We are anonymous, we are legion

White Paper on Data Protection and Privacy

Admin — 2018-03-07T14:57:53Z

National Institute of Public Finance and Policy is organizing a roundtable on data protection and privacy in New Delhi on March 8, 2018. Sunil Abraham is participating as a moderator in the session on Rights and Protections. Amber Sinha is also participating as a panelist.

Agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/white-paper-on-data-protection-and-privacy

Is there a case for penalizing fake news?

Admin — 2018-03-07T14:23:05Z

Facebook and Twitter have been under increasing scrutiny for allowing targeted political ads from Russia-backed entities to manipulate voters and influence elections.

The article by Nilesh Christopher was published by ET Tech on March 7, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

In May 2017, rumours of child-lifters on the prowl circulated on WhatsApp led to the lynching of seven men in Jharkhand.

The same month, the administrator of a WhatsApp group was arrested and later released on bail after a member of the group posted a “morphed” photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi wearing a garland of shoes.

A month earlier, following the assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, a district magistrate and a police official issued a joint order warning that WhatsApp group administrators could be slapped with criminal charges if factually incorrect or rumours were circulated in the group. Officials in Bihar followed suit, issuing similar orders against circulation of hoaxes.

These are just a few instance of ‘fake news’ on digital platforms that India had to deal with in 2017. Between June 2016 and May last year, more than 20 criminal complaints involving online content were filed, and many people were detained for content circulated on WhatsApp or published on Facebook, as per research organisation Freedom House.

As the consequences of bogus news become more pervasive, stoking resentment and violence, many South Asian countries such as Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam have sought to treat the manipulation of content as a criminal offence.

“It is not penalising, but defining ‘fake news’ which is a challenge,” said Max Smeets, Cybersecurity fellow at Stanford University. “We currently lack a common definition of fake news. Is it about fake personas, spam, data theft, seeding stories in the press or creating fake stories? We have to be clear by what we mean if we want to penalise fake news (or more generally tackle it).”

Criminalising dissemination is difficult mainly because people who disseminate the information are not necessarily aware that they are involved in this practice.

The inherent ambiguity has led certain governments to frame stringent laws to deal with the menace. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte signed stricter laws authorising punitive action resulting in a jail term of up to six months and heavy fines of up to an equivalent of Rs 2.5 lakh for publishers of fake news. But Duterte’s version of the law applies to anyone who expresses a contrarian view of the government or “causes damage to the state”. The government has set up a special task force in the national police to look into fake news, but experts say it amounts to a witch-hunt in the guise of a clampdown on fake news.

The proliferation of ‘fake news’ through misinformation and hyper-partisan content came to the fore in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election in the United States. Facebook and Twitter have been under increasing scrutiny for allowing targeted political ads from Russia-backed entities to manipulate voters and influence elections.

Since then, “manipulation and disinformation tactics played an important role in elections in at least 17 other countries over the past year, damaging citizens’ ability to choose their leaders based on factual news and authentic debate,” as per Freedom on the Net 2017 report.

In one of the most high-profile crackdowns on the fake news in 2017, Indonesian police incarcerated administrators of organised crime ring Saracen, which peddled racist and sectarian fake news against political parties. “Indonesia had to start fighting ‘organised fake news’ organisations such as Saracen who were launching targeted fake news campaigns on behalf of political parties during the periods leading up to major elections,” said Spandana Singh, Millennial public policy fellow at New America.

With more than 800,000 followers on Facebook, the admins made millions through advertising revenue by creating memes and fake posts on their page. As a result, on January 3, Indonesia launched a separate cybersecurity task force to bring purveyors of fake news to task.

“Criminalising fake news is counterproductive,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society. “The trouble with criminalisation is the person circulating the news is ‘fooled’ and is unaware of the crime they are committing. It is very similar to copyright infringement at a non-commercial stage. Many just don’t know,” Abraham said.

“Fake news cannot be battled by the government alone. Often it is the parties in power who are involved in many fake news cases,” he said.

How do we fix this?

Of the 3.4 billion people with access to the internet, 42% live in countries where governments employ armies of “opinion shapers” to spread government views and counter government critics on social media, as per the Freedom on the Net 2017 report.

