We are anonymous, we are legion

India blocks access to 857 porn sites

pranesh — 2015-08-05T01:31:32Z

India has blocked free access to 857 porn sites in what it says is a move to prevent children from accessing them.

The story was published by BBC on August 3, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

Adults will still be able to access the sites using virtual private networks (VPNs) or proxy servers. In July, the Supreme Court expressed its unhappiness over the government's inability to block sites, especially those featuring child pornography.

Telecom companies have said they will not be able to enforce the "ban" immediately.

"We have to block each site one by one and it will take a few days for all service providers to block all the sites," an unnamed telecom company executive told The Times of India newspaper.

A senior official, who preferred to remained unnamed, told the BBC Hindi that India's department of telecommunications had "advised" telecom operators and Internet service providers to "control free and open access" to 857 porn sites.

"There is no total ban. This was done in the backdrop of Supreme Court's observation on children having free access to porn sites. The idea is also to protect India's cultural fabric. This will not prevent adults from visiting porn sites," the official said.

In July, the top court had observed that it was not for the court to order a ban on porn sites.

"It is an issue for the government to deal with. Can we pass an interim order directing blocking of all adult websites? And let us keep in mind the possible contention of a person who could ask what crime have I committed by browsing adult websites in private within the four walls of my house. Could he not argue about his right to freedom to do something within the four walls of his house without violating any law?," the court said.

According to statistics released by adult site Pornhub, India was its fourth largest source of traffic in 2014, behind the US, UK and Canada. Pranesh Prakash of the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society said the directive to block the 857 sites was "the largest single order of its kind" in India.

"The government's reasoning that it is not a ban because adults can still access the porn sites is ridiculous," he told the BBC. The move has caused a great deal of comment on Indian social media networks, with many prominent personalities coming forward to condemn it.

Popular author Chetan Bhagat, writer and commentator Nilanjana Roy, politician Milind Deora and director Ram Gopal Varma have all added their voices to the debate.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-news-august-3-2015-india-blocks-access-to-857-porn-sites

India launches crackdown on online porn

pranesh — 2015-08-05T01:21:12Z

India has launched a crackdown on internet pornography, banning access to more than 800 adult websites, including Playboy and Pornhub.

The article by James Crabtree published in Financial Times on August 3, 2015 quotes Pranesh Prakash.

The restrictions followed a ruling from India’s telecoms ministry ordering internet service providers, including international telecoms groups operating in the country such as the UK’s Vodafone, to block 857 such sites.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government provided no public justification for the unexpected ban when it came into effect at the weekend. However, on Monday India’s telecoms ministry said that the order, issued under India’s Information Technology Act, had been prompted by comments made by a supreme court judge during a hearing in July.

The ministry said that the restrictions were temporary and did not amount to a “blanket” ban, arguing that internet users running virtual private networks, which can be used to access blocked sites, could still view the material. “It isn’t that they are being banned lock, stock and barrel,” the ministry said. “The justice noted that free and open access to these websites.... should be controlled, but these sites will continue to be available through the mechanism of a VPN.”

The crackdown is set to raise fresh concerns about sudden and sweeping legal restrictions in India, after the introduction of a ban on the sale of beef earlier this year in the western state of Maharashtra, a move that was supported by Mr Modi’s government. The ruling also drew criticism from legal experts following broader concerns about a recent rise in poorly-targeted internet rules, including some restrictions on global social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Pranesh Prakash of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society think-tank questioned the basis of the ruling, describing it as a further example of a “clumsy” approach to online regulation.

“There is no proper justification that they have given for banning all porn, rather than child porn or revenge porn or something like that,” he said. “The reaction is heavy handed, and has been done under the cloak of secrecy.” The remarks by a judge cited by India’s government as a rationale for the ban were a comment made in court rather than a legal ruling, Mr Prakash added, casting further doubt on the basis for the restrictions.

India’s mix of strict regulation and conservative public morals mean explicit sexual content is almost unheard of in mainstream media, where Bollywood films seldom featuring more than a chaste on-screen embrace.However India’s fast-growing internet population of about 300m is now both the world’s second largest after China, and an increasingly important sources for traffic for global pornographic websites.

Pornhub, which is the world’s 66th most visited website according to ranking service Alexa, said Indians were the fourth largest national users of its content during 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-james-crabtree-august-3-2015-india-launches-crackdown-on-online-porn

Proxies and VPNs: Why govt can't ban porn websites?

pranesh — 2015-09-13T08:26:17Z

The government's move to block more than 800 pornographic websites has led experts to question whether this latest attempt to police the internet is even feasible.

The article by Siladitya Ray was published in the Hindustan Times on August 3, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Internet service providers (ISPs) have confirmed they received letters from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Saturday that directed them to block certain websites. But can the government stop users from visiting porn sites?

The answer seems to be no.

"It is extremely easy to circumvent these blocks, using virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxies that anonymise your traffic," said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru.

A cursory Google search on how to unblock porn websites throws up millions of how-tos and guides on using proxies and VPNs to get around restrictions set by authorities. All these services anonymise users’ web traffic by routing them through foreign servers.

According to data from Pornhub, one of the world's biggest porn sites, India ranks fifth for the most daily visitors to the website. Pornhub saw a total of 78.9 billion video views globally in 2014.

The government can try to keep up with proxies and block them too. But as proxies change on a daily basis and there are always dozens of functioning proxies to choose from across, blocking all of them will be a near impossible task.

Tor, an anonymity network, is also a popular way to surf blocked sites.

But is it legal to circumvent blocks put in place by authorities by using VPNs and proxies?

There is no law in India that prohibits viewing pornography, experts say. Section 67 of the Information Technology Act only deals with "publishing obscene information in electronic form".

This provision has been interpreted as a measure to criminalise the posting of pornographic content online. However, accessing "obscene" content privately – such as within the four walls of a person’s home – is not illegal, say experts.

In July, while hearing a petition seeking the blocking of pornographic websites, Supreme Court Chief Justice HL Dattu wondered whether the court could restrain an adult from watching pornography within his home and described such a ban as a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution, which grants the right to personal liberty to its citizens.

But what about the legality of using VPNs and proxies? “There are no laws preventing the use of VPNs and proxies in India," said Prakash.

Are proxies and VPNs safe?

While the use of proxies and VPNs is very simple, they do come with their own set of problems. These services have access to all your browsing data and may push adware and other forms of malware.

Prakash advised that users should only choose services that are well known and have a good reputation.

"Sites like TorrentFreak put out annual lists of the top VPNs available," he said. These can be used as a guide to determine what services are safe.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-august-3-2015-siladitya-ray-proxies-and-vpns

Indian government orders ISPs to block 857 porn websites

pranesh — 2015-09-13T08:18:33Z

The Indian government has ordered a large number of porn websites to be blocked, creating an uproar among users and civil rights groups in the country.

The blog post by John Ribeiro was originally published by IDG News Service and mirrored on PC World website on August 2, 2015.

The Department of Telecommunications has issued orders for the blocking of 857 websites serving pornography, said two persons familiar with the matter, who declined to be named.

Section 69 (A) of India’s Information Technology Act allows the government to order blocking of public access to websites and other information through computer resources, though this section appears to be designed to be invoked when a threat is perceived to the sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.

“The government cannot on its own block private access to pornography under current statutes,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore. “Parliament has not authorized the government to ban porn on its own.”

“However, courts have in the past ordered specific websites to be blocked for specific offences such as defamation, though as far as I know not for obscenity,” Prakash added.

Viewing pornography privately is not a crime in the country, though its sale and distribution is an offense.

