We are anonymous, we are legion

Models for Surveillance and Interception of Communications Worldwide

bedaavyasa — 2014-07-10T07:50:08Z

This is an evaluation of laws and practices governing surveillance and interception of communications in 9 countries. The countries evaluated represent a diverse spectrum not only in terms of their global economic standing but also their intrusive surveillance capabilities. The analysis is limited to the procedural standards followed by these countries for authorising surveillance and provisions for resolving interception related disputes.

Sl. No.	Country	Legislation	Model
1.	Australia	Telecommunications (Interceptions and Access) Act, 1979 Governs interception of communications Relevant provisions: S. 3, 7, 6A, 34, 46 Surveillance Devices Act, 2004 Establishes procedure for obtaining warrants and for use of surveillance devices Relevant Provisions: S.13, 14	Authorisation for surveillance is granted in the form of a warrant from a Judge or a nominated member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal The warrant issuing authority must be satisfied that information obtained through interception shall assist in the investigation of a serious crime The Acts provide a list of prescribed offences for which interception of communication may be authorized The Acts also specify certain federal and state law enforcement agencies that may undertake surveillance
2.	Brazil	Federal Law No. 9,296, 1996: Regulates wiretapping	Authorisation for interception is granted on a Judge’s order for a period of 15 days at a time Interception is only allowed for investigations into serious offences like drug smuggling, corruption murder and kidnapping
3.	Canada	Criminal Code, 1985 Governs general rules of criminal procedure including search and seizure protocols Relevant Provision: §§ 184.2, 184.4	Grants power to intercept communication by obtaining authorisation from a provincial court judge or a judge of the superior court Before granting his authorisation, the judge must be satisfied that either the originator of the communication or the recipient thereof has given his/her consent to the interception Under exceptional circumstances, however, a police officer owing to the exigency of the situation may intercept communication without prior authorisation
4.	France	*Loi d'orientation et de programmation pour la performance de la sécurité intérieure* (LOPPSI 2), 2011: Authorises use of video surveillance and interception of communications Relevant Provisions: Article 36 *Loi de Programmation Militaire* (LPM), 2013: Authorises surveillance for protection of national security and prevention of terrorism	Interception of communication under LOPPSI 2 requires previous authorization from an investigating Judge after consultation with the Public Prosecutor Such authorization is granted for a period of 4 months which is further extendable by another 4 months Interception of communication under LPM does not require prior sanction from an investigating judge and is instead provided by the Prime Minister’s office Information that can be intercepted under LPM includes not only metadata but also content and geolocation services
5.	Germany	Gesetz zur Beschränkung des Brief-, Post und Fernmeldegeheimnisses (G10 Act), 2001 Imposes restrictions on the right to privacy and authorizes surveillance for protecting freedom and democratic order, preventing terrorism and illegal drug trade Relevant Provisions: §3 The German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO), 2002 Lays down search and seizure protocol and authorizes interception of telecommunications for criminal prosecutions Relevant Provisions: §§ 97, 100a	Authorises warrantless surveillance by specific German agencies like the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service) Lays down procedure that must be followed while undertaking surveillance and intercepting communications Authorises sharing of intercepted intelligence for criminal prosecutions Mandates ex post notification to persons whose privacy has been violated but no judicial remedies are available to such persons The Code of Criminal Procedure authorises interception of communication of a person suspected of being involved in a serious offence only on the order of a court upon application by the public prosecution office
6.	Pakistan	Pakistan Telecommunications Reorganisation Act, 1996: Controls the flow of false and fabricated information and protects national security Relevant Provisions: § 54 Investigation for Fair Trial Act, 2013: Regulates the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies regarding covert surveillance and interception of communications Relevant Provisions: §§ 6,7, 8, 9	Authorisation for interception is provided by the federal government. No formal legal structure to monitor surveillance exists Interception can be authorized in the interest of national security and on the apprehension of any offence Requests for filtering and blocking of content are routed through the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Evaluation of Websites, a confidential regulatory body Under the Fair Trial Act, interception can only be authorised on application to the Fedral Minister for Interior who shall then permit the application to be placed before a High Court Judge The warrant shall be issued by a judge only on his satisfaction that interception will aid in the collection of evidence and that a reasonable threat of the commission of a scheduled offence exists
7.	South Africa	The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act, 2002 Regulates and authorizes monitoring and interception of telecommunications services Relevant Provisions: §§ 16, 22	Warrant for intercepting communications and installing surveillance devices is granted by a designated judge The warrant is issued on satisfaction of the judge that the investigation relates to a serious offence or that the information gathering is vital to public health or safety, national security or compelling national economic interests
8.	United Kingdom	Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000: Authorises interception of communications and surveillance Relevant Provisions: §§ 5, 6, 65	Authorisation for interception is granted in the form of a warrant by the Secretary of State or in certain special cases by a ‘senior officer’ Communications can be intercepted only it is necessary to do so in the interest of national security or for the purpose of preventing and detecting serious crimes Complaints of alleged illegal surveillance are heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal
9.	United States	Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 1986 (Title III, Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act) Governs authorisation for wiretapping and interception Relevant Provisions: §18	Authorisation for interception can be granted by a district court or federal appeals court on application by a law enforcement officer duly signed by the attorney general Application mandates obtaining the information through a service provider before invading upon individual’s privacy

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/models-for-surveillance-and-interception-of-communications-worldwide

Mobilising support for freedom on the Web

praskrishna — 2012-04-25T11:02:58Z

A motion in the Rajya Sabha has sought annulment of the IT intermediary guidelines, writes Deepa Kurup in this article published in the Hindu on April 22, 2012.

A research, or a sting operation, conducted by researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society in October 2011 — a few months after the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules were notified — revealed some inherent flaws in the guidelines laid down by the Indian government. The results of the study made news, particularly after Union Minister for IT, Kapil Sibal, asked Internet companies and Web service providers to screen content.

The study revealed that companies were only too eager to comply with take-down notices or requests, in order to avoid further hassles, particularly legal ones.

Rishab Dara, a researcher who was part of this ‘sting', pointed out that unless the content was commercial, or had potential commercial interest, companies preferred to err on the side of caution.

Addressing an audience at a panel discussion, titled ‘Resisting Internet censorship: strategies for furthering freedom of expression in India', held at the Bangalore International Centre, Mr. Dara pointed out that search engines did not invest enough resources to check how valid the claims were, before taking down over 2,000 URLs related to a random complaint or take-down notice sent by them. His study underlined the need for debate and discussion on the intermediary guidelines, locating this in the larger context of freedom on the Web.

The discussion, organised by the Centre for Internet and Society, was moderated by the former journalist and academic, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. The audience and the panel comprised a diverse lot: from students, netizens and academics to those who were directly involved in the business of publishing content or hosting Web content. While a substantial part of the discussion dealt with the legal aspects of the notified rules, and how it may contradict the constitutional rights of citizens, a section of the debate also delved into whether the Web as a medium needed to be policed at all.

If panellist Mahesh Murthy, Chief Executive Officer of Pinstorm, argued vociferously for unfettered freedom on the Web and accused the government of being threatened by movements such as the anti-corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare (which he said was largely mobilised on the Web), another panellist Na. Vijayshankar, Cyber Law College, who claimed he was among those instrumental in bringing down the pornographic cartoon portal Savitabhabhi.com, argued that though these rules need to be withdrawn, there are “boundaries” to what can be posted and said on the Web.

Another section of the audience brought up the issues of hate speech on the Web, and pointed out that in some cases there was a need to pin liability on those who generate content that incites hatred.

Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Centre for Law and Policy Research, pointed out that currently the way the issue was being played out in court, the discourse was more about companies.

“The debate is not about users today. Companies are trying to duck liabilities, rather than deal with substantive issues of free speech,” he said, pointing to the complexities in locating liability for content.

Speaking from the publisher's perspective, B.G. Mahesh, OneIndia.in, an online news and entertainment portal, spoke of specific cases where his portal had been targeted by the Chennai Cybercrime cell for hosting a news story (syndicated from a news agency) that was declared defamatory. “We took it down, but there was no answer from them when we asked for an explanation,” he said, adding that in such cases there is tremendous pressure and harassment from authorities, leaving publishers with no choice but to comply.

Though the IT intermediary rules were notified in April 2011, the issue made headlines when Union Minister for Information and Communication Technology Kapil Sibal asked private companies or Web service providers to pre-screen content, a statement which he later withdrew.

Also discussed in detail were the complexities posed by a medium like the World Wide Web, and what were the reasonable restrictions to free speech on the Web. Does one need a separate legal dispensation to deal with this medium, Mr. Thakurta asked. While emphasising that the solution does not lie in “knee-jerk reactions”, such as the rules that have been proposed, he pointed out that the bid to control flow of information was a simple manifestation of the utter helplessness and inability of the government — and governments worldwide — to control the Web. Be it in West Bengal, where a professor is held for sharing a cartoon, or with the Union government that beckons corporates to pre-screen the Web, these acts are a manifestation of a “combination of arrogance and stupidity”, he said.

Subsequently, in February, Rajya Sabha member from Kerala, P. Rajeeve, moved a statutory motion in the Rajya Sabha seeking that these guidelines be annulled on the grounds that it allowed intermediaries protection from legal liability in return for trading away freedom of expression of users.

In the Parliamentary session that will start next week, this is likely to come up for discussion, and across the country, rights activists are mobilising support and lobbying with legislators to garner support for this annulment.

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/mobilising-support-for-freedom-on-web

Mobile, Trust and Privacy

praskrishna — 2014-10-05T09:21:15Z

Sunil Abraham was a speaker at the event organized by GSM Association on September 4, 2014.

More consumers now use their mobiles to go online to access information and services. Mobile plays a central role in driving economic growth and social opportunities. However, it is important that people can interact and access services in a trusted and secure environment that protects their online privacy.
Increasingly, mobile ecosystems acquire consumers’ data by default, while smartphones broadcast data by default. These ‘default’ positions challenge current data protection and privacy legal frameworks, and consumers’ ability to manage their privacy and online identities.
A key ingredient for strengthening trust in a mobile connected world is a user-centred privacy framework that applies to all digital and identity services whether in retail, healthcare, government, banking or any other sector.
The GSMA recently published global research showing trust matters and that mobile users want better transparency and choice over how their personal data are used. They also expect all companies accessing their data to treat their privacy consistently.
This workshop aims to bring together leading representatives from a broad spectrum of stakeholder groups to discuss privacy-related issues and ways to enhance mobile users’ trust.
Questions to address include:

How can citizens – in both developed and developing countries – benefit from the responsible use of mobile-derived data?
What are the key emerging issues and challenges of a mobile hyper-connected world?
How can we ensure secure and trusted identities online?
eds to be done to ensure consumers are able to access services in private, trusted and secure ways?
What are the respective roles of law and industry self-regulation in enhancing trust?

