We are anonymous, we are legion

Spy in the Web

nishant — 2012-03-26T06:38:51Z

The government’s proposed pre-censorship rules undermine the intelligence of an online user and endanger democracy.

Kapil Sibal’s recent remarks demanding that private social media companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook remove "objectionable" content from their social networks has created a lot of furore. It should not come as a surprise to us that just like any other platform of publication and content creation, several rules and regulations already regulate online content while still respecting our constitutional right for freedom of speech and expression in India.

From terms of services of the different web 2.0 products that seek to moderate "offensive" or "harmful" material to strictly defined punishable offences as defined in the Information Technologies Act, framed by the Government of India, there are various ways by which material that might incite violence, hatred or pain is systemically removed from the digital space.

Largely, this happens silently. Unless you are particularly keen on certain spurious websites, you wouldn’t even realise that there is a list of blacklisted websites that remain inaccessible to us in India. Once in a while, we realise the regulatory nature of state censorship when certain actions come to light. In 2006, the Indian government blocked Blogspot, the popular blogging platform, because they had detected "anti-national" activities by certain groups using the blog.

More recently, India’s first home-grown erotic comic series Savita Bhabhi was banned and taken off its Indian servers, without realising that in the era of cloud-computing, the comic still remains available through different containers and spaces. In both these cases, while one might be able to provide a critique of the Indian government’s attempts at censoring and regulating information, there is reasonable sympathy to the idea that some control on information is possibly a good thing.

It is in the very nature of information to be filtered. I am sure everybody will agree that censoring, controlling and regulating information of certain kinds — involving child pornography, calls for violence and vandalism aimed at insulting and offending vulnerable sections of the society — is probably in the interest of a healthier information society. And hence, one nods one’s head, rather grudgingly at some of the censorship laws (print, TV, internet, et al) and accepts that we need them, at least in principle, if not in execution.

However, what Sibal is asking for is not in the same vein. Censorship laws have always been very cautious of what constitutes "offensive" content and have relied both on the larger opinions of the community as well as the informed expertise of legal bodies to censor information. More often than not, an act of censorship is implemented when certain sections of the society, in their interaction with certain information, find it offensive or insulting and ask for a block. Pre-emptive censorship, the kinds performed by the Central Board of Film Certification, is in service of existing legal infrastructure around production and distribution of information.

Protective guidelines for censoring information, as was recently seen in the Broadcast Editors’ Association’s mandate around not intruding into the privacy of the Bachchan baby and the mother, during the birth of the child, are demonstrably for the protection of a person’s private life.

Sibal’s new calls for censorship against material “that would offend any human being” is separate from all these instances in three ways. First, while Sibal is an important political figure in this country, he is not the lord of information production. Using the power of his office to call for taking down of content that he found offensive (fortunately it did not incite him to violence and moral decrepitude) is undemocratic and possibly extra-legal (as in not within the boundaries of law, but who will bell the cat?).

To ask private companies and use his influence to bully them into curtailing the constitutionally provided freedom of speech and expression is in bad taste. There is enough regulation that could be invoked to seek arbitration between Sibal’s opinion and somebody else’s about how Sonia Gandhi should be represented online.

Second, Sibal might pretend that he is only asking for censorship of online content the way in which we have for other media, but that is a fallacy. What he is advocating is an ethos of pre-censorship, where, even before the material becomes public, it is screened through human agents who, through some divine right would know the right from wrong — read as what the powers to be want and don’t. To override existing regulation and ask for this extra layer of human scrutiny of all information being produced online is the equivalent of certain unnamed people in Mumbai, who, when Mani Ratnam was about to release his film Bombay, asked for a private screening of the film and then recommended some friendly cuts in it.

Third, is perhaps, and I write this with regret, Sibal has undermined the critical intelligence and engagement of the social media’s ardent users. He has fallen into the trap of suggesting that impressionable minds will be easily corrupted if they are introduced to "undesirable" information online, the same information that will apparently not drive human pre-screeners to prurient activities because they will be protected by the mantle of government sanction. Instead of drawing upon the wisdom of crowds, which invites communities and people to flag information that they find offensive and asks for independent arbitration, he has asked for an undemocratic and unconstitutional call for censorship which threatens the very structures of political protest, resistance and dialogue in the country.

If such draconian measures are going to be carried through, we might soon regress to a dystopia where all information is censored, filtered and reshaped only to suit the interests of those in power.

Nishant Shah, Director-Research wrote this article for the Indian Express. It was published on December 18, 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/spy-in-web

When the digital spills into the physical

praskrishna — 2011-12-22T05:42:39Z

Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, tells us why flash mobs are an interesting sign of our times, and not just a passing fad.

What is a flash mob?
There are many different forms of flash mobs, if you look at their content. In terms of structure, it has to do with a bunch of people, who are connected to each other by common technologies but don't necessarily know each other, and yet, come together in a public space to perform a set of pre-decided actions. Congregate, Orchestrate and Disperse -- that is the anatomy of a flash-mob. Hence it is different from other kinds of mobilisations, because it is very rare for anybody to know who is the organiser of a flash mob.

There are no long speeches, political expositions or agendas used in order to bring people together for a flash mob. Once the brief performance has been done, people don't stay back to form communities and discuss. The word 'flash' draws its inspiration both from 'flash-floods' and 'flash-in-a-pan', both referring to the immanence and suddenness of a flashmob.

What is a smart mob?
Howard Rheingold coined the term smart mob in a book by the same name. Smart mobs are a more inclusive form of digital technology-based mobilisation. Rheingold uses the term to refer to a series of sharing, collaborative, performative engagements that have emerged around the world, especially with young people using the Internet. The people don't know each other, but through different Peer-to-Peer (p2p) protocols, are able to share their resources towards a particular purpose. So it might be a group of friends who want to dance at the train station, or geeks sharing their idle computing time to search for records of UFOs, or people using location based applications to meet each other in caf ©s and form friendships. Smart mobs are essentially different from flashmobs because they have a specific agenda and are geared towards a longer, sustained and enduring practice of community belonging and building.

What role does the Internet and digital technology play in organising flash mobs?
One of the fundamental tenets of flash mobs is the condition of anonymity. The web offers the necessary condition where the intended participant does not have to disclose any personal information. They are able to interact, communicate, receive and share information while giving out nothing more than their email addresses and cellphone numbers. It would have been impossible to think of a flash mob without the use of these technologies because while the postal service would also offer similar conditions (though the physical address is more of an identifier), the flash mob also requires a speed and scale which would otherwise have been impossible in an analogue world.