Some porn websites were still accessible through certain Internet service providers on Monday, as some ISPs took some time to implement the order. “All the 857 websites will be blocked by all ISPs today,” said a source in the ISP industry, who requested anonymity. “As licensees we have to follow the orders.”

The government could not be immediately reached for comment.

Reports of the blocks created a furore among Internet users in the country, who criticized the move on Reddit, Twitter and other social media.

India’s Supreme Court struck down in March as unconstitutional an Internet law that provided for the arrest of people sending online messages considered offensive or menacing. But it upheld Section 69 (A) in that same ruling, which it described as a “narrowly drawn provision” limited to a few subjects.

In a public interest lawsuit on the blocking of pornography, the Supreme Court last month declined to issue an interim order that would block porn websites at the request of the private litigant, according to a report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-news-service-august-2-2015-indian-govt-orders-isps-to-block-857-porn-websites

Why the DNA Bill is open to misuse: Sunil Abraham

sunil — 2015-09-13T08:37:44Z

The Human DNA Profiling Bill, the law that regulates the collection, storage and use of the human genetic code, has attracted some strong criticism from civil liberties groups including the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) which had participated in the expert committee for DNA profiling constituted by the Department of Biotechnology in 2012.

CIS circulated a detailed dissent note earlier this year on the draft of the Bill. As the government gets ready to table the Bill in Parliament, CIS Executive Director Sunil Abraham tells Kanika Datta why the provisions of the Bill are open to misuse and invasion of privacy. Edited excerpts:

Why does Centre for Internet and Society reject using DNA analysis for non-forensic use as set out in the Human DNA Profiling Bill in its current form? What are the possible risks involved here?

The problem here is that the introduction to the Bill talks of DNA matches "without a doubt". But the way we understand it, biometric technology depends on approximate matching and not discrete matching. Unlike, say, the technology used for matching digital signatures, machines for matching DNA, fingerprints or the iris specify a false positive ratio when they leave the factory - that's what created the controversy in the O J Simpson trial, for example. This means you have to be very conservative in populating the database. For a given false positive ratio - the larger the database the greater the incidence of mistaken identification. That is why we think that for purposes other than forensic use, it would be better to create other databases.

Let me clear: we are not Luddites but neither are we naïve techno-enthusiasts. After all, the Innocence Project in the US has managed to overturn the convictions of many people who were held guilty through DNA evidence. But it is a myth that the more sophisticated the technology the more secure and accurate it is. In fact, the reverse is often true. For instance, the voter machines we use in India are primitive technology but they are much harder to compromise compared to the voting machines used in the US. Given all this, we believe that there should be "process fixes", such as sending DNA collected from a crime scene to two laboratories as a check and balance against the fallibility of human beings and machines.

CIS made the point that the powers of the DNA Board are too wide. In what possible way could these powers be misused since the Board is to be an independent authority?

When this exercise was started, the DNA Board had 26 functions. We proposed that this be cut this down to ten, which was accepted by a sub-committee. But when the final Bill came back it rejected the consensus view and restored the 26 functions, including things like "raising the general awareness". All this detracts from the Board's primary role and efficiency and expands its discretionary powers. It is true that a good regulator needs some amount of discretion but this should be a limited discretion within a tightly defined scope -- this is true for any regulator, not just the DNA Board.

The provision that no civil suit can be entertained on any matter on which the DNA Board is empowered under the Act looks excessive. Is there any precedent that explains why this provision was introduced? What kind of oversight and checks and balances are there in other jurisdictions that could be incorporated in the Indian law?

I can understand the logic here; the government is trying to ensure that the regulator has final say. After all, if you look at telecom, the decisions of the TDSAT (Telecom Dispute Settlement & Appellate Tribunal) can be appealed in the High Court and the Supreme Court. But eliminating judicial appeal as this Bill has state amounts to a violation of classic regulatory design by circumventing the appellate process. Ideally, we need a tripartite separation of law in which the executive frames policies, the DNA board implements them and the courts adjudicate upon them.

You have said the term "DNA Analysis" has not been defined. Could you explain the possible risks of the absence of a definition?

DNA analysis is of many types and some of them allow you to get to know a person quite intimately in terms of their medical history, genetic traits and so on. But forensic analysis looks at a limited set of markers which are essentially privacy-protecting and from which no genetic traits can be determined. You can't, for instance, do a study on the genetic make-up of criminals from this analysis. Now, if this Bill is around law enforcement - which we know is the policy intention - then the DNA analysis should be limited to those markers. That would reduce the chances of abuse.

You have also criticised the low standards of information disclosure and suggest the issue should be vested in an independent third party rather than the DNA Bank Manager. Could you explain how this would help?

In information and technology and telecom there is an executive authorisation mechanism in place for information sharing that requires the home secretary's permission for non-emergency situations and the head of the police station in the case of an emergency. We want a similar authorisation process - say, a judge and an established paper trail so that there are proper checks and balances. When personal information is involved, even the DNA Board is not well placed because its members are scientists whereas disclosure of personal information is a question of the law.

You have said the Bill has not been brought in line with the nine national privacy principles set out by an expert committee in 2012. Shouldn't a privacy law precede the passing of the DNA Bill in any case?

It's not a chicken-and-egg situation, but the point to consider is that the world is moving towards European data protection principles, and something like 100 countries have adopted it. If we in India want to trade in European personal information (via our BPO and outsourcing businesses) we must have a law that is adequate from the data protection perspective. This means, among other things, mandating that anyone whose DNA profile is accessed receives a notice to this effect, for instance. We know that the Department of Personnel and Training has incorporated the principles set out in the Justice Shah report in the privacy Bill two years ago but we haven't heard anything about it since. If and when this Bill is enacted, it will have overriding powers over a host of laws. But where the DNA Bill is concerned, there is no reason for it not to take cognisance of a later law.

What has been the government's reaction to this dissent note?

No reaction!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-kanika-datta-august-1-2015-why-the-dna-bill-is-open-to-misuse-sunil-abraham

July 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-11-21T16:23:52Z

Our newsletter for the month of July is below:

We are happy to share with you the seventh issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (July 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

NVDA team conducted a training at SIES College, Sion, Mumbai. Thirty-four delegates attended the training programme. A training workshop was held at Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli by NVDA team. Sixteen delegates participated in this. Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Subhashish Panigrahi has blogged on this highlighting the three Konkani Wikimedians. The 30^th Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights was held in Geneva from June 29 to July 3. Nehaa Chaudhari prepared a statement about the negotiations on the Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organisations. Sumandro Chattapadhyay wrote an article in the Hindustan Times about India’s “Digital India” initiative to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and general capacity to digitise public life in India. CIS published the first draft of its analysis on technology business incubators ("TBI") in India. The report prepared by Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak looks at operating procedures, success stories and lessons that can be learnt from TBIs in India. Pranesh Prakash did a brief analysis about the Department of Telecommunications Panel Report on Net Neutrality. CIS has participated in the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling constituted by the Department of Biotechnology in 2012 for the purpose of deliberating on and finalizing the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill and appreciates this opportunity. CIS has prepared a dissent note to the Expert Committee on DNA Profiling. In the last few decades, all major common law jurisdictions have decriminalised non-procreative sex – oral and anal sex (sodomy) – to allow private, consensual, and non-commercial homosexual intercourse. Bhairav Acharya brought out the developments from across the world in a blog entry. As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted interviews with a Tibetan security researcher and information activist and Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India. CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania had organized a conference in April in New Delhi. The findings have been condensed in a report titled “Effective research, policy formulation, and the development of regulatory frameworks in South Asia”. Pranesh Prakash in a research paper titled Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality gives an overview on why India needs to put in place net neutrality regulations, and the form that those regulations must take to avoid being over-regulation. Rakshanda Deka undertook an analysis on the anti-spam laws in different jurisdictions. This analysis is a part of a larger attempt at formulating a model anti-spam law for India by analysing the existing spam laws across the world. As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW has published blog entries on WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality; Users and the Internet; Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi; Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights; and 'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube. The National Optic Fibre Network, a part of the Government's Digital India Initiative, has been in the news since the recent Expert Committee Report. Aditya Garg in a blog entry examined the accountability of the funding of the project.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

July 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015).

