We are anonymous, we are legion

Internet Shutdown Stories

ambika — 2019-09-03T09:57:40Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) has published a collection of stories of the impact of internet shutdowns on people's lives in the country. This book seeks to give a glimpse into the lives of those directly affected by these internet shutdown experiments. When seen in a larger context, we hope that the stories in this book also demonstrate that access to the internet and freedom of speech is not just about an individual’s rights, but are also required for the collective good. This is a project funded by Facebook and MacArthur Foundation, and the stories were provided by 101 Reporters. Case studies from the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, West Bengal, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, and Uttar Pradesh have been highlighted in this compilation.

Read the report here: Download (PDF)

The report is shared under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon, and Swaraj Barooah

Print Design by Saumyaa Naidu

Advisor: Nikhil Pahwa, Founder and Editor at MediaNama

Foreword

Aside from the waves of innovation that the digital revolution brought with it, the ever increasing pervasiveness of the internet has had a tremendous impact on empowerment and freedoms in society. We are seeing unprecedented levels of access to information, along with a democratization of the means of creation, production and dissemination of information to anyone with an internet connection. This in turn has greatly amplified, and in many cases even created the ability, particularly for those traditionally left in the margins, to more meaningfully participate in their global as well as local societies. Recognising the significance of the internet to the freedom of expression as well as for the development and exercising of human rights more broadly, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously passed a resolution confirming internet access being a fundamental human right.

Simultaneously however, we are seeing Indian states discover and experiment with their power to clamp down on these new modes of communication for a variety of reasons, ranging from the ill-intentioned to the ill-informed. An internet shutdown tracker maintained by the Software Freedom Law Centre, shows that the number of shutdowns in India is increasing every year, with 70 shutdowns reported in 2017,and 45 shutdowns already reported from 1st Jan, 2018 to 4th May, 2018. These shutdowns also come at a significant economic cost. A 2016 Brookings report estimates that India faced a loss of about $968 million due to internet shutdowns. However, the democratic harms we have been accruing are more difficult to quantify and demonstrate.

This book seeks to give a glimpse into the lives of those directly affected by these internet shutdown experiments. From Jammu and Kashmir to Telangana, from Gujarat to Nagaland, we have collected 30 stories from across the country for an up-close look at how the everyday lives of common citizens have been impacted by internet shutdowns and website blocks. From CRPF members posted in Srinagar who use the internet to connect with their family, to students who have been cut off from education resources for competitive exams; from the disruptions in day to day life brought about by non-functional bank services in Darjeeling, to stock brokers in Ahmedabad who faced costly slowdowns; the idea of a Digital India is facing severe setbacks with these continuously increasing internet shutdowns.

When seen in a larger context, we hope that the stories in this book also demonstrate that access to the internet and freedom of speech is not just about an individual’s rights, but are also required for the collective good. The diversity of perspectives and activities that a healthy democracy demands is not met by the versioning of dominant narratives, but by allowing for, if not directly encouraging, the voices and activities of the unheard, oppressed and marginalised. We hope that in the telling of these personal stories of the day-to-day of people affected by such internet shutdowns, this book joins in the effort to position the dehumanized internet kill switches more aptly as dangers to democracy.

Sunil Abraham
Executive Director
The Centre for Internet and Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/internet-shutdown-stories

Internet services not to be affected as DNS servers undergo update

Admin — 2018-10-16T14:28:20Z

Internet services across the country are unlikely to be impacted over the next 48 hours even as the Domain Name System (DNS) servers undergo a security update coordinated by global regulator, Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The article by an HT correspondent was published in the Hindustan Times on October 12, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

“ICANN, the global certifying authority for DNS security, had taken a decision a year back to change the Trust Key. All ISPs were notified to update their configuration to the new key. Accordingly, the Internet Service Providers (ISP) have confirmed that they have already updated their DNS servers with the new key and the country does not carry any risk of impact on Internet services,” said National Cyber Security Coordinator Gulshan Rai in a statement on Friday. DNS servers are like the phone book for the Internet which translates human-friendly computer labels into their respective IP addresses. If the DNS servers become inactive, it will be impossible for users to access different websites in the absence of this translation.