What is a flash mob best suited to achieve? Is it a form of celebration, a protest, campaign, a quick way to poke fun, or be ironic?
I would say the flash mob is a tool — a process that can be deployed for anything that you want. You can use it as a form of celebration or protest. You can also use it to bully somebody, to destroy public property or create conditions of danger. However, that is true of any tool that we use. A hammer, for example, can be used to hit a nail, or hit some one. The flash mob is a symptom of how our digital and physical realities are merging. It uses the aesthetics of p2p, interaction with strangers, gaming elements with more control over the spaces that we occupy, 'avatar'ification which allows for a pseudonymous existence, etc. to organise something in the physical world. And it is these spillages of the digital into the physical (and vice versa) that make flash mobs significantly more interesting than just a passing fad.

MidDay published this interview in their newspaper on 18 December 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/when-digital-spills-into-physical

India's Techies Angered Over Internet Censorship Plan

praskrishna — 2011-12-22T05:30:09Z

India has the world's largest democracy, and one of the most rambunctious. Millions of its young people are cutting edge when it comes to high-tech. Yet the country is still very conservative by Western standards, and a government minister recently said that offensive material on the web should be removed.

The way it was reported in India, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal started the whole row by assembling the heads of social networking sites at a meeting in his office in New Delhi.

At the time, he was reported to have asked companies, like Google and Facebook, to devise a system to filter through and edit out objectionable material before it could make its way online.

In an interview with the Indian cable channel CNN-IBN, Sibal pointed to offensive religious content that could cause ethnic or inter-communal conflict.

"We will defend any citizens' right to freedom of speech until our last breath. But we don't want this kind of content to be on the social media," Sibal said in the interview.

India's civil society, and more particularly its very active blogosphere, was outraged.

Pranesh Prakash from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore says even the suggestion of censorship is a dangerous idea. Particularly if it's done before the content is posted online.

Indian Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal has said that Internet giants such as Facebook and Google have ignored his demands screen derogatory material from their sites, so the government would have to take action on its own.

"Pre-censorship is a very dangerous idea and is also something that actually doesn't happen in countries that are known for censoring the internet," Prakash says. "It will be charting a new path in Internet censorship."

Prakash says the proposal would be impractical, as well as undemocratic. Even with an army of censors, it would impossible to filter through content before it's uploaded, he says.

Stung by the criticism, Kapil Sibal now says he was misunderstood and that it "would be madness" to ask for pre-screening of content on electronic media and social media.

But in that fateful meeting, the Communications Minister also reportedly objected to unflattering portrayals of India's political leaders on the Internet and in Twitter messages. And that idea reinforced concerns that the government was overreaching and muffling dissent.

Censoring hate speech is one thing, but leaving it to the likes of Google to monitor political speech is problematic, says Apar Gupta, an Internet lawyer in New Delhi.

"It may offend you today, it may not cater to your taste, but at the end of the day: is it legal?" says Gupta. "The new proposals are quite a dramatic change, not only in terms of enforcement, but also in terms of what kind of speech it will prohibit."

Up till now, there has been some legal room for the government to censor inflammatory speech. For example, movies in India are subjected to a government censor board that monitors their content before they can be released to the general public. This year, a controversial movie about India's social caste system, was banned in some parts of the country.

But the Internet is less restrictive, says Apar Gupta.

"You can voice your opinion without any social sanctions for your opinions," he says. "So it's been a pressure valve which has allowed a lot of people to let off steam."

But even so, when debate online boils over in India it's the website or search engine that's held responsible. So critics of the proposed restrictions don't see the need for further action.

All this has left Communications Minister Kapil Sibal as something of a hate figure among Internet-savvy Indians. Although he says he's going to be pressing for tighter controls, he has agreed to meet with the Internet companies again.

This article by Elliot Hannon was published in NPR on 20 December 2011. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techies-angered-over-censorship

Indecent Proposals

praskrishna — 2012-02-14T06:13:22Z

If Kapil Sibal’s attempts to police net content fructify, it may even lead to a reversal of some of the forward-looking provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. The new proposal, for instance, will reverse Section 79 which protects intermediaries (websites and carriers) from being prosecuted or made liable for any objectionable content published. Says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager, Centre for Internet and Society: “Unfortunately, what Sibal says turns this upside down as they would now be held responsible for e-content.” Sibal wants to monitor content prior to publication.

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in Outlook Magazine on December 19, 2011. Pranesh Prakash was quoted in it.

While there are privacy concerns, any attempt to do real-time monitoring could pose serious legal complications. Says cyber law expert Pavan Duggal: “This proposition could be ultra vires of the Constitution which guarantees fundamental rights under Article 19, which is about freedom of speech and expression subject to reasonable restrictions.” And the reasonable restrictions for monitoring, blocking and interception of internet content are already built into the IT Act.

Says Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar: “If Sibal was really serious about protecting people, he should have read the IT Act that has a section which allows a victim to legally pursue his/her claim of defamation. If Sibal has his way, DoT bureaucrats will decide what content is ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’.”

“If Sibal was really serious, he should have read the IT Act...it has a section on how victims can pursue defamation claims.”

Moreover, the IT Intermediary Guideline Rules, 2011, though still provisional, mandate that once service providers receive instructions, they have to remove objectionable content within 36 hours. The Act also has other specific provisions like Section 69, which provides safeguards for interception, monitoring/decryption of information; Section 69A which gives procedures and safeguards for blocking access of information by the public; Section 69B for monitoring and collecting traffic data or information. There are also provisions for obscenity and defamation, with steep fines prescribed. Following these, the state has blocked 11 websites since ’09

However, what Sibal and his men would have seen is the Act’s inability to act on the content freely flowing in social media sites. Says Duggal: “The IT Act, 2000, was amended in ’08, but doesn’t talk about social media which came up only around that time. There is a need to bring social media within the ambit of the Act. What Sibal is suggesting doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.” Monitoring social media websites would also be a huge challenge as crores of messages and tweets are generated from India everyday.

And privacy? Experts say since India does not have dedicated legislation on privacy, the government could escape any attack on that front. Although some privacy elements were added to the IT Act in 2008, its scope is limited and the concept of data privacy is missing. In fact, the law doesn’t even recognise a person’s right to data privacy!.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/indecent-proposals

Censorship — A Death Knell for Freedom of Expression Online

praskrishna — 2011-12-19T10:12:46Z

On December 8, 2011, NDTV aired an interesting discussion on internet censorship. Shashi Tharoor, Soli Sorabjee, Shekhar Kapoor, Ken Ghosh and Sunil Abraham participated in this discussion with NDTV's Sonia Singh.

Sunil said that we need to reflect upon the limitations of freedom of expression which was listed out by Soli Sorabjee and then ask the question whether they are the same limitations in the IT Act. If one reads section 66A, one comes to the conclusion that the IT Act places many additional limitations on the freedom of expression (annoying speech, speech harmful to minors, inconvenient speech) and these are limitations that don’t have existing definitions either in the IT Act or any other statute or case laws.

