representing the interests of principally affected or having special knowledge of the subject matter as expressly stipulated in Section 88(2) of the IT Act". This is a problem that we at CIS also noted in November 2012, when the CRAC was reconstituted after having been defunct for more than a decade.

CIS hopes that the government finally takes note of the view of legal experts, the Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, the Parliamentary motion against the Rules, and numerous articles and editorials in the press, and withdraws the Intermediary Guidelines Rules and the Cyber Cafe Rules, and instead replaces them with rules that do not infringe our constitutional rights.

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness, and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities. It was among the organizations that submitted evidence to the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation on the IT Rules.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-welcomes-standing-committee-report-on-it-rules

Driving in the Surveillance Society: Cameras, RFID tags and Black Boxes...

maria — 2013-07-12T15:26:33Z

In this post, Maria Xynou looks at red light cameras, RFID tags and black boxes used to monitor vehicles in India.

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

How many times in your life have you heard of people been involved in car accidents and of pedestrians being hit by red-light-running vehicles? What if there could be a solution for all of this? Well, several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore, have already adopted measures to tackle vehicle accidents and fatalities, some of which include traffic enforcement cameras and other security measures. India is currently joining the league by not only installing red light cameras, but by also including radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on vehicles´ number plates, as well as by installing electronic toll collection systems and black boxes in some automobiles. Although such measures could potentially increase our safety, privacy concerns have arisen as it remains unclear how data collected will be used.

Red light cameras

Last week, the Chennai police announced that it plans to install traffic enforcement cameras, otherwise known as red light cameras, at 240 traffic signals over the next months, in order to put an end to car thefts in the city. Red light cameras, which capture images of vehicles entering an intersection against a red traffic light, have been installed in Bangalore since early 2008 and a study indicates that they have reduced the traffic violation rates. A 2003 report by the National Cooperative Highway Research Programme (NCHRP) examined studies from the previous 30 years in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore and concluded that red light cameras ´improve the overall safety of intersections when they are used´.

However, how are traffic violation rates even measured? According to Barbara Langland Orban, an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of South Florida:

“Safety is measured in crashes, in particular injury crashes, and violations are not a proxy for injuries. Also, violations can be whatever number an agency chooses to report, which is called an ‘endogenous variable’ in research and not considered meaningful as the number can be manipulated. In contrast, injuries reflect the number of people who seek medical care, which cannot be manipulated by the reporting methods of jurisdictions.”

Last year, the Bombay state government informed the High Court that the 100 CCTV cameras installed at traffic junctions in 2006-2007 were unsuitable for traffic enforcement because they lacked the capacity of automatic processing. Nonetheless, red light cameras, which are capable of monitoring speed and intersections with stop signals, are currently being proliferated in India. Yet, questions remain: Do red light cameras adequately increase public safety? Do they serve financial interests? Do they violate driver´s due-process rights?

RFID tags and Black Boxes

A communication revolution is upon us, as Maharashtra state transport department is currently including radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on each and every number plate of vehicles. This ultimately means that the state will be able to monitor your vehicle´s real-time movement and track your whereabouts. RFID tags are not only supposedly used to increase public safety by tracking down offenders, but to also streamline public transport timetables. Thus, the movement of buses and cars would be precisely monitored and would provide passengers minute-to-minute information at bus stops. Following the 2001 amendment of Rule 50 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, new number plates with RFID tags have been made mandatory for all types of motor vehicles throughout India.

RFID technology has also been launched at Maharashtra´s state border check-posts. Since last year, the state government has been circulating RFID stickers to trucks, trailers and tankers, which would not only result in heavy goods vehicles not having to wait in long queues for clearance at check-posts, but would also supposedly put an end to corruption by RTO officials.

By 31 March 2014, it is estimated that RFID-based electronic toll collection (ETC) systems will be installed on all national highways in India. According to Dr. Joshi, the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways:

“The RFID technology shall expedite the clearing of traffic at toll plazas and the need of carrying cash shall also be eliminated when toll plazas shall be duly integrated with each other throughout India.”

Although Dr. Joshi´s mission to create a quality highway network across India and to increase the transparency of the system seems rational, the ETC system raises privacy concerns, as it uniquely identifies each vehicle, collects data and provides general vehicle and traffic monitoring. This could potentially lead to a privacy violation, as India currently lacks adequate statutory provisions which could safeguard the use of our data from potential abuse. All we know is that our vehicles are being monitored, but it remains unclear how the data collected will be used, shared and retained, which raises concerns.

The cattle and pedestrians roaming the streets in India appear to have increased the need for the installation of an Event Data Recorder (EDR), otherwise known as a black box, which is a device capable of recording information related to crashes or accidents. The purpose of a black box is to record the speed of the vehicle at the point of impact in the case of an accident and whether the driver had applied the brakes. This would help insurance companies in deciding whether or not to entertain insurance claims, as well as to determine whether a driver is responsible for an accident.

Black boxes for vehicles are already being designed, tested and installed in some vehicles in India at an affordable cost. In fact, manufacturers in India have recommended that the government make it mandatory for cars to be fitted with the device, rather than it being optional. But can we have privacy when our cars are being monitored? This is essentially a case of proactive monitoring which has not been adequately justified yet, as it remains unclear how information would be used, who would be authorised to use and share such information, and whether its use would be accounted for to the individual.

Are monitored cars safer?

The trade-off is clear: the privacy and anonymity of our movement is being monitored in exchange for the provision of safety. But are we even getting any safety in return? According to a 2005 Federal Highway Administration study, although it shows a decrease in front-into-side crashes at intersections with cameras, an increase in rear-end crashes has also been proven. Other studies of red light cameras in the US have shown that more accidents have occurred since the installation of traffic enforcement cameras at intersections. Although no such research has been undertaken in India yet, the effectiveness, necessity and utility of red light cameras remain ambiguous.

Furthermore, there have been claims that the installation of red light cameras, ETCs, RFID tags, black boxes and other technologies do not primarily serve the purpose of public security, but financial gain. A huge debate has arisen in the United States on whether such monitoring of vehicles actually improves safety, or whether its primary objective is to serve financial interests. Red light cameras have already generated about $1.5 million in fines in the Elmwood village of Ohio, which leads critics to believe that the installation of such cameras has more to do with revenue enhancement than safety. The same type of question applies to India and yet a clear-cut answer has not been reached.

Companies which manufacture vehicle tracking systems are widespread in India, which constitutes the monitoring of our cars a vivid reality. Yet, there is a lack of statutory provisions in India for the privacy of our vehicle´s real-time movement and hence, we are being monitored without any safeguards. Major privacy concerns arise in regards to the monitoring of vehicles in India, as the following questions have not been adequately addressed: What type of data is collected in India through the monitoring of vehicles? Who can legally authorize access to such data? Who can have access to such data and under what conditions? Is data being shared between third parties and if so, under what conditions?How long is such data being retained for?

And more importantly: Why is it important to address the above questions? Does it even matter if the movement of our vehicles is being monitored? How would that affect us personally? Well, the monitoring of our cars implies a huge probability that it´s not our vehicles per se which are under the microscope, but us. And while the tracking of our movement might not end us up arrested, interrogated, tortured or imprisoned tomorrow...it might in the future. As long as we are being monitored, we are all suspects and we may potentially be treated as any other offender who is suspected to have committed a crime. The current statutory omission in India to adequately regulate the use of traffic enforcement cameras, RFID tags, black boxes and other technologies used to track and monitor the movement of our vehicles can potentially violate our due process rights and infringe upon our right to privacy and other human rights. Thus, the collection, access, use, analysis, sharing and retention of data acquired through the monitoring of vehicles in India should be strictly regulated to ensure that we are not exposed to our defenceless control.

