We are anonymous, we are legion

Tomorrow, Today

nishant — 2013-01-02T05:00:41Z

Our present is the future that our past had imagined. Around the same time last year, I remember taking stock of the technologies that we live with and wondering what 2012 would bring in.

Nishant Shah's end of the year column was published in the Indian Express on December 29, 2012.

And I find myself in a similar frame of mind, celebrating with joy the promises that were kept, reflecting sombrely on the opportunities we missed, and speculating about what the new year is going to bring in for the future of digital and internet technologies, and how they are going to change the ways in which we understand what it means to be human, to be social, and to be the political architects of our lives.

We all know that dramatic change is rare. Nothing transforms overnight, and a lot of what we can look forward to in the next year, is going to be contingent on how we have lived in this one. And yet, the rapid pace at which digital technologies change and morph, and the ways in which they produce new networked conditions of living, make it worthwhile to speculate on what are the top five things to look out for in 2013, when it comes to the internet and how it is going to affect our techno-social lives.

Head in the Cloud

If the last year was the year of the mobile, as more and more smartphones started penetrating societies, providing new conditions of portable and easy computing, making ‘app’ the word of the year, then the next year definitely promises to be the year of the cloud. As internet broadband and mobile data access become affordable, increasingly we are going to see services that no longer require personal computing power. All you will need is a screen and a Wi-Fi connection and everything else will happen in the cloud. No more hard drives, no more storage, no more disconnectivity, and data in the cloud.

More Talk

One of the biggest problems with the internet has been that it has been extremely text heavy. We often forget that the text is still a matter of privilege as questions of illiteracy and translation still hound a large section of the global population. However, with the new protocols of access, availability of 4G spectrum and the release of IPV6 as the new standard, we can expect faster voice and video-based communication at almost zero costs. It might be soon time to say goodbye to the SMS.

Big Data

You think you are suffering from information overload now? Wait for the next year as mobile and internet penetration are estimated to rise by 30 per cent around the world! This is going to be the year of Big Data — data so big that it can no longer be fathomed or understood by human beings. We will be dependent on machines to read it, process it, and show us patterns and trends because we are now at a point in our information societies where we are producing data faster than we can process it. Our governments, markets and societies are going to have to produce new ways of governing these data landscapes, leading to dramatic changes in notions of privacy, property and safety.

No Next Big Thing

If you haven’t noticed it, the pace of dramatic innovation has slowed down in the last few years and it will slow down even more. We have been riding the wave of the next big thing, in the last few years, constantly in search of new gadgets, platforms and ways of networking. However, the coming year is going to make innovation granular. It will be a year where things become better, and innovation happens behind the scene. So if you thought this was the year that Facebook will finally become obsolete and something else will take over, you might want to reconsider deleting your account, and start looking at the changes that shall happen behind the scenes, for better or for worse.

The Return of the Human

The rise of the social network has distracted us from looking at the human conditions. We have been so engaged in understanding friendship in the time of Facebook, analysing relationships, networked existences and our own performance as actors of information, that we haven’t given much thought to what it means to be human in our rapidly digitising worlds. And yet, the revolutions and the uprisings we have witnessed have been about people using these social networks to reinforce the ideas of equity, justice, inclusion, peace and rights across the world. As these processes strengthen and find new public spaces of collaboration, we will hopefully see social and political movements which reinforce, that at the end of the day, what really counts, is being human.

The future, specially in our superconnected times, is always unpredictable. But the rise of digital technologies has helped us revisit some of the problems that have been central to a lot of emerging societies — problems of inequity, injustice, violence and violation of rights. And here is hoping that the tech trends in the coming year, will be trends that help create a better version of today, tomorrow.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-nishant-shah-december-29-2012-tomorrow-today

Internet-driven Developments — Structural Changes and Tipping Points

elonnai — 2012-12-28T15:34:51Z

A symposium on Internet Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University from December 6 to 8, 2012. The symposium was sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation and was hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. In this blog post, I summarize the discussions that took place over the two days and add my own personal reflections on the issues.

The symposium served as an inaugural event for the Global Network of Interdisciplinary Centers, which currently includes as its members:

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University
The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society
The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
The Center for Technology & Society at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas Law School, Keio University
The MIT Media Lab and its Center for Civic Media
The NEXA Center for Internet & Society at Politicnico di Torino.

Individuals and researchers from the Centers focused on understanding the effects of internet and society. The participants were brought together to explore the past, present, and future tipping points of the internet, to identify knowledge gaps, and to find areas of collaboration and future action between institutes and individuals. Specifically, the symposium set out to examine fundamental questions about the internet, identify structural changes that are occurring because of the internet, and the forces that are catalyzing these changes. Questions asked and discussed included:

What forces are changing production and service models?
What forces are influencing entrepreneurship and innovation? and
What forces are changing political participation?

Production and Service Models

Discussion

When participants discussed the changes that are happening to production and service models, concepts such as big data, algorithms, peer based models of production, and intermediaries were identified as actors and tools that are driving change in production and service models in the context of the internet. For example, big data and algorithms are being used to alter the nature, scope, and reach of business by allowing for the personalization and customization of services. To this end, many organizations have incorporated customer participation into business models, and provide platforms for feedback and input. The personalization of services has placed greater emphasis on the voice of the customer, allowing customers to guide and influence business by voicing preferences, satisfaction levels, etc. In this way, consumers can determine what type of service they want, and can also make political statements through their choices and feedback. In the process, however, such platforms generate and depend on large amounts of data and thus raise concerns about privacy.

Knowledge gaps that were identified during the conversation included how to predict what would make a participatory platform and peer based model successful, and how these platforms can be effectively researched. When looking at big data, a knowledge gap that was identified included how to ensure that data are collected ethically and accurately, as well as the related question: once large data sets are collected, how can the data be analyzed and used in a meaningful way?

There was also discussion about the increasingly critical and powerful role that intermediaries serve within the scope of the internet as they act as the platform provider and regulator for internet content. Intermediaries both allow for content to be posted on the internet, and determine what information is accessed through the filtering of web searches. Increasingly, governments are seeking to regulate intermediaries and create strict rules of compliance with governmental mandates. At the same time governments are placing the responsibility and liability of regulating what content is posted on internet on intermediaries, essentially placing them in the role of an adjudicator. This is one example of how the relationship between the private sector, the government, and the individual is changing, because it is only recently that private intermediaries have been held responsible first to governments, and only secondarily to customers.

Knowledge gaps identified in the discussion on intermediaries included understanding and researching how intermediaries decide to filter content found through searches. On what basis is each filter done? Are there actors influencing this process? And what are the economics behind the process?

Personal Thoughts

When reflecting on how the internet is changing and influencing the production of goods and services, I personally would add to the points discussed in the meeting the fact that the internet has also impacted the job economy. Reports show that jobs in the extraction and manufacturing sector are decreasing, as the internet has created a mandatory new tech oriented skill set that often outweighs the need for other skill sets. This change is far reaching as the job economy influences what skills students choose to learn, why and for what purposes individuals migrate across borders for employment, and in what industries governments invest money towards domestic development. In addition to changing the nature of skills in demand, the nature of the services themselves is changing. Though services are becoming more personalized and tailored to the individual, this personalization is automated, and replacing the ‘human touch’ that was once prized in business. Whether customers care if the service they are given is generated by an algorithm or delivered by an individual may depend on a person’s preference, but the European Union has seen this shift as being significant enough to address automated decision making in Article 15 of the EU directive, which provides individuals the right to not be subject to a decision which legally impacts him/her which is based only on automated processing of data. This directive encompasses decisions such as evaluation of a person’s performance at work, creditworthiness, reliability, conduct, etc.

The internet has also increased the cost of small mistakes made by businesses, as any mistake will now potentially impact millions of customers. The impact of any mistake makes risk management much more important and difficult, as businesses must seek to anticipate and mitigate any and all mistakes. The internet has also created a new level of dependency on the network, as businesses shift all of their services and functions over to the internet. Thus, if the network goes down, businesses will lose revenue and customers. This level of dependency on the network that exists today is different from past reliance’s on technology — in the sense that in the past there was not one single type of technology that would be essential for many businesses to run. The closest analogue was transportation: if trucks, trains, or ships were unavailable, multiple industries would be impacted. The difference is that those who relied on rail could shift temporarily to ships or trucks. Those relying on the network have no alternatives. Furthermore, past technologies were constantly evolving in the resources they depended on — from coal to gas, etc, but for the internet, it seems that the resource is not evolving, so much as expanding as increased bandwidth and connectivity are the solution to allowing technological evolution and innovation through the internet.

As discussed above, intermediaries are becoming key and powerful players, but they also seem to be increasingly placed between a rock and a hard place, as governments around the world are asking national and multinational intermediaries to filter content that violates national laws in one context, but not another context. Furthermore, intermediaries are increasingly being asked to comply with law enforcement requests for access to data that is often not within the jurisdiction of the requesting country. The difficult position intermediaries are placed in demonstrates how the architecture of the internet is borderless but the regulation and use of the internet is still tied to borders and jurisdiction.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Discussion

When discussing entrepreneurship and innovation it was pointed out by participants that grey markets and market failures are important indicators for possibilities of new business models and forms of innovation. Because of that, it is important to study what has failed and why when identifying new possibilities and trends. The importance of policies and laws that allow for innovation and entrepreneurship was also highlighted.