Sunil further said that through section 79 which is the intermediary liability regime, the government places together a private censorship regime. We did some research at CIS. We sent fraudulent take down notices to seven large international and national intermediaries and through our empirical research we can demonstrate that these intermediaries over-comply with these fraudulent take down notices. So there is already (since the amended IT Act and the notification of the Rules in April this year) a huge chilling effect on the internet thanks to post facto censorship and what the minister is now calling for is preemptive or pro-active censorship which is really going to be the death knell for freedom of expression online.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-censorship

Free Speech Online in India under Attack?

praskrishna — 2012-03-02T03:03:24Z

When the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal suggested pre-censorship for a range of popular online platforms and social networking sites, the suggestion was met by a barrage of criticism, which soon forced him to back down. Yet Sibal’s suggestion is not the only threat to free speech on the Internet in India today. Legislation such as the Intermediary Due Diligence Rules and Cyber Café Rules (also jointly known as the IT Rules) issued in April 2011 is equally dangerous for free speech online.

Achal Prabhala, Anja Kovacs and Lawrence Liang will join Sunil Abraham to discuss in more detail some of the direct threats to freedom of expression online in India today including the larger legal and social context of freedom of expression and censorship, control and resistance in which they have to be understood and the steps that can be taken to ensure that substantive protections for freedom of expression online will be put into place.

The Speakers

Achal Prabhala

Achal is based in Bangalore, Karnataka. He is a researcher, activist and writer in the areas of access to knowledge and access to medicine besides being a member of the Advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Anja Kovacs

Anja works with the Internet Democracy Project, which engages in research and advocacy on the promises and challenges that the Internet poses for democracy and social justice in the developing world.

Lawrence Liang

Lawrence is a researcher and lawyer based in Bangalore, who is known for his legal campaigns on issues of public concern. He is a co-founder of the Alternative Law Forum and works on the intersection of law, technology and culture. He has worked closely with filmmakers and artists in a number of anti-censorship campaigns.

The Moderator

Sunil Abraham

Sunil is the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit organization. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software.

This event is jointly organised by the Internet Democracy Project and the Centre for Internet and Society. Join us at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, on Wednesday 21 December, at 5.30 pm.

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/free-speech-online-in-india-under-attack

Invisible Censorship: How the Government Censors Without Being Seen

pranesh — 2012-01-04T08:59:14Z

The Indian government wants to censor the Internet without being seen to be censoring the Internet. This article by Pranesh Prakash shows how the government has been able to achieve this through the Information Technology Act and the Intermediary Guidelines Rules it passed in April 2011. It now wants methods of censorship that leave even fewer traces, which is why Mr. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology talks of Internet 'self-regulation', and has brought about an amendment of the Copyright Act that requires instant removal of content.

Power of the Internet and Freedom of Expression

The Internet, as anyone who has ever experienced the wonder of going online would know, is a very different communications platform from any that has existed before. It is the one medium where anybody can directly share their thoughts with billions of other people in an instant. People who would never have any chance of being published in a newspaper now have the opportunity to have a blog and provide their thoughts to the world. This also means that thoughts that many newspapers would decide not to publish can be published online since the Web does not, and more importantly cannot, have any editors to filter content. For many dictatorships, the right of people to freely express their thoughts is something that must be heavily regulated. Unfortunately, we are now faced with the situation where some democratic countries are also trying to do so by censoring the Internet.

Intermediary Guidelines Rules

In India, the new 'Intermediary Guidelines' Rules and the Cyber Cafe Rules that have been in effect since April 2011 give not only the government, but all citizens of India, great powers to censor the Internet. These rules, which were made by the Department of Information Technology and not by the Parliament, require that all intermediaries remove content that is 'disparaging', 'relating to... gambling', 'harm minors in any way', to which the user 'does not have rights'. When was the last time you checked wither you had 'rights' to a joke before forwarding it? Did you share a Twitter message containing the term "#IdiotKapilSibal", as thousands of people did a few days ago? Well, that is 'disparaging', and Twitter is required by the new law to block all such content. The government of Sikkim can run advertisements for its PlayWin lottery in newspapers, but under the new law it cannot do so online. As you can see, through these ridiculous examples, the Intermediary Guidelines are very badly thought-out and their drafting is even worse. Worst of all, they are unconstitutional, as they put limits on freedom of speech that contravene Article 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution, and do so in a manner that lacks any semblance of due process and fairness.

Excessive Censoring by Internet Companies

We, at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, decided to test the censorship powers of the new rules by sending frivolous complaints to a number of intermediaries. Six out of seven intermediaries removed content, including search results listings, on the basis of the most ridiculous complaints. The people whose content was removed were not told, nor was the general public informed that the content was removed. If we hadn't kept track, it would be as though that content never existed. Such censorship existed during Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union. Not even during the Emergency has such censorship ever existed in India. Yet, not only was what the Internet companies did legal under the Intermediary Guideline Rules, but if they had not, they could have been punished for content put up by someone else. That is like punishing the post office for the harmful letters that people may send over post.

Government Has Powers to Censor and Already Censors

Currently, the government can either block content by using section 69A of the Information Technology Act (which can be revealed using RTI), or it has to send requests to the Internet companies to get content removed. Google has released statistics of government request for content removal as part of its Transparency Report. While Mr. Sibal uses the examples of communally sensitive material as a reason to force censorship of the Internet, out of the 358 items requested to be removed from January 2011 to June 2011 from Google service by the Indian government (including state governments), only 8 were for hate speech and only 1 was for national security. Instead, 255 items (71 per cent of all requests) were asked to be removed for 'government criticism'. Google, despite the government in India not having the powers to ban government criticism due to the Constitution, complied in 51 per cent of all requests. That means they removed many instances of government criticism as well.

'Self-Regulation': Undetectable Censorship

Mr. Sibal's more recent efforts at forcing major Internet companies such as Indiatimes, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, to 'self-regulate' reveals a desire to gain ever greater powers to bypass the IT Act when censoring Internet content that is 'objectionable' (to the government). Mr. Sibal also wants to avoid embarrassing statistics such as that revealed by Google's Transparency Report. He wants Internet companies to 'self-regulate' user-uploaded content, so that the government would never have to send these requests for removal in the first place, nor block sites officially using the IT Act. If the government was indeed sincere about its motives, it would not be talking about 'transparency' and 'dialogue' only after it was exposed in the press that the Department of Information Technology was holding secret talks with Internet companies. Given the clandestine manner in which it sought to bring about these new censorship measures, the motives of the government are suspect. Yet, both Mr. Sibal and Mr. Sachin Pilot have been insisting that the government has no plans of Internet censorship, and Mr. Pilot has made that statement officially in the Lok Sabha. This, thus seems to be an instance of censoring without censorship.