Event Reports

The training programmes were held in June and the reports were published in July:

Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop (Organized by NVDA team: Anne Jane Ask with Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 – 7, 2015).
Training in eSpeak Marathi (Organized by NVDA team; SIES College, Sion, Mumbai; June 28, 2015).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Submission / Comment

Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30 (Nehaa Chaudhari; July 2, 2015).

Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Reading Devanagari Script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; July 13, 2015).
Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation (Subhashish Panigrahi; July 18, 2015).

Events Co-organized

Christ University Undergraduate Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; July 1 - 8, 2015). Students were initiated into the Wikimedia activities with hands on sessions of typing on Wikisource. Faculty of the Christ University helped the A2K team in deciding on the texts that were to be typed. These texts will provide much needed impetus for Wikisource related activities in Indian Languages. Wikipedia Education Programme at Christ University received support from Ravishankar.A of the Tamil Wikimedia community and Sayant Mahato from Sanskrit Wikimedia community.
Aloysius College (Organized by CIS-A2K; Mangalore; July 1 – 4, 2015). Tulu and Kannada Wikipedia workshops were conducted in St. Aloysis College, Mangalore. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator and a small community is growing in Mangalore. Pavanaja U.B. and Rahmanuddin Shaik participated in this events.
Media Wiki Train the Trainer Program (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; June 24 – 27, 2015): A four-day long train-the-trainer program aimed at building leadership among technical contributors to Indic language Wikimedians in the areas of bugs, bots--Pywikipedia and Auto Wiki Browser, various MediaWiki tools, and translations. Ravishankar A. from Wikimedia India, MediaWiki developers Pavithra H., Yogesh Omshivaprakash H.L. and Harsh Kothari, and Tamil Wikimedian Dineshkumar Ponnusamy provided support for the event.

Participation in Events

Wikimania 2015 (Organized by Wikimedia Foundation; Mexico City; July 15 - 19, 2015): A whole day was dedicated for evaluation of strategies and activities by various major stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement. Community members who lead major activities, Wikimedia chapters, affiliate organizations and Wikimedia Foundation itself took part in the discussions. There were several group activities, exchange of ideas focused on project and community level outreach and other activities, tools and techniques, and best practices. Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event and gave a talk on How to do Guerrilla GLAM. Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist along with Rohini Lakshané in the session “Edit-a-thons for Bridging the Gender Gap on Wikimedia: A Panel Discussion”. An Indic Meet-up was also organized. Wikimedians from India, Bangladesh and Nepal representing various language communities, Wikimedia India, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Nepal, and Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) gathered to discuss about various challenges, cross-community collaborative projects, organizing larger events, and strategies to grow the Wikimedia movement in South Asia.
Classical Languages in the Digital Era Conference (Organized by Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore; July 17, 2015) Tanveer Hasan participated in this conference aimed at discussing about the future of Indian classical languages in the digital era.

Media Coverage

Not many contributors for Kannada-centric Wiki page (The Times of India, July 5, 2015)
Upload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia (Indian Express, July 5, 2015)
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Udayavani; July 5, 2015)
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Prajavani; July 5, 2015)

Staff Movement

Tito Dutta, Luis Gomes and Abhinav Garule have joined the CIS-A2K team as Programme Associates from March this year. Tito is working for internal documentation and resource building, and Luis and Abhinav are implementing the Konkani and Marathi work plan respectively along with community liaison.

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality (Pranesh Prakash; July 8, 2015). Vidushi Marda and Tarun Krishnakumar assisted Pranesh Prakash in this.
Free Speech Policy in India: Community, Custom, Censorship, and the Future of Internet Regulation (Bhairav Acharya; July 13, 2015).
Net Neutrality and the Law of Common Carriage (Bhairav Acharya; July 14, 2015).
Freedom of Expression in a Digital Age (Geetha Hariharan and Jyoti Panday; July 14, 2015). CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania organized this conference on April 21, 2015 in New Delhi. Elonnai Hickok edited the report.
Clearing Misconceptions: What the DoT Panel Report on Net Neutrality Says (and Doesn't) (Pranesh Prakash; July 21, 2015).
Role of Intermediaries in Countering Online Abuse (Jyoti Panday; July 31, 2015). This got published as two blog entries in the NALSAR Law Tech Blog. Part 1 can be accessed here and Part 2 here.

Event Co-organized

A Public Discussion on Criminal Defamation in India (Organized by CIS, the Network of Women in Media, India; and Media Watch; Bangalore; July 29, 2015). The event was a public discussion about the continued criminalisation of defamation in India.

Participation in Event

Roundtable discussion on WHOIS (Organized by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India; July 28, 2015; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda participated in the discussion remotely. Aditya Garg attended in person.

Privacy

Blog Entries

Anti-Spam Laws in Different Jurisdictions: A Comparative Analysis (Rakshanda Deka; July 2, 2015).
A Dissent Note to the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling (Elonnai Hickok; July 17, 2015). Click for DNA Bill Functions, DNA List of Offences, and CIS Note on DNA Bill. A modified version was published by Citizen Matters Bangalore on July 28.
Privacy, Autonomy, and Sexual Choice: The Common Law Recognition of Homosexuality (Bhairav Acharya; July 18, 2015).
Aadhaar Number vs the Social Security Number (Elonnai Hickok; July 21, 2015).

Participation in Event

7th Best Practices Meet 2015 (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; July 9 – 10, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Architecting Security for transformation to Digital India". Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session "Steering privacy in the age of extreme innovation technology & business models."

Cyber Security

Videos

Cyber Security Series Part 23 (Purba Sarkar; July 13, 2015). CIS interviews a Tibetan security researcher and information activist.
Cyber Security Series Part 24 (Purba Sarkar; July 15, 2015). CIS interviews Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India, as part of the Cybersecurity Series.

Miscellaneous

Article

Iron out contradictions in the Digital India programme (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Hindustan Times; July 28, 2015).

Research Paper

First draft of Technology Business Incubators: An Indian Perspective and Implementation Guidance Report (Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak; July 25, 2015).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Op-ed

The Centrality of Cash Flows (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 1, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; July 2, 2015).

Blog Entry

Funding of National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) - Who's Accountable? (Aditya Garg; July 17, 2015).

Researchers at Work

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Blog Entries

WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality (Maitrayee Deka; July 1, 2015).
Users and the Internet (Purbasha Auddy; July 10, 2015).
Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi (Sarah McKeever; July 16, 2015).
Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights (Deva Prasad M.; July 22, 2015).
'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube) (Ipsita Sengupta; July 27, 2015).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

'IRCTC’s Aadhaar play can violate SC order and derail National Security' (Shubhra Rishi; CIO.IN; July 1, 2015).
The Digital Divide: pros and cons of Modi's latest big initiative (Suhas Munshi; July 2, 2015).
Corporate push to Modi’s Rs.4.5-billion digital dream (Rakesh Kumar; The Statesman; July 13, 2015).
Criminal Defamation: The Urgent Cause That has United Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Subramanian Swamy (Betwa Sharma; Huffington Post; July 15, 2015).
Five Nations, One Future? (Bjorn Ludtke, Ellen Lee, Jaideep Sen, Gwendolyn Ledger, David Nicholson, and Jesko Johannsen; Voestalpine; July 18, 2015).
The scariest bill in Parliament is getting no attention – here’s what you need to know about it (Nayantara Narayanan; Scroll.in; July 24, 2015)
Regulation, misuse concerns still dog DNA profiling bill (Nikita Mehta; Livemint; July 29, 2015)

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2015-bulletin

Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group Analysis

jyoti — 2016-04-12T10:02:31Z

This analysis has been done to see the trend in the selection and rotation of the members of the Multistakeholder advisory group (MAG) in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The MAG has been functional for nine years from 2006-2015. The analysis is based on data procured, collated and organised by Pranesh Prakash and Jyoti Panday. Shambhavi Singh, Law Student, NLU Delhi who was interning with CIS at the time also assisted with the organisation and analysis of the data.