In the West, corporations are typically the ones that are expected to take up the mantle to tackle fake news. “But government censorship and corporate censorship are not the appropriate ways forward, as this impinges on freedom of speech,” Abraham said.

This raises the question as to who should fix the problem. For starters, in the European Union (EU), Germany has passed a law called the Network Enforcement Act or NetzDG advocating a crackdown on “punishable false reports”. Enforced in October 2017, the hate speech law mandates that companies remove hate speech within a certain time period, and this was created with the intention of also curbing fake news.

Policy experts say the only way forward is more collaboration among various stakeholders. In India, there are organisations such as SM Hoax Slayer and Altnews working to combat disinformation, but “stronger digital literacy, education, and transparency is the way to fight it”, Singh said. “Since there is a business model which has been established for fake news, more people may also try to join the illegal disinformation industry if it continues to prove profitable,” he said.

While existing laws are fragmented, Abraham offered a different policy view of the problem at hand. “The only way to combat bad speech is with good speech. Instead of criminalising, you can mandate public service announcements in on social media channels,” he said.

That is, if someone is using fake news to spark a riot, under the circumstances of an emergency, the government should be allowed to push actual facts around the area even in private WhatsApp groups. “A message similar to a ‘must carry’ obligation in broadcast regulation can come in,” Abraham said.

For instance, Catalan is a minority language in Spain but all Spanish language broadcasters must carry some amount of news in Catalan, Abraham said, adding this could be one way of dealing with if not eradicating fake news.

So far, the only solution to prevent rumour mongering in “sensitive” areas in India has been blocking social media sites and suspending internet services. There have been nearly 40 information communication technology (ICT) shutdowns ordered by local authorities, some lasting several months in Jammu and Kashmir, as per the Freedom on the Net 2017 report.

“Platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and the like are different from each other. This makes it difficult to set common standards for all organizations and to compare them fairly,” Smeets said.

“It is especially difficult for highly compartmentalised platforms like WhatsApp to deal with fake news, compared to a more public forum like Facebook,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/et-tech-nilesh-christopher-march-7-2018-is-there-a-case-for-penalizing-fake-news

Roundtable on A.I. and Governance in India

pranav — 2018-04-20T07:41:21Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore is organizing a roundtable on ‘A.I. and Governance in India' at India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi on March 16, 2018 from 10.00 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.

Download the Event Report

The Roundtable seeks to discuss the various issues and challenges surrounding the design, development and use of AI in Governance (including law enforcement and legal institutions).

In line with the changing times, the government, as well as its agencies, have started using technology and digitization to make governance more efficient and accessible. For example,through its flagship project Digital India, the Indian government has undertaken digitization and revamping of systems related to railways, land records, educational resource etc. As the government pursues its digital agenda, artificial intelligence can be a tool for efficiency and decision making. To realize the potential of AI, a clear understanding of the technology and how it can and should be used is necessary. The first step towards a robust AI policy is a sound Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy that lays the edifice for algorithmic decision making using AI.

Though the adoption of AI in the public sector is still in its nascent stages, the government of India is taking various steps to increase the scale of adoption. The Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry has constituted a task force on AI to facilitate India's economic transformation. This year’s Union Budget also recognised the need for government investment in research, training and skill development in robotics, AI, digital manufacturing, Big Data intelligence and Quantum communications. Though the adoption of AI in the public sector is still in its nascent stages, the government of India is taking various steps to increase the scale of adoption. The Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry has constituted a task force on AI to facilitate India's economic transformation. This year’s Union Budget also recognised the need for government investment in research, training and skill development in robotics, AI, digital manufacturing, Big Data intelligence and Quantum communications.

Our research on the application of AI in Indian governance aims to examine five broad sectors of application: law enforcement, discharge of governmental functions, defense,judicial/administrative decision making, and education. A few of the existing government research initiatives identified by CIS include the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) hosted by the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization which focuses on research and development of ICT solutions for defense, and the Ministry of Finance’s use of geospatial analytics for their economic survey on human settlements. There are already instances where government bodies are using AI, an example being the case of the Indian Police force, which is revamping its investigation procedures by using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. The Delhi police has already started using data and analytics to control crime. In the field of agriculture too, the Indian government has partnered with Microsoft to use AI to improve crop production.