Backdoor Censorship through Copyright Act

Further, since the government cannot bring about censorship laws in a straightforward manner, they are trying to do so surreptitiously, through the back door. Mr. Sibal's latest proposed amendment to the Copyright Act, which is before the Rajya Sabha right now, has a provision called section 52(1)(c) by which anyone can send a notice complaining about infringement of his copyright. The Internet company will have to remove the content immediately without question, even if the notice is false or malicious. The sender of false or malicious notices is not penalized. But the Internet company will be penalized if it doesn't remove the content that has been complained about. The complaint need not even be shown to be true before the content is removed. Indeed, anyone can complain about any content, without even having to show that they own the rights to that content. The government seems to be keen to have the power to remove content from the Internet without following any 'due process' or fair procedure. Indeed, it not only wants to give itself this power, but it is keen on giving all individuals this power.

It's ultimate effect will be the death of the Internet as we know it. Bid adieu to it while there is still time.

The article was translated to Marathi and featured in Lokmat

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/invisible-censorship

Technological beasts like Facebook, Orkut, YouTube & Google impossible to control

praskrishna — 2011-12-13T03:25:03Z

They were places that let you be: to chat with buddies, exchange photos and plan parties. The rules of engagement were loose, voyeurism passed off as curiosity, vanity as sharing and gibes as friendly banter.

Becoming the voice of a generation was never the agenda. Neither was toppling governments or inciting riots. But technological beasts are impossible to tame. And social networking sites (SNWs), made up of millions of lives, have morphed into the most unpredictable monster yet.

What started as online hangouts, have become a melting pot of opinions and ideas. Facebook, Orkut, YouTube and Google+, enjoy power of the collective, bolstered by technology that allows real-time interaction and blurs physical distances. The effect has shaken up the world: Wall Street to West Asia.

But the government ought to have been smarter than to call the biggest social media intermediaries, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, into a closed door meeting and force stricter rules. The news leaked, and the beast became angry. Social network users have gone into a frenzy to protect their rights.

Kapil Sibal, communications minister, held a press conference to highlight the kind of user-content that the government opposes. He clarified the government wants pre-screening not censoring. But SNW followers have paid no heed. For any external control taints the idea of an online hangout.

But one can't wish away perverseness. And Sibal is not completely wrong, there is plenty of it on SNWs. The question is, who should take it down? Users, hosts or the government?

Extra Rules Not Required

The country has not been running without cyber laws. So why invent new ones for the social media? "Rules are already in place, the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Information Technology Rules, 2011, which allow anyone, including the government, to take a legal recourse," says Pawan Duggal, advocate in the Supreme Court of India and a cyber law expert.

Section 2(1) of IT Act defines an "intermediary" as any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits a message or provides any service with respect to that message. By this definition, an intermediary is just a messenger. SNWs, internet service providers and web hosts fall in this category.

Changes and additions to the IT laws have already made their job tough. SNWs are responsible for taking down all potentially problematic content as and when requested. There is a time limit too: 36 hours to respond to such a request. If an SNW refuses to do so, it can be dragged to the court as a co-accused.

Duggal says that web hosts can be prosecuted if they create unlawful content, incite and encourage unlawful activities, or fail to remove illegal content despite it being brought to their notice. So why does the government suddenly want more rules for them?

Asking for the Moon

No one's denying the need for regulation. And SNWs have good regulators: millions of users. If even one finds a post offensive, he or she can report abuse. The nomenclature may be different, but every host of user-generated content has this option.

The problem is there's no scale to measure what offends sensibilities. There's a list of items that are considered illegal but they are not defined. For instance, "harmful to minors", makes the cut, but what qualifies as harmful is unclear. Even pornography is not defined by Indian laws.

This is why the government may not be wrong to be on tenterhooks. But its solution to the problem is untenable: both conceptually and technologically. "A pre-screening mechanism is not impossible. Tools and algorithms to monitor social media content are constantly evolving. But considering the scale of FB, YouTube, Twitter, etc, it will definitely affect real-time interaction," says Shree Parthasarathy, senior director, enterprise risk services, Deloitte, a consultancy.

Numbers corroborate the view. In India itself, there are almost 43 million users on Facebook, 3.6 million on Google Plus and 3.5 million on Twitter. Worldwide, YouTube uploads more than 48 hours of video every minute. Imagine an army of employees monitoring each post by referring to a catalogue of words considered unacceptable and a repository of images that are deemed inappropriate or offensive.

"The question is not whether it's possible but whether it's appropriate. Such a move will require extensive investment in infrastructure," says Parthasarathy.

Advith Dhuddu, founder of AliveNow.in, a social media firm based in Bangalore, says: "Technology doesn't understand sentiments or sarcasm. It won't distinguish between a porn clip or a video on sex education." Further, even if India decides to monitor content within the subcontinent, it cannot control what's created outside of the country.

Anti-intermediary Legacy

India has never been a favourite among web hosts. IT laws here have always been stricter than in the West and despite amendments, the burden of responsibility on intermediaries is high. "If pre-screening kicks in, web hosts will not be able to claim they did not know about any contentious material on their sites as they will have a seal of approval. This will undermine the sites' legal immunity, a big worry for web hosts," says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Outside India, there's differential treatment for different kinds of intermediaries, the principles of natural justice are implemented and there are options for counter notices and notifications. For instance, in Brazil, as per a draft bill, if someone sends three fraudulent take-down notices, he will not be allowed to send a take-down notice again for a year.

Before 2008, things in India were worse. Intermediaries were liable for their user's content. This led to the arrest of Bazee.com chief, Avnish Bajaj, in connection with the sale of the infamous DPS Noida MMS clip CD on the website.

Post the Bazee.com fiasco, IT laws have been amended. But according to Abraham, "There is still no principle of natural justice, no differentiation between different types of intermediaries and no penalty for abusing."

No wonder social media is over cautious. An unpublished report by the CIS claims intermediaries err on the side of caution and "overcomply" when take-down notices are sent. The researcher sent fraudulent notices to seven intermediaries, including prominent search engines and hosts, identifying specific user-generated material as offensive.

"Of the seven intermediaries to which take-down notices were sent, six over-complied...Not all intermediaries have sufficient legal competence or resources to deliberate on the legality of an expression, as a result of which, intermediaries have a tendency to err on the side of caution," says the report.

No Muzzle, Just Checks

The bottom line is: government control will take the fun away from SNWs. Imagine an invisible monitoring authority checking out pictures of a party before your friends and family can. It is creepy. It also hints at repression, of the kind China specialises in. No thank you, we are not competing in this department.

Some people believe the government doesn't intend to censor SNWs, it just goofed up on the communication. "Sibal is right in saying that obscenity in real and cyber space is the same. He bungles when he puts an insult to the Prophet, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in the same bracket. Had he put the debate in a different form, citizens might have appreciated that he's desperately trying to do a good job," says sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan.