The researcher has collected the data from the lists of members available in the public domain from 2010-2015. The lists prior to 2010 have been procured by the Centre for Internet and society from the UN Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

This research is based solely upon the members and the nature of their stake holding has been analysed in the light of MAG terms of reference. No data has been made available regarding the nomination process and the criteria on which a particular member has been re-elected to the MAG (The IGF Secretariat does not share this data).

According to the analysis, in these six years, the MAG has had around 182 members from various stakeholder groups.

We have divided it into five stakeholder groups, Government, Civil Society, Industry, Technical Community and Academia. Any overlap between two or more of these groups has also been taken into account, for example- A member of the Internet Society (ISOC) being both in the Civil Society and Technical Community.

According to the MAG Terms of Reference[1], it is the prerogative of the UN Secretary General to select MAG Members. The general policy is that the MAG members are appointed for a period of one year, which is automatically renewed for 2 more years consecutively depending on their engagement in MAG activities.

There is also a policy of rotating off 1/3^rd members of MAG every year for diversity and taking new viewpoints in consideration. There is also an exceptional circumstance where a person might continue beyond three years in case there is a lack of candidates fitting the desired area.

However, it seems like the exception has become the norm as a whopping number of members have continued beyond 3 years, ranging from 4 years up to as long as 8 years, this figure rounds up to around 49. No doubt some of them are exceptional talents and difficult to replace. However, the lack of transparency in the nomination system makes it difficult to determine the basis on which these people continued beyond the usual term.

S. No.	Stakeholder	Number of years	Total Members continuing beyond 3 years
1	Civil Society	8, 6, 6, 4, 4,	5
2	Government/Industry	4, 5	2
3	Technical community/ Civil society	8, 8, 8, 6, 6, 4, 4, 4, 4,4	10
4	Industry/ Civil society	8, 6,	2
5	Industry	8, 7, 7, 6, 6, 4,	6
6	Industry/Tech Community/ Civil Society	8,	1
7	Government	7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4,	19
8	Academia	6, 6, 5,	3
9	Industry/ Tech community	6,	1

The stakeholders that have continued beyond 8 years have around 39% members from Government and related agencies. The next being Technical Community/Civil Society with around 20% representation, followed by Industry at 12%, 10% from the Civil Society, 6% from Academia, 4% from Government/Industry, 4% from Industry/Civil Society and 2% each from Industry/Technical Community and Industry/Technical Community/Civil Society respectively.

Table with overlapping interests merged

S. No.	Stakeholder	Total Members continuing beyond 3 years
1	Civil Society	7 + 9 + 1+1 = 18
2	Government	19
3	Tech Community	9 + 1 + 1+1 = 12
4	Industry	6 + 2 + 1 + 1+2 = 13
5	Academia	3

When the overlap is grouped separately, as in if a Technical Community/Civil Society person is placed both in Technical Community and Civil Society groups individually, then the representation of stakeholder representation is as follows(approximate values)-

Government- 29%

Civil Society- 28%

Industry- 20%

Technical Community-17%

Academia-5%

This clearly shows us that stakeholders from academia generally did not stay on MAG beyond 3 years. Even when all members that have ever been on MAG are taken into consideration, only around 8% representation has been from the academic community. This needs to be taken into account when new MAG members are selected in 2016.

The researcher has also looked at the MAG Representation based on gender and UN Regional Groups. The results of the analysis were as follows-

The ratio of male members is to female members is approximately 16:9 in the MAG and the approximate value in percentage being 64% and 36% respectively.

Now coming to the UN Regional Groups, the results that the analysis yielded were as follows-

The Western European and Others Group (WEOG) has the highest representation in MAG, a large number of members being from Switzerland, USA and UK. This is followed by the Asia Pacific Group which has 20% representation. The third largest is the African group with 19% representation followed by Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC) and Eastern European Group with 13% and 12% representation respectively.

The representation of developed, developing and Least Developed Countries is as follows-

Developed countries have approximately 42% representation, developing countries having 53% and LDCs having a mere 5% representation. There should be some effort to strive for better LDC representation as they are the most backward when it comes to Global ICT Penetration. [2]

[1] Intgovforum.org, 'MAG Terms Of Reference' (2015) <http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/175-igf-2015/2041-mag-terms-of-reference> accessed 13 July 2015.

[2] ICT Facts And Figures (1st edn, International Telecommunication Union 2015) <http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2015.pdf> accessed 11 July 2015.

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

Role of Intermediaries in Countering Online Abuse

jyoti — 2015-08-02T16:38:36Z

The Internet can be a hostile space and protecting users from abuse without curtailing freedom of expression requires a balancing act on the part of online intermediaries.

This got published as two blog entries in the NALSAR Law Tech Blog. Part 1 can be accessed here and Part 2 here.

As platforms and services coalesce around user-generated content (UGC) and entrench themselves in the digital publishing universe, they are increasingly taking on the duties and responsibilities of protecting rights including taking reasonable measures to restrict unlawful speech. Arguments around the role of intermediaries tackling unlawful content usually center around the issue of regulation—when is it feasible to regulate speech and how best should this regulation be enforced?

Recently, Twitter found itself at the periphery of such questions when an anonymous user of the platform, @LutyensInsider, began posting slanderous and sexually explicit comments about Swati Chaturvedi, a Delhi-based journalist. The online spat which began in February last year, culminated into Swati filing an FIR against the anonymous user, last week. Within hours of the FIR, the anonymous user deleted the tweets and went silent. Predictably, Twitter users hailed this as a much needed deterrence to online harassment. Swati’s personal victory is worth celebrating, it is an encouragement for the many women bullied daily on the Internet, where harassment is rampant. However, while Swati might be well within her legal rights to counter slander, the rights and liabilities of private companies in such circumstances are often not as clear cut.

Should platforms like Twitter take on the mantle of deciding what speech is permissible or not? When and how should the limits on speech be drawn? Does this amount to private censorship?The answers are not easy and as the recent Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgment in the case of Delfi AS v. Estonia confirms, the role of UGC platforms in balancing the user rights, is an issue far from being settled. In its ruling, the ECtHR reasoned that because of their role in facilitating expression, online platforms have a requirement “to take effective measures to limit the dissemination of hate speech and speech inciting violence was not ‘private censorship”.

This is problematic because the decision moves the regime away from a framework that grants immunity from liability, as long as platforms meet certain criteria and procedures. In other words the ruling establishes strict liability for intermediaries in relation to manifestly illegal content, even if they may have no knowledge. The 'obligation' placed on the intermediary does not grant them safe harbour and is not proportionate to the monitoring and blocking capacity thus necessitated. Consequently, platforms might be incentivized to err on the side of caution and restrict comments or confine speech resulting in censorship. The ruling is especially worrying, as the standard of care placed on the intermediary does not recognize the different role played by intermediaries in detection and removal of unlawful content. Further, intermediary liability is its own legal regime and is at the same time, a subset of various legal issues that need an understanding of variation in scenarios, mediums and technology both globally and in India.