Maneuvering our monitoring

Nowadays, surveillance appears to be the quick-fix solution for everything related to public security; but that does not need to be the case.

Instead of installing red light cameras monitoring our cars´ movements and bombarding us with fines, other ´simple´ measures could be enforced in India, such as increasing the duration of the yellow light between the green and the red, re-timing lights so drivers will encounter fewer red ones or increasing the visibility distance of the traffic lights so that it is more likely for a driver to stop. Such measures should be enforced by governments, especially since the monitoring of our vehicles is not adequately justified.

Strict laws regulating the use of all technologies monitoring vehicles in India, whether red light cameras, RFID tags or black boxes, should be enacted now. Such regulations should clearly specify the terms of monitoring vehicles, as well as the conditions under which data can be collected, accessed, shared, used, processed and stored. The enactment of regulations on the monitoring of vehicles in India could minimize the potential for citizens´ due process rights to be breached, as well as to ensure that their right to privacy and other human rights are legally protected. This would just be another step towards preventing ubiquitous surveillance and if governments are interested in protecting their citizens´ human rights as they claim they do, then there is no debate on the necessity of regulating the monitoring of our vehicles. The question though which remains is:

Should we be monitored at all?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/driving-in-the-surveillance-society-cameras-rfid-black-boxes

The Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013: A Citizen's Draft

bhairav — 2013-07-12T11:50:20Z

The Centre for Internet and Society has been researching privacy in India since 2010 with the objective of raising public awareness around privacy, completing in depth research, and driving a privacy legislation in India. As part of this work, Bhairav Acharya has drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013.

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

The Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013 contains provisions that speak to data protection, interception, and surveillance. The Bill also establishes the powers and functions of the Privacy Commissioner, and lays out offenses and penalties for contravention of the Bill. The Bill represents a citizen's version of a possible privacy legislation for India, and will be shared with key stakeholders including civil society, industry, and government.

Click to download a full draft of the Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-protection-bill-2013-citizens-draft

Future of Privacy in India

praskrishna — 2013-03-26T05:14:45Z

DSCI and ICOMP are organizing a meet on Privacy at the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi on April 5, 2013. Sunil Abraham will be participating in this event as a speaker.

In recent years, there has been an increasing deployment of ICT in the collection of personal information by both private sector and state agencies. Data is a reason for empowerment for both commercial and public purposes. The prolific use of the Internet for search, social networking cloud computing and e-commerce transactions places increasing amounts of personal information and Internet history in hands of dominant private sector players. Data is undeniably the capital of the Internet. While technology has evolved to be able to collect, store and mine increasing amounts of data for improved public services or for commercial purposes, there are understandable concerns over the lack of accountability for the purposes and limits of the use of personal data. These concerns demand an appropriate regulatory framework for Privacy.

As an important step toward formulating the privacy bill, an Expert Group headed by Justice A P Shah provides inputs based on a study of the international landscape of privacy laws, along with the predominant privacy concerns ensuing from technological advancements. The Committee’s report, submitted in Oct 2012 has recommended Nine Principles as the cornerstone for privacy legislation. While the Privacy Act is under development, DSCI and iCOMP are organizing a meet focusing on the following areas:

Outline an appropriate Indian context for privacy: the nine principles
Presentation of the state of play on privacy in key markets (practices, Issues, regulatory interventions)
Analyse the scope and implications of data collection by public agencies in India.
Analyse privacy challenges and risks related to commercial use of data collected on the Internet by private players
Consider how India can address these challenges and enshrine privacy principles in legislation

Key Speakers

Dr. Gulshan Rai, DG, CERT-In*

Mr. Simon Davis, London School of Economics

Mr. Manoj Joshi, JS, DOPT*

Mr. Kanta Roy, CEO, NeGD*

Dr. Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, DSCI

Mr. Sunil Abraham, ED, CIS

* To be confirmed

Event Flow

Opening Remark by Mr. S V Divvaakar, Executive Director, ICOMP
Framework for Privacy Regulation in India, By Dr. Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, DSCI
Keynote Address
‘Privacy :The International state of play’, by Mr. Simon Davis, London School of Economics
Panel Discussion 1: Context of Privacy in India
Panel Discussion 2: Business responsibility in the age of ‘data driven’ transformations

Date: April 5, 2013
Time: 9.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.
Venue: Oberoi Hotel, Nilgiri Room, New Delhi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/future-of-privacy-in-india-on-april-5-2013-at-oberoi-hotel-new-delhi

Press controls ‘send wrong message to rest of world’

praskrishna — 2013-03-26T04:51:54Z

Britain could trigger an international media crackdown if the Government goes ahead with plans for a Royal Charter to introduce a new Press regulator, free speech campaigners warned yesterday.

Read the article written by Jerome Starkey from Johannesburg, Francis Elliott from Delhi and David Brown. It was published in the Times on March 21, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Oppressive regimes will use the example of the planned regulation in Britain to justify tighter controls on their own media, it was claimed. Campaigners from across the Commonwealth are preparing to urge the Queen not to approve the Royal Charter when it is presented by the Privy Council on May 8. Senior journalists and campaigners in Africa and Asia accused Britain of “chilling media freedom” by legitimising state interference in the media.

Phenyo Butale, the director of South Africa’s Freedom of Expression Institute, said: “African governments have shown they are uncomfortable with free press acting as a watchdog, holding them to account. A move to statutory regulation in the UK would really be a gift for them.”

In Somalia, one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist, reporters said that they were alarmed by the British plans. “It’s alarming that the British Government is regulating the freedom of its press,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, secretary-general of the Somali Union of Journalists.

Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based organisation that campaigns against the Indian Government’s often heavy-handed attempts to regulate online content, said that the UK had surrendered the moral high ground in an important international debate.

“The UK has traditionally made free speech an important component of their foreign policy and when their own internal actions contradict their external position . . . they no longer have any influence on the Indian situation,” he said.

The Editorial Board of The New York Times wrote that the proposed regulation would “do more harm than good”, adding: “It is worth keeping in mind that journalists at newspapers like The Guardianand The [New York] Times, not the police, first brought to light the scope and extent of hacking by British tabloids. It would be perverse if regulations . . . ended up stifling the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism that brought it to light in the first place.”

Mumsnet, one of the most popular blogging sites, has sought a guarantee from the Government that it would not be caught by the regulations. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport told the website that it “will ultimately be for the court to decide on the definition of a ‘relevant publisher’ ” covered by the new regulations “but our view is that Mumsnet would not be covered by the new regime”.

Justine Roberts, the website’s founder, has asked to be specifically included in the list of exempted websites.

The House of Lords will vote on Monday on the definition of “relevant publisher” when peers consider new amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill. Some of Britain’s major newspaper and magazine publishers have indicated that they will not join the new regulator.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-uk-jerome-starkey-francis-elliott-david-brown-march-21-2013-press-controls-send-wrong-message-to-rest-of-world

India’s Civil Liberties Crisis: Of Bans, Blocks, Bullying and Biometrics

praskrishna — 2013-03-25T10:39:43Z

Malavika Jayaram will be a speaker at this event which is organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies and will be held at Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennslyvania, Philadelphia, on March 28, 2013, from 12 p.m. to 1.30 p.m.

Read about the event on the website of the Center for Global Communication Studies.

Unlike the US First Amendment, the first amendment to the Constitution of India actually strengthened state regulation over freedom of speech. Irony aside, the amendment that is considered by many scholars as the first media crisis in post-colonial India has increasing relevance today. Its prioritization of sovereignty and national security over democratic rights and institutions has resulted in a zone of contestation between nation building and free speech. This is playing out through a series of battles involving website blocking, book banning, biometric databases and bullying of all kinds.