While AI can aid governance in numerous ways, there needs to be a system of checks and balances in order to ensure effectiveness, transparency, and accountability. Hence,governance mechanisms must be able to ensure inclusiveness, while minimising the risks that might arise with the use of the technology. Experts have also predicted that, as the government incorporates AI into specific areas of governance- such as service delivery, it will simultaneously need to incorporate it into broader policy structures such as cyber security and the national education framework.

The process of designing a governance ecosystem is a complex one, and AI poses several pre-existing ethical and legal for each application within this ecosystem. The effectiveness ofAI and Machine learning inherently depends on the availability of data, and it is predicted that the most imminent challenge will also involve the same, especially as India becomesincreasingly data dense and the government is entrusted with its citizens’ data. These challenges could range from the collection, storage, and use of data, to having to answerquestions of fairness, safety, and prevention of misuse. This roundtable seeks to deliberate on these questions and more so as to understand how to optimise the use of AI ingovernance for the public interest. In doing so, the roundtable will use preliminary research that CIS has undertaken into the use of AI and governance in India as an entry point into broader discussions on the challenges and benefits and way forward for AI.

Agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/roundtable-on-a-i-and-governance-in-india

CIS ranks amongst top think tanks for public policy in the region

Admin — 2018-03-02T12:56:27Z

Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program features Centre for Internet & Society in its annual report.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) ranks amongst the top public policy think tanks for 2017 in the region, according to an annual report compiled by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP). The TTCSP, a think tank at the University of Pennsylvania, maps the role and evolution of public policy think tanks in governments and civil society across the world with the objective to better integrate and create a bridge between academic knowledge and powerful institutions.

Released on 31 January 2018, the report assesses think tanks based on a range of criteria, including outreach, academic rigor, management, and impact on policy and civil society. The rankings are compiled using a participatory approach that calls upon over 6000 think tanks across the world to submit nominations for both participating organizations and the expert panel of judges.

CIS, which undertakes interdisciplinary research on digital spaces and technologies in India, ranks 81st among 90 think tanks for China, India, Korea and Japan, the dominant players in the region. The rankings also include 28 other Indian organizations, including the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Centre for Civil Society (CCS) and Delhi Policy Group (DPG), from 293 involved in public policy in India. The report, released annually for over a decade, is part of a campaign by the TTCSP to increase the public visibility and performance of public policy think tanks globally and strengthen cross-regional collaboration.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cis-ranks-amongst-top-think-tanks-for-public-policy-in-the-region

Data Privacy Forum

Admin — 2018-03-01T01:31:56Z

Amber Sinha took part in the Data Privacy Forum organized by the Asian Business Law Institute on February 7, 2018. The forum was held at the Supreme Court of Singapore.

The forum was organised to discuss the findings of a compendium of country reports on cross border data flow regulations in countries from Asia and Australia, and the way forward. The forum had attendance from 18 countries and had about 90 participants. Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha were the reporters for India. Amber was a speaker on the first panel on “Adoption and reform of data protection laws in Asia: how legal systems adapt to global developments and regulatory competition”.

Click to read more

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/data-privacy-forum

Quantified identities as a global phenomenon: analyzing the impact of biometric systems in our societies

Admin — 2018-03-01T00:56:20Z

A session by Amber Sinha and Leandro Ucciferri of ADC, Argentina at the Internet Freedom Festival to be held in Valencia, Spain in March has been selected. Amber Sinha will make a presentation.

In the last decade, societies all around the world have seen an exponential growth in the implementation of biometric identification systems, used from the most complex to the most mundane activities that we perform in our daily lives. The research work being carried out by ADC in Argentina, and more broadly in Latin America, allowed us to reach certain observations: In general, public policies related to the use of these types of technologies are carried out with little or no transparency vis-à-vis society; the lack of precise information, which varies country to country, about the technologies and mechanisms being used for the collection, analysis and storage of the biometric data, and the use cases behind such technologies (e.g. the purpose of the data, who will have access to it, if it will be shared and transferred between different public or private bodies); and finally the lack of sufficient legal frameworks to guarantee an adequate treatment of the biometric data collected, both by the State and the private sector.