Law and Short of IT

Earlier this year, in a leaked memo, the Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took personal responsibility for his platform's chronic problem and failure to deal with harassment and abuse. In Swati's case, Twitter did not intervene or take steps to address harrassment. If it had to, Twitter (India), as all online intermediaries would be bound by the provisions established under Section 79 and accompanying Rules of the Information Technology Act. These legislations outline the obligations and conditions that intermediaries must fulfill to claim immunity from liability for third party content. Under the regime, upon receiving actual knowledge of unlawful information on their platform, the intermediary must comply with the notice and takedown (NTD) procedure for blocking and removal of content.

Private complainants could invoke the NTD procedure forcing intermediaries to act as adjudicators of an unlawful act—a role they are clearly ill-equipped to perform, especially when the content relates to political speech or alleged defamation or obscenity. The SC judgment in Shreya Singhal addressing this issue, read down the provision (Section 79 by holding that a takedown notice can only be effected if the complainant secures a court order to support her allegation. Further, it was held that the scope of restrictions under the mechanism is restricted to the specific categories identified under Article 19(2). Effectively, this means Twitter need not take down content in the absence of a court order.

Content Policy as Due Diligence

Another provision, Rule 3(2) prescribes a content policy which, prior to the Shreya Singhal judgment was a criteria for administering takedown. This content policy includes an exhaustive list of types of restricted expressions, though worryingly, the terms included in it are not clearly defined and go beyond the reasonable restrictions envisioned under Article 19(2). Terms such as “grossly harmful”, “objectionable”, “harassing”, “disparaging” and “hateful” are not defined anywhere in the Rules, are subjective and contestable as alternate interpretation and standard could be offered for the same term. Further, this content policy is not applicable to content created by the intermediary.

Prior to the SC verdict in Shreya Singhal, actual knowledge could have been interpreted to mean the intermediary is called upon its own judgement under sub-rule (4) to restrict impugned content in order to seek exemption from liability. While liability accrued from not complying with takedown requests under the content policy was clear, this is not the case anymore. By reading down of S. 79 (3) (b) the court has addressed the issue of intermediaries complying with places limits on the private censorship of intermediaries and the invisible censorship of opaque government takedown requests as they must and should adhere, to the boundaries set by Article 19(2). Following the SC judgment intermediaries do not have to administer takedowns without a court order thereby rendering this content policy redundant. As it stands, the content policy is an obligation that intermediaries must fulfill in order to be exempted from liability for UGC and this due diligence is limited to publishing rules and regulations, terms and conditions or user agreement informing users of the restrictions on content. The penalties for not publishing this content policy should be clarified.

Further, having been informed of what is permissible users are agreeing to comply with the policy outlined, by signing up to and using these platforms and services. The requirement of publishing content policy as due diligence is unnecessary given that mandating such ‘standard’ terms of use negates the difference between different types of intermediaries which accrue different kinds of liability. This also places an extraordinary power of censorship in the hands of the intermediary, which could easily stifle freedom of speech online. Such heavy handed regulation could make it impossible to publish critical views about anything without the risk of being summarily censored.

Twitter may have complied with its duties by publishing the content policy, though the obligation does not seem to be an effective deterrence. Strong safe harbour provisions for intermediaries are a crucial element in the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of expression online. By absolving platforms of responsibility for UGC as long as they publish a content policy that is vague and subjective is the very reason why India’s IT Rules are in fact, in urgent need of improvement.

Size Matters

The standards for blocking, reporting and responding to abuse vary across different categories of platforms. For example, it may be easier to counter trolls and abuse on blogs or forums where the owner or an administrator is monitoring comments and UGC. Usually platforms outline monitoring and reporting policies and procedures including recourse available to victims and action to be taken against violators. However, these measures are not always effective in curbing abuse as it is possible for users to create new accounts under different usernames. For example, in Swati’s case the anonymous user behind @LutyensInsider account changed their handle to @gregoryzackim and @gzackim before deleting all tweets. In this case, perhaps the fear of criminal charges ahead was enough to silence the anonymous user, which may not always be the case.

Tackling the Trolls

Most large intermediaries have privacy settings which restrict the audience for user posts as well as prevent strangers from contacting them as a general measure against online harassment. Platforms also publish monitoring policy outlining the procedure and mechanisms for users to register their complaint or report abuse. Often reporting and blocking mechanisms rely on community standards and users reporting unlawful content. Last week Twitter announced a new feature allowing lists of blocked users to be shared between users. An improvement on existing mechanism for blocking, the feature is aimed at making the service safer for people facing similar issues and while an improvement on standard policies defining permissible limits on content, such efforts may have their limitations.

The mechanisms follow a one-size-fits-all policy. First, such community driven efforts do not address concerns of differences in opinion and subjectivity. Swati in defending her actions stressed the “coarse discourse” prevalent on social media, though as this article points out she might be assumed guilty of using offensive and abusive language. Subjectivity and many interpretations of the same opinion can pave the way for many taking offense online. Earlier this month, Nikhil Wagle’s tweets criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “pervert” was interpreted as “abusive”, “offensive” and “spreading religious disharmony”. While platforms are within their rights to establish policies for dealing with issues faced by users, there is a real danger of them doing so for “political reasons” and based on “popularity” measures which may chill free speech. When many get behind a particular interpretation of an opinion, lawful speech may also be stifled as Sreemoyee Kundu found out. A victim of online abuse her account was blocked by Facebook owing to multiple reports from a “faceless fanatical mob”. Allowing the users to set standards of permissible speech is an improvement, though it runs the risk of mob justice and platforms need to be vigilant in applying such standards.

While it may be in the interest of platforms to keep a hands off approach to community policies, certain kind of content may necessiate intervention by the intermediary. There has been an increase in private companies modifying their content policy to place reasonable restriction on certain hateful behaviour in order to protect vulnerable or marginalised voices. Twitter and Reddit's policy change in addressing revenge porn are reflective of a growing understanding amongst stakeholders that in order to promote free expression of ideas, recognition and protection of certain rights on the Internet may be necessary. However, any approach to regulate user content must assess the effect of policy decisions on user rights. Google's stand on tackling revenge porn may be laudable, though the decision to push down 'piracy' sites in its search results could be seen to adversely impact the choice that users have. Terms of service implemented with subjectivity and lack of transparency can and does lead to private censorship.

The Way Forward

Harassment is damaging, because of the feeling of powerlessness that it invokes in the victims and online intermediaries represent new forms of power through which users' negotiate and manage their online identity. Content restriction policies and practices must address this power imbalance by adopting baseline safeguards and best practices. It is only fair that based on principles of equality and justice, intermediaries be held responsible for the damage caused to users due to wrongdoings of other users or when they fail to carry out their operations and services as prescribed by the law. However, in its present state, the intermediary liability regime in India is not sufficient to deal with online harassment and needs to evolve into a more nuanced form of governance.

Any liability framework must evolve bearing in mind the slippery slope of overbroad regulation and differing standards of community responsibility. Therefore, a balanced framework would need to include elements of both targeted regulation and soft forms of governance as liability regimes need to balance fundamental human rights and the interests of private companies. Often, achieving this balance is problematic given that these companies are expected to be adjudicators and may also be the target of the breach of rights, as is the case in Delfi v Estonia. Global frameworks such as the Manila Principles can be a way forward in developing effective mechanisms. The determination of content restriction practices should always adopt the least restrictive means of doing so, distinguishing between the classes of intermediary. They must evolve considering the proportionality of the harm, the nature of the content and the impact on affected users including the proximity of affected party to content uploader.