The ICANN’s ongoing maintenance work over the next two days is to change the cryptographic key that helps protect DNS. This has been necessitated to counter the rising incidents of cyber attacks, ICANN said.

Rai had held a meeting with all ISPs in this regard on September 5. During which ISPs said that they had taken all necessary steps to update their systems in order to avoid any inconvenience to their users. Rai reviewed the situation again on Friday.

Sunil Abraham, founder, Centre for Internet and Society, said, “This security update is the responsibility of the management and network administrators at ISPs and telcos. Only time will tell what percentage of people have done their job. Its very likely that this number is very small, in case of people who haven’t updated their servers,” he explained.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-october-12-2018-internet-services-not-to-be-affected-as-dns-servers-undergo-update

Internet sceptic? Go get a life

radha — 2011-04-02T14:49:11Z

Fifty years down the line, generations will laugh off the paranoia about the Internet - an article by Nishant Shah in the magazine Down To Earth

If there is one thing the Internet can claim uniqueness for, it will be for the fact that never in human history has a technology been charged so much with being the object of obsessions, compulsions or psychological disorders. We have never really heard of a print addict. We do have bibliophiles and cultural gurus. The camera has been duly appointed the most effective form of preserving memories. Its presence at all occasions, or even in the ordinarily mundane, has been accepted as a protocol. Photographers might spend days in dark rooms and morphing memories for posterity but we haven’t yet heard of a camera addict who needs a rehab.

How does the Internet, then, achieve this dubious status of being heralded for generating the Internet Addiction Disorder? The term, coined as a hoax by Ivan Goldberg as a satirical comment on the easy ‘disorder-isation’ of practices by contemporary psychiatry, has unfortunately ended up becoming what it critiqued: pointless, devoid of meaning, and backed by questionable research and studies by groups with vested interests.

What is the Internet Addiction Disorder? The first set of answers that list physiological descriptions such as dry eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress injury shall be summarily dismissed because these are not specific to the Internet. They are associated with lifestyles, postures and lack of awareness among the users about their physical engagements with technology but cannot, in any way, be a part of the psychological disorder under scrutiny.

So, ask the question again. The answers we get are: gambling, watching pornography, inappropriate time spent on social networking and email, chronic dependence for information, shopping beyond limits, excessive gaming and recreation online and neglecting different parts of life, and work. The list continues, but leaves us slightly baffled.

Surely critiques must know people used to gamble—we have made a nation of TV audience watching people gamble their lives, dignity and relationships on the camera—way before the Internet. Are they naive enough to think pornography and adult sex industries were lying low before the Internet came into play? In the increasingly urbanized spaces that we occupy, the need for social networking is inversely proportional to the reduced mobility, time and spaces of social interaction. In such cases, social networking is a tool that fulfils the human need to know we are not alone.

Anybody who is making claims about the Internet leading to excessive shopping is confessing they haven’t been around since plastic money was invented. And if somebody is avoiding responsibilities, it is a problem that will persist with or without the Internet.

The Internet is only a gateway to these and other interesting (and sometimes disturbing) cultural products, trends and fashions. We have never called for banning print as a technology because people use it to publish sexual material. The TV is going strong with celebrities gambling their lives and choosing spouses in front of an audience. Digital cinema and portable media devices have ensured that movies can be seen almost anywhere.

The fact is we depend on technologies of the time. These technologies, like the Internet, offer us possibilities and potentials for expression, cultural production and dissemination, information and communication, and each technology has its own inherent potential for abuse. The anxiety about technology is not new. Carolyn Marvin’s fascinating account, When Old Technologies Were New, shows how the telephone was supposed to make our children more furtive, our women more gossipy, our men more promiscuous and our society more detached and less civil.