Additionally, the research by CIS in India and other jurisdictions in Asia shows that biometric identification systems are being portrayed as critical to the use of online services such as e-governance or e-commerce platforms, and facilitates the generation of enormous amounts of transactional data. In India, the biometric identity is envisioned as a ‘cradle to grave’ identity. This unique identifier is key to the integration of different government and private sector databases and poses serious risks of profiling, function creep, lack of accountability and regulation by code.

With this session we aim to address some of the more pressing issues regarding the implementation of biometric technologies in our societies, specifically: a) Threats to bodily integrity and dignity: how biometrics reduce an individual to a number represented through a biometric sequence. b) Irreversible damages in case of breach: unlike passwords, biometrics –such as our fingerprints, our faces, iris or voice– cannot be changed; so once compromised, the damage is irreversible. c) Are biometrics appropriate forms of identifiers? How can we answer questions around uniqueness, discrimination and bias, resolving false positives and false negatives, as well as the change of biometrics over time (e.g. age or medical conditions that may affect our bodies). d) How biometrics are changing our perception of public spaces, specially due to technologies such as facial recognition? e) How are biometric based identification systems reconfiguring the relationship between citizen and state? Together with CIS, we will give a brief overview of the current trends in Latin America and Asia, in order to set the context of the conversation and then allow participants to freely express their own personal/professional expertise to learn about their concerns and experiences in terms of how biometric technologies have affected their day to day lives.

For more info, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/quantified-identities-as-a-global-phenomenon-analyzing-the-impact-of-biometric-systems-in-our-societies

Beyond Scale: How to make your digital development program sustainable

Admin — 2018-02-26T14:23:26Z

A dissemination workshop was organized by BBC Media Action, with support from the Digital Impact Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on February 21, 2018 in Bangalore. Sunil Abraham participated in the workshop.

Agenda

9.00 to 9.45

Registration and coffee

9.50 to 10.05

Introduction to ‘Beyond Scale’, Kate Willson, CEO, Digital Impact Alliance

10.15 to 11.15

‘Surviving the Valley of Death’, panel discussion with:

Rahul Mullick, ICT lead, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, India,
Nehal Sanghavi, Senior Advisor for Innovation and Partnership, USAID, India
Kate Wilson, CEO, Digital Impact Alliance
Priyanka Dutt, Country Director, BBC Media Action

Moderated by Sara Chamberlain, Digital Director, BBC Media Action

11.15 to 11.30

Tea/coffee break

11.30 to 11.45

Introduction to the table workshop sessions

11.45 to 1.00

Each table works to identify solutions to some of the digital development sector’s most pressing challenges in the areas of organizational change management, regulatory compliance, legal protection and risk, public sector adoption, private sector business models, solution design, technical architecture for scale, partnerships and human capacity.

1 PM to 2.00

Lunch

2.00 to 2.30

Each table finalizes its presentation.

3.00 to 4.15

Presentations, Q&A and discussion of each table’s group work

4.15

Tea/coffee will be served at the tables

4.30 to 4.45

Introduction to the ‘Expert Bar’

4.45 to 6.00

There will be one or more ‘experts’ in specific focus areas of the guide seated at each table. Participants are free to visit the tables that interest them to discuss their challenges and share their own expertise.

6.00 – 9.00

Networking reception with open bar and snacks

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/beyond-scale-how-to-make-your-digital-development-program-sustainable

From 1 March, only registered devices to be used to authenticate Aadhaar

Admin — 2018-02-24T07:59:39Z

UIDAI directive to Aadhaar authentication agencies aims to avoid putting citizens’ biometric data at risk

The article by Komal Gupta was published in Livemint on February 8, 2018.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has directed all Aadhaar authentication agencies to use only registered biometric devices from 1 March to avoid putting residents’ data at risk.

The initial deadline to upgrade these devices was 1 June 2017, but it has been extended several times. The latest is the sixth extension.

The UIDAI wants the biometric devices registered with the Aadhaar system for encryption key management. The Aadhaar authentication server can individually identify and validate these devices and manage encryption keys on each registered device.

