We are anonymous, we are legion

Internet Freedom press conference at the UN Fellows

praskrishna — 2012-06-28T06:03:54Z

Published in Weekly ING on June 22, 2012

A central goal of the program is to share experiences and promote understanding of the importance of a free Internet to freedom of expression and association as fundamental rights of the people studied. Fellows are in Geneva June 19 to 22 at the 20th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Fellows this year on Internet freedom, all human rights activists and practitioners active in the digital media, are from Syria, India, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Venezuela and Azerbaijan. . In Geneva, they will participate in a conversation, global webcast of the United Nations, to “global networks, individual freedom”, Wednesday, Juin 20-1000 EDT (14:00 UTC) The 2012 Fellows are: Dlshad Othman (Syria): Mr. Othman is a Syrian activist and software engineer with the Syrians, the digital resources and support for security features so that they can use online communication and advocacy work freely and safely, despite the increased repression of E-Government in the form of censorship, Cyber-attacks and sophisticated monitoring intense.Pranesh Prakash (India): Mr. Prakash is a program manager at the Center for Internet and Society at Bangalore. He works primarily in areas where policies intersect and technology, conduct research and policy advocacy on issues of online freedom of expression, access to knowledge, intellectual property and Internet governance reform Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso). Mr. Kambou is a newspaper reporter and a presenter at Lefaso.net blogs. He wooed and promotes human rights and the values of democracy and freedom of the press. He publishes articles and videos to educate and raise awareness on issues of human rights Sopheap Chak (Cambodia):. Ms Chak is the program director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) is a leading Cambodian human rights activist bloggers. It mobilizes youth activists around the country in civic engagement through the Youth Network of Cambodia to change. She is the author of the online Global Voice, UPI Asia Online, and calls Furutre.Andres Azpurua (Venezuela): Mr. Azpurua is committed to the creation of digital tools to allow Venezuelans to better exercise their rights. O He has to create a digital platform that promotes and defends the rights of voters helped. It is also the founder of a digital initiative to establish a voluntary civil society to the right of the Milli Venezuela.Emin (Azerbaijan) is to be promoted: Mr. Milli is a writer and dissident who has actively used online networking tools, to disseminate information on violations of human rights in Azerbaijan. He was in for 16 months for his critical views on the Government of Azerbaijan in prison. He was pardoned in 2010 and is currently writing his doctoral work in London, the “New Media and the Arab revolutions”. U.S. Mission Photo by Eric Bridiers.

Internet

Image the U.S. mission in Geneva

The Internet Freedom Fellows Program of the U.S. State funded Department and administered by the United States Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, provides human rights activists around the world in Geneva, Washington, and Silicon Valley to work with other activists, U.S. and international to meet government and members of civil society and the private sector in technology and the human rights involved. A central goal of the program is to share experiences and promote understanding of the importance of a free Internet to freedom of expression and association as fundamental rights of the people studied. Fellows are in Geneva June 19 to 22 at the 20th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Fellows this year on Internet freedom, all human rights activists and practitioners active in the digital media, are from Syria, India, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Venezuela and Azerbaijan. . In Geneva, they will participate in a conversation, global webcast of the United Nations, to “global networks, individual freedom”, Wednesday, Juin 20-1000 EDT (14:00 UTC) The 2012 Fellows are: Dlshad Othman (Syria): Mr. Othman is a Syrian activist and software engineer with the Syrians, the digital resources and support for security features so that they can use online communication and advocacy work freely and safely, despite the increased repression of E-Government in the form of censorship, Cyber-attacks and sophisticated monitoring intense.Pranesh Prakash (India): Mr. Prakash is a program manager at the Center for Internet and Society at Bangalore. He works primarily in areas where policies intersect and technology, conduct research and policy advocacy on issues of online freedom of expression, access to knowledge, intellectual property and Internet governance reform Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso). Mr. Kambou is a newspaper reporter and a presenter at Lefaso.net blogs. He wooed and promotes human rights and the values of democracy and freedom of the press. He publishes articles and videos to educate and raise awareness on issues of human rights Sopheap Chak (Cambodia):. Ms Chak is the program director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) is a leading Cambodian human rights activist bloggers. It mobilizes youth activists around the country in civic engagement through the Youth Network of Cambodia to change. She is the author of the online Global Voice, UPI Asia Online, and calls Furutre.Andres Azpurua (Venezuela): Mr. Azpurua is committed to the creation of digital tools to allow Venezuelans to better exercise their rights. O He has to create a digital platform that promotes and defends the rights of voters helped. It is also the founder of a digital initiative to establish a voluntary civil society to the right of the Milli Venezuela.Emin (Azerbaijan) is to be promoted: Mr. Milli is a writer and dissident who has actively used online networking tools, to disseminate information on violations of human rights in Azerbaijan. He was in for 16 months for his critical views on the Government of Azerbaijan in prison. He was pardoned in 2010 and is currently writing his doctoral work in London, the “New Media and the Arab revolutions”.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-freedom-press-conference-at-un-fellows

Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate

praskrishna — 2013-01-25T10:45:56Z

In the aftermath of an Index on Censorship debate in New Delhi, Kirsty Hughes says India’s web users are standing at a crossroads

This article by Kirsty Hughes was published in Index on Censorship. CIS's research on censorship is quoted.