The editor of a Philadelphia newspaper in 1894 had cautioned his readers “not to converse by phone with ill persons for fear of contracting contagious diseases.” Ridiculous as it sounds to us who have grown up with universal telephone technology, these concerns were grave and important to the people in those early days of telephones. Fifty years from now, generations are going to look at the contemporary paranoia around Internet addiction in a similar way and wonder what the fuss was all about.

Link to the article in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-sceptic-go-get-a-life

Internet Rights and Wrongs

pranesh — 2016-09-22T23:36:14Z

With a rise in PIL's for unwarranted censorship, do we need to step back and inspect if it's about time unreasonable trends are checked?

The article was published in India Today on September 1, 2016. The original piece can be read here.

Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of cases of egregious censorship of websites in India. Many people started seeing notices that (incorrectly) gave an impression that they may end up in jail if they visited certain websites. However, these notices weren't an isolated phenomenon, nor one that is new. Worryingly, the higher judiciary has been drawn into these questionable moves to block websites as well.

Since 2011, numerous torrent search engines and communities have been blocked by Indian internet service providers (ISPs). Torrent search engines provide the same functionality for torrents that Google provides for websites. Are copyright infringing materials indexed and made searchable by Google? Yes. Do we shut down Google for this reason? No. However, that is precisely what private entertainment companies have done over the past five years in India. Companies hired by the producers of Tamil movies Singham and 3 managed to get video-sharing websites like Vimeo, Dailymotion and numerous torrent search engines blocked even before the movies released, without showing even a single case of copyright infringement existed on any of them. During the FIFA World Cup, Sony even managed to get Google Docs blocked. In some cases, these entertainment companies have abused 'John Doe' orders (generic orders that allow copyright enforcement against unnamed persons) and have asked ISPs to block websites. The ISPs, instead of ignoring such requests as instances of private censorship, have also complied. In other cases (like Sony's FIFA World Cup case), courts have ordered ISPs to block hundreds of websites without any copyright infringement proven against them. High court judges haven't even developed a coherent theory on whether or how Indian law allows them to block websites for alleged copyright infringement. Still they have gone ahead and blocked.

In 2012, hackers got into Reliance Communications servers and released a list of websites blocked by them. The list contained multiple links that sought to connect Satish Seth-a group MD in Reliance ADA Group-to the 2G scam: a clear case of secretive private censorship by RCom. Further, visiting some of the YouTube links which pertained to Satish Seth showed that they had been removed by YouTube due to dubious copyright infringement complaints filed by Reliance BIG Entertainment. Did the department of telecom, whose licences forbid ISPs from engaging in private censorship, take any action against RCom? No. Earlier this year, Tata Sky filed a complaint against YouTube in the Delhi High Court, noting that there were videos on it that taught people how to tweak their set-top boxes to get around the technological locks that Tata Sky had placed. The Delhi HC ordered YouTube "not to host content that violates any law for the time being in force", presuming that the videos in question did in fact violate Indian law. They cite two sections: Section 65A of the Copyright Act and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act. The first explicitly allows a user to break technological locks of the kind that Tata Sky has placed for dozens of reasons (and allows a person to teach others how to engage in such breaking), whereas the second requires finding of "dishonesty" or "fraud" along with "damage to a computer system, etc", and an intention to violate the law-none of which were found. The court effectively blocked videos on YouTube without any finding of illegality, thus once again siding with censorial corporations.

In 2013, Indore-based lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani filed a PIL in the Supreme Court calling for the government to undertake proactive blocking of all online pornography. Normally, a PIL is only admittable under Article 32 of the Constitution, on the basis of a violation of a fundamental right (which are listed in Part III of our Constitution). Vaswani's petition-which I have had the misfortune of having read carefully-does not at any point complain that the state is violating a fundamental right by not blocking pornography. Yet the petition wants to curb the fundamental right to freedom of expression, since the government is by no means in a position to determine what constitutes illegal pornography and what doesn't.