“It is reiterated that to ensure encryption of biometrics of residents at time of capture, it is absolutely essential to use only the registered devices. Any further use of non-registered devices will be putting residents’ privacy at risk,” a UIDAI circular dated 2 February said.

In January last year, UIDAI had instructed all the authentication user agencies (AUAs) and authentication service agencies (ASAs) to adhere to its new encryption standards and accordingly upgrade the devices to the new norms.

The AUA is an entity engaged in providing Aadhaar-enabled services. It may be a government, public or a private legal agency registered in India which uses Aadhaar authentication services provided by UIDAI.

The ASA is any entity that transmits authentication requests to the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) on behalf of one or more AUAs.

Requests from AUAs to extend the timeline has been cited as the reason for delay by UIDAI. The last deadline was 31 January.

Still, UIDAI claims most of the entities have migrated to registered devices and “no further extension will be given in this regard.” Failure to meet the February-end deadline will lead to loss or disruption of services, the circular added.

A privacy expert called for better security in the Aadhaar system.

“The UIDAI should have gone in for smart cards, which are inherently more secure and would have proven a better basis for a national ID system. Given its choice of biometrics, UIDAI should have required hardware-level encryption — the yet-to-be-specified (Level 1) security standard— from 2010,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at think tank Centre for Internet and Society.

“Making the much-delayed Level 1 mandatory is what UIDAI should be focusing on; sadly, even basic registration and easily-defeated software-level encryption (Level 0) is yet to be made mandatory,” he said.

UIDAI has been under the scanner over the past few months over charges that random entities have been accessing personal information without the consent of individual Aadhaar number holders.

Last month, UIDAI put in place a two-layer security to reinforce privacy protections for Aadhaar holders—it introduced a virtual identification so that the actual number need not be shared to authenticate their identity. Simultaneously, it further regulated the storage of the Aadhaar numbers within various databases.
There are more than 1.2 billion Aadhaar holders in the country.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-komal-gupta-february-8-2018-from-march-1-only-registered-devices-to-be-used-to-authenticate-aadhaar

Critics of India's ID card project say they have been harassed, put under surveillance

Admin — 2018-02-24T07:50:55Z

Researchers and journalists who have identified loopholes in India’s massive national identity card project have said they have been slapped with criminal cases or harassed by government agencies because of their work.

This was published by Reuters on February 13, 2018. Reporting by Rahul Bhatia; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

Last month, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the semi-government body responsible for the national identity project, called Aadhaar, or “Basis”, filed a criminal case against the Tribune newspaper for publishing a story that said access to the card’s database could be bought for 500 rupees ($7.82).

Reuters spoke to eight additional researchers, activists and journalists who have complained of being harassed after writing about Aadhaar. They said UIDAI and other government agencies were extremely sensitive to criticism of the Aadhaar programme.

Aadhaar is a biometric identification card that is becoming integral to the digitisation of India’s economy, with over 1.1 billion users and the world’s biggest database.

Indians have been asked to furnish their Aadhaar numbers for a host of transactions including accessing bank accounts, paying taxes, receiving subsidies, acquiring a mobile number, settling a property deal and registering a marriage.

The Tribune said one of its reporters purchased access to a portal that could provide data linked to any Aadhaar cardholder.

The UIDAI complaint, filed with the police cyber cell in the capital, New Delhi, accused the newspaper, the reporter, and others of cheating by impersonation, forgery and unauthorised access to a computer network.

Media associations sharply criticised the action - the Editors Guild of India said UIDAI’s move was “clearly meant to browbeat a journalist whose story was of great public interest. It is unfair, unjustified and a direct attack on the freedom of the press.”

In response, the agency said “an impression was being created in media that UIDAI is targeting the media or whistleblowers or shooting the messenger.”

“That is not at all true. It is for the act of unauthorised access, criminal proceedings have been launched,” it said in a statement.

Osama Manzar, the director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation, a New Delhi-based NGO, called the government’s prickliness “a clear sign that rather than it wanting to learn how to make Aadhaar a tool of empowerment, it actually wants to use it as a coercive tool of disempowerment”.

Data Leakage

Last May, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an independent Indian advocacy group, published a report that government websites had inadvertently leaked several million identification numbers from the project.