In the last few months, an all-girl rock band in Kashmir was silenced, a village in Bihar banned women and girls from using mobile phones, and we had yet another Salman Rushdie controversy. Movies were blocked. Facebook and Google were taken to court for hosting objectionable content. Paintings were removed from an art gallery at the “suggestion” of the police because they depicted Hindu deities as semi-nude. At the same time, there was a drive to digitize governance and to build biometric databases to enumerate and record every individual. The impacts on free speech, anonymity, and privacy were considered fair game in the drive towards progress, inclusion, and maintenance of public order.

The relationship between the citizen and the state is undergoing a radical transformation mediated by the marriage of welfare schemes and commercial interests. The privacy of one’s body and identity is challenged by initiatives to capture fingerprints, irises, faces, and transactions. The heckler’s vote is increasingly powerful in silencing free expression. Civil society is under siege for resisting the onslaught of draconian legislation, arbitrary restrictions, and the banning of various forms of cultural output. Narratives are being constructed that attribute all civic engagement with “western values” and with being mouthpieces of foreign interests.

In this talk, I will give an overview of the strands of discord that are forming the fabric of India’s latest crisis of democracy. I will unpack some of the rhetoric behind the government’s drive to grasp the individual, and make the citizen visible to the state in an unprecedented manner. I will also discuss my experiences working with civil society in India, and the tools and techniques used to engage with policy formation and to adapt to the future of advocacy.

A dual-qualified lawyer, Malavika Jayaram spent eight years in London - with global law firm Allen & Overy in the Communications, Media & Technology group, and then with Citigroup. She relocated to India in 2006, and wears 3 hats as a practising lawyer, a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and a PhD scholar. As a partner at Jayaram & Jayaram, Bangalore, she focuses on corporate/tech transactions and has a special interest in new media and the arts. At CIS, Malavika collaborates on projects that study legislative and policy changes in the internet governance and privacy domains. As a PhD scholar, she is looking at data protection and privacy in India, with a special focus on e-governance schemes and the new biometric ID project.

A graduate of the National Law School of India, she has an LL.M. from Northwestern University, Chicago. She is on the advisory board of the Indian Journal of Law & Technology and is the author of the India chapter for the Data Protection & Privacy volume in the Getting the Deal Through series, launched this year. She is one of 10 Indian lawyers featured in “The International Who's Who of Internet e- Commerce & Data Protection Lawyers 2012” directory.

She is currently running a research project for Internews, studying internet policy in India. This will produce a landscape overview and interviews with various stakeholders in this domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-asc-upenn-events-indias-civil-liberties-crisis

Internet Censorship, Surveillance, and Corporate Transparency

praskrishna — 2013-03-25T10:29:50Z

Google’s Dorothy Chou will be in conversation with international experts Annenberg School of Communication, St., Philadelphia, on April 3, 2013, from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m. Malavika Jayaram is participating in the event as a panelist. The event is organised by Center for Global Communication Studies and Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Read full details of the event was published on the website of Center for Global Communication Studies.

Since mid 2010 Google has been publishing data about the requests it receives from governments to remove content or hand over user data. This regularly updated Transparency Report reveals alarming trends: Government surveillance is on the rise, everywhere. Even worse, a large number of government censorship and surveillance requests are of dubious legality even according to the host countries’ own laws. In a world where citizens increasingly rely on digital products and services owned and operated by private corporations for their civic and political lives, the implications for human rights and democracy around the world are troubling.

Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst who leads Google's efforts to increase transparency about how it responds to government censorship and surveillance demands, will discuss Google's Transparency Report with Rebecca MacKinnon, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and an international panel of experts:

Ronald Lemos, the Director of the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Hu Yong, Associate Professor, Peking University School of Journalism and Communication

Malavika Jayaram, Fellow, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore and Annenberg CGCS;

Gregory Asmolov, PhD Candidate, London School of Economics; Global Voices "RuNet Echo" contributor and Russian social media expert.

This event is part of the cross-disciplinary, university-wide “New Technologies, Human Rights, and Transparency” project funded by the university’s Global Engagement Fund and hosted by Annenberg’s Center for Global Communications Studies in partnership with Wharton, PennLaw, Engineering, and the School of Arts and Sciences. The project aims to examine the relationship between government and corporate power in today’s digitally networked world, bringing together research partners from across the university and around the world to develop a methodology to evaluate and compare the policies and practices of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies as they affect Internet users’ freedom expression and privacy in a human rights context.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-asc-upenn-events-internet-censorship-surveillance-and-corporate-transparency

DML 2013 – Fourth Annual Conference

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T09:52:59Z

The fourth annual conference – DML2013 – was organized around the theme “Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices, and Remixing Youth Participation” and was held between March 14-16, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. The Centre for Internet and Society was one of the sponsors for this event.

The Digital Media and Learning Conference is an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the UC Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine.

We had a special track that ran through the conference on "Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)". Noopur Raval was one of the 16 presenters that we had selected on the tracks. Nishant Shah was one of the members in the Conference Committee.

Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)

Whose Change Is It Anyway? sought to explore new entry points into the discourse on youth, technology and change, with a specific focus on (but not restricted to) the Global South and the last decade of citizen action. This conference track sought to fashion frameworks and structures that provide new ways of interpreting and understanding outcomes that technology mediated citizen action has to offer, as well as the future of citizen led interventions: What enables, catalyzes and moves young people to reinvent themselves as citizen actors? What are the interventions and narratives of change that fail to fit into a ‘success’ rubric, but are still significant in the processes of change they initiate? How do we understand these ‘new’ events as hybrids, connecting with existing histories, contexts, media and technologies in their regions? Is there an alternative discourse that does not necessarily adopt frameworks arising from the knowledge centers of the West? Do these discourses help challenge and rework global vocabularies by offering new ways of looking at citizen action and change? The track invited provocative hypotheses, in-depth analyses, dialogues and contestations around these ideas, through innovative interactive presentation formats. The dialogue was informed by experimental and new methods of information and knowledge production, focusing on the Global South and its larger transnational contexts at the junctures of youth, technology and change.

For more info on the event, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dml-hub-net-dml-2013

Namaste, Mr. Eric Schmidt

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T08:48:48Z

An article by R. Jai Krishna published in the Wall Street Journal on March 20, 2013 quotes Sunil Abraham.

Read the original published by the Wall Street Journal on March 20, 2013.

Sandwiched between a January visit to North Korea and a stop in Myanmar at the end of this week Google Inc.'s GOOG +0.42% executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is visiting India until Thursday.

The world’s largest democracy might seem to have little in common with the two authoritarian states.

But free speech advocates say recent developments in India are troubling and observers are waiting to see whether Mr. Schmidt addresses them during two events over the next couple of days.

At issue is a debate in India over the limits to free speech. In 2011, India’s government, angered at the spread of inflammatory material online, passed a law that allows it to hold Internet companies liable for “offensive” material posted by users. Parts of the law are being challenged in India’s Supreme Court, which has yet to rule.

In December 2011, India’s then-telecoms minister, Kapil Sibal, urged Google Facebook Inc. FB -2.67% and other Internet companies to screen derogatory material from their sites. The requests came amid official anger over content that parodied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, as well as other leading politicians.

A journalist, Vinay Rai, subsequently filed criminal cases in a Delhi court against Internet firms including Google, alleging material they hosted was defamatory, obscene and promoted enmity among different religious and ethnic groups. The companies are challenging the validity of the case in a higher court. The lower court is expected to begin hearings next month.

Google and the others deny wrongdoing. Google has said it makes unavailable to Indian users any content that violates its terms of services or local laws.

Mr. Schmidt is unlikely to address the ongoing lawsuits. But he might take the opportunity to push India to reconsider its position on free speech, say activists.