The larger problem extends to the now-discredited censor board (headed by the notorious Pahlaj Nihalani), as also the self-censorship practised on TV by the private Indian Broadcasters Federation (which even bleeps out words and phrases like 'Jesus', 'period', 'breast cancer' and 'beef'). 'Swachh Bharat' should not mean sanitising all media to be unobjectionable to the person with the lowest outrage threshold. So who will file a PIL against excessive censorship?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/india-today-september-1-2016-pranesh-prakash-internet-rights-and-wrongs

Internet pour toutes

Isabelle Grégoire — 2019-09-20T15:01:56Z

Ambika Tandon was quoted in Canadian-French magazine L'Actualite, in an article on technology and women in India. In the quote, she explains the core research questions of the FIRN project, which is studying the digital intermediation of domestic work in India.

The article by Isabelle Grégoire was published in L'Actualite on September 11, 2019.

"Are women workers more or less exploited when they are recruited online? Can they evaluate clients and be defended if their rights are not respected? And most importantly, how do employers go about recruiting this workforce that usually does not have access to the Internet?

These are the kinds of questions that Indian researcher Ambika Tandon, a policy officer at the Center for the Internet and Society (CIS), a non-profit organization in Bangalore that conducts interdisciplinary research on the Internet and digital technologies, is trying to answer. To do this, she chose to look at digital platforms that provide housekeeping and home care services - trades mostly done by women.

"The idea is to compare the job opportunities and working conditions offered on these platforms with those of traditional placement agencies," says this graduate from the London School of Economics, and a member of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) launched this year. Funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) in Ottawa, the network brings together researchers (a majority of women) from a dozen countries in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. It is led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international organization, which contributed to the development of the 17 "feminist principles of Internet 2.0". Each of FIRN's eight research projects will be linked to one or other of these principles.

"Our goal is to increase the visibility of these issues in the public space, so that they become part of the discourse," says Namita Aavriti from India, who is co-responsible for setting up projects within the APC, "With special attention to online violence against women, which still needs to be recognized in many countries."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/l-actualite-magazine-isabelle-gregoire-september-11-2019-internet-pour-toutes

Internet opens doors to trillions more Net addresses with IPv6

praskrishna — 2012-06-14T05:12:25Z

The global Internet industry reached a key milestone on June 6 when a group of Web sites, Internet service providers (ISPs) and router manufacturers banded together to participate in the World IPv6 Launch.

This blog post by Aaron Tan was published in techgoondu. Nishant Shah is quoted in this.

Google, Facebook and Yahoo have flipped the switch to the new Internet addressing system, while ISPs such as Japan’s KDDI and India’s HNS will permanently enable IPv6 for a significant portion of their residential wireline subscribers. Home networking equipment manufacturers will also turn on IPv6 by default in home router products.

The World IPv6 Launch was organised by the Internet Society as part of its mission to ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible for everyone, including five billion people who have yet to connect to the Internet.

“The support of IPv6 from these thousands of organizations delivers a critical message to the world: IPv6 is not just a ‘nice to have’; it is ready for business today and will very soon be a ‘must have’,” said Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer of Internet Society in a statement Wednesday.

Last April, Asia-Pacific became the first region in the world to run out of IPv4 addresses. Europe will deplete its allocation of IPv4 addresses later this year, followed by the U.S. in 2013, and Latin America and Africa in 2014. With IPv6, the Internet can now support over 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses compared with 4.3 billion addresses for IPv4.

“Understanding the importance of IPv6, some governments in Asia Pacific have committed to enable IPv6 in their internal networks with set deadlines and, given that they run such large networks, having them on IPv6 is a big step in itself,” said Rajnesh Singh, regional director of the Internet Society’s Asia-Pacific bureau.

The Singapore Government, for instance, has spearheaded an initiative to make e-government services accessible via IPv6. The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has also started an IPv6 transition programme that offers grants and information for companies that intend to implement IPv6 on their networks.