If that's true, government officials can start a page: "I like social networks". That is a language we all understand.

This article by Sunanda Poduwal & Kamya Jaiswal was published in the Economic Times on December 11, 2012. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/technological-beasts-impossible-to-control

Caught in the Web

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T15:32:28Z

Do we need a cyber Big Brother watching us? A look at both sides of the coin.

In the summer of 2009, a hue and cry was raised by netizens when the Government blocked a hugely popular adult-oriented cartoon site called Savitabhabhi.com. The site was blocked after complaints that Savita Bhabhi's lurid tales were highly offending to the sensibilities of those grounded in Indian traditions. Those who opposed the move said that this was done without granting the creators an opportunity to defend their right to freedom of expression.
Recent ruffles

A similar brouhaha erupted recently when Communication and IT Minister Kapil Sibal, in a hurriedly called press conference, announced that the Government will bring in a law to pre-filter content posted on social networking Web sites. The trigger for this was certain pictures, with religious connotations, uploaded on various social networking sites including Facebook and Google Plus. Sibal claims that despite Government appeals the Web site refused to remove the content. If the new law is implemented, your status updates or videos will be screened by the internet company for objectionable content before it is published.

The move has angered Internet users, promoters of free speech and social networking companies. “As it is the status of freedom of speech in India is in a bad shape. Sibal's new rules will only make it worse,” says Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society.

Abraham's point is buttressed by a report from the United Nations Democracy Fund called ‘Freedom on the Net 2011' which gives Indian Internet usage a “partly free” status clubbed along with the likes of Egypt, Jordan, Rwanda and Venezuela.

“Pressure on private intermediaries to remove certain information in compliance with administrative censorship orders has increased since late 2009, with the implementation of the amended IT Act. While some observers acknowledge that incendiary online content could pose a real risk of violence, particularly given India's history of periodic communal strife, press freedom and civil liberties advocates have raised concerns over the far-reaching scope of the IT Act, its potential chilling effect, and the possibility that the authorities could abuse it to suppress political speech,” the report says.
User content removal

When Google began reporting government requests for data and content removal in early 2010, India ranked third in the world for removal requests and fourth for data requests. Between July 1, 2009, and December 31, 2009, India had submitted 142 removal requests. By June 2011, the Internet search giant received requests from the Indian government to remove 358 items. In a breakdown of reasons for such requests, 255 items were classified under the “government criticism” category. In May 2008, two men were arrested and charged for posting derogatory comments about Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi on Orkut. There are many other instances of Government intervention over the past 3 years.

Those who support monitoring argue that content on social media network should be scanned because the users are not responsible enough. California-based media commentator Andrew Keen blames the Internet users in a book called The Cult of the Amateur where he writes that technology has fostered a “dictatorship of idiots”. “.....the masses are liable to be further vulgarised by the overwhelming surfeit of their own voluntary contributions, which are inherently without value (otherwise they wouldn't have been offered freely). Without cultural elites empowered to control public discourse and deify their chosen superstars, the monkeys are running the show,” Keen declares.

Abraham says this argument is flawed because there is no empirical evidence to determine that people use the Internet for a single purpose. “There is no cause and effect here. People may use the Internet for anything ranging from pornography to science. One cannot generalise user behaviour. If Internet was a tool for the Egypt uprising, the same may not work in some other country,” says Abraham.
Monitoring issues

Then there are others who want the social network Web sites to take some responsibility. Rajesh Chharia, President of the Internet Service Providers Association thinks that multi-national Internet firms cannot get away by saying that they conform to standards of their country alone.

But experts feel that it is practically impossible for any social networking Web site to monitor everything that's posted on their site due to sheer volume. For instance, YouTube has 48 hours of videos uploaded every minute and Facebook has 38 million users in India posting thousands of pictures and messages every day. “The Internet is like a sea, you just cannot control everything that's thrown into it unless you man the entire coastline. Even if you block someone from posting content on one site, they will find another way to get in,” said one of major Internet firms.

Meanwhile the Savita Bhabhi site is back with all new content at a new address. So much for the Government's desire to monitor the Internet.

This article by Thomas K Thomas was published in the Hindu Business Line. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/caught-in-web

Much at stake for tech sector in UID project

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T13:10:49Z

With the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance raising a red flag against the National Identification Authority of India ( NIAI) Bill to grant the UID (or Aadhar) project legal status, the project looks set for a slowdown. That could have broad implications for the tech sector that had laid substantial hope on it, especially when global markets are slowing down.

The UID project is estimated to offer IT companies a Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000-crore opportunity. This includes building an ecosystem around the project, comprising biometrics, databases, smartcards, storage and system integration.

Since the UIDAI implements an open-system, plugand-play approach, entrepreneurs and startups can develop applications in numerous areas. Some of the applications of Aadhar is seen in areas such as food distribution, financial inclusion, and know-your-customer services.

The parliamentary committee has said that the project might be too expensive and duplicates the National Population Register's (NPR) efforts to collect biometric and other data for the national census. Some have also called for a change of collection of data from biometric data, which they consider insecure for smart cards (as fraudsters can take your fingerprints from objects that you touch). The Cabinet need not accept the committee's recommendations.

Thus it is unclear if the UID project will be scrapped, watered down or persisted with in its current form. Some contracts have been granted to tech majors. According to the said current contracts are not significantly large in size and their cancellation will not make a big dent in the companies' books. He added that scrapping of project from a longer term perspective could be a negative.

Government public services initiatives like public distribution system UIDAI website, Wipro in March 2011 won a contract to supply, install, and commission hardware and software for data centres at Bangalore and NCR. MindTree in April 2010 won a contract for application software development, maintenance and support. TCS, Accenture, HP, Satyam, Intelenet Global, HCL Infosystems, Geodesic are some others that have won contracts.

Ankur Rudra, IT sector analyst at Ambit Capital, (PDS) and e-governance schemes are expected to spark off more projects requiring technology enablement.

Sunil Abraham, ED of the Centre for Internet and Society, said if changes are incorporated to the Bill, it would not necessarily be anti-technology. The organization had raised concerns about security issues around biometric data. "There might be a change in the design of the UID project, but technology will remain a critical element," he added. Siddharth Pai, MD of global sourcing advisory firm Technology Partners International (TPI) India, said that the UID project is a very critical infrastructure from a national perspective and chances of the project being scrapped are little.

He added that tech companies might experience delay in government spends and see a delay in project execution. This may lead to delays in revenue yields. IT company officials also acknowledge that there could be delays in projects which could increase costs for them. None wanted to be quoted on this issue.