“He will obviously make a case..but the government is unlikely to take it seriously,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. “It’s much more complicated.”

Mr. Schmidt is set to speak at two technology conferences – one organized by the country’s software industry body, the National Association of Software and Services Companies, or Nasscom, on Wednesday, and another by Google on Thursday.

Paroma Roy Chowdhury, a spokeswoman for Google India said: “The Google India team is very happy to host him here.”

Mr. Schmidt’s India visit follows his private visit to North Korea in January where he urged its officials to drop barriers to global Internet access if they hope to develop their economy. He is likely to travel to Myanmar on March 22, after his India trip.

Google is facing other legal challenges in India. They include a federal anti-trust probe on alleged anticompetitive practices by Google’s online advertising business. Google says it has done nothing wrong.

For Google, India is an important market for its Internet services as well as mobile-devices software Android.

Market research firm ComScore Inc. SCOR -0.41% said in June that Google reached 95% of online users in India. “Visitors spent 2.5 hours on Google sites, with YouTube accounting for a major share,” it said.

More and more Indians have started taking to the Internet to express their views. India has about 62 million people in urban areas using social media platforms, according to a recent study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade body, and market-research agency, IMRB. That is expected to rise to 66 million by June.

Demographically, the report said, the “highest proportion’ of social media usage was among young men and college students, representing 84% and 82% of the total internet users, respectively.

Last year, New Delhi issued a series of guidelines on how government departments should use social media to reach out to people and to ensure public participation in policy framing.

The ruling Congress-led coalition government has now started embracing these networks.

For example, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram earlier this month interacted with citizens during the annual budget proposal using social media platform Google+.

For many, this was seen as a move to counter Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s use of online platforms during his successful re-election campaign late last year. Mr. Modi, widely expected to be named the prime ministerial candidate for the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, is scheduled to attend Google’s event Thursday.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wsj-r-jai-krishna-march-20-2013-namaste-mr-eric-schmidt

Reply to RTI Application on Blocking of website and Rule 419A of Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T07:58:12Z

The Department of Telecommunications sent its reply to an RTI application from the Centre for Internet and Society. The application was sent on December 27, 2012 with reference to blocking of websites and Rule 419A of the Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951.

To
Shri Subodh Saxena
Central Public Information Officer (RTI)
Director (DS-II), Room No 1006, Sanchar Bhawan
Department of Télécommunications (DoT)
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
20, Ashoka Road, New Delhi — 110001

Dear Sir,
Subject: Information on Website Blocking Requested under the Right to Information Act, 2005

1. Full Name of the Applicant: Centre for Internet & Society

2. Address of the Applicant

Mailing Address: Centre for Internet and Society
194, 2־C Cross,
Domlur Stage II,
Bangalore 560071

3. Details of the information required

It has come to our attention that Airtel Broadband Services ("Airtel") and Mahanagar Téléphoné Nigam Limited ("MTNL") have recently blocked access to a number of domain sites for all their users across the country. Airtel has blocked Fabulous Domains (http://www.fabulous.com/), BuyDomains (http://www.buvdomains.com/) and Sedo (http://sedo.co.uk/uk/home/welcome/). MTNL has blocked Sedo (http://sedo.co.uk/uk/home/welcQme/). Subscribers trying to access this website receive a message noting "This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Télécommunications". In this regard, we request information on the following queries under Section 6(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005:

Does the Department have powers to require an Internet Service Provider to block a website? If so, please provide a citation of the statute under which power is granted to the Department, as well as the safeguards prescribed to be in accordance with Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India.
Did the Department order Airtel or MTNL to block any or all of the above mentioned websites? If so, please provide a copy of such order or orders. If not, what action, if at all, has been taken by the Department against Airtel and MTNL for blocking of websites?
Has the Department ever ordered the blocking of any website? If so, please provide a list of addresses of all the websites that have been ordered to be blocked.
Please provide use the present composition of the Committee constituted under rule 419A of the Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951.
Please provide us the dates and copies of the minutes of all meetings held by the Committee constituted under rule 419A of the Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951, and copies of all their recommendations.

4. Years to which the above requests pertain: 2012

5. Designation and address of the PIO from whom the information is required

Shri Subodh Saxena
Central Public Information Officer (RTI)
Director (DS-II), Room No 1006, Sanchar Bhawan
Department of Télécommunications (DoT)
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
20, Ashoka Road, New Delhi — 110001

To the best of my belief, the détails sought for fall within your authority. Further, as provided under section 6(3) of the Right to Information Act ("RTI Act"), in case this application does not fall within your authority, I request you to transfer the same in the designated time (5 days) to the concerned authority and inform me of the same immediately.

To the best of my knowledge the information sought does not fall within the restrictions contained in section 8 and 9 of the RTI Act, and any provision protecting such information in any other law for the time being in force is inapplicable due to section 22 of the RTI Act.

Please provide me this information in electronic form, via the e-mail address provided above. This to certify that I, Smitha Krishna Prasad, am a citizen of India.

A fee of Rs. 10/- (Rupees Ten Only) has been made out in the form of a demand draft drawn in favour of "Pay and Accounts Officer (HQ), Department of Telecom" payable at New Delhi.

Date. Monday November 26,2012
Place: Bengaluru, Karnataka

Below is the reply received from the Department of Telecommunications for the above RTI application

Government of India
Department of Télécommunications
Sanchar Bhawan, 20, Ashoka Road. New Delhi -110 001
(DS-CelI)

No. DIR(DS-II)/RTI/2009																		Dated:ll/01/2013

To,
Centre for Internet and Society,
No. 194, 2-C Cross,
Domlur Stage II,
Bangalore - 560 071

This has reference to RTI application dated 27/12/2012 with reference to Blocking of website and Rule 419A of Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951

In this regard it is submitted that Internet Service licensees are to follow the provisions of Information Technology Act 2000 as amended from time to time. Under Information Technology Act 2000, "Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009" were notified on 27/10/2009.(Annexure) Aforesaid notified rules describes the "Designated Officer" for the purpose of issuing direction for blocking for access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource under subsection (2) of Section 69(A) of the ACT. Wide Gazette Notification dated 20/01/2010 Group Coordinator , Cyber Law division, Department of Information Technology has been authorized and designated as "Designated Officer".

As per the directions of Group Coordinator, Cyber Law division, under Information Technology Act 2000, instructions for blocking/ unblocking of websites/URLs are issued to Internet Service Licensees.

As per the available information no instruction to Internet Service Providers has been issued for Blocking of http://www.fabulous.com/, http://www.buydomains.com/, http://sedo.co.uk/uk/home/welcome/ and http://sedo.co.uk/uk/home/welcome/ as mentioned in your RTI application.

Copies of Blocking order for which blocking instructions issued by DoT are not being provided are not provided as per Clause 16 of "Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009" which says "Strict confidentiality shall be maintained regarding all the requests and complaints received and actions taken thereof."
With reference to information (Para 4 & 5 of RTI Aplication ) on Rule 419A of Indian Telegraph Rule, 1951 , the RTI is being forwarded to Dir (AS-III) & CPIO, DoT for providing the information.
The appeal, it any, may be made before Shri Nitin Jain, DDG(DS) & Appellate Authority, Department of Télécommunications, Room No. 1201, Sanchar Bhawan, 20 Ashoka Road, Nevy Delhi-110 001 within 30 days from the date of receipt of this letter.