UIDAI sent the CIS a legal notice within days, said Srinivas Kodali, one of the authors of the report.

The notice alleged that some of the data cited in the report would only be available if the site had been accessed illegally. The UIDAI wrote that the people involved had to be “brought to justice.”

According to Kodali, two more notices followed, addressed to the group’s directors and two researchers, containing more accusations. “They said it was a criminal conspiracy, and demanded that we send individual responses,” he said.

CIS then received questions about its funding from the home ministry section that grants NGOs permission to receive foreign funding, said a source in the group who saw the letter. CIS viewed this as a threat to its funding, the source said. CIS declined to comment on the notices or on the questions about funding.

UIDAI did not reply to multiple e-mails seeking comment on the accusations about CIS and similar complaints by other activists and journalists, and officials could not be reached by phone. Officials at the Ministry of Information Technology that supervises UIDAI were unreachable by phone.
In a column in the Economic Times newspaper in January, Ajay Pandey, the head of the UIDAI, wrote: “The data of all Aadhaar holders is safe and secure. One should not believe rumours or claims made on its so-called ‘breach’.”

R.S. Sharma, the head of India’s telecom regulatory body, said there was an “orchestrated campaign” against Aadhaar as it was against the interests of those who operated in the shadow economy with fictitious names, or were skimming off subsidies.

“It is going to clean up many systems,” Sharma told a television channel last month. “That’s probably one of the reasons why people realise that this is now becoming too difficult or too dangerous for them.”

That trip to Turkey

A Bangalore researcher who contributed to the CIS report said scrutiny by police and government officials was a common occurrence, but harassment was stepped up after it was published.

“Sometimes people from the police station visit you. Other times from the Home Ministry. It was intimidating,” the researcher said.

The person, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said police officers asked questions like “How was that trip to Turkey?',” to make it clear the subjects were under surveillance.

When Sameer Kochhar, a social scientist and author of books on Aadhaar, demonstrated how the system’s biometrics safeguards could be bypassed last year, UIDAI filed a police report in New Delhi, a person familiar with the matter said.

Subsequently, Kochhar received at least three notices from the Delhi Police alleging that he had violated 14 sections under three separate laws, the person said.

Kochhar’s lawyer declined comment. Delhi Police officials declined comment.

Critics have warned Aadhaar could be used as an instrument of state surveillance while data security and privacy regulations are still to be framed.

Former central bank governor Raghuram Rajan said last month that the government needed to prove it would protect the privacy of Aadhaar.

“I do think that we have to assure the public that their data is safe,” Rajan said. “All these reports about easy availability of data are worrying and we have to ensure security. We cannot just say trust us, trust us, it’s all secure.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/reuters-february-13-2018-rahul-bhatia-critics-of-indias-id-card-project-say-they-have-been-harassed-put-under-surveillance

The mystery of the website which published the ‘scoop’ on BJP’s Ram Madhav

Admin — 2018-02-22T14:55:33Z

The website has since been taken down, but the identity of its creators may not be very easy to find.

The blog post by Kaveesha Kohli and Talha Ashraf was published in The Print on February 13, 2018.

The BJP filed a criminal complaint Sunday against a website after it published a report about an alleged video said to show the party’s national general secretary Ram Madhav in a ‘compromising position’. However, the site no longer exists and experts say it may be difficult to find out who was behind the ‘expose’.

Congress MP from Assam, Sushmita Dev, was among those who shared the website’s report, which claimed that the senior BJP functionary and in-charge of the party’s north-east affairs, was allegedly caught in a hotel.

But soon after the Nagaland unit of the BJP vehemently denounced it as “fictitious report” and filed an FIR, the website ceased to exist. In its complaint, the BJP said the “news report is totally false and it seeks to character assassinate Ram Madhav and sabotage the election campaign of the BJP”.

However, the screenshot of the article continues to be shared on social media.

Registration details of thenewsjoint.com (now defunct) taken from The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that manages domain names says the site was created and registered on 2 January 2018. The site’s expiry date is 2 January 2019.

Since its creation, the site has published multiple stories, most of which have been published in the last two weeks.