Personal Thoughts

When thinking about entrepreneurship and innovation on the internet and forces driving them, it seems clear that tethering, conglomerating, and organizing information from multiple sources is one direction that innovation is headed. Services are coming out that have the ability to search the internet based on individual preferences and provide more accurate data quickly. This removes the need for individuals to search the internet at length to find the information or products they want. Along the same lines, it seems that there is a greater trend towards personalization. Services are finding new and innovative ways to bring individuals customized products. Another trend is the digitization of all services — from moving libraries online, to bookstores online, to grocery stores online. Lastly, there is a constant demand for new applications to be developed. These can range from applications enabling communication through social networking, to applications that act as personal financial consultants, to applications that act as personal trainers. The ability for concepts, trends, etc to go viral on the internet has also added another dimension to entrepreneurship and innovation as any individual can potentially become successful by something going viral. The ability for something to go viral on the internet does not just impact entrepreneurship and innovation, but also impacts political participation and production and service models.

Political Participation

Discussions also centered on how political participation is changing as the internet is being used as a new platform for participation. For example, it is now possible for individuals to leverage their voice and message to local and global communities. Furthermore, this message can be communicated on a seemingly personal scale. Individuals from one community are able to connect to communities from another location — both local and abroad, and to work together to catalyze change. Messages and communications can be spread easily to millions of people and can go viral. This ability has changed and created new public spheres, where anyone can contribute to a dialogue from anywhere. Empowerment is shifting as well, because the internet allows for new power structures to be created by any actor who knows how to leverage the network. These factors allow for more voices to be heard and for greater citizen participation. The role of the youth in political movements was also emphasized in the discussions. On the other hand governments have responded by more heavily regulating speech and content on the internet when dissenting voices and campaigns are seen as a threat. It was also brought out that though emerging forms of online political participation have been heralded by many for achievements such as facilitating democracy, transparency, and bringing a voice to the silenced — many have warned that analysis of these political forms of participation overlook individual contributions and time. Other critiques that were discussed included the fact that digital revolutions also exclude individuals who do not have access to the internet or to platforms/applications and overlook actions and movements that take place offline.

Knowledge gaps that were identified included understanding the basics of the change that is happening in political participation through the internet. For example, it is unclear who the actors are that determine the conditions and scope for these changes, and like participatory forms of business, what enables and mobilizes change. Furthermore, it is unclear who specifically benefits from these changes and how, and who participates in the changes — and in what capacity. Additionally, much of the change has been quantified in the dialogue of the ‘global’ — global voices, global movements — but that dialogue ignores the local.

Personal Thoughts

In addition to the discussions on political participation, I believe the internet has created the possibility for ‘social governance’. To address situations in which there is no particular law against an action, but individuals come together and speak out against actions that they see on the internet that they believe should be stopped or changed. Depending on the extent individuals choose to enforce these decisions, this can be potentially dangerous as individuals are essentially rewriting laws and social norms without subjecting them to the crucible of consensus decision-making or review. In addition, forms of political participation are not changing just in terms of how the individual engages politically with states and governments, but also in the ways that politicians are engaging with citizens. For example, politicians are using Facebook and Twitter as means to communicate and gather feedback from supporters. Politicians are also using technology to reach more individuals with their messages — from experimenting with 3D holograms, to web casting, to using technology like CCTV cameras to prove transparency. The impact of this could be interesting, as technology is becoming a mediating tool that works in both directions between citizens and governments. Is this changing the traditional understandings of the State and the relationship between the State and the citizen?

Conclusion and ways forward

The discussions also pulled out dichotomies that apply to the internet and illustrate tensions arising from different forces. These dichotomies can be shaped by individuals and actors attempting to regulate the internet, as for example with new models of regulation vs. old models of regulation, private vs. public, local vs. global, owned vs. unowned, and zoned vs. unzoned. These dichotomies can be shaped by how the internet is used. For example, fair vs. unfair, just vs. unjust, represented vs. silenced, and uniform vs. diverse.

Common questions being asked and areas for potential research that came out of these discussions included information communication and media, how to address different and at times contradictory policies and levels of development in different countries, and what is the impact of big data on different sectors and industries like e-health and journalism? What is the importance of ICT in creating economic progress? How is the Internet changing the nature of democracy?

When discussing ways forward and areas for future collaboration it was brought out that exploring ways to leverage open data, ways to effectively use and build off of perspectives and experiences from other contexts and cultures, and ways to share resources across borders including funding, human presence, and expertise were important questions to answer. Common challenges that were identified by participants ranged from cyber security and the rise of state and non-state actors in cyber warfare, finding adequate funding to support research, sustaining international collaborations, ensuring that research is meaningful and can translate into useful resources for policy and law makers, and ensuring that projects are designed with a long-term objective and vision in mind.

The discussions, presentations, and contributions by participants during the two day symposium were interesting and important as they demonstrated just how multi-faced the internet is, and how it is never one dimensional. How the internet is researched, how it is used, and how it is regulated will be constantly changing. Whether this change is a step forward, or a re-invention of what has already been done, is up to all who use the internet including the individual, the corporation, the researcher, the policy maker, and the government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/internet-driven-developments

Bangalore CryptoParty!

praskrishna — 2013-01-06T13:47:02Z

Care about your privacy and online security? Want to fight against pervasive governmental surveillance and corporate invasions of privacy? The Centre for Internet & Society invites you to the CryptoParty tonight (Friday) at 6.00 p.m. Make sure to bring friends (and your laptop and smart phones)!

We will discuss, install and use digital security and privacy tools and practices.

Hosts

Thejesh GN
Kaustubh Srikanth
Pranesh Prakash

Details

We Will Provide

Food and drinks: Snacks - Samosas + Kachoris + Biscuits + Tea + Soft Drinks
Software: Security-in-a-box toolkits + Ubuntu Live USBs + software + internet connection
Expertise: Kaustubh Srikanth + Thejesh GN + Pranesh Prakash

You need to bring

Your own laptop (highly recommended)
Desire to learn about secure and private communications and storage (mandatory! :D)
Expertise, to share with others (if possible)

Intro

(20 mins)

Privacy vs. convenience
Importance of Free and Open Source Software and Open Standards
Basics of Passwords

Choosing secure passwords

Dropbox Register Page

Storing comes later
2FA - Google Authenticator

Securing online Identities

Show and tell

Browsing (45 mins)
(5 mins)

Firefox (multiple platforms) / offline

(15 mins):

AdBlockPlus
RequestPolicy
HTTPSEverywhere
Ghostery / DoNotTrackMe
Noscript

(5 mins)

Anti-Google Surveillance

DuckDuckGo
GoogleSharing

(10 mins)

Password management

Keepass + Password Safe
Cloud Services

LastPass
Keepass + Dropbox

Email + IM (1 hour)
(10 mins)

Thunderbird (multiple platforms) / available offline

Enigmail

(30 mins)

GPG4Win + GPGTools / offline
Seahorse (on Ubuntu Fresh Install)
Enigmail + Key Management (Kaustubh)
Key-signing party!

(15 mins)

Instant Messaging with OTR

Pidgin + Adium / offline
OTR / offline

Tell (27 mins)
(5 mins)

Tor (Pranesh)

(5 mins)

VPNs and SSH tunnel

RiseUp (Kaustubh)
SSH tunneling using AWS / RackSpace (Thej)

(12 mins)

Mobiles

APG + K9 (Pranesh)
WhisperCore (Kaustubh mentions)
Text Secure (Thej)
Gibbberbot (Pranesh)

(3 mins)

Full-disk encryption

Ubuntu (Pranesh demoes quickly)
BitLocker
TrueCrypt

(2 mins)

Virtual machines

VirtualBox (Kaustubh demoes quickly)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-crypto-party

‘The IT Act is fine, but its interpretation is not’

praskrishna — 2012-12-21T10:08:43Z

Several organisations such as the Alternate Law Forum and Centre for Internet and Society are campaigning to amend the IT Act 2000. However, SV Raghavan, scientific secretary, office of PSA to the government of India, stated that the law in place is fine but the stakeholders need to be educated on implementing it better.

The article was published in DNA on December 19, 2012.

Raghavan, who was at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Tuesday to give a lecture on cyber security, specifically singled out the controversial Section 66 that can hold a person viable for posting ‘offensive’ content online. The IT Act 2000 is constituted to keep such law breakers under check.

“The IT Act 2000 gives specific powers to some of the law agencies to take action. In cyberspace, nearly 90% of the users don’t come with any malicious intentions. Now there is a large concerted effort across the country, to teach policemen how to apply this law and interpret it. There is also an effort to teach the judiciary to interpret the law correctly, so that the right people are held accountable,” he said.

“No matter what you do, when the law is written in English, sometimes it comes across two dimensional and the original intent of the law may be lost, which is why there are agencies who are dedicated to teaching the judiciary on how to interpret it,” he added.

As for cyber security amongst civilians, vigilance is simply all it takes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-bangalore-december-19-2012-the-it-act-is-fine-but-its-interpretation-is-not

State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp

praskrishna — 2012-12-21T07:19:55Z

A two-day conference was held in Rio on December 13 and 14 at Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event and made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.

Click here to see the Wiki page of the event. See Elonnai's presentation here [PDF, 313 Kb].

DAY 1: Mapping Out Government Surveillance Problems

8:30 - 9:00 Registration

9:00 - 9:10 Welcome/Introduction

Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese.