With the launch of IPv6, consumers can expect to see applications and services that take advantage of IPv6′s features. Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system will also favour IPv6 connectivity over IPv4.

According to Nishant Shah, research director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, IPv6 has an in-built security protocol called IPSec, which authenticates and secures all IP data. The data carrying capacity of IPv6 networks is also going to be higher.

“This means that more devices with more features will be able to work seamlessly through these networks. Despite the larger load of information, IPv6 packets are easier to handle and route, just like postcards with pincodes in their addresses are easier to deliver than those without”, Shah said in a joint statement with Tata Communications.

As an example, every aspect of the Beijing Olympics – from security surveillance to managing vehicles and media coverage – was done over IPv6. “The Chinese government, in fact, has already launched a ‘China Next Generation Internet’ project to build IPv6 networks which are going to radically change the face of high-speed internet in the country,” Shah revealed.

With all these benefits, why does IPv6 only command two percent of the world’s Internet traffic? Shah offers two clear reasons:

The first one is that of costs and infrastructure. The IPv6 platforms do not communicate easily with the IPv4 networks. We have the choice of a mammoth transition of all IPv4 websites and networks to new IPv6 protocols. This idea of abandoning IPv4 and moving to a new protocol is not only redundant; it is also futile, because IPv4 is already running the largest network in human history quite efficiently.

What we need are translators which will be able to speak to both the different versions and help our devices work through them seamlessly. Older, more successful technologies have been able to do this. So, television, for instance, whether it receives terrestrial data, satellite images or data transferred via cable, is able to translate and render them into images and sounds which we can consume with ease. However, the translators for the IPv4 – IPv6 are still expensive and we need more resources diverted towards making them affordable.

The second reason is linked to the first. In order for IPv6 to become popular, it needs a minimum threshold of service providers and users riding that network. As long as the deployment remains nascent, there will be no concentrated energy to actually try and make the bridges between versions 4 and 6. While global technology organisations like Tata Communications are ready for the transition, we are going to need a systemic change among all stakeholders to make IPv6 a reality, towards a faster, safer and more robust Internet.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-opens-doors-to-trillions-more-net-addresses

Internet L@w

praskrishna — 2016-05-30T02:07:00Z

Vanya Rakesh will attend the Internet law course organized by the University of Geneva from 20 June 2016 to 1 July 2016 as part of the Geneva Summer School.

Study Internet Law in Geneva, where the World Wide Web was born!

Topics that will be covered include cybersecurity, digital privacy and online surveillance, free speech, consumer protection, legal issues of social media, dangers of cloud computing, Internet and telecom infrastructure, intellectual property, antitrust, and much more...

This is a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the framework of an Internet law clinic and to discuss cutting edge Internet law and policy issues with academics, practitioners, representatives of global policy makers, international organizations and leading institutions, including the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

For its first and second sessions (in June 2014 and 2015), the Internet l@w summer school welcomed participants from very diverse background and countries including Argentina, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Lithuania, Ukraine and the US.

Discover an international city in the heart of Europe. Participate in an exciting social programme, including excursions and social gatherings, and build a global network of new friends as well as of Internet law and policy experts.

A video testimony of participants to the 2014 edition is available here!

Equivalence of 6 ECTS credits.

Please note: Changes to the draft program may be made at any time prior to the start of the course.

More Info, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/internet-l-w

Internet Intermediary Liability: Towards Evidence-based Policy and Regulatory Reform to Secure Human Rights on the internet

praskrishna — 2014-03-06T05:51:47Z

Elonnai Hickok participated as a speaker at this event organized by Association for Progressive Communications at the Wedgwood, 75A 2nd Ave. Melville, Johannesburg, February 10-11, 2014.

Click to download the full details in this event brochure.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/apc-internet-intermediary-liability-towards-evidence-based-policy-and-regulatory-reform-to-secure-human-rights-on-the-internet

Internet Governance Round-table at British High Commission

praskrishna — 2014-04-01T10:32:04Z

A Internet Governance Round-table was hosted at the residence of the British High Commissioner in Delhi on March 4, 2014. Geeta Hariharan participated in the round-table.