“If we look through Google cache, it has published multiple stories about budget aftershocks, Sensex falls by record, Modi Sarkar shuts bamboo budget, etc,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

Anyone could have published the website with the domain name The News Joint, said Madhulika Srikuamar, Junior Fellow, Cyber Initiative, Observer Research Foundation.

“The buyer, for an additional fee, can opt to keep her details private and not reveal her identity online,” she said.

The domain name thenewsjoint.com is registered through a private organisation named DomainsByProxy.com. The use of the private organisation is to maintain secrecy and makes it easy to hide the owner’s actual name and address. So how can it be traced?

“In order to track the original owners of the domain name, the police will have to take the court order and ask DomainsByProxy to hand over the name and IP address of the persons who registered themselves,” said Prakash.

And there’s no way to regulate against such sites as well.

“While there are no specific domestic regulations that govern the registration, sale and purchase of domain names, most restrictions on domain name registration stem from intellectual property protections,” said Srikumar.

In this particular case, it remains unclear whether the website was taken down because of the article on Madhav.

Prakash says it is important to verify whether The News Joint was created to peddle false news, or was pretending to be a genuine news website.

“It can be compared to the broader news environment in India where very mainstream newspapers, especially their Web desks, very often end up publishing news without any regard for journalistic ethics, without verification of the facts,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-print-kaveesha-kohli-and-talha-ashraf-the-vanishing-act-scoop-on-bjp-ram-madhav

CCI leaves Google searching for answers

Admin — 2018-02-19T02:26:17Z

If you go to the Google search box and type "nuance", the first result that shows up is "CCIBSE 0.00 % Judgement on Google". No, we just made that up.

The article by Nirmal John was published in the Economic Times on February 13, 2018

The Competition Commission of India's (CCI) landmark ruling enforcing a Rs 135.86-crore fine on Google for "search bias" and abusing its "dominant position" is one of the more finely considered judgements in the technology industry. According to Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bengaluru-based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society, "CCI is returning to the roots of the competition law, where it is as important to prevent concentration of power as it is to look at how pricing affects people. The emphasis here is now also on protecting innovation and competition itself."

To begin with, according to the CCI, the rules of engagement are different for early-stage markets and mature markets.

CCI has differentiated between early-stage markets and mature markets. In an earlier judgement when two radio cab operators, FastTrack and Meru, had accused Ola of offering discounts and predatory pricing, the CCI had ruled in favour of Ola. CCI had said a lack of market maturity in the cab-hailing space was central to its decision. "At this stage, it is difficult to determine with certainty the long-term impact of this pricing strategy, as the market is yet to mature," the CCI had ruled.

The search market is different. Google is the 800-pound gorilla and pretty much the entire zoo in this market. The Google judgement, according to a lawyer who chose to remain off the record, "is based on the principle that a higher degree of responsibility is cast on Google because it has a dominant position in the market".

The nub of the argument is that Google, by the showcasing of flights in its search page, has used its role as a gateway to offer a specific service.

As the judgement notes: "Google is leveraging its strong position in various online search markets to enter into and enhance its position in ancillary markets. Not only does that cause direct harm to competitors in vertical markets, it also causes direct harm to other website owners, since their websites are moved down on SERP [search engine results page] and hence, they receive less clicks as a result of lessened traffic. Further, this also harms consumers as they no longer receive the most relevant results at the top of SERP."

But why should the consumers care? After all they are getting the cheapest price.

This is where CCI's second important point comes in. There needs to be a balance between the short-term concerns of consumers with their long-term benefits.

Even if consumers who used Google flights to find options for firming up travel plans may have saved money, the CCI has, in this instance, taken the view that what may be of immediate benefit to the consumer may not be good for them in the long term because of the distortion of the market it creates.

Apart from prices, there is another benefit that comes from Google's search aggregation. Sid Talwar of Lightbox Ventures, a Mumbai-based VC firm, brings into light an interesting paradox: Is the addition of an extra step to the search process in consumer interest? Talwar argues that the consumer may be more interested in the most efficient way to find what he is looking for, which is the import of Google's mission. By aggregating results from various sources and offering it right at the search page, it could be fulfilling a consumer need.