For full details see the IGF website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mobile-trust-and-privacy

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change

radha — 2011-04-05T04:32:26Z

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change, Bangalore camp is a one-day event and is an exploration of mobile technology to advance social development and social change goals.

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Camps are local events for people passionate about using mobile technology for social impact and to make the world a better place.

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Camp in Bangalore includes:

interactive discussions about mobile tech for social good,
hands-on-demos of mobile apps and tools,
collaborations about ways to use, deploy, develop and promote mobile technology in health, advocacy, economic development, environment, human rights, and citizen media

Participants for Mobile Tech 4 Social Change barcamps include nonprofits, mobile application developers, researchers, donors, intermediary organizations, and mobile operators.

In short, Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Bangalore Camp is:

A one-day event in Bangalore on September 4, 2009
An exploration of mobile technology to advance social development and social change goals
Participatory and interactive
Open to anyone with passion and interest in the topic

Participants

YOU - register today!

Cost

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change camps are grassroots events. We are charging a small fee for this event that is used to offset costs for breakfast and lunch as well as supplies for the camp. If this cost constitutes a huge barrier for you attending, please be in touch so that we can work something out!

Planners and Sponsors

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Bangalore is organized by the following organizations. We are very grateful for this collaboration and support.

India

If you want to be an angel and sponsor this community-supported event, we would love to hear from you!

videos

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/mobile-tech-4-social-change

Mobile net ban during peaceful protest leaves farmers confused

Shruti Jain — 2018-01-19T15:20:14Z

Strap: Administration says it was done to prevent rumours from spreading, protesters insist they needed internet to fight it.

In Sikar district, about 15,000 farmers had staged a protest at Krishi Upaj Mandi on 1 September 2017 under the banner of All India Kisan Sabha. Their major demands were farm loan waiver, pension for farmers and implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission. The protest had the support of students, traders' associations, anganwadi workers, transport unions and a few other organisations. About 100,000 people joined farmers in a solidarity march during the next 13 days.

The demonstrations continued and when talks with the government failed, thousands of farmers set out to lay siege to the district collector's office and block highways on September 11.

Accordingly, the district administration clamped prohibitory orders under Section 144 of Criminal Procedure Code, restricting assembly of five or more people, and blocked mobile internet in the district.

Kishan Pareek, district secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) which took part in the protest, contended that though the government says the ban was enforced to check the spread of violence, the actual motive was something else. He says the administration was vying to stifle their movement but couldn’t use force as the protesters were peaceful.

"So, they resorted to spreading rumours to provoke us to commit any violent activity. If internet was working that time, we could have easily denied those [rumours],” he says.

According to Pareek, the rumours that circulated that day included: the protest has turned violent at some location, police have fired bullets/charged baton at the protesters, additional force has been called in from Jaipur etc. As broadband was operational, the organisers managed to counter falsehood with facts and the misinformation didn't spread outside Sikar. Pareek says whichever protest-spot the rumours portrayed as violence-ridden, their social media team shared videos from there on Facebook to counter them.

Pictures above: Thousands of farmers held a protest at Krishi Upaj Mandi, Sikar in September 2017.

Nevertheless, in the absence of mobile internet, farmers’ teams that had gathered at various highways to block roads had difficulty processing the false information that was trickling in. Though it created much confusion among them, it failed to instigate them.

Rajpal Singh, a Sikar-based member of CPI(M)'s social media wing, informed that the mainstream media didn't give much attention to the protest. He says it were local websites and newspapers that covered the event, which is why the administration banned internet, hoping restriction on the flow of information would throw a spanner in the works. Apart from local news websites, local Facebook pages -- Sikar Aapno, Sikar Sandesh, We love CPIM- Dhod and CPIM Sikar, etc. -- were giving minute-by-minute updates of the farmers' protest.

The internet services were resumed in Sikar a day later as the protest did not get violent and the protesters were not found circulating any provocative content.

A former CPI(M) MLA, president of All India Kisan Sabha and leader of the farmers' agitation, Amara Ram, told 101Reporters that one of the very reasons their movement enjoyed humongous public support was its peaceful nature. He says as their movement unfolded, people from Sikar and outside realised this protest would not turn violent and it’s a cause that needed support.

As cautious as the government might have been about the September 11 protest, police presence indicated that the law-enforcement agency did not perceive it as a threat. One of the protesters, Nemichand, says only 50-odd policemen had been deputed for the protest march of 15,000+ farmers to the district collectorate. He claimed that the number of men in khaki dwindled to 20 by the afternoon.

He alleged that the real reason for internet shutdown was stopping the dissemination of news about their protest as it exposes the Modi government's inconsiderate approach towards farmers.

“Everybody in Sikar was talking about the internet ban. Since there was no legitimate reason for the ban, the government couldn’t continue with it, fearing how they will justify,” he says.

	The administration confirmed that the ban was imposed fearing threat to law and order in the district due to the gathering of thousands. “Though they were protesting peacefully the initial ten days at the mahapadav, they had planned to block the district collectorate on September 11 in thousands. To restrict their movement, internet was suspended in Sikar. During such situations, no one writes positive about the administration. We didn’t want to provide them a platform for spreading rumours that could have made the protestors violent. If there had been no internet ban that day, something big would have happened,” Jai Prakash Narayan, additional district collector and additional district magistrate, told 101reporters. “Broadband was made working during the internet ban so that the private and government offices were not affected. While giving order for internet ban, it is made sure that normal call and broadband facilities are not debarred. General masses are affected but internet shutdown is the only option we have,” he added. “While their blockade continued for three days, we restricted internet services only for first 24 hours as the protest had gained stability till then.” Even three months after the high-powered ministerial committee was formed to look into the farmers’ demand, nothing has been done. Now, they plan to stage a protest in February 2018 when the state assembly will be in function. Former CPI(M) MLA Pema Ram says, “Preparation for February protest has already begun. Kisan Sansads are being organised in Sikar, where active farmers from each village participate to raise demands regarding implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report, a solution to the menace of stray cattle, complete farm loan waiver and pension for farmers. They then discuss it with other farmers in their villages.”

The administration confirmed that the ban was imposed fearing threat to law and order in the district due to the gathering of thousands. “Though they were protesting peacefully the initial ten days at the mahapadav, they had planned to block the district collectorate on September 11 in thousands. To restrict their movement, internet was suspended in Sikar. During such situations, no one writes positive about the administration. We didn’t want to provide them a platform for spreading rumours that could have made the protestors violent. If there had been no internet ban that day, something big would have happened,” Jai Prakash Narayan, additional district collector and additional district magistrate, told 101reporters.

“Broadband was made working during the internet ban so that the private and government offices were not affected. While giving order for internet ban, it is made sure that normal call and broadband facilities are not debarred. General masses are affected but internet shutdown is the only option we have,” he added. “While their blockade continued for three days, we restricted internet services only for first 24 hours as the protest had gained stability till then.”

Even three months after the high-powered ministerial committee was formed to look into the farmers’ demand, nothing has been done. Now, they plan to stage a protest in February 2018 when the state assembly will be in function.

Former CPI(M) MLA Pema Ram says, “Preparation for February protest has already begun. Kisan Sansads are being organised in Sikar, where active farmers from each village participate to raise demands regarding implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report, a solution to the menace of stray cattle, complete farm loan waiver and pension for farmers. They then discuss it with other farmers in their villages.”

Pictures above: Apart from local news websites, local Facebook pages - Sikar Aapno, Sikar Sandesh, We love CPIM- Dhod and CPIM Sikar, etc. - were giving minute-by-minute updates of the farmers' protest. Pictures courtesy: Shruti Jain

(Shruti Jain is a Jaipur-based journalist and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mobile-net-ban-during-peaceful-protest-leaves-farmers-confused

Mobile India 2016

praskrishna — 2016-01-13T14:26:50Z

COMSNETS in association with Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Digital India, et.al. organized the event in Bangalore from January 5 to 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham participated as a speaker in Session 4: Law, regulation and policy of App Economy.

Mobile India 2016 is one of the first premier events and will be the curtain raiser for the App Economy revolution in the country. It is associated with The Eighth International Conference on COMmunication Systems NETworkS (COMSNETS), the world's premier international conference on networking and communications technology innovation.

Theme: App Economy: Interplay between Telcos and OTTs

The App Economy in India has been jumpstarted by the new age start-ups, commonly referred to as “Over The Top (OTT)” players. Compass (2015) upgraded Bengaluru from #19 to #15 in its Global Start-up Ecosystem Ranking, much to the delight of all of us. The app economy and the traditional economy are overlapping to a greater extent. Apps are being integrated into many traditional activities ranging from grocery shopping to calling a cab, a trend that is rapidly spilling revenue from almost every industry in the higher revenue traditional economy into the app economy. It is expected that the spill-overs are greater in emerging countries such as India where there are substantial inefficiencies in the traditional industries. This has also caught the attention of funding agencies. While more than $4 billion was invested in start-ups in India in 2014, the meter is up to $1.5 billion in Q1 of 2015, indicative of the promise of this sector of the economy.

Simultaneously, the telecom, mobile and Internet infrastructure backbone that is required for the app economy is also gearing up. Nationwide 3G mobile service is available and year 2016 is expected to be the “Year of 4G mobile”. Mobile broadband subscriber base is touching 100 Million and continues to grow at a quarterly growth rate of more than 15%.

Hence the interplay between telcos and OTTs are very important to bolster the app economy. Meanwhile, the “Net Neutrality” debate is also peaking with the world watching our policy steps on this issue closely.

Mobile India 2016 will explore opportunities and challenges of the App Economy and the interplay between Telcos and OTTs in four sessions with all stakeholders in the ecosystem. For more info, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mobile-india-2016

Mobile education comes to villages

praskrishna — 2011-05-30T05:49:27Z

PEOPLE living in remote villages, trekking many miles to schools and colleges before dropping out, can now look forward to a tech option — mobile education. Education over mobile phones is vital in India, where the literacy rate according to 2011 census is 74.04 per cent, observers note. This article by Shayan Ghosh was published in Mail Today on May 27, 2011.

India has 791 million mobile subscribers according to regulatory body TRAI with a significant share in villages. That is the target group several start- ups and educational institutions are looking at.

Indira Gandhi National Open University ( IGNOU) based in New Delhi, is taking a lead in the matter. “ The technology is pretty new in India and we are planning to implement things like SMS alerts to students and coursespecific databases,” K. R. Srivathsan, pro vice- chancellor, IGNOU, said.

"It will definitely change the scenario of education in rural India," noted Srivathsan.

"All possible components required in a learning cycle including auditory, visual, reading, writing, collaboration, interaction, recording and computing," Amit Zaveri, CEO, EnableM, a company that delivers education through mobile devices, said.