Plenary: Kinds of Data, Ways of Getting It

09:10 - 10:30

Chair: Enrique Chaparro, Fundacion Via Libre [Argentina, ES]

Metadata, online identifiers, and technologies of surveillance

Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Surveillance is getting easier and cheaper for many reasons, not least because people are using electronic communications more than ever before, and there are so many facts out there to be noticed about the ways devices are talking to each other.
I will talk about the kinds of things that refer to people and their devices, with a particular focus on telecommunications metadata and transactional records that are described as "non-content" and may receive lower levels of legal protection. I'll discuss who is in a position to record this information, some of the things that can be learned from it, and why traffic analysis is powerful and difficult to defend against.
I'll try to explain concepts like MAC address, IP address, account name and number, telephone number, IMEI, IMSI, transient identifiers, log files, transactional records, locational privacy, and associational privacy.

How law enforcement agencies use cell phone location tracking technology in criminal cases

Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

With the rise of smartphones, the U.S. government's use of cell site location data to pinpoint our exact location has grown more widespread (and precise) over time. For years, U.S. courts permitted the government to get this location data without a search warrant under a tortured interpretation of federal electronic privacy statutes and an even more alarming constitutional argument: that we don't have any privacy in data we turn over to third parties, like cell phone companies. This talk will review what location data is and why the police want it, how they can get it under U.S. law, and legal and practical steps that need to be taken to safeguard our privacy.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Deep packet inspection: What it is, how it works, and how it is used for surveillance

Chris Parsons, Doctoral Candidate, University of Victoria [Canada, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

We are in the midst of a standardization revolution, a mass translation of discordant analogue signal types to interoperable digital transmission standards. All this digitized consumer traffic passes through the gateways of Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs). ISPs function as communicative bottlenecks, ideally positioning them to monitor, mine, and modify data using the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) appliances situated within their networks. Some uses of these appliances could reshape the conditions of communication in democracies, blocking or modifying data transmissions in near real time.
In this presentation I discuss the technical capabilities of deep packet inspection and its significance for increased private and public surveillance capabilities. Drawing from case material from academic and advocacy work, I identify how the technology has been used for ISP-level surveillance, for copyright purposes, for national security purposes, and for advertising purposes. Moreover, I address how advocates in differing nations have opposed various uses of the technology, why they have done so, and conditions that facilitate domestic resistance to deep packet inspections' uses.

Advances in online spying: Commercial surveillance software, targeted hacking and beyond

Morgan Marquis-Boire, Google [New Zealand, EN]

Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Against an increasingly security-aware online community, the traditional tools of blocking, filtering, and wiretapping have become less effective. Nervous regimes turn to the largely unregulated $5 billion a year industry in Internet surveillance tools.
Once the realm of the black market and intelligence agencies, the latest computer spyware is now sold at trade shows for dictator pocket change.
This talk will detail the cat and mouse game between authoritarian regimes and dissidents, as well as ongoing efforts to map out the relationship between surveillance software companies and governments.

10:30 - 10:40 Coffee Break

Workshops: Round I

10:40 - 11:50

Format: Interactive sessions with active participat0ion from the audience.

Workshop 1: Mobile privacy threats

This workshop addresses the ways governments are tracking mobile devices’ location and use, and why it’s been harder to protect communications privacy on mobile devices than on PCs.

Facilitators:
Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]
Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN/PT]

Rapporteur:
Enrique Chaparro, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, EN/ES]

Workshop 2: Training activists about state surveillance capabilities

In this workshop we’ll talk about some of new surveillance technologies that states are deploying, and the tactics that are used to legitimize the surveillance.
Going beyond just ‘what is used and how’, we speak to some political tactics that advocates have used to resist these tools on practical and principled levels, some of the conditions that contribute to successes, and ways of mobilizing effective strategies against expansions of state surveillance.

Facilitator:
Chris Parsons, University of Victoria [Canada, EN]

Rapporteur:
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]

Workshop 3: Tactics for opposing state sponsored malware and surveillance

This workshop will review the different tactics government and non-government actors have employed to stop authoritarian regimes from making use of surveillance technology built in the United States and Europe to spy on their citizens.
We will discuss corporate responsibility, export controls, as well as the role of security research and user education campaigns. The workshop will end with a brainstorm of at least one concrete action each workshop attendee can take.

Facilitators:

Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]
Morgan Marquis-Boire [New Zealand, EN]

Rapporteur:
Silvio Rhatto, Sarava Group [Brazil, PT]

Reporting Back Session

11:50 - 12:40 Chair:

Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Rapporteurs:
Enrique Chaparro, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, EN/ES]
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]

Report: Training Activists about State Surveillance Capabilities

Silvio Rhatto, Sarava Group [Brazil, PT]

Format: Each rapporteur has 10 minutes to report back about the results of their workshop discussion and 20 minutes to answer questions.

12:40 - 2:00 Lunch

Legal and Policy Plenary: Government Access to People’s Data

2:00 - 3:20

Chair: Pedro Paranaguá, Advisor for Internet Policy to the Workers’ Party in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies [Brazil, PT/EN]

Different data, different rules? How the law has assigned varying levels of privacy protection to different categories of personal information

Kevin Bankston, Center for Democracy and Technology [United States, EN]

Using the example of US law, this presentation will map the different legal protections that have traditionally been applied to different types surveillance of different types of data, and consider how to redraw that map in light of new technologies.
Speaking generally, US surveillance law has been written based on the assumptions that: (1) surveillance of data on your computer is more invasive than access to your data in the cloud;(2) real-time surveillance is more invasive than access to stored data; (3) surveillance of the content of communications is more invasive than surveillance of non-content meta-data; (4) surveillance of newer communications is more invasive than surveillance of older communications.
These assumptions have long defined which types of surveillance are most strongly regulated against and which types of data are most strongly protected by law. Changing technology has made these assumptions about invasiveness and privacy increasingly obsolete, assuming that they ever made sense at all. But if these distinctions are outdated, what if any legal distinctions between different types of surveillance or data should replace them? How, if at all, can the law sensibly distinguish between personal communications and communications data in which we have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that which we do not?

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Internet companies as an agent of the state & european mandatory telecommunications data retention

Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]

In this short presentation I will introduce European (i.e. based on EU legislation) regime of mandatory retention of telecommunication data for law enforcement purposes, explaining its political context, implementation and negative impact on human rights standards (not just privacy-related!).
Using case studies of Poland and Germany I will present two strikingly different approaches to storing telecommunication data and law enforcement, thus questioning the necessity and proportionality of this controversial measure. I will also touch briefly on pending political developments (including the revision of the Data Retention Directive and the reform of data protection law in the EU), explaining what the stakes are, what European civil society organisations are fighting for and why it is such an important fight. Finally, I will explain how the debate about mandatory data retention feeds into a broader discussion about the role of Internet intermediaries, including both their independence from political pressure and protection of their clients from surveillance executed by “private police.”

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Crossborder access to citizen's data and cloud computing in the investigation of criminal cases: Regional trends

Marcos Salt, profesor de derecho penal y procesal penal de la universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) [Argentina, ES]

During the brief presentation, I will present practical examples of the problems caused by the application by analogy of the rules on physical evidence to obtain digital evidence.
I try to show that this trend is inconvenient to both for efficiency in the investigation of crimes by the state as to the validity of individual rights. I will place special reference to cross-border access to citizen's data in the cloud.

Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese.

Background on lawful interception mandates and government access to encryption keys

Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

In this session, I'll discuss some of the history of fights over government surveillance powers and government access in the United States, starting in the early 1990s and continuing to the present day. These issues have centered on three main themes: restrictions on cryptography and privacy tools, obligations for communications intermediaries to acquire and implement surveillance capabilities, and mandatory retention of telecommunications data.
One interesting point is that many of the same themes keep recurring: the powers that the government is seeking today are often similar to those it sought two decades ago.
Another interesting point is that the government has not always been successful in expanding its surveillance powers. Many of its proposals never became law and there are still plenty of issues left to fight over. But governments around the world are continuing to having a major effect on the design of technology, getting wiretapping interfaces and backdoors added to communications systems and discouraging deployments of strong encryption.

MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes

Elonnai Hickok, Center for Internet & Society India [India, EN]

In this session I will be looking at the challenges, requisite safeguards, and possible solutions in the context of international cooperation for fighting crime. In doing so I will look closely at the proposed principle of safeguards for international cooperation.
The objective of this session will be to explore ways of improving MLATS and international law enforcement cooperation in order to ensure that basic safeguards can be built into the process of international cooperation.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Format: 10-15 minutes for each five speakers to introduce legal issues and 20 minutes of discussions

3:10 - 3:20 Coffee Break

Workshops: Round II

3:20 - 4:30

Workshop 1: Electronic surveillance demonstrations

In this workshop, we'll take a look at a few electronic surveillance devices (including an ordinary laptop) and look at some of what they can intercept. Technological infrastructure permitting, we may have a live demonstration of intercepting or modifying users' Internet communications.
We'll also consider low-cost surveillance techniques and discuss what kinds of demonstrations have the most pedagogical value for making users aware of particular threats.

Facilitator:
Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Rapporteur:
Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN/ES/PT]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Workshop 2: Legal framework regarding compelled disclosure of communications, subscriber information, and cryptographic keys

In this workshop we will cover various examples of compelled disclosure of private information (from subscriber information and content of communication to cryptographic keys) in the context of law enforcement, focusing on their legal aspects. We will briefly present various legal frameworks, discussing both the examples of legal safeguards (“good practices”) and their shortcomings that allow for government surveillance.
We will also look at various human rights implications of these measures and (potential / existing) role of private companies from the perspective of their compliance with such measures (incl. when requested by non-democratic regimes).