Further, intermediaries and governments should communicate a clear mechanism for review and appeal of restriction decisions. Content restriction policies should incorporate an effective right to be heard. In exceptional circumstances when this is not possible, a post facto review of the restricton order and its implementation must take place as soon as practicable. Further, unlawful content restricted for a limited duration or within a specific geography, must not extend beyond these limits and a periodic review should take place to ensure the validity of the restriction. Regular, systematic review of rules and guidelines guiding intermediary liability will go a long way in ensuring that such frameworks are not overly burdensome and remain effective.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/role-of-intermediaries-in-counting-online-abuse

Regulation, misuse concerns still dog DNA profiling bill

praskrishna — 2015-09-13T08:32:48Z

Experts fear such data could be used for non-forensic purposes and are concerned about the vast powers to be vested in proposed DNA profiling board.

The article by Nikita Mehta was published in Livemint on July 29, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

A bill aimed at creating a DNA database of offenders, slated for introduction in the monsoon session of Parliament, has been criticized by experts who fear that such information could be used for non-forensic purposes and are concerned about the vast powers sought to vested in a proposed DNA profiling board.

Despite changes made by the Department of Biotechnology, the final draft of the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 has drawn flak from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a non-profit group that works on policy issues.

The bill seeks Parliament’s approval for plans to create a DNA bank of various offenders in order to prevent repeat offences and to regulate the process by defining infrastructure, training, qualifications, facilities and legalities.

The government says that conducting DNA analysis involves working with sensitive information which, if misused, can cause harm to a person or to society. There is, thus, a need to restrict the use of DNA profiles through an Act of Parliament only for lawful purposes of establishing someone’s identity in a criminal or civil case and for other specified purposes.

The bill seeks to establish standards for laboratories, staff qualifications, training, proficiency testing, collection of body substances, custody trail from collection to reporting and a data bank with policies of use and access to information, its retention and deletion.

The offences for which the database can be maintained range from criminal and civil offences to paternity disputes.

“We need this bill because there are so many unresolved cases. A judge can use this data as material evidence and speedy justice can be served,” said M.K. Bhan, former secretary of the department of biotechnology. “Tremendous amount of effort has been taken to consult all possible parties and the bill has been drafted and redrafted over the years,” Bhan added.

In its note of dissent, CIS raised objections about DNA profiling and DNA samples being used for identifying victims of accidents or disasters, for missing persons and in civil disputes. It also objected to the creation and maintenance of a population statistics databank that is to be used, as prescribed, for the purposes of identification.

“One problem is accuracy. Unlike comparisons between digital signatures which can either have matches or no matches, biometric signatures will have a level of accuracy, so there can be a few false matches. Hence unnecessary widening of the data will reduce the accuracy of this system,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director at CIS.

CIS further noted that a DNA Profiling Board proposed by the bill will have vast powers, including those of authorizing procedures for DNA profiling for civil and criminal investigation, drawing up a list of instances for the application of human DNA profiling and undertaking any other activity which in the opinion of the Board advances the purposes of the Act. The DNA Profiling Board will consist of eminent scientists, administrators and law enforcement officers who will administer and carry out other functions assigned to it under the Act.

“Usually when regulators are created, the mandate is extremely clear. In this bill it is quite vague and there should not be so many things left to the discretionary powers of the board,” said Abraham who was part of the consultation process for the bill. He added that a number of changes have been introduced to the bill, including reduction of powers of the board, tighter definitions and more privacy safeguards.

“Any regulatory system requires external auditing, that should be taken into view. Another issue that was being looked at was that the forensic system should be outside police jurisdiction as they may have vested interests,” Bhan said.

The CIS note pointed out that although the bill refers to security and privacy procedures that labs are to follow, these have been left to be drawn up and implemented by the proposed DNA Board.

“This proposal has been doing the rounds for years and I can vouch for the scientific infallibility of using DNA profiling for carrying out justice. That being said, the bill does not provide verifiable or implementable safeguards for misuse of this data and lack of accountability of public servants can cause serious jeopardy to the privacy of citizens,” said K.P.C. Gandhi, a forensic scientist and founder chairman at Truth Labs, an independent forensic science laboratory.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-nikita-mehta-july-29-2015-regulation-misuse-concerns-still-dog-dna-profiling-bill

Roundtable discussion on WHOIS

vidushi — 2015-08-24T14:16:12Z

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda participated remotely in a round-table discussion organized by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India on July 28, 2015. Aditya Garg, an intern at the Centre for Internet & Society also participated (in person) from New Delhi and made an intervention.

Dr. Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary, DeitY chaired the round-table to seek expert input from all stakeholders at the national level, on various issues related to WHOIS (domain name) which are currently being discussed at the Public Safety Working Group (PSWG), an internal working group of Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN.

The PSWG will be focusing on ICANN’s policies and procedures that raise questions or have implications for the safety of the public, in connection with their use of the Internet. Current major areas of interest for PSWG are:

WHOIS
Enforcing Contractual Compliance with Registries and Registrars
Implementation of new gTLDs
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

WHOIS is a long-term strategic priority for ICANN. ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) has issued 12 reports/advisories with reference to WHOIS.

The roundtable will served as a platform to discuss WHOIS policy / implementation issues for .IN <http://for .IN> registry.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/round-table-discussion-on-whois

Iron out contradictions in the Digital India programme

sumandro — 2015-07-28T01:04:28Z

The Digital India initiative takes an ambitious 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' approach to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and general capacity to digitise public life in India. I of course use 'public life' in the sense of the wide sphere of interactions between people and public institutions.

The article was published in the Hindustan Times on July 15, 2015.

The 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' approach involves putting together Japanese shoes, British trousers, and a Russian cap to make an entertainer with a pure Indian heart. In this case, the analogy must not be understood as different components of the initiative coming from different countries, but as coming from different efforts to use digital technologies for governance in India.

It is deploying the Public Information Infrastructure vision, inclusive of the National Optical Fibre Network (now renamed as BharatNet) and the national cloud computing platform titled Meghraj, so passionately conceptualised and pursued by Sam Pitroda. It has chosen the Aadhaar ID and the authentication-as-a-service infrastructure built by Nandan Nilekani, Ram Sewak Sharma, and the team, as the identity platform for all governmental processes across Digital India projects. It has closely embraced the mandate proposed by Jaswant Singh led National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development for completely electronic interface for paper-free citizen-government interactions.

The digital literacy and online education aspects of the initiative build upon the National Mission on Education through ICT driven by Kapil Sibal. Two of the three vision areas of the Digital India initiative, namely 'Digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen' and 'governance and service on demand,' are directly drawn from the two core emphasis clusters of the National e-Governance Plan designed by R. Chandrashekhar and team, namely the creation of the national and state-level network and data infrastructures, and the National Mission Mode projects to enable electronic delivery of services across ministries.

And this is not a bad thing at all. In fact, the need for this programmatic and strategic convergence has been felt for quite some time now, and it is wonderful to see the Prime Minister directly addressing this need. Although, while drawing benefits from the existing programmes, the DI initiative must also deal with the challenges inherited in the process.

Recently circulated documents describes that the institutional framework for Digital India will be headed by a Monitoring Committee overseeing two main drivers of the initiative: the Digital India Advisory Group led by the minister of communication and information technology, and the Apex Committee chaired by the cabinet secretary. While the former will function primarily through guiding the implementation works by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), the latter will lead the activities of both the DeitY and the various sectoral ministries.

Here lies one possible institutional bottleneck that the Digital India architecture inherits from the National e-Governance Plan. Putting the DeitY in the driving seat of the digital transformation agenda in parallel with all other central government departments indicate an understanding that the transformation is fundamentally a technical issue. However, most often what is needed is administrative reform at a larger scale, and re-engineering of processes at a smaller scale.