"In rural areas the challenges for delivery of learning content & services are many including physical distances ( to institutes etc.), lack of teachers, no or limited access to standardised & branded content, time & cost constraints, limited capability for peer assessments, lack of skills development facilities for employability," Zaveri added.

Mig33, a Singapore- based mobile social network is hopeful that the mobile revolution could actually mean impart education to all.

"Mobile phones have moved from being phone devices to communication devices. With the advent of 3G, this is going to become bigger and better.

Also tablets are expected to play very effective role in this," Mohit Gundecha, India operations head, Mig33, said.

"With 3G the video clips can help educate, smart apps can help people learn, good sms apps can engage audiences about education concepts. We already see a host of companies coming in to take care of the hardware aspects and digital content to match the need," Gundecha explained.

According to Vikram Nagaich, director and founder, InnovateEdu, on one side, with mobile phones the content the reach of the content could be very wide. However, the efficacy would have to be delivered through extremely innovative and sophisticated content.

"Mobiles can penetrate better as they have things in favour like better battery life and people do not need any training to operate it. This gives it an upper hand over computers," Sunil Abraham, ED, Center for Internet and Society, said.

The Tech Option

Education over mobile phones is vital in India, where the literacy rate according to the 2011 census is 74.04 per cent, observers note.

With a significant share in villages, this is the target group several start- ups and educational institutions are looking at Indira Gandhi National Open University ( IGNOU) based in New Delhi, is taking a lead in the matter.

In rural areas, challenges regarding delivery of learning content & services are many and include physical distances, lack of teachers, limited access to standardised content.

Mobile phones have moved from being phone devices to communication devices. With 3G, this is going to become better.

Read the original story here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/mobile-education-villages

Mobile Broadband: Leveraging for Business Transformation

praskrishna — 2013-01-15T08:40:21Z

Mobile India 2013 is being held at the Chancery Pavillion, Bangalore on 9 January 2013. Sunil Abraham is speaking at this event.

Mobile India 2013 is the one of the first premier conferences and will be the curtain raiser for Mobile Broadband revolution in the country. It is associated with The Fifth International Conference on COMmunication Systems NETworkS (COMSNETS), the world’s premier international conference on networking and communications technology innovation.

Keynote Speeches

Keynote - 1: Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi , Director, IIT Madras will deliver the joint keynote speech for COMSNETS 2013 and Mobile India 2013.
Keynote - 2 : Sanjay Nayak , Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Tejas Networks. Tejas Networks.

Mobile India 2013 will try to unravel the mysteries in the following sessions.

Session 1: Enterprises on the move

"For a preview, read http://yourstory.in/2012/12/enterprises-on-the-move/ "

Enterprises are exploring ways to leverage the power of smart devices, the cloud, and broadband to be agile, flexible, and productive. The IT managers in organizations are challenged to support variety of devices (viz. BYOD) within the organization, at the same time providing the required organizational security and performance support to the employees. This session will deliberate on the challenges and opportunities of today's networked world for enterprises on the move.

Panelists: Ashvin Vellody , Director - Management Consulting, KPMG India; Dr. K.K. Ramakrishnan , Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, AT&T Labs Research, USA; Puneet Gupta , AVP and Head of Mobility Research, Infosys SET Labs; Sai Pratyush, Head-Enterprise Products, Tata Teleservices; E. Manikandan , Head-Channels and Alliances, Ramco Systems; Umesh Sachdev , Co-founder and CEO, Uniphore ; Yathish, L, N. , CTO, Huawei Technologies

Moderator: Swami Krishnan , VP and Head-Marketing, Sasken Communication Technologies

Session 2: Massively Open Online Education

"For a preview, read http://yourstory.in/2012/12/massively-open-online-education/ ".

Online and Internet based education has permeated in to schools and colleges today. Massively Open On-line Course (MOOC) initiatives such as National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) in India and those by leading institutions such as MIT and Stanford in the US are democratizing education and making it available globally over the Internet. In India, the Government has been an early adopter and both academia and industry have begun taking this initiative further. However, limited access to wired broadband and computers have restricted reach for providing online education. Can the ubiquitous mobile solve this problem?
In this session, experts will deliberate in detail on the opportunities and challenges in providing education through mobile networks and wireless devices. Are these scalable and monetizable? What are the implications for traditional educational methodologies? What are the transformations this will bring to the publishing industry?

Panelists: Dr. Gautam Shroff , VP and Chief Scientist, TCS; Srikanth B. Iyer , COO, Pearson Education Services; Rohit Kumar , MD, Elsevier India; Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Civil Society; Arun Prabhudesai , CTO, myopencourses.com

Moderator: Prof. D. Manjunath , Professor, IIT Bombay

Session 3: Innovation Workshop

In the concluding session of the day, a workshop on mobile innovations will be conducted wherein several start-up firms will show case their unique innovations in the mobile space and share their experiences on ideation, fund mobilization, monetization models, and scale-up for sustainability.

Panelists: MintM ( Sachin Garg , Founder); Robots Alive ( Abheek Bose , Founder); Twaang
( Vishnu Raned , Founder); JanaCare , ( Sidhant Jena , Co-founder), AstralPad (Rahul Singh)
Moderator: Madanmohan Rao , Director-Research, Yourstory.in

Event Chairs

Dr. V. Sridhar (sridhar.varadharajan@sasken.com), Sasken Communication Technologies, India
S.R. Raja (rajaraghavan.setlur@sasken.com)

Register here for Mobile India 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/mobile-india-2013

MLATs and the proposed Amendments to the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok — 2016-12-28T01:09:34Z

In continuance of our blog post on mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), we examine a new approach to international bilateral cooperation being suggested in the United States, by creating a mechanism for certain foreign governments to directly approach the data controllers.

Published under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA. Anyone can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this document, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the creator of this document and license their new creations under the terms identical to the license governing this document.

In the previous article on MLATs we discussed, in some detail, what MLATs are and why they are needed. One area which was briefly focused upon in that article was the limitations and criticisms of the MLAT mechanism, of which one of the main criticisms being the problems caused due to different legal standards in various jurisdictions as well as the time taken to process a request for information sent from one country to another. Talking specifically about the United States, where most internet companies are headquartered and hold large amounts of data, it typically takes months to process requests under MLATs and foreign governments often struggle to comprehend and comply with the legal standards in the United States for obtaining data for use in their investigations.[1] The requirement that a foreign government should take permission from, and comply with the requirements of a foreign government simply because the data needed happens to be controlled by a service provider based in a foreign country strikes many foreign law enforcement officials as damaging to security and law enforcement efforts, especially when they are requesting data pertaining to a crime between two of their own citizens that primarily took place on their soil.[2]

These inefficiencies of the MLAT process lead to further problems of foreign governments attempting to apply their search and surveillance laws in an extraterritorial manner for example in 2014 the UK passed the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, 2014 with gives the government the power to directly access data from foreign service providers if sought for specific purposes and the request is approved by the Secretary of State or other specified executive branch official.[3] Another response that may occur is if, frustrated by such inefficiencies of the existing systems, courts in foreign states start assuming extra territorial jurisdiction, as happened when a District Court in Vishakhapatnam restrained Google from complying with a subpoena issued by the Superior Court of California, ordering Google to share the password of the Gmail account belonging to an Indian citizen residing in Vishakhapatnam.[4]

Solution proposed in the United States

In order to overcome these inefficiencies, at least in the American context, the Department of Justice has proposed a legislation which seeks to make the process of foreign governments getting information from US based entities more streamlined by amending the provisions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of the United States (the “Amendment”). These amendments have been proposed primarily for the US and UK to effectuate a proposed bilateral agreement whereby the UK government will be able to approach US companies directly with requests for information without going through the MLAT process or getting an order from a US court.

The Amendment seeks to ensure that requests from foreign governments for information from US entities get answered in a smooth manner by including those requests in the process for seeking information under the ECPA itself. This move would no doubt, make it easier for foreign governments to access data in the US, but such a move can be criticized on the ground that it would then allow all states, irrespective of their legal standards of privacy, etc. to get access to such information. This problem has been overcome in the amendment by adding a new section to Title 18 which would allow the Attorney General, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State to certify to the Congress that the legal standards in the contracting state which is being given access to the mechanism under the ECPA satisfies certain requirements specified in the chapter (and discussed below). Only after such a certification has been received by the Congress, a contracting state would be able to receive the benefits sought to be granted under the Amendment.

It is important to note that the US administration is looking to use the US-UK Agreement as a standard to be followed for similar potential agreements with a number of other countries wherein the agencies in those countries could request information from US based entities through court orders through a properly specified legal framework. Though to our knowledge India has not been formally approached by the US government to enter into such an agreement, it is important to ask the question viz. if approached:

Does India's present legal system meet the standards laid down in the amendment to the ECPA?
And if they do, should India also seek to enter into such an Agreement with the United States?
And if India does, what could be the implications for citizens and for countries in a similar position as India?

We hope to be able to answer the above three questions, or at least throw some light on them, in the conclusion of this paper by relying upon the discussions contained herein.

Criticisms of the Amendment

While such a mechanism may be very effective in addressing the needs of security agencies in investigation and prevention of criminal activities, one cannot accept such an overarching change in cross border enforcement without analyzing the consequences that such a proposal will have on the right to privacy. Some of these consequences have been highlighted by experts responding to the amendment:

Lack of Judicial Authorisation: The Amendment requires that the foreign governments have a process whereby a person could seek post-disclosure review by an independent entity instead of a warrant by a court.[5] Although a court order is not the norm for interception even in Indian law, however under American law such protection is given to data held by American companies even though the data may belong to Indian citizens and this protection will no longer be available if the Amendment is passed.

Vague Standard for requests: Under the domestic law of any state there is usually a large amount of jurisprudence regarding when search orders can be issued, such as the “probable cause” standard that is followed in the United States or similar standards that may be followed in other jurisdictions. This ensures that even when the wording of the law is not precise, which it cannot be for such a subjective issue, there is still some amount of clarity around when and under what circumstances such warrants may be issued. In contrast, the Amendment requires that the orders be based on “requirements for a reasonable justification based on articulable and credible facts, particularity, legality, and severity regarding the conduct under investigation.” Although the language here may seem reasonable but in the absence of any jurisprudence backing it, it becomes very vague and susceptible to misuse. Disclosure without a Warrant: Under the current MLAT process as followed in the United States, a judge in the U.S. must issue a warrant based on probable cause in order for a U.S. company to turn over content to a foreign government. This requirement protects individuals abroad by requiring their governments to meet certain standards when seeking information held by U.S. companies. The Amendment seeks to remove this essential safeguard for a judicial warrant. The Amendment does not require requests from foreign governments to be based on a prior judicial authorization, since a large number of countries (including India) do not always require judicial orders for such orders.[6]

Allows Real Time Surveillance by Foreign Governments: American privacy rights activists have raised the concern that the Amendment would allow foreign governments to conduct ongoing surveillance by asking American companies to turn over data in real time. The requirements that the foreign governments would have to fulfill to execute such an order are less stringent than those which have to be fulfilled by the American security agencies if they want to indulge in similar activities. When the U.S. government wants to conduct real-time surveillance, it must comply with the Wiretap Act, which imposes heightened privacy protections.[7] The court orders for this purpose also require minimization of irrelevant information, are strictly time-limited, only available for certain serious crimes, etc.[8] In Indian law any such request, apart from being time limited and being available only for certain specified purposes, also has to satisfy that interception is the only reasonable option to acquire such information.