Facilitators:
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]
Elonnai Hickok, Center for Internet & Society India [India, EN]

Rapporteur:
Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Workshop 3: What data is most private? What surveillance is most invasive? How if at all should laws treat them differently?

This workshop will build on the discussion that began in the law & policy plenary, discussing how certain surveillance laws have applied different legal protections to different types of data and surveillance, and questioning whether such distinctions make sense in light of new technology.
The workshop will address that question from legal, personal, and political perspectives. Participants will share with each other details of how the laws in their countries treat different types of data and different types of surveillance, to facilitate shared understanding of the existing legal frameworks and to identify existing gaps and discrepancies in current legal protections.
Based on their own personal experiences as Internet users and as advocates, participants will then discuss what data in their lives they consider most private and what types of surveillance they find most invasive, and reflect on how if at all the law should distinguish between them. Finally, participants will discuss the politics of these different frameworks: both how gaps and weaknesses in existing frameworks threaten the ability of advocates to politically organize in the face of government surveillance, and how we can best work through the political process and change those frameworks to better reflect current technology and human rights norms.

Facilitators:
Kevin Bankston, Center for Democracy and Technology [United States, EN]
Danilo Doneda, Fundação Getúlio Vargas [Brazil, PT/EN]

Rapporteur:
Beatriz Busaniche, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, ES]

Reporting Back Session & Closing Meeting Day 1

4:30 - 5:20

Chair:
Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Rapporteurs:
Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN/ES/PT]

Report: Demonstrating Surveillance

Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Report: Compelled Disclosure of Communications, Subscriber Information & Cryptographic Keys

Beatriz Busaniche, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, ES]

Report: What Data is Most Private? What Surveillance is Most Invasive? Should Laws Treat Different Data Differently?

8:30 pm Dinner

DAY 2: Challenges and Mapping Out Possible Solutions
8:55 - 9:00 Welcome

Plenary: Surveillance in Latin America
9:00 - 10:20

Chair: Camila Marques, Lawyer, ARTIGO 19 [Brazil, PT]

Surveillance in Colombia
Carlos Eduardo Huertas, Semana [Colombia, ES]

Surveillance in Cuba
“Mario Hernandez” [Cuba, ES]

Surveillance in the Northern Triangle
Renata Avila, Global Voices [Guatemala, ES]

Surveillance in Peru
Yonsi Solis, Global Voices [Peru, ES]

Surveillance in Mexico
Caracol Azul, [Mexico, ES]
This session will have simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

Keynote: Challenges Posed By Electronic Surveillance

10:20 - 10:40
Frank La Rue, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression [Guatemala, ES]
Increasing pressure (legal and political) on private parties to help carry out the state’s surveillance mandate.

Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

10:40 - 11:00 Coffee Break

Plenary: International Surveillance & Human Rights Principles: Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America

11:00 - 11:50

Chair: Carly Nyst, Privacy International [Australia/UK, EN]
Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Explanation of the Principles: Background, purpose, need, challenges and opportunities

Chilean and Latin American perspectives

Alberto Cerda, Derechos Digitales [Chile, ES]
Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

Expansion of Brazilian law enforcement powers to access users’ digital information

Pablo Ortellado, GPOPAI [Brasil, PT/EN]
Simultaneous interpretation from Portuguese to Spanish and English

Surveillance and regional human rights standards

Juan Camilo Rivera, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas [Colombia, ES]
Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

Workshops: Round III

11:50 - 1:00

Workshop 1: International surveillance and human rights principles: Perspectives from Latin America

Facilitator:
Alberto Cerda, Derechos Digitales [ES] & Carly Nyst, Privacy International [UK, EN]

Rapporteur:
Juan Camilo Rivera, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas [Colombia, ES]

Workshop 2: Technical community activism
What is the technology community doing to defend privacy?

Facilitators:

Enrique Chaparro, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, ES ]
João Carlos Caribé, Movimento Mega (aka Mega Não) [Brazil, PT/EN]

Rapporteur:
Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [USA, EN]

Plenary: Hands-on Activism

2:40 - 3:50 p.m.

Chair: Rebecca Bowe, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

What is meant by Hands-On Activism? As you’ll learn from our panelists, there are many strategies that can be utilized to push back against a surveillance practice or proposal. We’ll cover the most effective ways to obtain public records; strategies for generating interest in digital rights issues; fresh and extraordinary approaches to creative campaigning, and tactics used by an international nonprofit to tackle privacy issues with online campaigns.

Raising digital awareness in Peru

Marco Sifuentes, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad [Peru, ES]

Peru has a very active and influential online community. It can affect the course of elections, prove the president wrong and stop law projects. It can work very well on "real world" matters. But when it comes to online issues, it's been hard to raise awareness on the Peruvian general public and even on the media. What went wrong? However, in the past year, some digital topics have received a lot of coverage. Some not. What changed? I’ll share Peru's experience in the hope that every participant can compare it with his or her own country's situation.

Online organizing for human rights

Fabiola Carrion, Access [Peru, ES/EN]

A recent addition to the Access Team, Fabiola will begin her presentation by talking about her own experiences in organizing and advocacy, arguing that the struggle for human rights is increasingly moving online. She will discuss new tools of organizing, and the importance of combining technology, policy, and grassroots advocacy tactics to affect holistic change in internet policy debates. Her presentation will include a series of short case studies from around the world where Access, along with its various allies, have successfully campaigned for a free and open internet. Her presentation will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and best practices for online organizing, particularly around issues of surveillance and due process.

Surveillance and secrecy: Strategy and tactics - Using the law to uncover abuse of LEAs’ surveillance powers

Geoff King, Lawyer [United States, EN]

Open government laws, though riddled with exemptions, are powerful tools for shedding light on the governmental operations. One way in which these laws can be used is to uncover the existence of law enforcement surveillance, as well details about the tools used to achieve such surveillance. This portion of the presentation will explore how journalists and activists can employ successful transparency strategies in the face of various procedural pitfalls. It will also give concrete examples of how such strategies have paid off in the recent past.
Presentation Materials

Creative campaigning: tactical media mashup
Vladan Joler, Share Foundation [Serbia, EN]

Explore the beautiful world of tactical media as a creative tool for getting your message out there.
From creative campaigning during Serbian protests in the 90s to “lo fi” media interventions, protests inside computer games, media pranks and parasite media tactics to social media bots and Twitter bombs.
Presentation Materials

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese Return to Top

3:50 - 4:10 Coffee Break

Workshops: Round IV

4:10 - 5:10

Workshop 1: What the international surveillance and human rights principles are asking the governments to do?

This session will be used to call out exactly what the International Surveillance and Human Rights Principles are asking governments to change or legislative/policy actions they are asking governments to take. This will hopefully be useful in helping individuals and organizations understand what aspects to highlight and push when proposing the principles and why.

Facilitators:

Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]
Elonnai Hickok, Center for Internet & Society India [India, EN]

Rapporteur:
Graciela Selaimen, NUPEF [Brasil, EN/ES/PT]

Workshop 2: Creative campaigning: tactical media mashup & anti-surveillance campaigns

What are activists around the world doing to counter surveillance proposals and practices? And what could they be doing, with just a little more knowledge and inspiration? At this session, workshop facilitators will share stories about successful campaigns launched around the world in response to government surveillance. How did a humorous Twitter hashtag about a proponent of surveillance legislation rise to “trending” status on Twitter? How did a small team of digital rights activists in Argentina manage to position themselves as one of the most trusted media sources on issues relating to privacy in the digital realm? How did a small group of activists manage to reach biggest world media and how are activists creating their own media? We’ll then open it up for a group discussion in which participants can share their own stories of effective tactics from around the world, and explore ideas for collaborating and harnessing the knowledge gleaned from our collective experiences.

Facilitators:

Rebecca Bowe, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]
Vladan Joler, Share Foundation [Serbia, EN]

Rapporteur:
Hisham Almiraat, Global Voices Advocacy [Morocco, EN]

Reporting Back Session & Closing Remarks

5:10 - 6:00

Chair:
Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Rapporteurs:
Graciela Selaimen, NUPEF [Brasil, EN/ES/PT]

Renzo Lavin, Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia [Argentina, ES]
Hisham Almiraat, Global Voices Advocacy [Morocco, EN]

Each breakout session will have one designated rapporteur, one note-taker, and a module to work around.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/state-surveillance-and-human-rights-camp

Govt likely to issue guidelines to clarify IT rules soon

praskrishna — 2012-12-20T05:24:14Z

Norms relate to the role of intermediaries such as telcos, Web service providers, others on hosting content online, writes Surabhi Agarwal.

The article was first published in LiveMint on December 16, 2012.

After the government issued guidelines on the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, it is expected to soon come out with similar guidelines to clarify the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, that have also been heavily criticised.

A senior official of the department of electronics and information technology said that even though the government is not looking at amending the overall Act as the legislative process for that would be time consuming, it is hoping to issue guidelines within a week.

The rules were notified in April 2011 with the aim of clearly defining the role of intermediaries—including telcos, Internet and web-hosting service providers and search engines—while hosting content on their networks and websites along with ensuring some level of due diligence by them.

However, this led to outrage among the Internet community as the rules mandated hosts or owners of the websites to take action against “objectionable content” within 36 hours of receiving a complaint. Experts argued that the rules could lead to censorship attempts with some intermediaries complying with illegitimate requests to remove content from websites in a bid to avoid litigation.

The government official said that there had been some confusion about what it meant to take action within 36 hours.