If debate is a sign of a positive environment for internet freedom, then India scores highly. From debates in parliament, and panel discussions (including Index’s own recent event) to newspaper editorials, blogs and tweets on the rights and wrongs of internet freedom, controls on the web, and India’s position in the international debate, there is no shortage of voices and views.

India has around 120 million web users — a large number but still only about 10 per cent of the country’s population. As cheaper smart phones enable millions more to access the net on their mobiles, India’s net savvy population is set to soar in the next few years. But what sort of online environment they will find is open to question — and to wide debate.

India has some very broad laws that could apply to a wide range of online speech, comment and criticism. These laws have been so far rather randomly applied. But the cases that have arisen — from individuals criticising politicians by email, Facebook or Twitter to some of the big web companies such as Google and Facebook (both facing numerous takedown requests and court cases in India) — show just why India needs to look at limiting both the range of some of its net laws, and to stop these laws criminalising a range of speech.

In 2012, there was widespread outcry in India when two women were arrested for complaining on Facebook about the disruption caused by the funeral of Bal Thackeray, leader of the right wing Hindu party, Shiv Sena. They were arrested under the infamous section 66A of India’s IT Act (2008) which criminalises “grossly offensive” and “menacing” messages sent by electronic means, but also “false” messages sent to cheat, deceive, mislead or annoy, taking online censorship beyond offline laws.

India’s telecom minister Kapil Sibal spoke out against the arrests. And as part of the fallout, guidelines were announced that in future any such charges could only be brought by senior police. But how effective such a restriction might be was challenged, with aTimes of India editorial suggesting “rampant political interference in law enforcement is itself a burning issue…so to argue that senior police officers will always resist mob pressure or political diktats isn’t persuasive.”

Other parts of the IT Act (2008) are also causing a chilling atmosphere in India’s cyber sphere — with new regulations introduced in 2011 obliging internet service providers to take down content within 36 of a complaint (whether an individual, organisation, government body or anyone else) or face prosecution. The law covers a sweeping range of grounds for complaint, including “grossly harmful”, “harassing, “blasphemous” and more. It also is confused on liability – holding intermediaries large and small responsible for content on websites and platforms.

One of India’s leading policy centres on digital issues, the Centre for Internet and Society, decided to test how this 36-hour takedown rule could result in censorship of innocuous and legal content on web sites. They sent complaints to four main search engines across a range of content — and as a result got thousands of innocuous posts removed; a censor’s dream outcome.

Despite a debate in parliament calling for repeal of the 2011 rules, for now they remain.

Some observers suggest the Indian government is catch-up mode, not fully understanding the reach or nature of social media or how to deal with the international range and speed of the web today — something plenty of other governments around the world are showing some confusion about. Some think the lively debate on net freedom in India reflects the voice and demands of the growing Indian middle class. But whether those demands remain pro-freedom is yet to be seen as internet penetration grows apace.

There are some other encouraging signs. While many in India are not keen at US dominance of key parts of internet regulation, there was concern from business and civil society ahead of the International Telecommunications Union summit in December 2012, when the Indian government looked like it might advocate some form of top down control of the web as an alternative. In the event, India, like the EU and US, did not go along with Russia, China and others keen to include net governance into the ITU’s remit.

India is going to be an increasingly influential voice in global internet debates — with its rapidly growing number of netizens and its increasing clout more widely in a multipolar world.

Its healthy and lively debate about digital freedom stands as a beacon of hope in the face of some of its more disturbing laws. But the laws will need to change, if India is to be a country that stands for internet freedom.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/index-on-censorship-kirsty-hughes-january-22-2013-internet-freedom-in-india

Internet Freedom Festival 2017

praskrishna — 2017-03-29T11:24:38Z

The Global Unconference of the Internet Freedom Communities took place at Valencia in Spain from March 6 to 10, 2017. The event was organized by the IFF. Vidushi Marda on behalf of CIS took part in the event.

Vidushi as part of her work with Working Group 1 (WG1) of the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), organised a workshop along with Mallory Knodel from APC. This workshop was titled "Practical implementations of human rights respecting cybersecurity policy". Participants in the workshop were divided into groups to evaluate the recommendations developed by WG1 in light of existing cyber security policies from around the world. The recommendations can be found here and the accompanying narrative document can be found here.