Process to determine which countries can make demands is not credible: Under the Amendment, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, would decide whether the laws and practices of the foreign government adequately meet the standards set forth in the legislation for entering into a bilateral agreement. Their decisions would not be liable to be reviewed by a court or in any administrative procedure. They could make their determinations based on information which is not available to the public and the criteria for making the decision are vague and flexible. Further these criteria have been described as “factors” and not “requirements”[9] so that even if some of them are not satisfied, the certification process can still be completed.

Companies do not have the resources to determine if a request complies with the terms of the agreement: The Amendment does not provide any oversight to ensure that technology companies are only turning over information permitted in a specific bilateral agreement. For example, a bilateral agreement may permit disclosure of information only in response to orders that do not discriminate on the basis of religion, however, it may not be possible for the companies receiving the request to determine whether a particular request complies with that condition or not. The Amendment does not require that individual companies put in place requisite processes to weed out requests that may be non compliant with the provisions of the agreement; nor are there periodic audits to ensure that companies are properly responding to foreign government information requests.[10]

Non compliance with Human Rights Standards: Under international human rights law, governments are allowed to conduct surveillance only based on individualized and sufficient suspicion; authorized by an independent and impartial decision-maker; necessary and proportionate to achieve a legitimate aim, including by being the least intrusive means possible.[11] However the mechanism proposed by the Amendment falls woefully short of these standards.[12]

One must not lose sight of the fact that most of the criticisms of the proposal that have been discussed above have been made in the context of, and based on the standards of privacy protection that are available to American citizens. If we look at it from an Indian perspective most of those protections are not available to Indian citizens in any case since independent judicial oversight is not a sine qua non for access to information by the security agencies in India. Although the Amendment leaves open the question of how a request would be made by the foreign government to the individual Agreements, it may be safe to assume that were India to enter into such an Agreement with the United States, it would require the orders for access to comply with the standards laid down under Indian law before the relevant authorities send the request to the US based data controllers. At the least, this would ensure that the rights of Indian citizens currently guaranteed under Indian law, howsoever flawed they might be, would in all likelihood be safeguarded as per Indian law.

Certification from the Attorney General to the US Congress

In the above background if India were to enter into the agreement with the U.S Government apart from actually negotiating and signing that Agreement, the Indian government will also have to ensure (if the Amendment is passed) that the Attorney General of the United States, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State gives a certificate to the Congress that Indian law satisfies the requirements set forth in the proposed section XXXX of Title 18.

It must be kept in mind that if the negotiations between India and the United States in this regard reach such a mature stage that the certification from the Attorney General is required, then that would mean that there is enough political will on both sides to ensure that such an arrangement actually comes to fruition. In this context it would not be unfair to assume that the Attorney General may have a slight bias towards opining that Indian laws do conform to the requirements of the Amendment, as the Attorney General would want to support the decision taken by the administration, and our analysis shall have a similar bias in order to be more contextual.

The certification would, inter alia, contain the determination of the Attorney General:

That the domestic law of India affords robust substantive and procedural protections for privacy and civil liberties in light of the data collection and activities of the Indian government that will be subject to the agreement.It should be noted that the Amendment specifies various factors that should be taken into account to reach such a determination, which include whether the Indian government:

(i) has adequate substantive and procedural laws on cybercrime and electronic evidence, as demonstrated through accession to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, or through domestic laws that are consistent with definitions and the requirements set forth in Chapters I and II of that Convention; Although India is not a signatory to the Budapest Convention the Information Technology Act, 2000 (which is the main legislation dealing with cybercrime) has penal provisions which have borrowed heavily from the provisions of the Budapest Convention.

demonstrates respect for the rule of law and principles of nondiscrimination;

The provisions of Article 14 as well as Article 21 of the Constitution of India demonstrates that the legal regime in India is committed to the rule of law and principles of non discrimination.

adheres to applicable international human rights obligations and commitments or demonstrates respect for international universal human rights (including but not limited to protection from arbitrary and unlawful interference with privacy; fair trial rights; freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly; prohibitions on arbitrary arrest and detention; and prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment);

India is a signatory to a number of international human rights conventions and treaties, it has acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966, ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), 1965, with certain reservations, signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 1979 with certain reservations, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989 and signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), 1984. Further the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution takes within its fold a number of human rights such as the right to privacy. Freedom of expression, right to fair trial, freedom of assembly, right against arbitrary arrest and detention are all fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India.

has clear legal mandates and procedures governing those entities of the foreign government that are authorized to seek data under the executive agreement, including procedures through which those authorities collect, retain, use, and share data, and effective of oversight of these activities;

India has a number of legislations which govern the interception and request for information such as the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, etc. which put in place mechanisms governing the authorities and entities which can ask for information.

has sufficient mechanisms to provide accountability and appropriate transparency regarding the government’s collection and use of electronic data; and

The Right to Information Act, 2005 provides the citizens the right to access any public document unless access to the same is prohibited due to the specific exemptions provided in the Act. It may be noted here that the provisions of the Right to Information Act are often frustrated by the bureaucracy by using exceptions such as “national security”, but for the purposes of this write up we are already assuming a bias towards fulfillment of these factors/conditions and therefore as long as there is even some evidence of compliance, the conditions will be considered as fulfilled by the Attorney General for the purposes of his certificate.

demonstrates a commitment to promote and protect the global free flow of information and the open, distributed, and interconnected nature of the Internet.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, which regulates telecom services in India has also issued the Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016 which prohibits service providers from charging discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content.

Other than Indian law, the certificate from the Attorney General will also have to certify certain issues which would have to be addressed in the bilateral agreement itself, viz.:

That the Indian government has adopted appropriate procedures to minimize the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of information concerning United States persons subject to the agreement.
That the agreement requires the following with respect to orders subject to the agreement:

(i) The Indian government may not intentionally target a United States person or a person located in the United States, and must adopt targeting procedures designed to meet this requirement;

(ii) The Indian government may not target a non–United States person located outside the United States if the purpose is to obtain information concerning a United States person or a person located in the United States;

(iii) The Indian government may not issue an order at the request of or to obtain information to provide to the United States government or a third-party government, nor shall the Indian government be required to share any information produced with the United States government or a third-party government;

(iv) Orders issued by the Indian government must be for the purpose of obtaining information relating to the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism;

(v) Orders issued by the Indian government must identify a specific person, account, address, or personal device, or any other specific identifier as the object of the Order;

(vi) Orders issued by the Indian government must be in compliance with the domestic laws of India, and any obligation for a provider of an electronic communications service or a remote computing service to produce data shall derive solely from Indian law;

(vii) Orders issued by the Indian government must be based on requirements for a reasonable justification based on articulable and credible facts, particularity, legality, and severity regarding the conduct under investigation;

(viii) Orders issued by the Indian government must be subject to review or oversight by a court, judge, magistrate, or other independent authority;

(ix) Orders issued by the Indian government for the interception of wire or electronic communications, and any extensions thereof, must be for a fixed, limited duration; interception may last no longer than is reasonably necessary to accomplish the approved purposes of the order; and orders may only be issued where that same information could not reasonably be obtained by another less intrusive method;

(x) Orders issued by the Indian government may not be used to infringe freedom of speech;

(xi) The Indian government must promptly review all material collected pursuant to the agreement and store any unreviewed communications on a secure system accessible only to those trained in applicable procedures;

(xii) The Indian government must segregate, seal, or delete, and not disseminate material found not to be information that is, or is necessary to understand or assess the importance of information that is, relevant to the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism, or necessary to protect against a threat of death or seriously bodily harm to any person;

(xiii) The Indian government may not disseminate the content of a communication of a U.S. person to U.S. authorities unless the communication (a) may be disseminated pursuant to Section 4(a)(3)(xii) and (b) relates to significant harm, or the threat thereof, to the United States or U.S. persons, including but not limited to crimes involving national security such as terrorism, significant violent crime, child exploitation, transnational organized crime, or significant financial fraud;

(xiv) The Indian government must afford reciprocal rights of data access to the United States government;

(xv) The Indian government must agree to periodic review of its compliance with the terms of the agreement by the United States government; and

(xvi) The United States government must reserve the right to render the agreement inapplicable as to any order for which it concludes the agreement may not properly be invoked.

Conclusion

It is clear from the discussion above that the proposed Amendment is a controversial piece of legislation which will affect the way law enforcement is carried out in the internet. While there is no doubt that proposing an alternate mechanism to the existing inefficient MLAT structure is definitely the need of the hour, whether the mechanism proposed in the proposed Amendment, with all the negative implications on privacy, is the right way forward is far from certain.

As for the three questions that we had sought out to answer in the beginning of this paper, we would not like to say that Indian law definitely conforms to all the requirements listed in the Amendments, but it can safely be said that it appears that if the governments of India and the United States so wish, it would not be difficult for the Attorney General of the United States to be able to give a certification to the Congress as required in the proposed Amendment.

The other two questions as to whether India should try to opt for such an arrangement if given a chance and what would be the consequence for its people are somewhat related, in the sense that it is only by examining the consequences on its citizens that we will arrive at an answer as to whether India should opt for such an arrangement or not. The level of protections offered to Indian citizens under India law in terms of protection of their private data from government surveillance is lower than that which is offered to American citizens under American law. The growing influence of the internet is changing the citizen-state dynamic giving rise to increasing incidents where the government has to approach private actors for permission in order to carry out their governmental functions of providing security. This is because more and more private data of individual citizens is being uploaded on to the internet and controlled by private actors such as telecom companies, social media sites, etc. and the governments have to approach these private actors in case they want access to this information. The fact that the government has to approach private actors to get access to data gives private citizens some leverage to ask for better privacy protections in the context of state surveillance.

Although this proposed Amendment may not affect the local surveillance laws in India, however it would definitely have an effect on the way that citizens’ data is protected and accessed by the government.

[1] Explanation by the Assistant Attorney General attached to the proposed Amendment.