This article by Pranav Nambiar was published in the Economic Times on 12 December 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/much-at-stake-for-tech-sector

Online @ India

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T07:48:55Z

I haven't yet heard of anybody in India going on a rampage because somebody in Pakistan started an 'India hate' page. However, I have seen people kill and destroy because they got incited to violence and hatred through offline religious propaganda, cinema and cricket.

I suggest it might be more useful to ban all these three institutions before looking at online networks," says Nishant Shah, Director of Research at Centre for Internet and Society. Shah's sarcastic quote is in response to the Information Technology minister Kapil Sibal's demand earlier this week that Internet companies censor content - leading to a huge outcry both online and offline.

Sibal cites "offensive content" on the internet as the reason for censorship, but what exactly is unacceptable or offensive and, as a noisy democracy, how slanderous are we as a people? What is the modern India's online psyche?

Hindustan Times-C fore survey

For many, India's growing presence on the net - from 97 million earlier in the year to almost 121 million by this year end (IMRB report) -translates into a "vomiting revolution", in the words of Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India and Chairman, ASSOCHAM Cyberlaw Committee. Accoding to Duggal, "Indians today on social media are vomiting everything about their lives, social, personal, professional, otherwise. It is only a matter of time before people realize what they have said could impact them for times to come."

While Duggal says that "Indians are currently on the learning curve when it comes to behaviour in the online environment and a large number, in emotional states of mind, post information on the Internet which they later regret", sociologist Susan Visvanathan believes that it's a tool for instant satisfaction, especially the young. "Everyone knows that what goes online is recorded. However, that doesn't stop them from saying what they feel. This is verbosity in another form," says Visvanathan.

The "Argumentative Indian", Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's book, celebrated the Indian tradition of public debate. But while this culture of discourse is seen in everything from our yap-happy expert panelists on tv to political debate, does the argumentative Indian become an obnoxious, intolerant lout when unmonitored online?

According to Mahesh Murthy, online marketing expert, this is not true. "The young generation believes in live and let live. They respect opinions, and move on," says Murthy.

In India, everything from our history, cross border issues, nationalism, cricket, bollywood, religion, society and politics stirs emotions says Tarun Abhichandani, Group Business Director of the research firm IMRB International - "but it is the net that has the power to give it a cascade effect." As examples, Abhichandani refers to Kolaveri Di or content such as the anti-islamic post on FB which reportedly led to riots on the street in Dungarpur.

Here's where some people believe that the net becomes "tricky." Of religious discussion, says Abhichandani, "online we tend to be obnoxious when we are put in a setting where we need to differentiate ourselves from others."

However, defenders of net freedom - and they seem to far outnumber those who prescribe censorship - believe that even online religious dissent is not a cause for concern in a healthy democracy like ours. "The most extreme religious views online are actually from NRIs," says Murthy. He also points to the latest Google Transparency report for India where of the 355-plus items that the government asked to be removed, "only 3 were religious, the rest were political."

A survey conducted by Indiabiz, with a sample size of 1200 of India's youth (18-35 years) found that the youth saw social media as a space for change. Anti-corruption has emerged as the most prominent social cause endorsed by 32 per cent of the respondents.

India with its 100 million internet users comes third after China (485 million) and the US (245 million). In India 65 million of the active Internet users are in urban cities, ie . nearly 35% of the active Internet users are located in top eight metros, (IMRB). In comparison with other south east asian countries there are so many geographies of access and consumption within India for which finding a common spectrum is difficult. According to the latest IAMAI report, in rural India (24 million users), entertainment was the key driver. In urban India, 71 % of internet users indulged in social networking and 64% used internet for educational purposes. Shah however highlights, "One of the biggest differences that we can see is in the linguistic restrictions in India." For countries like China, S. Korea, Japan, Thailand, the web is essentially a local experience with the tools and language localised, while in India, with social media being used primarily in English, it is restricted to the urban elite.

The uprising in the middle east and, in comparison to communist China, which has blocked international social media sites, is something that India won't see for a long time feel experts. "We haven't as yet seen a revolution caused by the internet. The closest we came to it was when the 2G scam broke and the Anna Hazare movement. In Syria, Tunisia etc. because of totalitarian governments, the internet was crucial in the revolution, we are far from that because we are clear of censorship. For now," says Murthy.

Revolutions aside, online intellectual property rights and online slander which are rampant do cause a lot of trouble. "Indians need to believe in legal consequences of their postings," says Duggal who adds that almost six out of ten users in India would have faced some kind of undesirable content directed at them. "We've also seen cases where people, in a fit of anger, publish the most dirtiest of all expletives. People need to appreciate that the Indian Information Technology Act, 2000 has provisions which make such online behaviour unacceptable."

In April this year, the government attempted to put down rigorous laws when the "Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011" was set up. The rules require intermediaries, ie companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo that provide the platform for users to comment and create their own content, to respond quickly if individuals complain that content is "disparaging" or "harassing," among other complaints. If the complainant's claim is valid, these companies must take down the offensive information within 36 hours. And when required, the intermediary shall provide information or assistance to government agencies authorised for investigative, protective, cyber security activity.

However, critics of filtering of content say that most social networks already have evolved guidelines; the law is in place; and also that monitoring of the net is not just required, it is virtually technologically impossible.

While offensive is not an absolute category and because online space transcends national boundaries and puts us together in a non-space, it still is the best platform for public debate, according to most. As says Visvanathan: "The young will always have something to say via arts, music and slogans online. Our online experience reflects the openness of a democracy."

This article by Sharon Fernandes was published in the Hindustan Times on December 10, 2011. Nishant Shah was quoted in this. Read the original in the Hindustan Times here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/online-at-india

Online gag:Existing rules give little freedom

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T05:42:05Z

Even as the controversy over Kapil Sibal's attempt to get internet giants such as Google and Facebook to prescreen user-generated content to weed out 'offensive' material rages, a yet-to-be-published study by Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society reveals that rules already in place can have "chilling effects on free expression on the internet".

The study set out to examine if the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011, notified in April 2011, could create a gagging effect on websites that provide a platform for user-generated content in the form of opinion and comments. Websites such as Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube and Twitter fall under this category. The study was commissioned by the Centre for Internet and Society, which was invited to comment on the department of information technology when it framed the seminal Information Technology Act 2000.

The study author set out to test the process of 'takedown' (requesting an internet entity to remove material that can be interpreted as 'hateful', 'disparaging', 'defamatory', etc) by notifying seven separate internet entities of content linked to their websites or hosted by them that could, in very loose terms, be deemed offensive. The entities are not named in the study.

This first-of-a-kind experiment included actions such as sending search engines a takedown notice alerting it to results on searching the keywords 'online gambling' and alerting a news website about comments on a news story related to the Telangana dispute.