“While the intent was to ensure that intermediaries take cognizance of the request and initiate some proceeding on it, it has been misconstrued as removing content within 36 hours in some cases,” this person said.

The official added that the government was looking at clarifying issues such as this. “We are currently studying the representations sent by different stakeholders on the rules.”

Subho Ray, president, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), said that the term “act” should be replaced by “acknowledge” to ensure that it is not wrongly interpreted as removing content within 36 hours.

“We have also requested the time period to be extended to 72 hours as 36 hours is sometimes too short a period if it falls during the weekend,” he said.

While only some clauses address issues such as national interest, public order and security restrictions under which content can be removed, “the remainder of grounds includes private claims such as content which ‘belongs to another person’, or otherwise infringes proprietary rights, or is ‘defamatory’,” said Bangalore-based think tank Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in its representation, of which Mint has a copy. Moreover, other terms, such as ‘grossly harmful’, ‘harassing’ and ‘disparaging’, are “terminologically indeterminate and purely subjective”, the representation said. It also said that “the intermediary guidelines create a two-track system by which private censorship is legitimized online”.

IAMAI’s recommendations include clearly defining who can qualify as the ‘affected person’ eligible to post a complaint on content, which has currently been left to the discretion and determination of the intermediary.

Ray’s representation also said the rules put the burden of interpretation and acting upon third-party content on the intermediary. “This, we believe is the function of the judiciary and not the intermediaries,” it said.

Guidelines, while bringing some initial clarity, may not be enough, said an executive at a top technology firm who did not want to be identified. “To ensure long-term solutions to some of the issues highlighted, the Act needs to be amended eventually,” he said.

Late last month, the government promised to issue guidelines to the states that complaints under the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act, which criminalizes “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online or electronically, can be registered only with the permission of an officer at or above the rank of deputy commissioner of police, and inspector general in metro cities. However, even in the case of Section 66A, it did not amend the terms in the Section that are said to be vague and subject to interpretation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-16-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-likely-to-issue-guidelines-to-clarify-it-rules-soon

The Trouble with Hurried Solutions

chinmayi — 2012-12-20T04:23:08Z

The World Conference on International Telecommunication showed that countries are not yet ready to arrive at a consensus on regulation and control of the Internet

Chinmayi Arun's Op-ed was published in the Hindu on December 15, 2012.

The World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) that concluded on December 14 saw much heated debate. Some countries wanted to use the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to gain intergovernmental control of the World Wide Web. Some saw it as an opportunity to democratise the Internet, by replacing U.S. and corporate domination of Internet policy, with a more intergovernmental process. Others insisted that the Internet must be left alone.

The result is that after many days’ deliberations, there was no consensus. The amended International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) document has not yet been signed by over 50 countries, of which some like the United States have refused to sign altogether, while others have said that they will need to consult with their national governments before signing.

This article discusses the broader issue under question, which is, whether ITU is the best forum to solve the cross-border problems that arise in relation to the Internet.

WCIT, ITU and ITRs

The ITU has been creating international policy from the days in which the telegraph was prevalent. Although it is now a United Nations agency, its existence predates the U.N. As technology evolved, forcing the telegraph to give way to the telephone, the ITU created new standards for telephony. It even rechristened itself from ‘International Telegraph Union’ to ‘International Telecommunications Union’.

The ITU performs an essential role in ensuring that multiple states with their varying technology, standards and legal systems, are able to interconnect and co-ordinate. Its harmonising rules and standards make co-ordination easier and cheaper than having each state come to an agreement with every other state. The ITRs within the ITU framework facilitate co-ordination by creating binding rules for member states.

Some countries’ proposals for the amendment of the ITRs would have affected content on the Internet substantially. However, after prolonged negotiation, the final draft that was under consideration contained an explicit statement excluding such content from the ITRs’ purview. This draft also came with a resolution that made reference to states’ elaborating their Internet related public policy positions in ITU fora, which was a source of controversy.

Some of the initial suggestions like Russia’s controversial proposal would have given the ITU greater sway over the Internet, permitting it to lay down global standards. These standards may have encouraged countries to inspect data transmitted across the Internet to check whether it is undesirable content raising serious privacy and freedom of speech concerns, especially in countries that do not protect these rights.

The global standards created by the ITU would have permeated to the companies that create the web-based applications that we use, and the resulting law and technological choices would have affected individual users.

Internet governance

The ITU makes its decisions using a traditional model that only seeks consensus between governments, and this is far removed from the way in which the Internet has been governed thus far. Therefore, although expanding the ITU’s mandate to the Internet may seem natural to those who have followed its evolution mirroring the evolution of information technology, the ITU’s manner of functioning is viewed by many as being at odds with the more multi-stakeholder and ad hoc system used to build Internet policy.

In the 1990s, John Perry Barlow proclaimed that cyberspace was outside national borders, and questioned the authority and legitimacy of a national government’s attempts to govern it. Over the years, it has become clear that national governments can exert jurisdiction in cyberspace: filtering content, launching surveillance of users, and creating law that impacts citizens’ behaviour online directly and indirectly.

However, governments’ exertion of will on Internet users is tempered greatly by the other forces that have a strong influence on the Internet. User-behaviour and content often depend on the policies of major service providers like Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook.

Key standards and functions like the allocation of domain names and developing of Internet standards are managed by organisations like ICANN and IETF, which are not governmental organisations. Features like user anonymity are based on technological choices on the World Wide Web. Therefore, governments face significant obstacles and counterbalancing power when they attempt to impose their will on citizens online.

The ITU can weigh this power balance in favour of governments. Many fear that more government power will lead to more censorship, surveillance and stifling of the innovation that is integral to the evolution of Internet. But others support ITU intervention, in the belief that an international inter-governmental regulatory body would be more accountable, and would prevent corporate abuse of power.

Several of the aforementioned corporations, as well as regulatory bodies under question, are headquartered in the United States. There are those who see this as excessive U.S. influence on the Internet, eroding the sovereignty of other states, which have relatively limited influence over what their citizens can transmit and access online. These people see the ITU as a forum that can democratise Internet Governance, giving states shared influence over the web. However, this shared influence is resisted by those who find that the U.S. influence offers them more leverage and protection for their freedom of speech, than increased influence of countries that threaten this internationally accepted human right.

Powerful arguments in favour of increased ITU involvement include highlighting the dangers of abandoning the Internet to the free market. It is true that markets need some regulation to guard against malfunction and abuse of power by stronger players. However, the significant question is not whether these markets should be regulated, but how they should be regulated. Unfortunately, many of the arguments that supported expansion of the ITU’s mandate failed to establish why the ITU is the best solution to the problems plaguing the Internet, rather than being the most readily available reaction.

Any regulatory intervention must have very clear objectives, and some estimate of its likely impact. The intervention must not be considered in isolation but in contrast with other ways to achieve the same goals. Although some of the serious transnational issues plaguing the Internet need international solutions, the ITU, at least in its current avatar, is not necessarily the best remedy. It also remains unclear exactly what effect ITU intervention would have on the Internet — whether it would really offer solutions as intended, or whether it would prove more detrimental than useful, condoning of human rights violations and slowing the blistering innovation that is characteristic of the Internet.

Lack of consensus

Therefore, some of the initial concerns expressed by the countries that refused to sign the ITRs were legitimate. However, the final ITRs document addressed many of these concerns. The dissent emerged over the insertion of text in the preamble that recognised member states’ rights to access international telecommunication networks. These rights, being expressed only in the preamble, are not enforceable, even if they express intentions that are unacceptable to some.

The debates at the WCIT made it clear that the world is not yet ready to come to a unified position on this subject. Perhaps the ITU’s continuation in its path towards increasing, and making effective, multi-stakeholder participation will be the unifying factor some day, if it evolves into a forum which everyone sees as sufficiently democratic, transparent and accountable for Internet policy.

(The writer is Assistant Professor of Law at National Law University, Delhi, and a Fellow of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. She attended the WCIT from December 3-14)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-opinion-lead-december-15-2012-chinmayi-arun-the-trouble-with-hurried-solutions

The freedom of expression debate: The State must mend fences with The Web

praskrishna — 2013-01-07T10:30:21Z

A fortnight after her arrest, Renu Srinivasan spends her free time singing Ashley Tisdale's number Suddenly. The lyrics - Suddenly people know my name, suddenly, everything has changed - resonate with the story of her life ever since she 'liked' and 'shared' her friend, Shaheen Dhada's, 21, controversial post regarding Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray's funeral on Facebook on November 18 and got arrested for it.

The article by Rahul Jayaram was published in India Today on December 18, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

She's now flooded with "hundreds" of messages on FB; some congratulatory, others abusive and gets at least a dozen friend requests on the social networking site. When Renu went to the doctor last week, two constables accompanied her.

"All of a sudden, there's too much attention on me," says the Botany graduate from Dandekar College and a budding singer who is making new friends in the virtual world. There's, however, a word from caution from her father P.A. Srinivasan: "Don't comment on controversial issues you don't understand."

Bloggers are careful. Krish Ashok, a well-known blogger is disappointed with the government's lack of engagement with India's surging online community. In a blog post in August 2010, he made fun of the Ramayana and the fact that women couldn't enter the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. A group called Hindu Janajagruti Samiti threatened to take him to court. Ashok spoke to his lawyer.

"I was amazed. She said no individual could take action against me. But a group or organisation could," he says. Since then, he has become more aware of his Internet rights.