[2] https://www.justsecurity.org/24145/u-s-u-k-data-sharing-treaty/

[3] https://www.justsecurity.org/24145/u-s-u-k-data-sharing-treaty/

[4] http://spicyip.com/2012/04/clash-of-courts-indian-district-court.html

[5] https://www.justsecurity.org/32529/foreign-governments-tech-companies-data-response-jennifer-daskal-andrew-woods/

[6] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[7] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[8] https://www.justsecurity.org/32529/foreign-governments-tech-companies-data-response-jennifer-daskal-andrew-woods/

[9] https://www.justsecurity.org/32529/foreign-governments-tech-companies-data-response-jennifer-daskal-andrew-woods/

[10] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[11] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 17, Dec. 19, 1966, U.N.T.S 999, cf. https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[12] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mlats-and-the-proposed-amendments-to-the-us-electronic-communications-privacy-act

Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T08:42:56Z

In wake of the recent arrests of UP-based scholar Kanwal Bharti and Andhra-based PUCL activist Jaya Vindhyala over their Facebook posts, NDTV aired a discussion on the grey areas of the IT Act. Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui

The video was published by NDTV on August 16, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The NDTV anchor asked Pranesh that this notice — the indicator coming from the government is that nobody seems to really know what section 66A is all about...and at the end of the day we are going to make a case by case decision.

Pranesh said that:

"This not just about 66A. This is actually about rule of law. We see that the arrest of Kanwal Bharti is actually a legal arrest. It goes against a judgment of the Allahabad High Court saying that routine arrests shouldn't be made in cases where the imprisonment term is less than 7 years. He actually hasn't been charged under 66A, he was charged under the IPC. It is not just about Internet censorship. It also very much about the rule of law and that completely breaking down in India and ... people's persectives and government's perspectives many times are withering away when it comes offensive content or what they deem offensive or communal content being posted online...and if something like what Kanwal Bharti posted is actually deemed to be illegal under those provisions then lots of statements that the Prime Minister of India has said should also be deemed to be equally illegal."

Watch the full video below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ndtv-the-social-network-mixed-signals-supreme-court-notices-to-states-on-facebook-arrests

Ministry of Health's public consultation on National Digital Health Blueprint: Legal issues around telemedicine, consent, and 'egosystems' in healthcare Trisha Jalan

Trisha Jalan — 2019-08-09T14:05:14Z

“The patient should be centric to every intervention,” declared Preeti Sudan, special secretary at the Ministry of Health, at the ministry’s public consultation on the National Digital Health Blueprint 2019, held at the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on August 6.

The article by Trisha Jalan was published by Medianama on August 8, 2019. Aayush Rathi was quoted.

The venue was packed with representatives from the government, major hospitals chains, health start-ups, associations, and civil society organisations. The blueprint — which is an evolved document of the National Health Stack 2018 (NHS) — was put in the public domain on July 15, and comments were closed on August 4. After holding consultation on the NHS, the ministry formed a committee under the chairmanship of former UIDAI head and former MeitY secretary J. Satyanarayana to create an implementation document for the NHS.

Health is a complex and interwoven subject, and deals with people’s lives, said Sudan. “The patient should be centric to every intervention,” she said. Clearly stated during the discussion was that private sector participation is important and necessary. Sudan opened the consultation by mentioning that the ministry is in the process of forming the e-pharmacy rules, “we’ve had extensive consultations on it”:

“There are issues which require assistance from all of you. We don’t have e-prescriptions on a large scale, you can’t expect government to lead e-prescriptions, we have hospitals all the country. So what can industry do, to make this application cheap and user-friendly, and have it across the system so epharmacy actually becomes possible. E-precriptions have been the norm wherever e-pharmacies have been successful.”

J. Satyanarayana, chairman of the committee (also a former UIDAI chair), wasn’t present at the consultation. Here’s a list of representatives from the government present at the consultation, some of whom were also members of the committee:

Preeti Sudan, Secretary, Ministry of Health
Sanjeeva Kumar, Special Secretary, Ministry of Health
Lav Agrawal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health
Gaur Sunder, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune
Sunil Kumar, National e-Governance Division
J Rama Krishna Rao, CEO, National Institute for Smart Governance
Pallab Saha, chief architect, The Open Group

(A non-exhaustive list of stakeholders present at the consultation is available at the end of the article.)

Electronic Health Records (EHR)

Non-financial incentives for adoption of EHR: “What are the incentives that could really make for early adoption for various players? There are many different approaches that it can happen to incentivize each and every player, for example, maybe let’s build a national license for actionable guidelines, define it, and set standards for that, like the government has done for SNOMED CT,” Krish Dutta from Relx Group said.

“US has shown us that throwing money at the problem doesn’t solve it,” Dutta said. “It’s the the largest investment healthcare, but there are still problems.”
One small step [we could do] would be how do you get doctors or hospitals to adopt EHR — for example, [requiring that] a copy or electronic subset of the EHR should be immediately recorded, and payments and reimbursements are made on the basis of this. “Maybe that’s can be the only document that you send to the insurer,” Dutta said.

Patient agency in ensuring EHR: Talking about his experience of working in hospitals in the US, Dr Surajit Nandy, CEO of Raxa Health, asked “What power will the citizens have to ensure that their data is pushed to the NHS? When the citizen accesses a health service, they don’t have the power to ensure that their health records are digitised and centralised, he said.

“Having practiced in the US, we often had many problems getting the data from other medical institutes — even with interoperability and other laws on the books — and this had catastrophic consequences. At Massachusetts General, we had to ensure that your data was pushed to the digital records within 24 hours of seeing the patient.” — Dr Surajit Nandy

Data privacy: legal issues, absence of Data Protection Law, and use of Aadhaar

Multiple stakeholders raised the point that Personal Data Protection Bill is still in the works, and that the blueprint, in the current form, is designed amidst the absence of a law dealing with data protection and citizen privacy.

According to Dr Vivek Gupta of AIIMS, the data privacy law is a (or should be a) mandatory prerequisite before this regulation comes into place.
According to another doctor, who has been at AIIMS and also been an IAS officer, if DISHA and/or PDP Bill don’t come into effect, then the patient won’t be established as the owner of the data, this is especially important given that legal issues have not been integrated into the NDHB document.

“We need to think through the question of data ownership, and what implications it has for things already in the NDHB, but may not be viable, said Ayush Rathi from Centre for Internet & Society. “One of the things is the de-identification of anonymised data, the PDP bill (in its current form, already criminalizes this without the consent of the data fiduciary.”

Talking about consent, he said, the NDHB does a lot in terms of seeking consent, “but a crucial component of consent is already the ease with which it can be withdrawn. It’s unclear how deletion or right to be forgotten can be included in the NDHB, a critical principle of how the PDP Bill was built. And this can deal with not just how your entire health record can be deleted, but also how specific parts of it can be deleted.” He said there has a very “solid legal assessment of the NDHB”, with what the PDP will prospectively look at.

The use of Aadhaar

The NDHB document suggests the use of Aadhaar as a possible Personal Health Identifier, since it “assures uniqueness of identity” and provides an online mechanism for authentication. Although the document defers the final decision and says that Ministry of Health may decide this in consultation of MeitY and UIDAI (FYI, the committee which drafted this blueprint was chaired a former chairman of the UIDAI), it will be no surprise if Aadhaar is indeed a preferred PHI, given its mission creep.

The only stakeholder to raise issues around Aadhaar was Aditi Chaturvedi from Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC). “The ministry should provide clarity on the use of Aadhaar, the system links very sensitive personal data with public and private, while the Act permits the use of Aadhaar only in some ccases, we aren’t able to understand where the line will stop,” she said.

Data collection and gathering, and data disclosure

Dr Vivek Gupta from AIIMS said that there needs to be clarity on whether data is going to be collected at both IPD and OPD. 5 out of the 8 mandatory data elements in Table 3.3 (see below) of the document deal with clinical data to be collected at the time of doc-patient interaction. “There are very broad terms and encompasses the entire encounter — history, observations, complaints etc. In a high load set-up such as AIIMS, where the average interaction time is very less, how does this [kind of] data gathering work out?” “Again, data is collected also for design purposes and not just for clinical purposes. Is all this data or only a part of it also supposed to flow into a central repository, only a part of it?”

Aditi Chaturvedi from SFLC, said the its concerning that we don’t know the amount of patient data that will be disclosed to private players in the system, such as insurers, pharmacies, and hospitals, among others.

Use of telemedicine and lack of legal framework around it

Telemedicine is one of the answers to the skewed doctor-patient ratio, and two areas of telemedicine need a little more stress in the document, according to Dr Karanvir Singh, Chief Medical Information Officer at Apollo Hospitals. One is the business model, a large number of organisations which started telemedicine projects have gone down because their business model doesn’t address their local concerns.

“They’re treating or giving consultation to patients in different parts of India, but the income — it does come down to income — is actually not coming to them. Because if a patient comes in via telemedicine, the consult is supposed to be free.” — Dr Karanvir Singh

Legal framework and issues surrounding telemedicine

Dr. Singh flagged another issue — the legality of telemedicine consults, whether it is telemedicine or via WhatsApp. “Karnataka has made it illegal,” he said, “so it’s an area that needs to be addressed.” Preeti Sudan, Union Health Secretary, agreed that there are ethical issues surrounding telemedicine.

She explained that the ministry had asked if the Medical Council of India (MCI) could act on it. The body, however, has been dissolved with the passage of the National Medical Commission Bill, 2019 (which has been passed in both houses of Parliament). For context, once the NMC Bill becomes an Act, it will replace the MCI as the regulatory body for medical colleges and institutions in the country.
“We need actually need some kind of policy document or legal framework as to the extent of telemedicine we can do,” said Sudan.

Sudan also pointed out that there isn’t yet a data privacy law in India, the Srikrishna Report is under consideration, and “we are eagerly awaiting it”. Elaborating on the government’s work in telemedicine, she said the ministry is forming an e-learning network in medical colleges. Teleradiology works very well in government, because because you will have that X-ray know in front of you and the doctor [can consult].

“Then there are legal issues around teleconsultation. Is there a country with a legal framework for telemedicine?” — Preeti Sudan

Colonel (Retd) Dr Ashvini Goel, vice-president of the Telemedicine Society of India, pointed out that Texas had passed its own Telemedicine Act. The society had presented a white paper on a proposed Tele-health Act to the NITI Aayog, but hasn’t heard anything on it, he said.

Tele-monitoring as a form of tele-health

Although questions were being raised about the legal issues surrounding telemedicine, Dr. Monica Thomas, a neurologist at Holy Family Hospital, pointed out that a variation of tele-health is tele-mentoring, which the hospital has been doing through extension of community health care outcomes started by Indian origin hematologist Dr Sanjeev Arora.