The session ended up being productive - we received feedback from participants about the effectiveness of the recommendations, and also about aspects of these recommendations that needed revisiting/more work. A more detailed account of the session can be found at the Wiki page.

Vidushi also attended the following sessions:

Data Protection Law and its Different Manifestations
Using the Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index for Advocacy & Research
The identity we can't change: a new wave of biometric policies around the world
Enabling free speech online by legal defence: the need for skilled lawyers to secure the free flow of information online: Vidushi channeled a discussion about Shreya Singhal v. Union of India as an important case study in understanding how legal defence has been used to secure rights online. She specifically spoke about the distinction made in the judgment b/w communications on the internet vs. communications elsewhere.

For more info see here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/internet-freedom-festival-2017

Internet Freedom Fellows Program Emphasizes Defense of Fundamental Freedoms Online

praskrishna — 2012-07-02T06:47:31Z

At the Human Rights Council (HRC), the United States has consistently placed special emphasis on the protection and promotion of the freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association, because we understand that these fundamental freedoms are essential to facilitating the exercise of other universal rights.

Published on DipNote, the US Department of State Official Blog

Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe serves as the U.S. Representative to the Human Rights Council. His blog post was published on DipNote on June 25, 2012.

As activity in the economic, social, and the political realms gravitates from the offline world to the online world, we have an additional responsibility to ensure that human rights and fundamental freedoms are not eroded simply because they are being exercised in the digital realm. The United States is committed to the principle that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected in the online world.

Last week, I had the chance to spend time with the Internet Freedom Fellows, six young human rights activists, each of whom is working in his or her own way to promote and defend freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and all other human rights on the Internet. The Internet Freedom Fellows (IFF) program is funded by the State Department's Innovation Fund and the U.S. Mission in Geneva, and was designed to follow up on Secretary Clinton's pledge to find innovative ways to promote the use of the Internet in support of human rights. The 2012 Fellows are: Dlshad Othman (Syria), Pranesh Prakash (India), Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso), Sopheap Chak (Cambodia), Andres Azpurua (Venezuela), and Emin Milli (Azerbaijan).

The fellows' visit to Geneva coincided with a moment when the Human Rights Council is seized with these issues: The United States and a cross regional group of countries consisting of Brazil, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Turkey have joined with Sweden to present a resolution on the Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet. If adopted later this session, this landmark text will mark the first time the Council has substantively addressed the issue of human rights online in a resolution.

As the global community has watched during the past 18 months, individuals across the Middle East, North Africa and beyond have taken to both physical town squares and virtual spaces to express their legitimate aspirations and demand democracy. The Internet has become an essential medium through which journalists, activists, and citizens connect and share information in ways that are changing their societies.

One of this year's fellows is Dlshad Othman, a Syrian activist and IT engineer who has put his own life in danger to assist his fellow Syrian citizen journalists. Sitting next to me at a UN press conference, Dlshad explained how he helps provide Syrians with digital security resources so that they can communicate online freely and securely despite Assad's "electronic army," with its active online censorship and surveillance. Although he cannot currently return to his country, Dlshad is focused on making it possible for the world to hear the voices of people inside Syria. "This is actually the only way that we have at this time, since there isn't any media on the ground."

As the Representative of the United States to the Human Rights Council, I am inspired by these fellows and the courage they've displayed in using the digital realm to advocate for the human rights of their fellow citizens. I will recall their stories and experiences as I work to promote these fundamental freedoms in the Human Rights Council.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/defense-of-fundamental-freedoms-online

Internet Freedom At Home: Governments, Companies Need Accountability, Speakers Say

praskrishna — 2012-06-28T05:27:43Z

The freedom to access the internet does not translate into freedom of expression in many countries of the world, including in western economies, according to speakers at a peer forum organised yesterday by the United States mission to the United Nations in Geneva.

Catherine Saez wrote this for Intellectual Property Watch on June 22, 2012

Both governments and companies, prime providers of internet surveillance technologies in particular in the developed countries, need to be held accountable for the destination and use of those technologies, some of which run counter to human rights.

The peer forum on internet freedom and human rights was held on 21 June and gathered technology experts, and human right activists, with the participation of the mission’s Internet Freedom Fellows programme, organised since 2011 in parallel with the UN Human Rights Council.

Freedom to connect exists in most countries where internet surveillance runs counter to human rights but not freedom from fear, Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN journalist and co-founder of Global Voices Online said.

“Internet freedom does not mean just free networks, it means free people,” MacKinnon said. “Accomplishing that and constraining the abuse of power across digital networks is a tough problem.”