Gursimran Khamba, who has over 30,000 followers on Twitter, kept his cool during Thackeray's death and funeral. When all the media went gaga over him, televising his family photo albums, Khamba, re-tweeted reports and accounts of the Shiv Sena's role during the Mumbai riots of 1992-93. "In my head, I am not courageous to say anything about it myself," he says. He didn't want to incite. He'd rather help his followers get a more nuanced picture of a venerated leader.

Palghar and after, has made Ashok think. "I would reduce the number of provocative posts I might make," he says. Khamba says he will stick to comedy and doesn't believe in offence for the sake of offending although "taking offence is our national sport."

It is a shame, for the Internet is growing in India like nobody's business. It's the medium of the age.

According to comScore, a company that measures Internet trends, India is the fastest growing online market in the last 12 months among BRIC nations. There were 44.5 million unique visitors in July 2011 and in July 2012 there were 62.6 million unique visitors. That is, a growth of 44 per cent in one year. The total Internet usage of 124.7 million users in July 2012, that is, a 41 per cent growth from last year (July 2011).

With 124 million users as of July 2012, India has an Internet penetration of 10 per cent. 75 per cent of India's online users are below the age of 35 making it one of the youngest Net-connected populations. 39.3 per cent of India's Internet population consists of females. It has the highest growth seen among 15 to 24 male and female segments. India has 56.2 million Facebook users and 4.1 million Twitter users. Facebook had 35.3 million users in July 2011 and it jumped to 52.1 million in July 2012. That's a growth of 47% in just one year!

Growth of the Internet is one thing. Freedom of the Internet is another. Freedom House, an American organisation that tracks political and civil liberties worldwide, is blunt in its assessment. India is third in terms of Internet penetration, after the United States and China. Before November 2008, government control over the Internet was limited. All that changed after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Since then it says, "The need, desire, and ability of the Indian government to monitor, censor, and control the communication sector have grown. Given the range of security threats facing the country, many Indians feel that the government should be allowed to monitor personal communications such as telephone calls, email messages, and financial transactions. It is in this context that Parliament passed amendments to the Information Technology Act (ITA) in 2008, expanding censorship and monitoring capabilities. This trend continued in 2011 with the adoption of regulations increasing surveillance in cyber cafes. Meanwhile, the government and non-state actors have intensified pressure on intermediaries, including social media applications, to remove upon request a wide range of content vaguely defined as "offensive" and potentially pre-screen user-generated content. Despite new comprehensive data protection regulations adopted in 2011, the legal framework and oversight surrounding surveillance and interception remains weak, and several instances of abuse have emerged in recent years."

Over this year we have had the cases of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi being put in jail and later released in September. In April, Ambikesh Mahaptra of Jadavpur University in Kolkata was arrested for a cartoon poking fun at West Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee and Railway Minister Mukul Roy. In October, Ravi, owner of plastic packaging material factory was arrested and let off on bail for joking about Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's son, Karti. The list gets longer. The Web and the State are at loggerheads. Why?

Lawyers and bloggers haul up Internet laws. And for such a community, we have laws like Section 66 (A) of the Information Technology Act of 2000. The law states that "any person who sends by means of a computer resource or a communication device, any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character," can be booked for online crime.

Legal experts think Section 66 (A) and the whole of the IT Act of 2000, needs revisiting. According to cyber lawyer Pavan Duggal, Section 66 (A) "is a vanilla provision that can be used for anything online."

Section 66(A) seeks to empower the police and the complainant. "The words 'grossly offensive' and 'menacing character' of Section 66 (A) have no definition given. Normal, legitimate bona fide conversation between boyfriend and girlfriend at noble times online is fine. Once relationship sours, and they are gone."

"It's not clear what the purpose of Section 66A is. It's like having a single provision covering murder, assault, intimidation, and nuisance, and prescribing the same penalty for all of them," says Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore. Terminology and the law's purpose are massive concerns.

"The extent of the ambiguity of Section 66A is worrying. Laws need to be very clear about what they want to achieve. If it is murder, then it must say murder. If its attempted murder, it must be clear it is attempted murder. Section 66 A is trying to do too many things at the same time. Its canvas is too vast," says Rajeev Chandrasekar.

As a country, we look to imitate the West, and often copy it badly. Some wonder if we need to mime the West. Pranesh Prakash thinks the Indian Constitution is stronger on free speech grounds than the (unwritten) UK Constitution, and the judiciary has wide powers of judicial review of statutes (i.e., the ability of a court to strike down a law passed by Parliament as 'unconstitutional').

Judicial review of statutes does not exist in the UK (with review under its EU obligations being the exception) as they believe that Parliament is supreme, unlike India. Putting those two aspects together, a law that is valid in the UK might well be unconstitutional in India for failing to fall within the eight octagonal walls of the reasonable restrictions allowed under Article 19(2).

Rajeev Chandrasekar thinks the Brits got it right. During the London riots of June 2011, "the UK government kept a tab on social media networking sites so as to check incitement, he says. It was a good example of clear legislation and effective execution, in an extreme scenario." To defuse online paranoia he wants the government to have a multi-stakeholder arrangement in fixing IT laws. This must involve users, IT companies, cyber cafe owners and the government. The State must mend fences with the Web.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-today-rahul-jayaram-december-18-2012-the-freedom-of-expression-debate

Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns

praskrishna — 2012-12-12T10:38:01Z

On the 20th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, the ShauryaDiwas, Ayodhya and Babri Masjid hashtags were trending on Twitter all day, with almost 2,500 messages sent over 48 hours.

Surabhi Agarwal's article was published in LiveMint on December 6, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The tag ShauryaDiwas was used by supporters of the demolition and was used in half the total number of tweets.

Experts said the public display of extreme views on a social networking platform has the potential to create social unrest, leaving the government with few options but to regulate content, in turn fuelling the Internet censorship debate further.

A senior government official said that in a situation in which there are serious national security implications, the government has no option but to "block content" in order to stop communal sentiment from flaring up.

According to social web analytics firm Social Hues, the tweets reached an audience of 456,000 followers. However, according to Vinita Ananth, chief executive of Social Hues, there were also messages that "condemned the call for ShauryaDiwas” tagging it ShameDiwas. "New platforms like Twitter are providing real-time feedback on public sentiment, which is unprecedented."

Ashis Nandy, political and social analyst, said that even though very few Indians are on platforms such as Twitter, communications over them give a hint of what a certain section of the society is thinking about.

"It is a small representation of the middle class, which is driven by ideology and some of the people with extreme opinions may also belong to this group, so perhaps it could have some security implications," he said.

Fringe groups such as those above tend to take extreme positions to get attention, said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society.

Having learnt their lessons after the recent Assam-related panic, intelligence agencies are now keeping a close watch on the Internet, another government official said.

"If necessary, posts will be removed through legitimate ways," the official said, adding that a debate was underway about how to strike a balance between freedom of speech and the lawful requirement of agencies. "Mischief by a few people creates nuisance in society. The government is now looking for ways through which it can regionally block or remove inflammatory tweets. We don’t want to curb freedom of speech and the government doesn’t have any such intentions either," the official said.

Hate messages on social media had sparked a panic exodus of people from the north-east from cities such as Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in August.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-6-2012-surabhi-agarwal-ayodhya-trending-on-twitter-sparks-censorship-concerns

66A ‘cut & paste job’

praskrishna — 2012-12-11T05:43:50Z

The controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act has borrowed words out of context from British and American laws, according to lawyers here who are calling it a “poor cut-and-paste job”.

GS Mudur's article was published in the Telegraph on December 3, 2012. Pranesh Prakash and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted.

Section 66A, passed by Parliament in December 2008, draws on laws passed in the UK in 1988 and 2003 and the US in 1996. But some lawyers say that, unlike 66A, those foreign laws impose only reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech.

"The text of 66A seems to be the result of a cut-and-paste job done without applying the mind," said Snehashish Ghosh, a lawyer with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a non-government organisation in Bangalore.

Some of the language in Section 66A is taken from Britain’s Malicious Communications Act (MCA) of 1988, which begins with the words: "Any person who sends to another person...."

This provision in MCA 1988, Ghosh said, is intended to curb malicious messages from one person to another. "It does not cover a post on a social website or an electronic communication broadcast to the world."

Section 66A has also borrowed words from Britain’s Communications Act of 2003 which, Ghosh said, is intended to prevent abuse of public communication services and does not directly deal with messages sent by individuals.

Government officials have said that 66A has also plucked language from the US Telecommunications Act of 1996.

This was a landmark legislation that overhauled America’s telecommunication law by taking into account the emergence of the Internet and changing communications technologies. Among other things, it made illegal the transmission of obscene or indecent material to minors via computers.

"Section 66A in its current form fails to define a specific category (context) as defined in the laws from where it has borrowed words," Ghosh said. "This is what has led to its inconsistent and arbitrary applications."

Ghosh and his colleagues say that 66A, through an "absurd" combination of borrowed and ambiguous language, curbs freedom of expression and threatens people with three years’ imprisonment for certain offences that would otherwise, under existing Indian Penal Code (IPC) provisions, draw a fine of only Rs 200.

Section 66A(b), for example, clubs together the offences of persistently repeated communications that might lead to "annoyance", "inconvenience", "danger", "insult", "injury", "criminal intimidation", "enmity", "hatred", and "ill-will".

This is "astounding and unparalleled", said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the CIS, who has posted an analysis of Section 66A on the NGO’s institutional blog.

"We do not have such a provision anywhere but in India’s information technology law."