Tele-mentoring, she explained, takes away the risks of advising the patient directly, since “you are advising the community physician who takes care of the patient. And I would suggest that that should be multiplied much more.”
Sudan once again pointed out that tele-mentoring has indeed worked, and the government is using Dr Arora’s platform on a large scale. “The question raised that if we’re going for tele-medicine, the legal liabilities need to be defined. Only Texas has a law now.”

“We are using this echo platform of Sanjeev Arora on a very large scale now. And you’re right, this tele mentoring has worked. And we do use this platform. And it’s a good thing. But you know, I understand that and it’s being used in US also.We are extending it to our TV also now. We have a Digital Academy for Mental Health in NIMHANS. The question raised that if we’re going for telemedicine, the legal liabilities need to be defined. Only Texas has a law now.” — Preeti Sudan

‘Patient consent is paramount’, illiterate patients, and consent frameworks

The document says that data will not be available to any care provider without explicit consent of the patient, Dr Karanvir Singh from Apollo Hospitals reminded everyone. But, he said, “we have a large number of illiterate patients, patients can be unconscious, or can be children.”

There are two solutions for this:
1. All data becomes available to the current care provider, as long as it is not explicitly marked as confidential by the patient. This is the less preferable option.
2. Break the ceiling, break the glass: So a patient is brought in unconscious, there should be a mechanism defined by which the doctors in the casualty or emergency can access the data even if it’s not explicit consent by the patient.

“The issues of consent is paramount,” said Anuvinda Varkey from Christian Coalition for Health. “We should have some kind of communication measures to the public about what consent means. And in case the patient has no identifier like Aadhaar, it should be mandatory to give them care.”

EHR standards need more clarity

Aditi Chaturvedi from SFLC said that the document provides MeitY’s electronic consent framework guidelines, and the EHR standards in another section. “Although the [EHR] standards are backed by law, they’re not very clear, they lack of lot of comprehensive consent requirements present under the MeitY’s consent framwork.”

“It’ll good to learn from the data breaches happening despite there being HIPAA in the US. It’s interesting to note how the US is highlighted difficulty patients have in accessing data.” — Aditi Chaturvedi

Consent from illiterate patients, doctors wary of technologies

An audience member, who identified himself as Raghuram from the life sciences and healthcare practices at NASSCOM, said that there’s need for clarity on [obtaining] consent from illiterate citizens.

Speaking about standards, he queried if India can make an ICD-10 similar to the SNOMED standards, for which India already has a license. The standards can be adopted and the government can release it to all the techology houses, he suggested. “Or maybe India is a large enough country to have its own standards,” he said.
He also said that many of the doctors they [NASSCOM] spoke to were wary of using digital technologies for diagnostics, and so there should be some representation on the legal aspects of using digital technologies.

“The document talks about creating various registries and directories, but do we know the digital landscape of our country?” asked Antony Vipin Das, an eye surgeon at LV Prasad Eye Institute, which has been working with Microsoft India on a AI model for diagnostics. “While we’re listing registries, we need to understand where we stand at the govt and private sector,” he said. Sundar agreed that states are at various levels of development in health.

Standardisation and interoperability

“The decision support system should not be in silos, but should be interoperable.” according to Dr Prashant Mathur, director of ICMR’s National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research (NCRID) in Bangalore, which also runs the National Cancer Registry programme. “There’s a little ambiguity between repositories and registries. In the cancer registry, besides collecting incidence and trend data, we also study patterns of disease and survival studies for cancer, we have been publishing data for in breast, oral, cervical cancer.” This, he says, needs repeated contacts, information, and follow-up treatment, “does the document have clarity on whether all these events should be taken in longitudinally?” he asked.

Ministry of Health representatives also emphasisized on the need and benefits of interoperability. In cool sarkaari parlance, they said, currently the health sector has ‘egosystems‘ and not ‘ecosystems’, meaning all existing systems are siloed and don’t speak with one another, and that it’s important to do that. Stakeholders present in the meeting said. “There are already existing systems and programmes in place, so how do we knit the entire system together?” asked Sudan.

Other issues raised around standards and interoperability:

Ayush Rathi, from Centre for Internet and Society, said that the terms ‘open standards’ and ‘interoperability’ are being used as synonyms. “Open standards may be instituted but they may not be interoperable themselves.” he said.
Abhijeet, sale enablement leader at Philips, said interoperability is a low-hanging fruit, and the benefits can be seen easily and instantly. He also said the action plan is “quite” aggresive, and more specifities and details need to made visible.
Sudeep Dey, Associate VP for IT operations for India for Fortis Healthcare, said data retention has been a challenge. “We have e-precription shops coming up as mom-and-pop stores. A lot of data is getting generated, we need some kind of standards, so everyone can access the system. Fortis gets 20 requests everyday that we have a new e-prescription solution.”

Private sector setting standards?

“One of the major roles of the government will be setting standards,” said Krish Dutta of Relx Group. “Private sector can come up with solutions, but they will not be able to agree on it, because we will all have different opinions. But standard setting is very important, and should be a goal in all domains of digital health.”

Dealing with EHR standards in primary hospitals:

Talking about EHR standards in primary care hospitals, Dr Rajesh Kumar, a dean at PGI-MER, Chandigarh, said most standards like SNOMED are for tertiary care hospitals, but there are many primary care hospitals, which don’t need many elaborate standards. “So can the government some open standards for primary care centres and hospitals, which is not very demanding on softwares.”

“Secondly, we have lot of silos, can we begin within the Health Ministry where APIs can be shared to make existing softwares interoperable. Once this platform starts working, there will be great need for storage space. Our data centre is totally full, we’re looking forward to if the government can bring in guidilines for data storage?” — Dr Rajesh Kumar

To the above query, Preeti Sudan said the guidelines are available, and cloud storage can be bought on GeM platform.

We should draw inspiration from UPI, ecocystem should be ‘rich’, with private and public players:Reliance Jio

Also present in the consultation was a representative from Reliance Jio, Ganesh Kathirasen, VP for digital healthcare. He said the NDHB should be a “rich ecosystem” with both private and public players. The talk of federated architecture shouln’t be limited to just the states, but should include any provider of healthcare data and system in the country.

“People can largely be put in two buckets, providers like hospitals and clinics or consumers who are patients. Both stakeholders should be able to choose any application to enter the system, as long as the software or app adheres to certian minimum regulations by the ministry.”
He said “we can all draw inspiration from UPI, and how its been implemented”. It created a level playing field and its important to mirror something similar in the digital health domain, he said.

Issues surrounding Outcome measures in blueprint

Talking about the outcomes measures defined in the document, Dr Karanvir Singh of Apollo Hospitals, said the outcome measures aren’t clearly defined – and they will be ultimately used to make KPIs. He suggested that the outcome measures be laid out at three levels — ecosystem level, platform, and another level that we didn’t catch.

“For instance, on the ecosystem level, one KPI could the percentage of patients who have managed have a longitudinal record pulled in from various places. Another could be the percentage of doctors who are able to access this longitudinal record. The current KPIs aren’t covering all the three areas, which we can ensure by breaking them up.” — Dr Karanvir Singh

He laid out another two outcomes measures, which according to him, are flawed. “Firstly, that the test is not to be repeated,” referring to the requirement that a patient should be tested “ONCE ONLY”. “But clinically, there are many reasons for repeating a test. So rather than saying once only, which is in caps in the document, it should be to minimize duplications.”

Another outcome measure is that the patient should be treated only at one at one point of care. Based on the capacity and capability of hospitals, patients do get referred from one place to the other. If these are the KPIs, we’re going to get wrong values that the system has failed when it actually hasn’t failed.

Artificial intelligence is brought up

There wasn’t much representation or discussion around artificial intelligence in healthcare. P. Anandan, from Wadhwani Institute for AI, said AI can augment human capacity. AI, data science, and data analytics are all relevant, “however there is some myth and mystery surrounding this technology. Its important to have clarifications around how AI can help, how it should be implemented, and the regulatory aspects around AI, such that privacy and quality of care is assured.” Raghuram from NASSCOM also said AI is also “taking shape in a big way across the continent, and we should have some policies around use of AI in the digital health.”

AYUSH Ministry says it should be involved

A representative from the Ministry of AYUSH, who identified herself as Leena Chattrey, said AYUSH should be part of this document, in a sense wherein “AYUSH can use the data of UID or something similar, and share our data through common APIs. We also want the names of applications or portals developed by AYUSH to be in the document. We want complete or partial integration with building blocks, complete integration can be in patient care and other common interest areas, and partial integration can be done in AYUSH-specific activities.”

COAI marks its attendance, and other comments

Rajan Mathews, Director-General of telecom lobby COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India), expressed concern over the “minimal role operators are asked to play in this,” “you have MeitY, but not DoT”.

We have all these uncovered villages, we know about scope and scale, and even Aadhaar. Aadhaar did not become successful until you involved the operators. So their should be greater inclusion.

Mathews also recommended that there should be an international focus, particularly considering BPO businesses. “Having our requirements that comply with the EU requirements of data privacy and data control, and the American requirements on medical records and documentation, we should have that international focus in terms of the standards of the integration, because otherwise our BPO services will become subject of risk.”

Rahul Pandey from World Bank said that although he’s aware that health is a state subject, and the centre cannot dictate policies, “Many of the state government trying to innovate and thinking of various tools and processes in IT; there could be some kind of guidance to the states to make sure that there is some alignment with the centre.”

Participants in the consultation

Startups: Raxa Health, Relx Group, Wadhwani Institute for AI, mFine
Hospitals: Fortis Healthcare, Apollo Hospitals, AIIMS, PGIMER Chandigarh,
Associations in health: Telemedicine Society of India,
Other associations: NASSCOM, COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India)
Civil society: Centre for Internet & Society, SFLC (Software Freedom Law Centre)
Doctors and medical professions from: Holy Family Hospital, LV Prasad Eyecare Institute
MNCs: Philips, Johnson & Johnson
Others: Ministry of AYUSH, World Bank, ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research), Access Health

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/medianama-trisha-jalan-august-8-2019-ministry-of-health-public-consultation-on-national-digital-health-blueprint

Mining the Web Collective

sharath — 2013-01-06T23:48:20Z

In March 2012, Dr Bruno Latour and his team from the Sciences Po Media Lab organized a workshop that assembled a selected group of researchers from India to explore methods of Controversy Mapping. It was hosted by Dr J. Srinivasan, Director of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

While the context of this workshop focussed on deciphering and mapping opinions related to academic controversies surrounding climate change, the very same techniques of deploying digital tools to crawl through associated content on the websphere, maybe used to map any other controversy that has been actively influencing public and political opinion.