Encl: As above
																							(Subodh Saxena) DIR (DS-II) 011-2303 6860 011-2335 9454

Copy to:

(I) Shri Rajiv Kumar, CPIO & Director (AS-III), DoT, New Delhi

NOTIFICATION
New Delhi, the 27th October, 2009

G.S.R. 781 (E). — In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (z) of sub-section (2) of section 87, read with sub-section (2) of section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000 (21 of 2000), the Central Government hereby makes the following rules, namely:

Short title and commencement — (1) These rules may be called the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access and Information by Public) Rules, 2009.
(2) They shall come into force on the date of their publication in the Official Gazette.
Definitions. — In these rules, unless the context otherwise requires. —
(a) "Act" means the Information Technology Act, 2000 (21 of 2000);
(b) "computer resource" means computer resource as defined in clause (k) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of the Act;
(c) "Designated Officer" means an officer designated as Designated Officer under rule 3;
(d) "Form" means a form appended to these rules;
(e) "intermediary" means an intermediary as defined in clause (w) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of the Act;
(f) "nodal officer" means the nodal officer designated as such under rule 4;
(g) "organisation" means
(i) Ministries or Departments of the Government of India;
(ii) State Governments and Union Territories;
(iii) Any agency of the Central Government, as may be notified in the Official Gazette, by the Central Government
(h) "request" means the request for blocking of access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource;
(i) "Review Committee" means the Review Committee constituted under rule 419A of Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951.
Designated Officer — The Central Government shall designate by notification in Official Gazette, an officer of the Central Government not below the rank of a Joint Secretary, as the "Designated Officer", for the purpose of issuing direction for blocking for access by the public any information generated, transmitted. received,, stored or hosted in any computer resource under sub-section (2) of section 69A of the Act.
Nodal officer or organisation.— Every organisation for the purpose of these rules, shall designate one of its officer as the Nodal Officer and shall intimate the same to the Central Government in the Department of Information Technology under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technotogy, Government of India and also publish the name of the said Nodal Officer on their website.
Direction by Designated Officer. — The Designated Officer may, on receipt of any request from the Nodal Officer of an organisation or a competent court, by order direct any Agency of the Government or intermediary to block for access by the public any information or part thereof generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource for any of the reasons specified in sub-section (1) of section 69A of the Act.
Forwarding of requests by organisation. — (1) Any person may send their complaint to the Nodal Officer of the concerned organisation for blocking of access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource:
Provided that any request other than the one from the Nodal Officer of the organisation shall be sent with the approval of the Chief Secretary of the concerned State or Union territory to the Designated Officer.
Provided further that in case a Union territory has no Chief Secretary, then, such request may be approved by the Adviser to the Administrator of that Union territory.
(2) The organisation shall examine the complaint received under sub-rule (1) to satisfy themselves about the need for taking of action in relation to the reasons enumerated in sub-section (1) of section 69A of the Act and after being satisfied, it shall send the request through its Nodal Officer to the Designated Officer in the format specified in the Form appended to these rules.
(3) The Designated Officer shall not entertain any complaint or request for blocking of information directly from any person.
(4) The request shall be in writing on the letter head of the respective organisation, complete in all respects and may be sent either by mail or by fax or by e-mail signed with electronic signature of the Nodal Officer.
Provided that in case the request is sent by fax or by e-mail which is not signed with electronic signature, the Nodal Officer shall provide a signed copy of the request so as to reach the Designated Officer within a period of three days of receipt of the request by such fax or e-mail.
(5) On receipt, each request shall be assigned a number along with the date and time of its receipt by the Designated Officer and he shall acknowledge the receipt thereof to the Nodal Officer within a period of twenty four hours of its receipt.
Committee for examinatlon of request.— The request along with the printed sample content of the alleged offending information or part thereof shall be examined by a committee consisting of the Designated Officer as its chairperson and representatives, not below the rank of Joint Secretary in Ministries of Law and Justice, Home Affairs. Information and Broadcasting and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team appointed under sub-section (1) of section 70B of the Act.
Examination of request.— (1) On receipt of request under rule 6, the Designated Officer shall make all reasonable efforts to identify the person or intermediary who has hosted the information or part thereof as well as the computer resource on which such information or part thereof is being hosted and where he is able to identify such person or intermediary and the computer resource hosting the informalion or part thereof which have been requested to be blocked for public access, he shall issue a notice by way of letters or fax or e-mail signed with electronic signatures to such person or intermediary in control of such computer resource to appear and submit their reply and clarifications, if any, before the committee referred to in rule 7, at a specified date and time, which shall not be less than forty-eight hours from the time of receipt of such notice by such person or intermediary.
(2) In case of non-appearance of such person or intermediary, who has been served with the notice under sub-rule (I), before the committee on such specified date and time, the committee shall give specific recommendation in writing with respect to the request received from the Nodal Officer, based on the information available with the committee.
(3) In case, such a person or intermediary, who has been served with the notice under sub-rule (1), is a foreign entity or body corporate as identified by the Designated Officer, notice shall be sent by way of letters or fax or e-mail signed with electronic signatures to such foreign entity or body corporate and any such foreign entity or body corporate shall respond to such a notice within the time specified therein, failing which the committee shall give specific recommendation in writing with respect to the request received from the Nodal Officer, based on the information available with the committee.
(4) The committee referred to in rule 7 shall examine the request and printed sample information and consider whether the request is covered within the scope of sub-section (1) of section 69A of the Act and that it is justifiable to block such information or part thereof and shall give specific recommendation in writing with respect to the request received from the Nodal Officer.
(5) The designated Officer shall submit the recommendation of the committee, in respect of the request for blocking of information along with the details sent by the Nodal Officer to the Secretary in the Department of Information Technology under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India (hereinafter referred to as the "Secretary, Department of Information Technology").
(6) The Designated Officer, on approval of the request by the Secretary, Department of Information Technology, shall direct any agency of the Government or the intermediary to block the offending information generaled, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in their computer resource for public access within time limit specified in the direction:
Provided that in case the request of the Nodal Officer is not approved by the Secretary, Department of Information Technology, the Designated Officer shall convey the same to such Nodal Officer.
Blocking of Information in cases of emergency.— (1) Notwithstanding anything contained in rules 7 and 8, the Designated Officer, in any case of emergency nature, for which no delay is acceptable, shall examine the request and printed sample information and consider whether the request is within the scope of sub-section (1) of section 69A of the Act and it is necessary or expedient and justifiable to block such information or part thereof and submit the request with specific recommendations in writing to Secretary, Department of Information Technology.
(2) In a case of emergency nature, tne Secretary. Department of Information Technology may, if he is satisfied that it is necessary or expedent and justifiable for blocking for public access of any information or part thereof through any computer resource and after recording reasons in writing as an interim measure issue such directions as he may consider necessary to such identified or identifiable persons or intermediary in control of such computer resource hosting such information or part thereof without giving him an opportunity of hearing.
(3) The Designated Officer, at ihe earliest but not later than forty-eight hours of issue of direction under sub-rule 2, shall bring the request before the committee referred to in rule 7 for its consideration and recommendation.
(4) On receipt of recommendations of committee, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, shall pass the final order as regard to approval of such request and in case the request for blocking is not approved by the Secretary. Department of Information Technology in his final order, the interim direction issued under sub-rule (2) shall be revoked and the person or intermediary in control of such information shall be accordingly directed to unblock the information for public access.
Process of order of court for blocking of Information — In case of an order from a competent court in India for blocking of any information or part thereof generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in a computer resource, the Designated Officer shall, immediately on receipt of certified copy of the court order, submit it to the Secretary, Department of Information Technology and initiate action as directed by the court.
Expeditious disposal of request - The request received from the Nodal Officer shall be decided expeditiously which in no case shall be more than seven working days from the date of receipt of the request.
Action for non-compliance of direction by Intermediary — In case the intermediary fails to comply with the direction issued to him under rule 9, the Designated Officer shall, with the prior approval of the Secretary, Department of Information Technology, initiate appropriate action as may be required to comply with the provisions of sub-section (3) of section 69A of the Act.
Intermediary to designate one person to receive and handle directions — (1) Every intermediary shall designate at least one person to receive and handle the directions for blocking of access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource under these rules.
(2) The designated person of the intermediary shall acknowledge receipt of the directions to the Designated Officer within two hours on receipt of the direction through acknowledgement letter or fax or e-mail signed with electronic signature.
Meeting of Review Commlttee — The Review Committee shall meet at least once in two months and record its findings whether the directions issued under these rules are in accordance with the provisions of sub-seclion (1) of section 69A of the Act and if is of the opinion that the directions are not in accordance with the provisions referred above, it may set aside the directions and issue order for unblocking of said information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in a computer resource for public access.
Maintenance of records by Designated Officer — The Designated Officer shall maintain complete record of the request received and action taken thereof, in electronic database and also in register of the cases of blocking for public access of the information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in a computer resource.
Requests and complaints to be confidential — Strict confidentiality shall be maintained regarding all the requests and complaints received and actions taken thereof.