This is where another facet of the judgement -- the pre-eminence of product and user-interface (UI) design and its relationship with controlling user behaviour -- establishes the anti-competitive nature of Google's search results page. The manipulation of UI design has been key to the debate on anti-competitive behaviour across the world. Europe's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager became one of the most important proponents of this idea when the European Commission fined Google a record $2.9 billion in mid-2017 for "abusing its dominance in Europe by giving prominent placement in searches to its comparison shopping service and demoting rival offerings".

As NS Nappinai, a Mumbai-based lawyer and author of Technology Laws Decoded, points out, the ruling establishes a precedent and helps the CCI build a reputation for itself as a body that shows strength in evaluating technology. "Tech companies will now have to take cognisance of abuse of their dominant position in India," she says.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-february-13-2018-nirmal-john-cci-leaves-google-searching-for-answers

A Series of Op-eds on Data Protection

amber — 2018-02-19T02:08:28Z

I wrote a short series of three op-eds for Asia Times this week.

The first article "User consent is the key to data protection in India" examines the debate around consent and the arguments made to discard it. I question the premise of big data exceptionalism, particularly in the absence of any mature governance models which address use regulation.

In the second article "Robust economic argument for a sound Indian data protection law", I examine the substance of the argument of 'innovation' as a legitimate competing interest with respect to privacy, and questionthe economic arguments made in support of innovation enabled by unregulated access to data.

In the third article "India’s data protection law needs graded enforcement mechanism", I look at the two competing arms of regulation - enforcement and compliance, and how a balance of two is need in India,with an empowered regulator and drawing from the principles from responsive regulation theory.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/a-series-of-op-eds-on-data-protection

The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide

amber — 2018-02-16T05:31:37Z

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. This visual guide to the story of privacy law in India and the recent judgement of the Puttaswamy v. Union of India case is developed by Amber Sinha (research and content) and Pooja Saxena (design and conceptualisation).

The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide: Download (PDF)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-a-visual-guide

Unpacking Data Protection Law: A Visual Representation

amber — 2018-02-15T13:22:00Z

This visual explainer unpacking data protection law was developed by Amber Sinha (research) and Pooja Saxena (design), and published as part of the Data Privacy Week celebrations on the Privacy International blog. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.

Cross-posted from Privacy International blog.

Credits: Flag illustrations, when not created by the authors, are from Ibrandify / Freepik.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unpacking-data-protection-law-a-visual-representation

AI and Manufacturing and Services in India: Looking Forward

Shweta Mohandas and Pranav M. Bidare — 2018-02-14T11:13:56Z

This Report provides an overview of the proceedings of the Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Manufacturing and Services: Looking Forward (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Roundtable’), conducted at The Energy Resource Institute (TERI), in Bangalore on January 19, 2018.

Event Report: Download (PDF)

The Roundtable comprised of participants from different sides of the AI and manufacturing and services spectrum including practitioners, representatives from multinational companies, think tanks, academicians, and researchers. The Roundtable discussed various questions regarding AI in the manufacturing and services industry in India.

The round of discussions began with initial observations from the in progress research that the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is undertaking, on the use of AI in manufacturing and services. Some of the uses of AI that the research had thus far identified across various sectors included AI platforms in IT services for accurate forecasting for businesses, AI driven automation of routine tasks in manufacturing and production, and AI driven analytics for forecasting in the agriculture sector. The discussion then proceeded to the benefits of using AI - including efficient and effective results, precision, and automation of repetitive maintenance tasks. The draft research also acknowledges that although the use of AI is beneficial in many ways, there are also some key concerns around job displacement, privacy, lack of awareness, and a needed capacity to fully understand and use new AI technologies. The draft research also identified a few key AI initiatives in India, such as Wipro Holmes, TCS Ignio, and G.E, that were providing solutions to help automating software maintenance tasks and helping in the smooth working of SAP (Systems, Applications & Products) operations. Innovative uses of AI in areas such as crop production (M.I.T.R.A.) and dairy optimization (StellApps) were also identified.

To understand the present state of AI and impact of the same, the session was opened to discussion on the following questions: See the full report here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ai-and-manufacturing-and-services-in-india-looking-forward