As one of the participants in the workshop, in an attempt to make my interpretation as accessible as possible to a wider inter-disciplinary audience, below is my own assimilation and extrapolation of the musings and discussions that entailed. Further I have drawn out limitations and future directions towards more viable paradigms that augment the mapping and democratization of public opinion.

The session drew an outset around how new digital tools could aid researchers by enabling them to quickly see an individual entity’s data as well as it’s associated aggregates, and register all of this within a single view in real-time. Contrasting the traditional methods of data collection through individual surveys, new digital methods can almost instantaneously bridge the gap between the individual and the collective and help us answer the question that Latour poses in his most recent paper that revisits social theory around the Tardean concept of reciprocally connected ‘monads’ -- ''.... is there an alternative to the common sense version that distinguishes atoms, interactions and wholes as successive sequences (whatever the order and the timing)? An alternative that should not oblige the inquirer to change gears from the micro to the macro levels ..... but remains fully continuous ...'' [Latour et al , 2012].

Encompassing the Collective

The geometric basis of the universe as expressed by Edgar Allan Poe, asserts that the ‘universe.. is a sphere of which the centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere’ (Eureka, p 20) This is essentially a post-Euclidean conception of space, in line with the view of early 20th century physicist Alexander Friedmann who posits that the ‘universe is not finite in space, but neither does space have any boundary’ and so the centre of the universe is relative to every single atom — hence every single observer.

In many ways, the process of data collection and visualization that was carried out at the workshop tried at best to mimic this geometric basis of space. By starting with a single entity (say, mammals) the empiricist begins with nothing more than a named 'label'. One then extends the specification of this entity, by populating a list with an increasing number of elements. This process of 'learning' about an entity is essentially an infinite process, as many abstract associations maybe permitted to enter the list. However, the observer stops this iterative process at a point when he feels that he has enough knowledge to describe the entity within the (seemingly finite) 'scope' of study. What we then have is a highly individualized point of view with respect to one entity that has a view of all it's associated attributes.

It is worth noting here that the attributes themselves can be looked at as individualized entities, and vice versa, from their own view point, depending on the way in which one navigates, thereby making the map invertible. For instance while 'egg-laying' maybe one of the attributes of a 'mammal', if we navigated to define 'egg-laying' to be our starting entity, it's view point can contain attributes like 'mammals' and 'birds'. This process is entirely different from the bottom up approach of constructing a general view by combining individual counterparts. In fact, there is no one general view here, as the picture is an exploded graph emanating from a single entity's view point, each to it's own 'umwelt'.[Kaveli et al, 2010].

(Re)formation of Opinion

The formation of a fundamental percept in the human brain, for instance, during the cognitive activity of reading a text, is in itself a bottom-up serial process where individual words progressively make up semantic associations to form a meaningful structure (just as this sentence), along with contextual association with previously acquired knowledge. This capacity limit for information processing [Rene and Ivanoff, 2005] which is a prerequisite for our highly focussed mechanism of attention is the reason why we cannot capture the entire star map within a single glance at the night sky.

Somewhere down this iterative line of observing an entity, and not having access to all of its attributes in entirety, leads to over-specification and an entanglement with isolated systems, thereby falling into a local maxima as opposed to a global solution. This is the basis of opinion formation and by envisaging it as a 'closed' object it is transformed into a percept, open to interpretation and often conflicting with another, thereby resulting in a controversy.

One of the objectives of the controversy mapping workshop was to transform the 'immutable' percept surrounding a controversy into a visual map that all at once registers weblinked attributes surrounding it, to give us a possibly emergent and unbiased picture.

The Method to the Madness

The process of framing of a ‘controversial topic’ and the collation of massive data and links on the internet that surround the topic could indeed be a cumbersome task. An informed approach is thus required in order to achieve a meaningful result.

Firstly, one needs to consider reliable sources and means of knowledge production that provide enough fuel to kindle the analysis of the controversy. One needs to move on from casual matters of opinion or statements (such as “the cumulative effects of CFC result in ozone layer depletion”) to identifying a hypothesis or theory that is being actively contested by academicians and experts through research and publication. This serves to outline an important preliminary sketch of the controversy that exists within the community.

Secondly, it is essential to remember that specialized researchers do not exist in self-centered isolation but often operate in tandem with multiple stakeholders, investors, donors, sponsors and a diverse audience that they cater to through articles, books, research projects and published journals. For instance, several theorists who are into the business of developing a so-called ‘language of critique’ often ensure through working group meetings that a selected group of researchers are on the ‘same page’ while using common words to canvass a spearhead towards prospective calls from popular journals. At other times, one may perceive a very direct link between mainstream press and cutting-edge research. This group comprising allies and endorsers are an important constituent of the mapping process as they provide key points of entry into the controversy.

Further, as more and more data relating to a controversy is accrued, one must decipher not only how the position of the controversy is being dynamically shaped over time along with its stakeholders but also be able to extrapolate how and why its current position of uncertainty might evolve. This would involve identifying potential points of contention that could respark a debate over an issue that has reached near closure.

Mapping the Controversy around ‘Anthropocene’

The topic chosen by my group (which consisted of scholars Neesha Dutt, Muthatha Ramanathan and Prasanna Kolte) was ‘Anthropocene’, a geo-chronological term that was informally introduced by a Nobel laureate in the field of atmospheric chemistry, Paul Crutzen, at a dinner party. ‘Anthropocene’ apparently marks the post industrial period as a time window that represents the impact that human activities have had on earth’s ecological systems, thereby affecting climate change. The widespread acceptance and popularity of the the word has even seen a move to officially recognize ‘Anthropocene’ as geological unit of time, complemented by a number of dubious research projects that assume the ‘anthropocenic’ view of climate change. The tools used were Navicrawler to populate a massive list of webpages that featured the keyword and other landing websites that each of the webpages point to. The context of the websites based on their content were labelled manually and no native text parsing and analysis was used. An interconnected visual graph structure was then obtained using Gephi, a software that uses Force Layout -2 , a graph layout algorithm for network visualization. [M. Bastian et al, 2009].

Future Directions

Including a layer of geographical representation to the formation and spread of an opinion is a key direction towards which opinion mining and controversy mapping is headed. A limiting factor while crawling articles over the web using currently available digital tools is the inaccurate representation of geographical source. An article posted in a popular science blog in India, may actually have its server hosted in California and this fact may often be abstracted to our crawler.

Furthermore, apart from the geographical source of a web article, an interesting direction would be to employ geo-located public opinion interfaces to collect a sample set of public opinion related to an issue, across diverse geographical locations in realtime. This would serve as valuable layer to overlay onto the controversy web map.

Another constraint of the digital methods referred to here within, is the medium specific approach that does not look beyond the sample space of the internet. Listening to and analyzing internet social media dynamics and combing large data sets to churn out a report is not much of a challenge. Cross media influences in public and political opinion have become increasingly clear with television broadcasts and newspaper reports directly contributing to discussions that happen on internet forums and websites. Take for instance Blue Fin Labs that started off within the Cognitive Machines group of MIT Media Lab. Initially known as the Human Speechome project which used deep machine learning algorithms to map out relationships between spoken word and context, Blue Fin Labs now applies the same technique to map internet comments and posts to corresponding audio-visual stimuli in television broadcasts that caused those comments to be made on the web.

Video

Data visualization of connecting the social graph to the TV content graph

References

Cappi, Alberto (1994). "Edgar Allan Poe's Physical Cosmology". The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 35: 177–192
Castells, M. (2000). Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society. British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 1 (January/March 2000).
Edgar Allen Poe (1848) ‘Eureka : A Prose Poem'.
Kull, Kaveli 2010. Umwelt. In: Cobley, Paul (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge, 348–349.
Latour, B. et al 2012 “The Whole is Always Smaller Than It’s Parts A Digital Test of Gabriel Tarde’s Monads” British Journal of Sociology (forthcoming)http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/123-WHOLE-PART-FINAL.pdf
M. Bastian, S. Heymann, and M. Jacomy, “Gephi: an open source software for exploring and manipulating networks,” in International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2009.
M. E. J. Newman, “Analysis of weighted networks,” 2004, arxiv:cond-mat/0407503.
Reynolds, C. W. (1987) Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model, in Computer Graphics, 21(4) (SIGGRAPH '87 Conference Proceedings) pp. 25-34.
Rene Marois and Jason Ivanoff, Capacity limits of information processing in the brain, TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9 No.6 June 2005
T. M. J. Fruchterman and E. M. Reingold, “Graph drawing by force-directed placement,” Softw: Pract. Exper., vol. 21 no. 11, pp. 1129–1164, Nov. 1991.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mining-the-web-collective

Minimising Legal Risks of Online Intermediaries while Protecting User Rights

praskrishna — 2014-07-29T07:50:51Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in partnership with Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC.in) is organizing a workshop during the APrIGF event to be held at Crown Plaza, Greater Noida on August 5, 2014, 3.30 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. Jyoti Panday will be a panelist.

Thematic Area of Interest

Internet business in the Asia Pacific region

Consumer protection for users of global Internet services

Internet for socio-economic development

Specific Issues of Discussions & Description

Internet usage in the Asia Pacific region has been growing at a phenomenal rate and online service providers have benefited enormously from this growth. However, the region poses challenges for online service providers in terms of legal risks involved with respect to user generated content. Across the world from Europe to the US, it has been an accepted policy that service providers on the Internet cannot be held liable for user-generated content and this principle has found place in legislations enacted in this field in most countries. However, the Asian region has often seen blocking of services and websites due to user-generated content that is deemed to be illegal. There needs to be a debate on safe harbour provisions for intermediaries and the take-down provisions in legislations to ensure that the right to freedom of expression of citizens are protected while maintaining an environment that permits innovation in this space.

The workshop will also consider the different classes of intermediaries, how they differ functionally and if their differing roles should bear an impact on their responsibility with regards to protection of rights of users. Traditional models of consumer protection are based on distinguishing the roles and responsibilities of suppliers, facilitators and consumers. While developing consumer protection models for online intermediary platforms, their evolving roles and responsibilities as a supplier and a facilitator need to be considered. Intermediary platforms have also created and highlighted new consumer relations and issues that call for robust and fluid reddressal mechanisms.

The need to reflect on reddressal mechanisms for consumer issues pertaining to online intermediaries is also necessary, given the economic implications associated with intermediary liability. Failure to protect intermediaries stems innovation and restricts growth of start-ups and small to medium enterprises in the digital economy and has negative financial implications. Moreover, intermediaries are crucial in connecting developing countries to global markets and a failure to protect them, creates a barrier to information exchange and capacity building.