FORM
(See rule 6(2))

A. Complaint

Name of the complainant: --_________________________________________________________________
(Person who has sent the complaint to the Ministry/Department/State Govt./Nodal Officer)
Address: ________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
City: ______________________________ Pin Code: __________________
Telephone: ________________________ (prefix STD code)
Fax (if any): _______________________
Mobile (if any): ______________________
Email (if any): __________________________________

B. Details of website/computer resource/intermediary/offending information hosted on the website
(Please give details wherever known)
URL / web address: ____________________________________
IP Address: _______________________________________
Hyperlink: ________________________________________
Server/Proxy Server address: ________________________________________
Name of the Intermediary: _________________________________________
URL of the Intermediary: __________________________________________
(Please attach screenshot/printout of the offending information)
Address or location of intermediary in case the intermediary is telecom service provider, network service provider, internet service provider, web-hosting service provider and cyber cafe or other form of intermediary for which information under points (7), (8), (9), (10), (11) and (12) are not available.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
C. Details of Request for blocking
Recommendations/Comments of the Ministry/State Govt: ________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
The level at which the comments/recommendation have been approved
(Please specify designation) ________________________________________________
Have the complaint been examined in Ministry / State Government: Y/N
If yes, under which of the following reasons it falls (please tick):
(i) Interest of sovereignty or integrity of India
(ii) Defence of India
(iii) Security of the State
(iv) Friendly relations with foreign states
(v) Public order
(vi) For preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above
D. Details of the Nodal Officer, forwarding the complaint along with recommendation of the Ministry/State Govt. and related enclosures
Name of the Nodal Officer: ___________________________________________
Designation: ______________________________________________________
Organisation: _____________________________________________________
Address: ________________________________________________ _________

__________________________________________________________

City: __________________________ Pin Code: _________________
Telephone: ___________________________ (prefix STD code)
Fax (if any) _____________________
Mobile (if any) ______________________
Email (if any): ___________________________
E: Any other information:
F: Enclosures:

1.

2.

3.

Date Place Signature

[No. 9(16)J2004-EC]
N. RAVI SHANKER, Jt. Secy

3855GI/09-5

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/reply-to-rti-application-on-blocking-of-website-and-rule-419a-of-indian-telegraph-rules-1951

Reply to RTI Application on the List of Nodal Officers Designated Under the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T06:30:57Z

The Centre for Internet and Society had sent an RTI to the Department of Electronics & Information Technology on December 4, 2012. The Department responded to the same through this notification on January 7, 2013. The letter sent and the notification received are reproduced below.

Shri Anil Kaushik Scientist E Office of PIO (RTI) Electronics Niketan
Department of Information Technology (DIT) Ministry of Communications and Information Technology 6, CGO Complex, New Delhi

Dear Sir,

Subject: Information on nodal officers appointed requested under the Right to Information Act, 2005.

1. Füll Name of the Applicant: Centre for Internet and Society

2. Address of the Applicant:

E-mail Address:

Mailing Address:
Centre for Internet and Society
194, 2-C Cross,
Domlur Stage II,
Bangalore-560071

3. Details of the information required:

The Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 ("Rules") provides for the désignation of nodal officers under Rule 4. Rule 4 states that every Organization shall designate one of its officers as the Nodal Officer for the purpose of implementing the Rules. Rule 4 also provides that every Organization shall inform the Department of Information Technology of the désignation of such a Nodal Officer. In this regard, we request information on the following queries under Section 6(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005:

Does the Department of Electronics and Information Technology maintain a list of all Nodal Officers designated under Rule 4 of the Rules?
If so, please provide me a copy of any list containing information about the Nodal Officers designated under Rule 4 of the Rules.
Years to which the above requests pertain:'

2009-2012

5. Designation and Address of the PIO from whom the information is required:
Shri Anil Kaushik Scientist E Office of PIO (RTI) Electronics Niketan
Department of Information Technology (DIT) Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
6, CGO Complex, New Delhi

To the best of my belief, the details sought for fall within your authority. Further, as provided under section 6(3) of the Right to Information Act ("RTI Act"), in case this application does not fall within your authority, I request you to transfer the same in the designated time (5 days) to the concerned authority and inform me of the same immediately.

Please provide me this information in electronic form, via the e-mail address provided above. This is to certify that I, Smitha Krishna Prasad, am a citizen of India.

(Smitha Krishna Prasad

A fee of Rs. 10/־ (Rupees Ten Only) has been made out in the form of a demand draft drawn in favour of "Pay and Accounts Officer, Department of Information Technology" payable at New Delhi.

Date: Tuesday December 4, 2012
Place: Bengaluru, Karnataka

Below is the reply received from the Department of Electronics & Information Technology:

No. 14(142)/2012-ESD
M/o Communiciations & Information Technololgy Department of Electronics & Information Technology Electronics Niketan,6, CGO Complex
New Delhi-110003

Dated: 7.1.2003

Subject: RTI application received from Shri Smitha Krishna Prasad

This is with reference to your RTI application requesting for the following information:

The Information Technology (Procédure and Safeguards for blocking for access of information by public) Rules, 2009 ("Rules") provides for the désignation of nodal officers under Rule 4. Rule 4 states that every organisation shall designate one of its officers as the Nodal Officer for the purpose of implementing the Rules. Rule 4 also provides that every organisation shall inform the Department of Information Technology of the désignation of such a Nodal Officer. In this regard, we request information on the following queries under Section 6(1) of the Right to Information Act,2005.

Does the Department of Electronics and Information Technology maintain a list of all Nodal Officers designated under rule 4 of the Rules?
If so, please provide me a copy of any list containing information about the Nodal Officers designated under Rule 4 of the rules.

The information as received from the custodian of the information is placed below:

Department of Electronics and Information Technology maintains a list of Nodal Officers designated under rule 4 of the Information Technology (Procédure and Safeguards for blocking for access of information by public) Rules, 2009.
A copy of list of Nodal Officer is enclosed at Annexure.