In six of the seven cases, the intermediaries and hosts - technical terms for websites that host content - acted promptly to not only remove the 'offensive' content without due processes of investigation but in some cases went beyond their brief to remove all content connected with the one mentioned in the takedown notice.

For instance, a news website that was sent a takedown notice about a well-argued and non-abusive comment to an article on the Telangana issue took down not just that comment, but all 15 comments published below the article In the case of the results of a search for 'online gambling', despite the fact that intermediaries are exempted from being implicated in such cases, one search engine notified took down not just the three links mentioned in the notice but another 25 sub-domains as well, "presumably to avoid legal risk and to err on the side of caution," the CIS report says.

"Our criticism is of the policy and not of the websites and Internet entities that are forced to err on the side of caution when faced by such notices," says Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society. "We are aware that they do not always have the legal and manpower resources necessary to monitor the enormous volumes of content they host." These companies often overstep their brief in order to avoid legal hassles resulting from what Abraham calls "unconstitutional limits on free speech".

The original story was published by the Times of India on 9 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in it. Read the story on Times of India here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/online-gag

That’s the unkindest cut, Mr Sibal

sunil — 2011-12-12T04:59:00Z

There’s Kolaveri-di on the Internet over Kapil Sibal’s diktat to social media sites to prescreen users’ posts. That diktat goes far beyond the restrictions placed on our freedom of expression by the IT Act. But, says Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, India is not going to be silenced online.

Thanks to leaked reports about unpublicised meetings that communications minister Kapil Sibal had with social media operators – or Internet intermediaries, to use legalese — such as Facebook, Google and Indiatimes.com, censorship policy in India has gained public attention, and caused massive outrage.

According to The New York Times India Ink reportage, quoting unnamed sources from the Internet intermediaries, Mr Sibal demanded proactive and pre-emptive screening of posts that people make on social media sites, ostensibly to filter out or remove “offensive” content and hate speech. In a television interview, however, the minister denied he wanted to censor what Indians thought and shared with others online.

One is tempted to believe him. He was, after all, the amicus for the landmark People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) wiretapping judgment of 1996, which is pivotal to protecting our civil liberties when using communication technology in India.

Last week, though, Mr Sibal came out in public with his demands, saying that there was a lot of content that risked hurting the sensibilities of people and could lead to violence. “It was brought to my notice some of the images and content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google are extremely offensive to the religious sentiments of people ...”We will not allow Indian sentiments and religious sentiments of large sections of the community to be hurt,” he said.

There was even a threat of state action if Internet companies did not comply with demands to screen content before it was posted online.

The NYT blogpost said, however, quoting executives from the Internet companies Mr Sibal had reportedly met, that the minister showed them a Facebook page that maligned Congress president Sonia Gandhi and told them, “This is unacceptable.”

Google responded to Mr Sibal by releasing its Transparency Report, saying that out of 358 items that it had been requested to remove between January and June 2011, only eight requests pertained to hate speech, while as many as 255 complaints were against “government criticism”.

Indian netizens raged against Mr Sibal, and very quickly #IdiotKapil Sibal was ‘trending’ on Twitter, with thousands posting comments against attempts to ‘censor’ Internet content. Much has changed, in Mr Sibal’s reckoning, between 1996 and 2011.

So, what’s all the fuss over ‘pre-screening’ and what’s at stake here? Critics of Mr Sibal say, our freedom of speech and expression is under threat. They see a pattern in the way the government has sought to impose rules and restrictions on Internet and telecommunications players, with demands on BlackBerry-maker RIM to give it access to its users’ email and messenger content, on telecom players to install electronic surveillance equipment and let the government eavesdrop as it sees fit, and on the likes of Google and Yahoo to part with email content and users’ details.

It all started with the amendments to the Information Tech-nology Act 2000 in 2008. Together, they constitute damaging consequences for citizens, including the creation of a multi-tier blanket surveillance regime, inappropriate security recommendations, and undermining freedom of speech and expression.

The amendments passed in 2008 — without any discussion in Parliament – did solve some existing policy concerns, but simultaneously introduced new ones. For instance, Section 66, introduced during this amendment, criminalises sending offensive messages through any ICT-based communication service.

Offensive messages are described as “grossly offensive, menacing character..... or causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will.” These terms are not defined in the IT Act or in any other existing law, rules or case-law, except for a couple of exceptions such as what constitutes “criminal intimidation”. These limits on the freedom of expression go well beyond Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which only permits “reasonable restrictions...in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”

If Mr Sibal himself were to don his lawyer’s coat again and launch a legal challenge to Section 66, in all likelihood, courts in India would strike it down as unconstitutional.

Section 79, which was amended, brought into being an intermediary liability regime. This was in part precipitated by the arrest of Avnish Bajaj, the former CEO of bazee.com in December 2004 for the infamous Delhi Public School MMS clip which was being sold on his e-commerce platform. Policy-makers were, however, convinced to follow international best practices and grant intermediaries immunity under certain conditions.

Just as the postal department is not considered liable for the content of letters or telecom operators liable for the content of phone conversations, Internet intermediaries, too, were to be considered “dumb pipes” or “common carriers” of content produced and distributed by users. Intermediaries therefore earned immunity from legal action so long as they acted upon take-down notices, or written requests for deletion of illegal content.

Section 79 was further clarified in April this year when the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules were notified. Stakeholders from the technology industry, media and civil society had sent feedback to the Department of Information Technology under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in February, but DIT choose to ignore the feedback and finalised rules with serious flaws in them. For one, a standardised “Terms of Service” that focused on limits on free expression had to be implemented by all intermediaries – forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.

Content that was 'harmful to minors' was not permissible regardless of the target market of the website. All intermediaries were supposed to act upon take-down notices within 36 hours, something that a Google may be able to do, but an average blogger could not.

Two, the vague terms introduced in Section 66A were left undefined. Intermediaries were asked to sit on judgment on the question of whether an article, image or video was causing 'inconvenience'.

Three, all principles of natural justice were ignored – the person responsible for posting the content would not be informed, s/he would not be given an opportunity to file a counter-notice to challenge the intermediary’s decision in court.

Four, the rules left it open for economically or politically motivated actors to seriously damage opponents online using fraudulent take-down notices, instead of treating abuse of the take-down notice system as an offence.

How the take-down system terrorises free expression on the Internet was illustrated when the Centre for Internet and Society, where this author works, undertook a research project. A pro-bono independent researcher who led the exercise sent fraudulent take-down notices to seven Internet companies in India. These included some of the largest and most popular Indian and foreign search engines, news portals and social media platforms.

Although they all employ the most competent lawyers in the country, six of the seven intermediaries over-complied, confirming our worst fears. In one case, a news portal deleted not just the specific comment that was mentioned in the take-down notice but 14 other comments as well. Most importantly, it must be pointed out, the comment identified in the take-down notice was itself an excellent piece of writing that could not be construed as “offensive” by any stretch!