The event aimed to bring together stakeholders from government, industry and the non-governmental sectors in India to discuss issues of Internet governance, and forms part of the UK’s commitment and interests in cyber-engagement with India.

The panel included the following members:

Julian Evans, the Acting British High Commissioner to India
Jonathan Cook, Second Secretary, Foreign Security Policy Team, British High Commission
Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, Data Security Council of India
Rahul Jain, Principal Consultant, Data Security Council of India
Vikram Tiwathia, Associate Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India
Dr. Govind, Senior Director heading the E-Infrastructure & Internet Governance Division, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India
Narayanan, NIXI
Dr. Sundeep Oberoi, TCS
M.P. Gupta, Professor & Chair, Information Systems and Centre for Excellence in E-Gov, IIT Delhi
Somnath Mitra, Xchanging
Mahima Kaul, Observer Research Foundation

The British government’s views on cyber-engagement and Internet governance were touched upon, voicing their support for a free, open and secure Internet, upholding human rights. The UK supports a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance. However, their position on the Sao Paolo meeting is as yet not officially clear.

Five broad issues were raised for discussion:

Balancing the role of government and non-government stakeholders, and the limits of governmental regulation Internet for development
Free speech and privacy v. security
Practical model of Internet governance (multi-stakeholder or multilateral)
India’s contribution, presence or expectations of the Sao Paolo meeting

The speakers raised concerns about the effectiveness of the multi-stakeholder model in light of international law built on the Westphalian model, where governments are effectively the only real law-makers and regulators. In considering whether non-governmental stakeholders (such as NGOs and think-tanks, industry and corporations, individuals) should have an equal voice in IG, concerns were raised about the representativeness of such actors, and accountability that they would have. In this regard, the future and desirability of the ICANN (and the US’ stake in it), and fora like the IGF and the UN-WGEC as platforms for participation were discussed.

While civil society involvement is imperative, government initiatives are necessary to create access to the Internet, and to ensure that the Internet is made safe and utilized for development. This obviously creates tensions between privacy and liberty, and security concerns; one of the speakers spoke of Snowden as the “elephant in the room”. Not only was a common concept of privacy non-existent at the international level, it would also be difficult to achieve (except a namesake ‘lowest common denominator’ definition), as states must account for their experiences with terrorism as well as cultural differences. For instance, the way the UK deals with privacy/security concerns in comparison with India would be very different. Finally, the possibilities and potential outcomes of the Sao Paolo meeting were touched upon without elaborate discussion on the same.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ig-round-table-british-high-commission

Internet Governance Plenary

praskrishna — 2012-10-01T14:14:07Z

Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria at this event organised by APNIC on August 28, 2012. Kuo Wei Wu, CEO, National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association (NIIEPA) was the moderator.

Theme: What mechanism works better to resolve the issues?

Objectives:

To discuss relevant Internet Governance Forum (IGF) related issues for the APNIC community.
Update APNIC Members about the IGF process, including recent national and regional IGF initiatives, such as the APrIGF 2012 in Tokyo, Japan.
Prepare for the seventh Annual IGF Meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan from 6-9 November 2012.

Panelists

Ang Peng Hwa, Director of Singapore internet Research Centre (SiRC) Presentation Slides
Paul Wilson, Director General, APNIC and MAG Member, IGF
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet Society, India
Duangthip Chomprang, Regional Affairs Manager, Internet Society
Raúl Echeberría, Executive Director/CEO, LACNIC and MAG Member, IGF

Click to read the Transcript
Watch the full video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/conference-apnic-net-aug-28-2012-internet-governance-plenary

Internet Governance Forum: Participate Remotely

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T05:09:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invites you to attend the sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a remote participant from Bangalore. The IGF is being held in Nairobi from 27-30 September 2011. CIS has been registered as a remote IGF hub. This will allow many of us who are unable to attend the IGF in person. You can follow the discussion, watch the web cast of the event, follow real-time closed captioning and participate live (via text or video) that will be answered by panelists in the IGF.

The IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum that addresses public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. The overall theme of the meeting will be ‘Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation'. The various themes are as follows:

Internet Governance for Development
Emerging Issues
Managing Critical Internet Resources
Security, Openness and Privacy
Access and Diversity
Taking Stock and the Way Forward

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, will be participating in the following workshops:

Shyam Ponappa, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, will be presenting remotely for the following workshop:

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration

Nishant Shah, Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, has organized the following workshop:

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

We are not limited to following specific workshops. Please follow the link for more information on workshops of your interest, program details and the schedule:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/schedule-a-programme-2011

Participation is free. However, we would be grateful if you could confirm your attendance by emailing Natasha Vaz “natasha@cis-india.org or Tom Dane at “tjdane@gmail.com”. We hope you will join us to watch the web cast and contribute your own insights on the various workshops.

Looking forward to welcoming you at the workshops!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/igf-remote-participation

Internet Governance Forum Report 2017

Shweta Mohandas — 2018-01-11T02:13:07Z

The twelfth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017, on the theme, Shape Your Digital Future!

The Centre for Internet and Society was invited as one of the participating civil society organisations. The meeting was attended by Sunil Abraham (Executive Director), Elonnai Hickok (Director) - Internet Governance and Vidushi Marda (representing both CIS as Programme Manager and ARTICLE 19 as Policy Advisor).

CIS members participated as speaker / panelists in the following sessions:

Human Rights based Cyber Security Strategy
Body as Data: Dataveillance, the Informatisation of the Body and Citizenship
What digital future for vulnerable people?
Benchmarking ICT companies on digital rights: How-to and lessons learned
CyberBRICS: Building the Next Generation Internet, STEP by Step
State-led interference in encrypted systems: a public debate on different policy approaches
Artificial Intelligence in Asia: What’s Similar? What’s Different? Findings from our AI workshops
Datafication and Social Justice: What Challenges for Internet Governance?
Fake news, Content Regulation and Platformization of the Web: A Global South Perspective

Full report here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/internet-governance-forum-report-2017

Internet Governance Blog

kaeru — 2011-10-18T06:40:43Z

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

Internet Governance and India: The Way Forward

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T10:33:53Z

Snehashish Ghosh is participating in this event organized by the Observer Research Foundation on January 22 in New Delhi.

The Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) purpose is to support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. The eighth edition of the Internet Governance Forum started on October 22, in Bali, Indonesia. Representatives of governments, intergovernmental organisations, private sector, technical and academic community and civil society gathered together to discuss Internet governance related issues, under the general theme of “Building Bridges – Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development”. Cybersecurity, open internet, freedom of expression, protection of human rights were some of the topics discussed and debated at the three day conference. There was also a mutual consensus amongst the participants on the multistakeholder model for internet governance.

Programme

10.30: Registration/Tea
11.00: Opening Remarks by Mahima Kaul, Fellow-ORF
11.10: Subi Chaturvedi, Assistant Professor Journalism & Communication, Lady Shri Ram College for Women & Founder Trustee Media For Change
11.25: Dr. Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, New Delhi.
11.40: Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
11.55: Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI Communications & Digital Economy Committee and President, IEA AT&T, SouthAsia
12.10: Question and Answer
12.50: Concluding remarks
13.00: Lunch, ORF Lounge.

Speakers Biography

Subi Chaturvedi, Asstt. Professor Journalism & Communication, Lady Shri Ram College for Women & Founder Trustee Media For Change.

Ms. Chaturvedi strives to promote the role and participation of the youth, women and girls in ICT and the policy dialogue and decision making, along with Improving e-governance and deepening democracy through 'media for change'. She also works on building bridges between different stakeholders in IG and enabling conversations on the national and domestic level on important policy concerns such as cybersecurity, openness, universality, human rights, permission less innovation and freedom of speech and expression online, through roundtables, workshops, public hearings and youth meets (Internet Dialogues) for India.