(A.K. Kaushik)
Additional Director & CPIO
(E-Security & Cyber Laws)

Centre for Internet & Society
194, 2-C Cross, Domlur Stage II
Bangalore - 560071

Annexure

List of Nodal Officers

Director, Dept. of Agriculture, Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi
Adviser, Dept. of Biotechnology, Block-2, Room - 707, CGO Complex, New Delhi- 110003
Dy. Director General, Dept. of Chemicals & Petrochemicals, Shastri Bhawan, N. Delhi-1
Jt. Secretary (Admn.), Room No. 321-A, Shastri Bhawan , N. Delhi-1
Scientist Gr. IV(6), Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Anusandhan Bhavan, 2 Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110 001
Director (Coord), Dept. of Defence, R, No. 94, South Block, New Delhi - 110001
Director (B&C), Dept. of Defence Production, R. No. 146, B-Wing, Sena Bhawan, New Delhi
Director, DESIDOC, 405, Cresent Apartment, Pocket 2, Sector 18A, Dwarka, New Delhi - 110075
Deputy Secretary (res - I), Dept. of Ex-servicemen Welfare, Room No. 237, B-Wing, Sena Bhawan, New Delhi-11
Scientist E, Room No. 3, Administrative Block, DSIR, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi-110 016
Director, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Block-12, CGO Complex, New Delhi - 110003
Dy. Secy (Budget Monitoring), Dept. of Economic Affairs, Room No. 238-B, North Block, New Delhi-110001
Deputy. Secretary, Room 1222, Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, Lodi Road, New Delhi-3
Jt. Secy. (XP), Ministry of External Affairs, R.No. 152, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi
Deputy Secretary, Dept. of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, 3rd Floor, Jeevandeep, Parliament Street, N Delhi-1
Under Secretary, Min. of Food Processing Industry, Panchsheel Bhawan, Room No 117, August Kranti Marg, New Delhi - 110049
DDG (Stats), Dept. of Health & Family Welfare, 518-A, Nirman Bhawan, New Delhi
Jt. Director, Ministry of Home Affairs, 35, Sardar Patel Marg, New Delhi
Sr. Tech. Director,NIC, Room No. 108, A-Wing, Shashtri Bhawan, N. Delhi-1
JS & Legislative Counsel, Legislative Department, Min. of Law & Justice, Room No. 430A, A-Wing, Shastri Bhawan, N Delhi-11001
Deputy Secretary, Department of Legal Affairs, Min. of Law & Justice, Room No. 433A, A-Wing, Shashtri Bhawan, N Delhi-11001
Joint Secretary, Min. of Mines, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi
Director (R&A), Min. of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Room No. 203, B-Wing, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi-110 001
DDG (Technology) Dept. of Posts, Room No. 524, Dak Bhawan, Parliament St., New Delhi - 110016
Joint Secretary, Min. of Power, Room No. 202, Shram Shakti Bhawan, Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110001
Dy. Secretary, Dept. of Public Enterprises, Room No. 410, Block-14, Public Enterprises Bhavan, CGO Complex, N Delhi-110003
Executive Director (C&IS) Railway Board, Min. of Railways, Rail Bhavan, Raisina Road, New Delhi - 110 001
Director (Narcotics Control), Dept. of Revenue, Min. of Finance, Room No 48-A, North Block, N Delhi
Jt. Secy (T&A), Min. of Road Transport & Highways, Transport Bhawan, 1 Parliament Street, New Delhi
Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Shipping, Room 428, Transport Bhavan, Sansad Marg, N Delhi-110001
Deputy Director, INSES, Indian Space Research Organisation, Antariksh Bhavan, New BEL Road, Bangalore-560231
Dy. Secy, Ministry of Steel, Udyog Bhavan, New Delhi
Additional Surveyor General, International Boundary Directorate (SGO), Room 37-B, L-II Block, Brassey Avenue, Church Road, N Delhi
Asstt. Director (PG-I), Department of Telecom, Sanchar Bhawan, 20 Ashoka Road, N Delhi-1
Director, Ministry of Textile, Room No. 231, 2nd Floor, Udyog Bhawan, New Delhi
Director (Admn), Min. of Urban Development,Room No. 235, "C" Wing, Nirman Bhawan, New Delhi
Director (IT), Ministry of Water resources, 627, Shram Shakti Bhawan, Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110001
SD(IT)-2, A&N Admin., Govt. Polytechnic Campus, Junglighat (P.O.), Pahargaon, Port Blair-744 103
Special Officer (Portal), Room No. 208, A-Block, IT&C Department, A.P. Secretariat, Hyderabad-500022
Managing Director, Bihar State Electronics Devp. Corp., Beltron Bhawan, Shastri Nagar, Patna-3
Director, Information Technology, Dept. of IT, 5th Floor, Addl. Deluxe Building, Sector-9, Chandigarh
Chief Executive Officer, CHIPS office, IT & BioTech Department, Mantralaya, D.K.S. Bhawan, Raipur-492001
Director (IT) Room No. 207-208, Secretariat, Amli, Silvassa-396 230
Principal Home Secretary, Dèlhi Secretariat, IP Estate, New Delhi-11002
DCP, Economic Offences Wing, Crime Branch, Delhi Police
Secretary (IT), Dept. of IT, Secretariat Complex, Porvorim, Goa-403521
Principal Secretary Science & Tech. Dept.. Block - 7, 5th Floor, New Sachivalaya, Gandhinagar- 382 010
Spl. Secretary, Secretariat for IT, 9th Floor, Haryana Civil Secretariat, Chandigarh
Director. Dept. of IT, STPI Building, Block-24, SDA Complex, Kasumpti, Shimla- 71009
Regional Dy. Director, Revenue & Land Reforms Department, Project Bhawan, Dhurva, Ranchi-834002
Project Officer. HRMS Project, Room No. 145-A, M.S. Building, Gate No. 2, Dr. В R Ambedkar Veedhi, Bangalore 560001
Principal Secretary, Information Technology Department, Central Secretariat, Trivandrum - 695 001
Director (Information Technology) Department of Information Technology, Administration of the UT of Lakshadweep, Kavaratti - 682 555
OSD, Department of Information Technology, Room No. 132, Vallabh Bhavan, Bhopal - 462 004
Jt. Commissioner of Police (Crime), Govt. of Maharashtra, Mumbai
Principal Informatics Officer, Dept. of Information & Comm. Technology, Govt. of Mizoram, Secrétariat Annex-l, Aizawl, Mizoram
Secretary IT&C, Nagaland Civil Secrétariat, Kohima - 797004
DGM. Orissa Computer Application Centre, OCAC Building, Plot N/1-7D, Acharya Nagar, PO-RRL. Bhubaneswar-751013
Director (IT), Directorate of IT, No. 505 Kamraj Salai, PRD Complex, Saram, Puducherry - 605 013
Director, Department of IT, SCO 193-95, Sector 34-A, Chandigarh
Additional Director, Dept. of IT & Communication, First Floor, Yojana Bhawan, Tilak Marg, Jaipur
Principal Secretary, Information Technology Department, Secrétariat, Chennai
Additional Director, Govt of Tripura, Directorate of IT, Indranagar, ITI Road, Agartala - 799 006
Special Secretary, IT & Electronics Dept., Bapu Bhawan, II Floor, No. 209, U.P. Admn. Lucknow
Uttra Portal Subject Specialist, ITDA, 93, Phase-II, Vasant Vihar, Dehradun
Executive Director (Technical), WBEIDC Ltd., Webel Bhawan, Block EP & GP, Salt lake, Sector-V, Kolkata-700091

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/arreply-to-rti-application-on-nodal-officers-from-deit

Global Partners Meeting @ London

praskrishna — 2013-03-20T06:37:48Z

Privacy International is organizing the Global Partners Meeting in London from March 22 to 25, 2013. The workshop will be held at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Sunil Abraham and Malavika Jayaram will be participating in this event.

Click to read the full details published by Privacy International here.

The meeting is an opportunity to connect global partners with each other and with researchers, human rights advocates, and privacy and technology experts from over 20 countries. This will provide an opportunity for discussion and debate, that will enrich global research and advocacy agenda for the next two years.

Workshop Overview

The purpose of the three day workshop is as follows:

To understand the privacy discourse and identify the challenges faced in advancing the right to privacy across the globe.
To consolidate our network and look for opportunities for collaboration and cross-pollination for research and advocacy initiatives.
To share experiences about research, dissemination and advocacy strategies that influence policy change.