Government agencies that have addressed such challenges in the past, such as the department of administrative reforms and public grievances, is not mentioned explicitly within the institutional framework, and instead DeitY has been trusted with a range of tasks that may be beyond its scope and core skills.

The danger of this is that the Digital India initiative will end up initiating more infrastructural and software projects, without transforming the underlying governmental processes. For example, the recently launched eBasta website creates a centralised online shop for publishers of educational materials to make books available for teachers to browse and select for their classes, and for the students to directly download, against payment or otherwise. The website has been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and DeitY. At the same time, the ministry of human resource development, which is responsible for matters related to public education, has already collaborated with the Central Institute of Educational Technology and the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in TIFR to build a comprehensive platform for multi-media resources for education – the National Repository of Open Educational Resources. The initial plans of the DI initiative are yet to explicitly recognise that the key challenge is not in building new applications and websites, but aligning existing efforts.

This mismatch, between what the Digital India initiative proposes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it, is further demonstrated in the 'e-Governance Policy Initiatives under Digital India' document. The compilation lists the key policies to govern designing and implementation of the Digital India programmes, but surprisingly fails to mention any policies, acts, and pending bills approved or initiated by any previous government. This is remarkably counter-productive as the existing policy frameworks, such as the Framework for Mobile Governance, the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, and the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance, are suitably placed to complement the new policies around use of free of open source softwares for e-governance systems, so as to ensure their transparency, interoperability, and inclusive outreach. Several pending bills like The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, The Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011, and The Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013, are absolutely fundamental for comprehensive and secure implementation of the various programmes under the Digital India initiative.

The next year will complete a decade of development of national e-governance systems in India, since the launch of National e-Governance Plan in 2006. Given this history of information systems sometimes partially implemented and sometimes working in isolation, a 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' approach to digitise India is a very pragmatic one. What we surely do not need is increased contradiction among e-governance systems. Simultaneously, we neither need digital systems that centralise governmental power within one ministry on technical grounds, or expose citizens to abuse of their digital identity and assets due to lack of sufficient legal frameworks.

(Sumandro Chattapadhyay is research director, The Centre for Internet and Society. The views expressed are personal.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-july-15-2015-sumandro-chattapadhyay-iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme

A Public Discussion on Criminal Defamation in India

bhairav — 2015-07-27T14:44:15Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS); the Network of Women in Media, India; and Media Watch, Bengaluru, are hosting a public discussion on criminal defamation in India. The discussion will start at 5.30 pm on Wednesday, 29 July 2015, at the CIS office in Domlur, Bengaluru.


Pictured above: A poster of the event.

Decriminalising Defamation in India: A Brief Statement of Issues

Subramanian Swamy’s petition to decriminalise defamation has been joined in the Supreme Court by concurring petitions from Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal. Defamation is criminalised by sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC). Swamy and his unlikely cohorts want the Supreme Court to declare that these criminal defamation provisions interfere with the right to free speech and strike them down.

Although news coverage of the case has focused on the motivations and arguments of the three politicians, defamation should not be the sole province of celebrities and the powerful. Unfortunately, criminal defamation has emerged as a new system of censorship to silence journalists, writers, and activists. SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation) are being increasingly used by large corporations to frighten and overwhelm critics and opponents. SLAPP suits are not designed to succeed – although they often do, they are intended to intimidate, harass, and outspend journalists and activists into submission.

The law of defamation rests on uncertain foundations. In medieval Europe defamation was dually prosecuted by the Church as a sin equal to sexual immorality, and by secular courts for the threat of violence that accompanied defamatory speech. These distinct concerns yielded a peculiar defence which fused two elements: truth, which shielded the speaker from the sin of lying; and, the public good, which protected the speaker from the charge of disrupting the public peace. This dual formulation – truth and the public good – remains the primary defence to defamation today.

India does not have a strong ‘fair comment’ defence to protect speech that is neither true nor intrinsically socially useful. This bolsters the law’s reflexive censorship of speech that falls outside the bounds of social utility and morality such as parody, caricature, outrageous opinion, sensationalism, and rumour. This failure affects cartoonists and tabloid sensationalism alike.

Defamation law is also open to procedural misuse to maximise its harrassive effect. Since speech that is published on the Internet or mass-printed and distributed can be read almost anywhere, the venue of criminal defamation proceedings can be chosen to inconvenience and exhaust a speaker into surrender. This motivation explains the peculiarly remote location of several defamation proceedings in India against journalists and magazine editors.

The offence of defamation commoditises reputation. While defamation remains a crime, the state must prosecute it as it does other crimes such as murder and rape. This merits the question: should the state expend public resources to defend the individual reputations of its citizens? Such a system notionally guarantees parity because if the state were to retreat from this role leaving private persons to fight for their own reputations, the market would favour the reputations of the rich and powerful at the expense of others.

These and other issues demand an informed and rigorous public discussion about the continued criminalisation of defamation in India.

Download the concept note prepared by Bhairav Acharya

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/a-public-discussion-on-criminal-defamation-in-india

Will Indians have to pay for WhatsApp?

pranesh — 2015-08-24T02:00:56Z

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) formed a panel in January 2015 to look into net neutrality in the country.

This was originally published by BBC on July 25. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted.

Net neutrality means service providers should treat all traffic equally. Users should be able to access all websites at the same speed and cost.

A battle to decide the future of the internet in India is being fought online, between telecom users and operators.

The panel has now released its report to the public and invited comments. Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet Studies decodes the report and what it means for Indians.

What does the panel say?

Internet-based Over-the-top (OTT) communication services like WhatsApp, Viber, and the like are currently taking advantage of "regulatory arbitrage", meaning that the regulations that apply to non-Internet based communications services (telephone calls) are different from OTT communications services.

Under current rules, the OTT services don't have to get a licence from the government, don't have to abide by anti-spam, do-not-disturb regulations, share any revenue with the government or abide by national security conditions. The panel wants to bring these services under a licensing regime.

The report distinguishes between Internet-based voice calls (voice over IP, or VoIP) and messaging services and doesn't wish to interfere with the latter. This means it could regulate services like Skype, Viber and WhatsApp calls but not WhatsApp or Viber messages. It also distinguishes between domestic and international VoIP calls, and believes only the former need regulation. It is unclear on what basis these distinctions are made.

The core principles of net neutrality - which are undefined in the report, though definitions proposed in submissions they've received are quoted - should be adhered to. In the long-run, these should find place in a new law, but for the time being they can be enforced through the licence agreement between the government and telecom providers.

Where does the panel report go wrong?

The proposal by the panel to regulate VoIP services like Skype or Viber is a terrible idea.

Many important terms are left undefined, and many distinctions that the report draws are left unexplained. For instance, it is unclear on what regulatory basis the report distinguishes between domestic and international VoIP calls or between regulation of messaging services and VoIP services.

Will it increase cost of access to WhatsApp and Viber?

"Zero-rating" is a policy whereby telecoms providers agree not to pass on the costs of handling the data traffic so that consumers can receive services for free.

On the one hand, this could decrease the cost of access to WhatsApp and Viber. But that might not be allowed because free services could harm competition and distort markets.

Whether this will lead to consumers paying for WhatsApp and similar services depends on what kinds of regulations are placed on them, and if any costs are imposed on them.

Does the report uphold net neutrality?

The report is clear that it strongly endorses the "core principles of net neutrality".

On the issue of "zero-rating" the panel proposes some sound measures, saying that there should be a two-part mechanism for ensuring that "harmful" zero-rating doesn't go through.