This is “akin to... providing equal punishment for calling someone a moron (insult) and threatening to kill someone (criminal intimidation),” Prakash wrote in the blog, where he has listed existing IPC provisions that can deal with the offences that 66A seeks to cover.

Lawyers have also questioned 66A’s effect of criminalising what the existing IPC would label as civil offences. For example, Prakash said, while the punishment under IPC for criminal nuisance is Rs 200, the penalty imposed by 66A is jail for up to three years.

Several sections in the IPC, they said, can effectively address offences that 66A attempts to address exclusively for electronic communications. For example, the IPC has sections for defamation (499 and 500), outraging religious sentiments (295) and obscenity (292).

"We do not require extraordinary laws when existing laws suffice," Ghosh said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/telegraphindia-december-3-2012-gs-mudur-66a-cut-and-paste-job

The Worldwide Web of Concerns

pranesh — 2012-12-27T04:31:39Z

The International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) is currently under way in Dubai, after a gap of 25 years. At this conference, the Inter-national Telecommunication Regulations — a binding treaty containing high-level principles — are to be revised.

Pranesh Prakash's column was published in the Deccan Chronicle on December 10, 2012.

Much has changed since the 1988 Melbourne conference. Since 1988, mobile telephony has grown by leaps and bounds, the Internet has expanded and the World Wide Web has come into existence.

Telecommunications is now, by and large, driven by the private sector and not by state monopolies.

While there are welcome proposals (consumer protection relating to billing of international roaming), there have also been contentious issues that Internet activists have raised: a) process-related problems with the ITU; b) scope of the ITRs, and of ITU’s authority; c) content-related proposals and “evil governments” clamping down on free speech; d) IP traffic routing and distribution of revenues.

Process-related problems: The ITU is a closed-door body with only governments having a voice, and only they and exorbitant fees-paying sector members have access to documents and proposals. Further, governments generally haven’t held public consultations before forming their positions. This lack of transparency and public participation is anathema to any form of global governance and is clearly one of the strongest points of Internet activists who’ve raised alarm bells over WCIT.

w Scope of ITRs: Most telecom regulators around the world distinguish between information services and telecom services, with regulators often not having authority over the former. A few countries even believe that the wide definition of telecommunications in the ITU constitution and the existing ITRs already covers certain aspects of the Internet, and contend that the revisions are in line with the ITU constitution. This view should be roundly rejected, while noting that there are some legitimate concerns about the shift of traditional telephony to IP-based networks and the ability of existing telecom regulations (such as those for mandatory emergency services) to cope with this shift.

ITU’s relationship with Internet governance has been complicated. In 1997, it was happy to take a hands-off approach, cooperating with Internet Society and others, only to seek a larger role in Internet governance soon after. In part this has been because the United States cocked a snook at the ITU and the world community in 1998 through the way it established Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as a body to look after the Internet’s domain name system. While the fact that the US has oversight over ICANN needs to change (with de-nationalisation being the best option), Russia wants to supersede ICANN and that too through current revisions of the ITRs. Russia’s proposal is a dreadful idea, and must not just be discarded lightly but thrown away with great force. The ITU should remain but one among multiple equal stakeholders concerned with Internet governance.

One important, but relatively unnoticed, proposed change to ITU’s authority is that of making the standards that ITU’s technical wing churns out mandatory. This is a terrible idea (especially in view of the ITU’s track record at such standards) that only a stuffy bureaucrat without any real-world insight into standards adoption could have dreamt up.

Content-related proposals: Internet activists, especially US-based ones, have been most vocal about the spectre of undemocratic governments trying to control online speech through the ITRs. Their concerns are overblown, especially given that worse provisions already exist in the ITU’s constitution. A more real threat is that of increasing national regulation of the Internet and its subsequent balkanisation, and this is increasingly becoming reality even without revisions to the ITRs.

Having said that, we must ensure that issues like harmonisation of cyber-security and spam laws, which India has been pushing, should not come under ITU’s authority. A further worry is the increasing militarisation of cyberspace, and an appropriate space must be found by nation-states to address this pressing issue, without bringing it under the same umbrella as online protests by groups like Anonymous.

Division of revenue: Another set of proposals is being pushed by a group of European telecom companies hoping to revive their hard-hit industry. They want the ITU to regulate how payments are made for the flow of Internet traffic, and to prevent socalled “net neutrality” laws that aim to protect consumers and prevent monopolistic market abuse. They are concerned that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are free-riding on their investments. That all these companies pay to use networks just as all home users do, is conveniently forgotten. Thankfully, most countries don’t seem to be considering these proposals seriously.

Can general criteria be framed for judging these proposals? In submissions to the Indian government, the Centre for Internet and Society suggested that any proposed revision of the ITRs be considered favourably only if it passes all the following tests: if international regulation is required, rather than just national-level regulation (i.e., the principle of subsidiarity); if it is a technical issue limited to telecommunications networks and services, and their interoperability; if it is an issue that has to be decided exclusively at the level of nation-states; if the precautionary principle is satisfied; and if there is no better place than the ITRs to address that issue. If all of the above are satisfied, then it must be seen if it furthers substantive principles, such as equity and development, competition and prevention of monopolies, etc. If it does, then we should ask what kind of regulation is needed: whether it should be mandatory, whether it is the correct sort of intervention required to achieve the policy objectives.

The threat of a “UN takeover” of the Internet through the WCIT is non-existent. Since the ITU’s secretary-general is insisting on consensus (as is tradition) rather than voting, the possibility of bad proposals (of which there are many) going through is slim. However, that doesn’t mean that activists have been crying themselves hoarse in vain. That people around the world are a bit more aware about the linkage between the technical features of the Internet and its potential as a vehicle for free speech, commerce and development, is worth having to hear some shriller voices out there.

The writer is policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/deccan-chronicle-pranesh-prakash-december-10-2012-the-worldwide-web-of-concerns

Debate on Section 66A rages on

praskrishna — 2012-12-10T09:44:31Z

Last week, a reputed BPO in Chennai took down its Facebook page and introduced stricter moderation for posts on its bulletin board.

Vasudha Venugopal's article was published in the Hindu on December 10, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The measure, an official said, was aimed at avoiding any "callous remark by any employee." "We have discussions on many raging topics here, and we are just making sure the content is clean with no intended defamation."

The need to present only ‘unobjectionable content’ is just one off-shoot of a controversy that has gripped the country after at least five persons were arrested in recent months for posting their views online. But what started as an outcry by a few voices against the IT Act has now turned into a campaign against the constitutional validity of the Act itself. Last week also saw concerted protests to demand the repeal of Section 66A of the IT Act, under which most of the accused were booked. Human chains and protests were conducted in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Guntur, Kakinada, Vijaywada, Visakhapatnam, Pune, Kozhikode and Kannur, among others.

In the past few months, the debate on the use of Section 66A in particular, and the Act in general, has gathered momentum. The arrests of Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra for circulating a cartoon lampooning West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee; cartoonist Aseem Trivedi; businessman Ravi Srinivasan for tweets against Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram; and the two girls in Maharashtra for criticising the bandh after Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s death have sparked popular anger.

“Public anger and media attention have been so strong that the government has been forced to retreat, which is a good first step,” says Alagunambi Welkin, president of the Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu, which organised the protests in Chennai. "The next step would be to plug the loopholes in the IT Act. After all, this same government has declared in various international forums that it is all for promoting openness online."

Activists say that along with the increased pressure on the government, collecting information on cases of the misuse of the Act are the tasks that have to be fulfilled immediately. Human rights activist A. Marx, who has filed a public interest litigation petition against Section 66A, says the selective application of the law is very troubling. From a broader perspective though, this is also an issue of global proportions. Recently, a man in the U.K. was jailed for 18 months after he was found guilty of posting abusive messages on an online memorial. In July this year, a young Moroccan was arrested in Casablanca on the charge of posting “insulting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.”

As recently as Tuesday, a Shenzen resident was arrested for posting a letter online, accusing a senior village official of corruption, and last week, a man in Kent was arrested for posting an image of a burning poppy on a social network site.

However, Pranesh Prakash, policy director, Centre For Internet And Society, Bangalore, notes that the more problematic parts in India’s laws are ones that result from adaptation. India’s own adaptation of the U.K. law, for instance, considerably increases punishment from six months to three years. However, if it is any consolation, there are voices worldwide being raised on this issue. Till last week, Google’s search page had a message: "Love the free and open Internet? Tell the world’s governments to keep it that way," and a link for comments directed to the Dubai conference, which will see a wide-ranging discussions and key decisions on global internet governance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-sci-tech-internet-december-10-2012-vasudha-venugopal-debate-on-section-66a

The Worldwide Web of Concerns

pranesh — 2012-12-10T05:10:47Z

The threat of a ‘UN takeover’ of the Internet through the WCIT is non-existent. However, that does not mean that activists have been crying themselves hoarse in vain.

Pranesh Prakash's column was published in the Asian Age on December 10, 2012.

The International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) is currently under way in Dubai, after a gap of 25 years. At this conference, the International Telecommunication Regulations — a binding treaty containing high-level principles — are to be revised.

Much has changed since the 1988 Melbourne conference. Since 1988, mobile telephony has grown by leaps and bounds, the Internet has expanded and the World Wide Web has come into existence. Telecommunications is now, by and large, driven by the private sector and not by state monopolies.