We envisage this workshop as a launching pad for the work that Privacy International and our global partners will conduct over the next two years under the ambit of the Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project, funded by the International Development

Research Centre. The focus of the SAFEGUARD project is to understand what are the threats, challenges and obstacles to, and opportunities for, the protection of privacy in developing countries.

Background to the SAFEGUARD project

Nowhere are the challenges to, and opportunities for, privacy protections as dynamic and complex as in the developing world. As these countries seek new measures to develop their economies, build social and technological infrastructures, sustain their social systems, and ensure security they need to consider what are the modern policy frameworks they require to ensure a just society. The windows around these policy frameworks are key opportunities for reflection about rights and democratic values, and in the case of this project, the protection of privacy.

The vast scope and relevance of the right to privacy in this age of technology gives rise to a myriad of challenges and issues, many of which have relevance across, as well as within, borders. This is particularly the case in the developing world, where South-South collaboration is gaining increasing currency in the development sector, and donor countries continue to contribute to and influence policy in recipient countries, particularly with respect to the adoption of new technologies. Many of the trends in developing countries – communications surveillance, biometrics and DNA databases, and identity cards – mirror those being adopted in the global North. Policy laundering and modelling, such as that witnessed with respect to counter-terrorism policies in the aftermath of 9/11 is taking hold in the context of communications surveillance laws and national ID databases. Such phenomena raise concerns not only as to the spread of practices that threaten to undermine privacy, but also with respect to the stifling of national policy discourses and legislative processes.

Conceptual framework

This projects sets out to isolate and understand the challenges to privacy in the developing world. In order to ensure that the research developed is sufficiently targeted to influence policy debates, we have identified a set of themes that cover the range of privacy-related issues and that together will give a comprehensive picture of the difficult relationship between privacy and technology. This set of themes has been developed in collaboration with our partners, who have identified those discussions around which there is perfect storm of advancing surveillance policies and technologies, poor legal and technical safeguards, and a scarcity of research and understanding. We have designed our conceptual framework accordingly.

Research questions

The legal and constitutional landscape: What laws and constitutional provisions exist to protect privacy, how are they implemented and monitored, and where are the legal and policy gaps?

Data protection: What is the state of data protection in partner countries, and what are the local and regional regulatory standards and good practices?

Communications surveillance: What communications surveillance regimes are in place, how are they designed in law and how do they operate in practice?

Adoption of surveillance technologies: Where are governments buying surveillance technologies, and how are they using them? What legal regimes are in place to establish safeguards over the use of advanced surveillance technologies? What is the state of the art in legal protections?

Political intelligence oversight: What is the nature and operation of local intelligence services, what oversight mechanisms are in place, and how can these mechanisms be implemented or enforced?

Politics, Identity, sexual and reproductive health and social sorting: To what the extent do governments misuse personal information to pursue social sorting practices?

Delivery of public services: What is the state of privacy protections in public service delivery, particularly those related to e-health systems and social protection programmes, and how can protections be improved?

ID, DNA and biometrics: What privacy risks are associated with the collection and use of personal information for ID and biometric systems?

Partners

Africa	Latin America	Asia
Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum, Zimbabwe Kenyan Ethical and Legal Issues Network, Kenya Media Institute of Southern Africa, Namibia Jonction, Senegal Centre for Social Sciences Research, University of Cape Town African Platform for Social Protection, Kenya	Dejusticia, Columbia Asociacion por los Derechos Civiles, Argentina Autonomous University of Mexico State, Mexico Centro de Tecnologia y Sociedad, Universidad San Andres, Argentina, in collaboration with the Centro de Tecnologica da Escola de Direito da Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brasil Instituto NUPEF, Brazil Derechos Digitales, Chile	VOICE, Bangladesh University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Centre for Internet and Society, India Thai Netizen Network, Thailand Thai Media Policy Center, Thailand Bytes For All, Pakistan Centre for Cyber Law Studies, Indonesia Foundation for Media Alternatives, Philippines

Africa

Latin America

Asia

Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum, Zimbabwe

Kenyan Ethical and Legal Issues Network, Kenya

Media Institute of Southern Africa, Namibia

Jonction, Senegal

Centre for Social Sciences Research, University of Cape Town

African Platform for Social Protection, Kenya

Dejusticia, Columbia

Asociacion por los Derechos Civiles, Argentina

Autonomous University of Mexico State, Mexico

Centro de Tecnologia y Sociedad, Universidad San Andres, Argentina, in collaboration with the Centro de Tecnologica da Escola de Direito da Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brasil

Instituto NUPEF, Brazil

Derechos Digitales, Chile

VOICE, Bangladesh
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Centre for Internet and Society, India
Thai Netizen Network, Thailand
Thai Media Policy Center, Thailand
Bytes For All, Pakistan
Centre for Cyber Law Studies, Indonesia
Foundation for Media Alternatives, Philippines

Participants

Ababacar Diop
Allan Maleche
Anna Fielder
Anthony Jackson
Arthit Suriyawongkul
Arthur Gwagwa
Ben Hayes
Ben Wagner
Benjamin Barretto
Carly Nyst
Carolin Moeller
Charles Dhewa
Claudio Ruiz
Clement Chen
Danilo Doneda
Eric King
Farjana Akter
Fieke Jansen
Graciela Sulamein
Gus Hosein
Helen Wallace
Juan Camilo Rivera
Karelle Dagon
Katitza Rodriguez
Kevin Donovan
Levinson Kabwato
Malavika Jayaram
Mathias Vermeulen
Michael Rispoli
Nelson Arteaga Botello
Pablo Palazzi
Pirongrong Ramasoota
Ramiro Alvarez Ugarte
Richie Tynan
Sam Smith
Sinta Dewi Rosadi
Shahzad Ahmed
Sinta Dewi Rosadi
Sunil Abraham
Stephanie Perrin
Tavengwa Nhongo
Vera Franz
Vicky Nida
Vivian Newman Pont

Agenda

Friday, March 22, 2013: Reception

Meet with Privacy International staff members and advisors, and workshop participants from more than 20 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Central Asia. Food and drinks will be provided.

Time: 6.00 p.m.
Location: 2nd Floor, 46 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4LR
Contact: 0207 242 2836
Getting there: Our office is a short walk 10 minute from your hotel. See Map 1 below for directions.

Saturday, March 23, 2013: Day 1 (Objectives and Reviewing the Landscape)

10:00 a.m. - Welcome Breakfast: Setting The Scene
Location: Mercure London Bloomsbury restaurant

Welcome and introduction

Overview of PI’s work in developing countries

Participant introductions

Setting the agenda

12:30 p.m. - Session 1: Reviewing The Landscape
Location: Old Building, Room 3.21, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE

Mapping privacy in constitutions

Masterclass 1: communications surveillance laws around the world

Break-out groups on assigned topics, and reporting back

2:30 p.m. - Afternoon tea

Privacy quiz

Masterclass 2: SIM card registration

Building a network: how can PI facilitate your work?

Masterclass 3: Oversight of intelligence agencies

6:00 p.m. - Drinks

7:00 p.m. - Dinner

Location: Tohbang, 164 Clerkenwell Road
http://www.tohbang.com/sub_eng/main.php

Sunday, March 24: Day 2 (Research Topics and Strategies)

Location: Old Building, Room 3.21, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE

10:00 a.m. - Recap of day one

Masterclass 4 - The UN Universal Periodic Review

Open-space - research and policy priorities

1:00 p.m. - Lunch
Location: Ship Tavern, Holborn

2:30 p.m. - Reconvene

Open space - research, dissemination and communication strategies

Wrapping up and going forward

6:00 p.m. - Dinner
Location: Wahaca, Charlotte St, http://www.wahaca.co.uk/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-partners-meeting-london