The panel will discuss the following issues:

Take-down procedures and Put-back provisions used in various countries in the region
Safe-harbour provisions for intermediaries
Need for classification of Intermediaries for the purpose of a take-down regime and user rights
Rights of users of services provided by online intermediaries
Recommendations for a balanced intermediary liability regime

Expected Format and Confirmed Panel Members

The workshop will be a ninety minute panel divided in two sessions of forty five minutes each. The proposed panel includes:

Mishi Choudhary (Moderator) SFLC.IN Civil Society India
Mishi Choudhary is the founding director of SFLC India. She started working with SFLC in New York following the completion of her fellowship during which she earned her LLM from Columbia Law School and was a Stone Scholar. In addition to her LLM, she has an LLB and a bachelors degree in political science from the University of Delhi, India.

Jyoti Panday, Center for Internet and Society, Civil Society, India
Jyoti Panday is Programme Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society working on Internet governance and on issues related to the role and responsibility of intermediaries in protecting user rights and freedom of expression. She has experience in strategy, campaign management and research on issues and processes related to the development agenda, sustainability and democracy. She has completed her MSc in Public Policy from Queen Mary, University of London.

Shahzad Ahmed, Bytes for All Pakistan, Civil Society, Pakistan
Shahzad Ahmad is the Country Coordinator of Bytes for All, Pakistan and founder of the Digital Rights Institute (DRI). He is currently working on issues of ICT policy advocacy, internet rights and freedom of expression. He is a development communications expert and is at the forefront of the Internet Rights movement in Pakistan.

Mr. Ahmad is a Diplo Fellow, Executive Board Member of the Association for Progressive Communications, Advisory Board Member of .PK ccTLD and a member of the International Advisory Board of Privacy International, UK. He regularly contributes to various publications and research studies on ICTs for development, freedom of expression and gender related issues. Widely travelled, he regularly participates in various forums at local, regional and global level. Mr. Ahmad maintains a strong engagement with broader civil society networks and strongly believes in participation and openness.

Professor KS Park, Korea University Law School Professor
One of the founders of Open Net Korea, Professor Park has written and is active in internet, free speech, privacy, defamation, copyright, international business contracting, etc. He has given expert testimonies in high-profile free speech cases including the /Minerva /case, the internet real name verification case, the military’s subversive book blacklisting case, the newspaper consumers’ boycott case, and the Park Jung-Geun Retweet case. As a result, the “false news” crime and the internet real name verification laws were struck down as unconstitutional, Park Jung-Geun and Minerva acquitted, the soldiers challenging book blacklisting reinstated, the newspaper boycotters acquitted partially as to the “secondary boycotting” charge (2010-2013).

Since 2006, he serves as the Executive Director of the PSPD Law Center, a non-profit entity that has organized several impact litigations in the areas of free speech, privacy, and copyright. There, the Law Center won the world’s first damage lawsuit against a copyright holder for “bad faith” takedown (2009) and the first damage lawsuit against a portal for warrantless disclosure of the user identity data to the police (2012).

Arvind Gupta, National Head-Information and Technology, Government/ BJP Political party, India
National Head, BJP Information Technology Cell

Faisal Farooqui, CEO, MouthShut.com, Private Sector, India
Faisal Farooqui is a highly recognized entrepreneur who is among the trailblazers of his generation. Faisal has founded and managed two successful Internet and technology companies -MouthShut.com, India's largest consumer review and social media portal and Zarca Interactive, a Virginia based enterprise survey and feedback company.

Ramanjit Singh Chima, Google, Private Sector, India
Raman Jit Singh Chima serves as Policy Counsel and Government Affairs Manager for Google, based in New Delhi. He currently helps lead Google'spublic policy and government affairs work in India. He is a graduate of the Bachelors in Arts and Law (Honours) programme of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. While at the National Law School, he was Chief Editor of the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. He has studied Internet regulation as an independent research fellow with the Sarai programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and contributed to Freedom House's 2009 Freedom on the Internet report.

Apar Gupta, Legal, India
Apar Gupta is a practicing lawyer in Delhi working as a Partner at the law firm of Advani & Co. His practice areas include, commercial litigation and arbitration with a focus on technology and media. Apar as a retained counsel, represents an internet industry organisation in government affairs, including consultations on draft laws and policies which effect the sector. These issues include legal risks of intermediaries, media freedom and consumer rights. He has completed his masters in law from Columbia Law School, New York and has written columns for the Business Standard, Indian Express and the Pioneer on legal issues. Apar also is a visiting faculty at National Law University, Delhi.

Full Name, Affiliation and Contact Details of the Workshop Organizer

The workshop will be jointly organised by SFLC.IN and the Centre for Internet & Society, India. The details of the contact person for the workshop is given below:

Name: Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC.IN I
E: mishi@softwarefreedom.org
Jyoti Panday—Centre for Internet & Society, India
E: jyoti@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/minimising-legal-risks-of-online-intermediaries-while-protecting-user-rights

Minds that (should) matter

praskrishna — 2015-02-26T16:34:25Z

Thinkers who best explain a rapidly-changing India to the world (and the world to India).

The article by Raju Narisetti was published in Forbes India magazine on January 2, 2015.

Sunil Abraham
Executive director of The Centre for Internet and Society. Has deep insights into India’s rapidly growing digital culture as well as the threats to it from misguided government regulation.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Runs Raqs Media Collective and is a founder of the Sarai Collective which does the rare examination of the interplay of urban India/technology/culture.

Anusha Rizvi
The former journalist who directed Peepli Live is now a filmmaker. Peepli was the first ever Indian film to be screened at Sundance. Her response to broadcast media and society issues always make you think.

Mohandas Pai
Ex-Infosys and now with the Manipal Group, he is active in public policy and corporate governance issues, and is not afraid to speak his mind. He was behind the Bangalore Political Action Committee—first-of-its-kind in India—and is also an activist shareholder who has minority shareholders’ interests in mind.

Ramesh Ramanathan
Ex-Citibanker, who heads Janalakshmi, a micro/alternative finance organisation, that has attracted Wall Street money. Offers honest and workable solutions through Janagraha, a hybrid public-private partnership initiative.

Satish Acharya
A brilliant cartoonist from Mangalore. A small-town guy whose views on Indian politics and Indian sport are spot on as he traverses the fine line of cartoons in India: Not too cerebral, but never clichéd and banal either.

Chhavi Rajawat
A young MBA who chose to go back to her ancestral village, Soda in Rajasthan, to help bring management skills to grassroots governance. Won elections to be its sarpanch. A high-profile doer, she will be worth listening to about hands-on governance.

Payal Chawla
While her past claim to fame is taking on Coca-Cola over workplace harassment, as a lawyer and founder of her own law firm, Juscontractus, this University of Chicago alumni would be a good way to track India’s troubled legal system.

Pushkar
A professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at BITS Pilani’s Goa Campus, he is particularly good on a major challenge for India: Reforming its education system.

Karuna Nundy
A Supreme Court lawyer involved in major commercial and human rights litigation and legal policy, she has contributed in a major way on gender justice in India, recently helping with the new anti-rape laws.

Binalakshmi Nepram
She fights racism against people from the North East and says it like it needs to be said in a country with deep geographical and regional prejudices.

Ireena Vittal
This former McKinsey consultant has a lot of good things to say about smart cities.

Economic and Political Weekly
Ignore its left-leaning interpretations and conclusions. Focus on its outstanding data.

GVL Narasimha Rao
GVL knows his psephology like few others do. His current turn as a spokesman for the BJP yields unrelenting evidence that is often hard to refute. And he takes sides when taking sides can be personally risky.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/forbes-india-january-2-2015-raju-narisetti-

Mind of the millennium teen

praskrishna — 2012-09-22T08:34:08Z

Say mom, did you have electricity when you were growing up?" Twelve-year-old Aditya throws a casual query at his 38-year-old mother during a power cut.

This article by Atul Sethi was published in the Times of India on September 16, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.

Even before the bemused mother can revert, the backup inverter springs into action and her son is once again immersed in his online game, competing against friends in multiple locations, most of whom perhaps have no idea how growing up in the 1900s — a different century for them — was like. These kids — a generation born in 2000 — would, by next year, be the millennium's first teens. Their arrival in the world roughly coincided with the dawn of the information age — the internet implosion, google search, mobile phones, glitzy malls — stuff that was not available even to their immediate predecessors growing up barely a decade before in the late 1990s.

It's a generation, then, that has seen a completely different picture of the world which has accordingly shaped its world view. That it's a smarter generation is largely due to its fascination — some would even say obsession — with technology. Arsh Srivastava, a 12-year-old student of Class VII at Chandigarh's St John's High School, says he was fascinated by mobile phones ever since he was a baby. He now uses a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone and aspires for a S3. Not surprising then, that social scientists term it a generation of 'digital natives' , who take to technology like fish to water. "You can't blame them," says Shiv Visvanathan, professor at the Jindal School of Government & Public Policy. "This is a generation that has trained in a new kind of literacy, which involves technology extensively. For them, information and technology are commodities. They'd die of boredom if deprived of either commodity."

The solution to boredom, in the tween manual, is the golden 'F' word. Facebook is the alternate world which every kid below 13 aspires to reach. What makes it cooler is that it's officially off-limits to them. But it's a restriction that's easily bypassed. Anmol, a 11-year-old from Kolkata, says most of his friends are there. Those who are not, are told off: 'Go gal'. That's 'Go, get a life dude' in tweenspeak. Once inside the inner circle, there is a sense of achievement, but only till the next new technological marvel catches their attention.

This extreme restlessness is the hallmark of a generation that has to keep pace with fast-changing technology which, many say, is leaving them with seriously low attention-spans — a problem that their teachers often have to contend with. "For teachers, the challenge is engaging them through lessons and activities that develop reflection, patience and sensitivity which can balance their moods and behaviour," says Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal of Springdale's School at Pusa Road in Delhi.

In terms of awareness, though, again facilitated by technology, this is a generation that is aggressively aware. Sexologist Prakash Kothari says that the internet — which most kids start using by the time they are 6 or 7 — has ensured that they are sexually knowledgeable much earlier. "I have had instances of parents bringing boys as young as 8 or 9, who have started masturbating after they learnt about it from the net," he says.

Because it's a generation that's maverick in its choices, and often damning in its quick judgments on brands, marketers catering to this segment can't take them for granted. Smita Jatia of Mc Donald's , a brand that many tweens have grown up on, says it's important to keep their behaviour and dynamic wants and desires in mind. "We have to constantly innovate and elevate their 'I'm lovin it' experience through menu options which can keep them happy."

Impatient and restless may be the words that older generations may use to describe the millennium's first teens, but there's no denying that they symbolize the way society, and indeed, life has changed around the world. "We live in accelerated times," says Nishant Shah of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society. "The breathlessness of our times is evident in everything — from the kind of movies we make to the ways in which our news and information travel. At the end of the day, our younger generations are also products of our times."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-times-of-india-sept-16-2012-atul-sethi-mind-of-the-millennium-teen