First, telecom services need to submit "zero-rating" tariff proposals to an expert body constituted by telecoms department.

Second, consumers will be able to complain about the harmful usage of "zero-rating" by any service provider, which may result in a fine.

Where have people got the report wrong?

There have been reports saying that the panel has recommended increased charges for domestic VoIP calls. This is untrue.

There are reports saying the panel has given the go-ahead for all forms of zero-rating. Once again, this is untrue. The panel cites instances of zero-rating that aren't discriminatory, violative of net neutrality and don't harm competition or distort consumer markets (such as zero-rating of all Internet traffic for a limited time period). Then it goes on to state that the regulator should not allow zero-rating that violates the core principles of net neutrality.

Pranesh Prakash is policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society. A longer article he wrote on the panel report can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-july-25-2015-will-indians-have-to-pay-for-whatsapp

First draft of Technology Business Incubators: An Indian Perspective and Implementation Guidance Report

vidushi — 2015-07-25T16:14:44Z

The Centre for Internet and Society presents the first draft of its analysis on technology business incubators("TBI") in India. The report prepared by Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak looks at operating procedures, success stories and lessons that can be learnt from TBIs in India.

A technology business incubator (TBI) is an organisational setup that nurtures technology based and knowledge driven companies by helping them survive during the startup period in the company’s history, which lasts around the initial two to three years. Incubators do this by providing an integrated package of work space, shared office services, access to specialized equipment along with value added services like fund raising, legal services, business planning, technical assistance and networking support. The main objective of the technology business incubators is to produce successful business ventures that create jobs and wealth in the region, along with encouraging an attitude of innovation in the country as a whole.

The primary aspects that this report shall go into are the stages of a startup, the motivational factors behind establishing incubators by governments & private players, the process followed by them in selecting, nurturing talent as well as providing post incubation support. The report will also look at the role that incubators play in the general economy apart from their function of incubating companies, such as educational or public research roles. A series of case analysis of seven well established incubators from India shall follow which will look into their nurturing processes, success stories as well as lessons that can be learnt from their establishment. The final section shall look into challenges faced by incubators in developing economies and the measures taken by them to overcome these challenges.

Download the full paper

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-business-incubators

The scariest bill in Parliament is getting no attention – here’s what you need to know about it

sunil — 2015-09-13T07:56:42Z

A bill proposes creation of a national DNA data bank, without requisite safeguards for privacy, and opens the information to everything from civic disputes to compilation of statistics.

The blog post by Nayantara Narayanan was published in Scroll.in on July 24, 2015.

On Wednesday, the Narendra Modi government told the Supreme Court that India's citizens have no fundamental right to privacy. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi referred to a 1950 court verdict which held that the right to privacy was not a fundamental right while defending the constitutional validity of the Aadhar scheme, a massive database of information of individual citizens including biometrics and bank accounts. At the same time, the government is planning another big database.

In the ongoing stormy monsoon session of Parliament, where the government and opposition have locked horns over several proposed legislation, Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 has been making little noise but can have widespread impact on India’s criminal justice system and the privacy of citizens. The bill aims to regulate the collection and use of genetic material from crime scenes, and also proposes the creation of a national DNA databank that might be used for non-forensic purposes.

DNA is a mighty tool, especially in criminal forensics, but access to a person’s genetic information can be highly intrusive and dangerous. DNA contains information about health and genetic relationships that can influence employment, insurance. It can be tampered with and planted at crime scenes.

Law and poverty expert Usha Ramanathan and Centre for Internet and Society executive director Sunil Abraham, who are members of an expert committee on DNA profiling constituted by the government, have written dissent notes against the final draft of the Human DNA Profiling Bill. Ramanathan and Abraham are of the opinion that there aren’t adequate safeguards to privacy and too much power rests with the proposed DNA Profiling Board.

Ramanathan notes that one of the biggest challenges of a DNA database is function creep – the gradual widening of the use of a technology beyond the purpose for which it was originally intended. As this DNA profiling bill enters Parliament, here are some questions we should be asking.

Is DNA evidence infallible?

The short answer is “no”. Despite all the crime shows and murder movies we have seen where DNA evidence nails the perpetrator to the crime, DNA evidence is far from absolute. Genetic material recovered from a crime scene is likely to be only a partial strand of DNA. Analysing this partial strand can lead to a match with the person that left the DNA behind but can also lead to a coincidental match with people who happen to have a similar gene sequence in their DNA. False incriminations can happen when more than one person’s DNA get mixed at the crime scene, from DNA contamination, mislabelling and even degradation over time.

In the Aarushi Talwar murder case, for instance, the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics altered its 2008 report in 2013 and admitted to typographical errors in the description of its DNA samples. The evidence could have changed the course of the investigation.

What will the national DNA database look like?

The bill proposes to set up a national DNA data bank and a number of state or regional data banks that will feed into the national data pool. Every data bank will have six categories under which DNA profiles will be filed – crime scene index, suspects’ index, offenders’ index, missing persons’ index, unknown deceased persons’ index, and volunteers’ index. The DNA profiling board will have the power to include more categories. In the offenders’ index, the DNA information will be linked to the name of the person from whom it was collected. All others will be linked to a case reference number.

What happens when my genetic material is on the database?

The bill gives sanction for broad use of DNA profiles and samples – to identify victims of accidents or disasters, to identify missing persons, for civil disputes and other offences. It also allows the information to be used to create population statistics, identification research, parental disputes, issues relating to reproductive technologies and migration. In his dissent note, Abraham argues that all non-forensic use should be rejected.

Cases like whether paternity should be determined, unwed mothers leaving their children and adopted children looking for their natural parents are hugely contestable things, said Ramanathan. “You are changing multiple structures and not recognising any of them,” she added.

Even though the bill allows for DNA information of offenders to be expunged once a court acquits them or sets aside a conviction, it makes no provision for removing other kinds of profiles.

The CDFD, which will be instrumental in building and processing DNA profiles, is using the CODIS software bought from the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation an compatible with their systems. The FBI used CODIS to identify victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. More recently, the CDFD used CODIS to identify some who died in the Uttarakhand floods of 2013 after asking for 5,000 people who were possibly relatives of the deceased to undertake DNA testing.

Can the DNA profiling board protect our genetic information?

The bill grants the board vast powers to allow the use of DNA profiles in any civil and criminal proceedings that it deems necessary. “Ideally these powers would lie with the legislative or judicial branch,” Abraham said, in his dissent note. “Furthermore, the Bill establishes no mechanism for accountability or oversight over the functioning of the Board.”

Ramanathan questions the constitution of the board itself, her worry being that the board is not a body of disinterested officials. The secretary of the board is supposed to be from the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, an autonomous institute that will get a lot of work from the creation of the national DNA data bank.

Why does a DNA fingerprinting consent form ask for caste?

One of the most troubling features of the creation of a databank is the consent form to be signed by a person donating blood for DNA analysis. Along with name, gender and address, the form also asks for caste to be listed.

India has a history of unwarrantedly linking caste and community with criminality. Members of decriminalised tribes regularly report being harassed by the police and even having false cases foisted on them simply because they are linked to a certain community. Tagging caste onto genetic data can result in unfair profiling and identification errors.

The United Kingdom set up its national criminal DNA database in 1995. The database expanded over a decade by including genetic information of anyone who was arrested till more than one million innocent people were on it – including a grandmother who didn’t return a football to children who kicked it into her garden. The dangers of a genetic database are too much state oversight, false implication in crimes and a loss of privacy – none of which should come to pass without at least a debate.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-scariest-bill-in-parliament-is-getting-no-attention-2013-here2019s-what-you-need-to-know-about-it