Process-related problems: The ITU is a closed-door body with only governments having a voice, and only they and exorbitant fees-paying sector members have access to documents and proposals. Further, governments generally haven’t held public consultations before forming their positions. This lack of transparency and public participation is anathema to any form of global governance and is clearly one of the strongest points of Internet activists who’ve raised alarm bells over WCIT.

Scope of ITRs: Most telecom regulators around the world distinguish between information services and telecom services, with regulators often not having authority over the former. A few countries even believe that the wide definition of telecommunications in the ITU constitution and the existing ITRs already covers certain aspects of the Internet, and contend that the revisions are in line with the ITU constitution. This view should be roundly rejected, while noting that there are some legitimate concerns about the shift of traditional telephony to IP-based networks and the ability of existing telecom regulations (such as those for mandatory emergency services) to cope with this shift.

Content-related proposals: Internet activists, especially US-based ones, have been most vocal about the spectre of undemocratic governments trying to control online speech through the ITRs. Their concerns are overblown, especially given that worse provisions already exist in the ITU’s constitution. A more real threat is that of increasing national regulation of the Internet and its subsequent balkanisation, and this is increasingly becoming reality even without revisions to the ITRs. Having said that, we must ensure that issues like harmonisation of cyber-security and spam laws, which India has been pushing, should not come under ITU’s authority. A further worry is the increasing militarisation of cyberspace, and an appropriate space must be found by nation-states to address this pressing issue, without bringing it under the same umbrella as online protests by groups like Anonymous.

Division of revenue: Another set of proposals is being pushed by a group of European telecom companies hoping to revive their hard-hit industry. They want the ITU to regulate how payments are made for the flow of Internet traffic, and to prevent so-called “net neutrality” laws that aim to protect consumers and prevent monopolistic market abuse. They are concerned that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are free-riding on their investments. That all these companies pay to use networks just as all home users do, is conveniently forgotten. Thankfully, most countries don’t seem to be considering these proposals seriously.

Can general criteria be framed for judging these proposals? In submissions to the Indian government, the Centre for Internet and Society suggested that any proposed revision of the ITRs be considered favourably only if it passes all the following tests: if international regulation is required, rather than just national-level regulation (i.e., the principle of subsidiarity); if it is a technical issue limited to telecommunications networks and services, and their interoperability; if it is an issue that has to be decided exclusively at the level of nation-states; if the precautionary principle is satisfied; and if there is no better place than the ITRs to address that issue. If all of the above are satisfied, then it must be seen if it furthers substantive principles, such as equity and development, competition and prevention of monopolies, etc. If it does, then we should ask what kind of regulation is needed: whether it should be mandatory, whether it is the correct sort of intervention required to achieve the policy objectives.

The writer is policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-column-december-10-2012-pranesh-prakash-the-worldwide-web-of-concerns

Annual Conference on Human Rights 2012

praskrishna — 2013-01-07T10:47:00Z

Malavika Jayaram participated in this conference as a panelist in this event organised by Estonia and Google.

Read the original published by Estonian Institute of Human Rights on December 9, 2012.

Monday, December 10, 2012

09:30-10:00 Registration of participants

10:00-11:00 Opening session

Welcoming remarks:	Hanno Pevkur, Minister of Social of Affairs
Presentation of the Report on Human Rights in Estonia:	Mart Nutt, MP, Member of Supervising Board of Estonian Institute of Human Rights Karin Reivart, Research Manager, Turu-uuringute AS
Moderator:	Vootele Hansen, Chairman of Estonian Institute of Human Rights

11:00 – 12:40 Session 1

Human Rights and Security: Protecting victims and providing justice

In the modern world, the vast majority of casualties in armed conflicts are civilians. How should the international community react to human rights violations in conflict zones? Could a conflict exist between the requirements of peace on the one hand and justice, on the other? How can we implement the concept of Responsibility to Protect in practice? How does the promotion of human rights influence the ability of Western nations and institutions to interact with the rest of the world?

Keynote speech:	Stephen J. Rapp, United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice.
Panelists:	Anthony Dworkin, European Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Policy Fellow Gentian Zyberi, University of Oslo, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Associate Professor Jeffrey D. Levine, United States Ambassador in Estonia
Moderator:	Riina Kionka, Head of Central Asia Division, European External Action Service; former Personal Representative for Human Rights in the area of CFSP for SG/HR

12:40 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:40 Session 2

Human Rights and the Internet: Shuting down the Internet, shuting up the world

UN Human Rights Council Resolution L13 (6 July 2012) stresses that human rights must also be guaranteed in cyberspace. There is no doubt that the Internet has become an important resource for acquiring information, disseminating points of view and creating networks. Restricting Internet freedom also poses a direct threat to human rights. The panel will discuss these threats: who wants to restrict the Internet? Why and how are they doing it? How should we respond?

Keynote speech:	Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media
Panelists:	Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia Thomas Zerdick, policy officer, DG Justice, European Commission Malavika Jayaram, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, India David Mothander, Google Nordic Policy Counsel
Moderator:	Dr Katrin Merike Nyman-Metcalf, Tallinn University of Technology, member of the Council of Estonian Human Rights Centre

15:40 – 16:10 Coffee break

16:10 – 17:50 Session 3

Contemporary Human Rights Challenges in a Changing Global Balance of Power

The panel will focus on the role of human rights policy in the changing international environment. Does the shift in global power away from the West force a system based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law onto the defensive? How do we promote our values while engaging with authoritarian countries? Should human rights policy consider local needs and conditions?

Panelists:	Anna Sevortian, Director of Human Rights Watch´s Russia Office Frank Johansson, Director of Amnesty International´s Finland Office Douglas Davidson, US State Department Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues; former Head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina Dr Anja Mihr, Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Associate Professor
Moderator:	Hannes Hanso, Researcher, International Centre for Defence Studies

17:50 – 18:00 Conclusions

Dr Mart Nutt, MP, Member of Supervising Board of EIHR

18:30 – 21:30 Dinner, hosted by the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves

The dinner will be the Swissôtel Tallinn (6. floor).

N.B! The organiser reserves the right to make changes in the programme and the presenters

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/estonian-institute-of-human-rights-december-9-2012-annual-conference-on-human-rights-2012

Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech

sunil — 2012-12-05T07:06:52Z

Why is there a constant brouhaha in India about online censorship? What must be done to address this?

Sunil Abraham's article was published in the Economic Times on December 2, 2012.

Of course, we must get the basics right â€” bad law has to be amended, read down by courts or repealed, and bad implementation of law should be addressed via reform and capacity building for the police. But most importantly those in power must understand how to approach the regulation of speech.

To begin with, speech is regulated across the world. Even in the US â€” contrary to popular impression in India â€” speech is regulated both online and offline.

However, law is not the basis of most of this regulation. Speech is largely regulated by social norms. Different corners of our online and offline society have quite complex forms of self-regulation.

The harm caused by speech is often proportionate to the power of the person speaking â€” it maybe unacceptable for a politician or a filmstar to make an inflammatory remark but that very same utterance from an ordinary citizen may be totally fine.

To complicate matters, the very same speech by the very same person could be harmful or harmless based on context. A newspaper editor may share obscene jokes with friends in a bar, but may not take similar liberties in an editorial.

The legal scholar Alan Dershowitz tells us, "The best answer to bad speech is good speech." More recently the quote has been amended, with "more speech" replacing "good speech".

Censorship by the state has to be reserved for the rarest of rare circumstances. This is because censorship usually results in unintended consequences.

The "Streisand Effect", named after the singer-actor Barbra Streisand, is one of these consequences wherein attempts to hide or censor information only result in wider circulation and greater publicity.

The Maharashtra police's attempt to censor the voices of two women has resulted in their speech being broadcast across the nation on social and mainstream media. If the state had instead focused on producing good speech and more speech, nobody would have even heard of these women.

Circumventing Censorship

Peer-to-peer technologies on the internet mimic the topology of human networks and can also precipitate unintended consequences when subject to regulation. John Gilmore, a respected free software developer, puts it succinctly: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

Most of the internet censorship in the US is due to IPR-enforcement activities. This is why Christopher Soghoian, a leading privacy activist, attributes the massive adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies such as proxies and VPNs (virtual private networks) by American consumers to the crackdown on online piracy.

In India, and even when the government has had legitimate reasons to regulate speech, there have been unintended consequences.

During the exodus of people from the North-east, the five SMS per day restriction imposed by the government resulted in another exodus from SMS to alternative messaging platforms such as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), WhatsApp and Twitter.

In both cases the circumvention of censorship by the users has resulted in a worsening situation for law-enforcement organisations â€” VPNs and applications like WhatsApp are much more difficult to monitor and regulate.

Mixed Memes

Regulation of speech also cannot be confused with cyber war or security. Speech can occasionally have security implications but that cannot be the basis for enlightened regulation.

A cyber war expert may be tempted to think of censored content as weapons, but unlike weapons that usually remain lethal, content that can cause harm today may become completely harmless tomorrow. This is unlike a computer virus or malware. For example, during the exodus, the online edition of ET featured the complete list of 309 URLs that were in the four block orders issued by the government to ISPs.

However, this did not result in fresh harm, demonstrating the fallacy of cyber war analogies. A cyber security expert, on the other hand, may be tempted to implement a 360Â° blanket surveillance to regulate speech, but as Gilmore again puts it, "If you're watching everybody, you're watching nobody."

In short, if your answer to bad speech is more censorship, more surveillance and more regulation, then as the internet meme goes, "You're Doing It Wrong".

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-december-2-2012-sunil-abraham-online-censorship