In the single exception to the rule, one e-commerce portal refused to act upon a take-down notice trying to prevent the sale of diapers on the grounds that it was “harmful to minors”, rightly dismissing the notice as frivolous. But that exception simply proved a rule: Private intermediaries use their best lawyers to protect their commercial interests, but are highly risk-averse and do not value freedom of expression, unless it affects their bottomline.

Proactive and pre-emptive screening of social media content, as Mr Sibal has demanded, will only further compromise online civil liberties in what’s already a dismal situation. In short, we move from a post-facto to a pre-emptive censorship regime.

In fact, given the magnitude of the task of pre-screening in a nation with a 100 million Internet users and growing, such an intense censorship regime will mean not only that what Indian citizens say or post will be censored by private companies, but those private companies will, in turn, use machines to screen what humans are saying and doing! After all, otherwise, companies would require armies of human censors to screen the millions of posts that are made on Twitter and Facebook every minute.

But the Supreme Court has held that even the executive arm of government cannot engage in censorship prior to publication, let alone ordering private companies to do so. In any case, it’s a policy that’s bound to fail, for both technical reasons and for its failure to take into account human motivations.

Machines, as we know, continue to be poor judges of the nuances of human expression and will likely cause massive damage to the idea of public debate. Humans, on the other hand, will begin to circumvent machine filters – for example, content labelled as PRON instead of PORN will go through.

Draconian crackdown on certain types of fringe content is likely to have the counterproductive result of the general society developing an unhealthy obsession for exactly such content. Despite the comprehensive censorship controls in Saudi Arabia, for instance, pornography consumption is rampant, usually accessed via pirated satellite TV and circulated using personal computing devices and mobile phones.

But all is not lost yet, perhaps. Faced with the barrage of criticism, Mr Sibal has now called for public consultations on the issue of pre-screening content. There’s hope yet for freedom of speech and expression in India. Thanks to the Internet, a throwback to 1975 simply does not look possible.

Sunil Abraham is executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. He wrote this article in the Deccan Chronicle on December 11, 2011. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/unkindest-cut-mr-sibal

Internet, social media access should not be blocked: Ban

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T04:16:25Z

Amidst a raging controversy over the federal government’s proposal to monitor content in cyber space, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday said access to the Internet and various social media must not be blocked as a way to prevent criticism and public debate.

In his speech on the eve of the Human Rights Day which was released at the United Nations Information Centre, Ban said: “Today, within their existing obligation to respect the rights of freedom of assemble and expression, governments must not block access to the Internet and various forms of social media as a way to prevent criticism and public debate.”

His comments came a few days after Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said the government will take steps to stop offensive and defamatory content on Internet sites.

Ban said: “Many of the people seeking their legitimate aspirations were linked through social media.”

Sibal’s comments provoked anger and derision among Internet users. Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said it would be “impractical on the level of scale and on the level of the objective test. What’s offensive for someone might be completely banal to somebody else,” he said. Any ham-fisted government crackdown would “have a high impact on our credibility as a democracy” and risk alienating India’s growing online community, Abraham said.

The story was published in the Oman Tribune on December 10, 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-social-media-access-should-not-be-blocked-ban

India entering the Minority Report age?

praskrishna — 2011-12-10T06:40:57Z

Indian government efforts to block offensive material from the Internet have prompted a storm of online ridicule along with warnings of the risk to India's image as a bastion of free speech.

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal pledged a crackdown on “unacceptable” online content, saying Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo! and Facebook had ignored India's demands to screen images and data before they are uploaded.

“We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue,” Sibal told reporters this week, without detailing what steps might be taken.

His comments provoked anger and derision among Indian Internet users, while experts raised doubts about the practicalities of enforcing any directive and others questioned the government's motives.

Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said it would be “impractical on the level of scale and on the level of the objective test”.

“What's offensive for someone might be completely banal to somebody else,” he told AFP.

Any ham-fisted government crackdown would “have a high impact on our credibility as a democracy” and risk alienating India's growing online community, Abraham said.

“We should be doing almost everything to promote the take-up of the Internet. It's almost tragic that we're pushing in the opposite direction,” he added.

India, the world's largest democracy, has more than 110 million Internet users out of a population of 1.2 billion, with predictions that 600 million people will be online in the next five years.

#KapilSibal has this week become one of the most trending topics among Indian users of the micro-blogging site Twitter, with many resorting to humour to mock the minister.

Some likened his comments to attempts by Pakistan's telecoms regulator last month to ban text messages containing nearly 1,700 words it deemed “obscene”, which was shelved after outrage from users and campaigners.

The satirical Indian web site fakingnews.com compared Sibal's plans to the futuristic Hollywood film “Minority Report”, in which criminals are arrested before committing their crimes.

It also carried a spoof news article headlined: “All Facebook posts to have 'Kapil Sibal likes this' by default”.

The mainstream media has been generally critical of Sibal as well, warning the government that it could not be seen to over-step the boundaries protecting India's treasured democratic values.

“Pre-screening of content amounts to unacceptable censorship,” the Business Standard said in an editorial.

There was even a mild expression of concern from Washington where US State Department spokesman Mark Toner was asked about the Indian government's stance.

“We are concerned about any effort to curtail freedom of expression on the Internet,” Toner said, while carefully avoiding any direct criticism of Sibal's proposals.

Sibal rejected any suggestion of an assault on free speech, saying the government had pleaded for self-regulation by companies such as Google to filter out deeply “insulting” material.

He highlighted examples of faked pictures of naked politicians, including Congress Party head Sonia Gandhi, and other images and social network pages that he said could inflame religious tensions.

India has in the past moved to block the publication of books and other material seen as disrespectful to Gandhi, or other members of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has dominated India's political life since independence.

Vijay Mukhi, a Mumbai-based freelance consultant who writes on Internet security, said Sibal had shown a fundamental lack of understanding about technology and was badly-advised.

He also saw in the reaction to the proposals a sign of how the Internet is undermining traditional unquestioning respect and deference towards elders and authority figures.

“Most of us in India are very sensitive about what people say. The problem also is that whilst the Internet is there, you have to have a thick hide,” said Mukhi.

“Politicians have got to create a second, third or fourth skin to be immune to the criticism that they get.”

New Delhi has been accused before of censorship after demanding that BlackBerry makers Research In Motion give Indian security services access to encrypted messaging and email services.

Analysts agreed that under certain circumstances, particularly national security, pre- or post-censorship was acceptable, as India was the frequent target of extremists.

Abraham, though, said any ban on data and images on decency grounds without a prior complaint was doomed to fail and likely to be contrary to the constitutional right of freedom of expression if challenged in court. - Sapa-AFP

The blog post by Phil Hazlewood was published in ioL scitech. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/minority-report-age