She also actively participates in domestic as well as International meetings on Internet governance and enhanced cooperation to represent her stakeholder perspective, especially as a women academician and a member of the media and civil society from a developing country and an emerging economy. She often writes opinion and edits pieces for national dailies, journals and provides inputs and commentary to the electronic media to inform the debate and dialogue on Internet Governance policy questions

Dr. Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, Delhi
Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project, Delhi, where her work focuses on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance as they relate to the Internet and democracy. She is currently also a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the interim Steering Group of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. In addition, Anja has worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, and has been an IREX Fellow and a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore. Prior to focusing her work on the information society, Anja researched, lectured and consulted on a wide range of development-related issues, including at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and Ambedkar University, Delhi. She obtained her PhD in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India

Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI Communications & Digital Economy Committee and President, IEA AT&T, SouthAsia
As Chairman of the FICCI Communications and Digital Economy Committee, Mr. Bhatia currently leads the combined advocacy and policy reform efforts of nearly 150 members - representing leading telecom industry associations, mobile service providers, domestic and long distance service providers, ISPs, internet companies, social media, infrastructure and tower companies, device manufacturers, consultants, legal experts and other related stakeholders in India’s ICT space. He is appointed as a member of the Joint Working Group (JWG) which drafted the “Guidelines on Protection of National Critical Information Infrastructure”, later released by the NSA in June 2013. He serves on the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of DeitY for India IGF, and in the past, on the JWG dealing with issues of cyber security.

At AT&T, Mr. Bhatia serves as President, IEA, for the South Asia region. He has responsibility for supporting all of AT&T’s businesses, corporate development activities, new investments and business strategies. He has been involved with the digital economy sector since 1994.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-governance-and-india-the-way-forward

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T03:59:50Z

Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), IT for Change, and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.

Internet governance has significant impact on human rights. This is reflected by the inclusion of human rights considerations in the Geneva Declaration of Principles and the Tunis Agenda, which gave the IGF its mandate. However, human rights discussions have not featured prominently at the IGF. What discussions there have been tended to focus on civil and political rights without also sufficiently considering how the internet relates to cultural, social and economic rights. The indivisibility of rights has not received the attention it requires.

The Internet governance and human rights communities work in different spaces and rarely have the opportunity to interact. The presence of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank la Rue at the 2009 IGF and again at the 2010 IGF shows that this is beginning to change. The 2010 IGF presents a valuable opportunity to place human rights more firmly on the Internet governance map and to identify opportunities for collaboration with mainstream human rights communities.

With an increasing emphasis on the development agenda in the IGF it is also a good opportunity to look at the links between human rights, development and the Internet.

Join the conversation with human rights, Internet governance and development activists as we review pressing IG issues such as access, diversity, equality, freedom, openness and development with a view to strengthening the human rights agenda at the IGF.

More concretely, we hope to:

continue building effective collaborations promoting human rights in Internet governance, and,
identify appropriate spaces for intervention in the 2010 IGF.

Agenda:

Moderator: Chad Lubelsky. Global Networking, Policy & Advocacy Coordinator,

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

14:00 Introduction: Background and rationale of the session, aims and objectives. Anriette Esterhuysen (APC)

Keynote speaker : Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

Keynote speaker: Arvind Ganesan, Director or Business and Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch.

14:45 Questions

15:00 Open discussion session on 'Human rights and internet policy: the interconnectedness of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights'. Moderated by Lisa Horner (Global Partners) and Anja Kovacs (the Centre for Internet and Society).

15:40 Coffee/tea break

16:00 Breakout group discussions

16:40 Report Backs

17:00 Plenary discussion on the way forward (Anriette Esterhuysen, APC and Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change)

17:20 Closing remarks

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/internet-governance-human-rights