Strong Global Standard Needed, Democracies also Concerned

In the Internet Age, it is technically trivial both for corporations and governments to gain access to people’s private communications, she said. The issue is that without strong global standards the empowering potential of the internet is going to be diminished, she said. This is true not only for interconnection but also public transparency and accountability in how surveillance technologies are developed, deployed. And it applies to how information is shared between governments and between companies and governments.

Even in democracies, “we are really struggling” with the issue of how to make sure that in the legitimate fight against crime, terrorism, cyber attacks, which all are real problems, the mechanisms put in place are not abused, she said. How can it ensured that those who hold power through those mechanisms will be accountable when they use that power for purposes that were not intended, she asked. She cited a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union http://www.aclu.org/spy-files on widespread surveillance by US law enforcement agencies across the US.

Surveillance technologies “are being sold very obviously to governments who clearly are going to abuse that technology,” she said. She mentioned what has been nicknamed the “Wiretappers’ Ball” to describe trade fairs run by a company which invites law enforcement and security agencies from around the world to meet with companies that built those technologies.

The last one of those fairs was held “not too far from Washington, DC” and 35 US federal agencies were present, along with representatives of 43 different countries, she said, with ” no questions asked.”

A lot of these technologies are being built or developed primarily by western companies with western governments as prime customers, but are being sold blatantly to countries like Azerbaijan (which has been reported recently for its crackdown on free expression) and others, she said.

As a major customer, the United States needs to demand transparency on the part of these companies about where those technologies are being sold and used, MacKinnon said, adding, “Internet freedom starts at home.”

There is a need to demand that governments be accountable and transparent on what surveillance technologies exist and how they are being deployed and used, and not only at the domestic level, but globally.

As an example of transparency, she cited the Google transparency report, which lists the number of requests from governments around the world both for user information and takedown requests. MacKinnon said the top requesters were democratic governments.

All companies should be requested to provide similar transparency reports, she said, and governments should also issue transparency reports about the number of requests they are making. “There should be ways to do this without compromising active investigation,” she said.

MacKinnon recently published a book entitled, “Consent of the Networked.”

Internet: Shopping Mall or Public Square
A panel discussion addressed the protection of human rights in a world of global networks in which two visions of the internet were described. One is§ the internet as a shopping mall, mainly owned by private interests, the other one as a public square.

Robert Whelan from the International Committee of the Red Cross raised the concept of informed consent in the context of victims of armed conflicts. The victims of violation of human rights law have the right to know what information is going to be used about their experience, or their story, he said. They should know where this information will go, who is going to see it, have access to it, where that information is going to be replicated or reproduced and when will that information will be deleted, he added.

The challenge is to put the civilian victims at the centre, and in control of the information about their experience. This is at odds with the concept of free exchange of information, he said, citing as examples the “re-tweeting” and reproducing of articles, photographs and names on the internet.

Nicolas Seidler from the Internet Society said the internet is not “the wild west” but just the digital version of the real world, and as such is subject to the same human rights instruments. The challenge is that no new rights are needed; rather the need is to implement and reinforce human rights standards on the internet, he said. Governments’ management of the internet is but a reflection of their overall management, he said.

For Brett Solomon, executive director of Accessnow.org, a US-based nongovernmental organisation pushing for digital freedom, several issues are laid out in the “Silicon Valley Standard” [pdf]. The standard was developed after the Silicon Valley human rights conference held in San Francisco in 2011.

The effort to protect rights holders and copyrights by the copyright industry, which he qualified as “voracious,” is putting internet intermediaries at risk of liability, he said.

Effective internet security is essential, he said, as “there is no freedom of speech unless people feel safe and secure.” He called for the right to encryption of web activity. “Technology companies must provide a basic level of security … to their users by default and resist bans and curtailments of the use of encryption,” the standard says.

David Sullivan, policy and communications director for the Global Network Initiative (GNI) presented the initiative, which gathers information and communication technology stakeholders and provides a framework for companies based on international standards. Companies that commit to GNI standards also commit to being assessed independently, he said, on how they implement principles, if they have policies and procedures in place to meet standards and accountability commitments.

Sullivan cited the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the failed US legislation, as a policy effort aimed at solving one problem around copyright infringing material that is was “going to have deeply worrisome repercussions around the world as other countries look at that example in ways that could have deeply problematic consequences in terms of censorship.”

This year, the human right activists participating in the Internet Freedom Fellows programme are: Dishad Othman from Syria, Pranesh Prakash from India, Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou from Burkina Faso, Sopheap Chak from Cambodia, Andreas Azpurua from Venezuela and Emin Milli from Azerbaijan. Short biographies are here.

Emin Milli, a writer who was imprisoned for expressing his opinion in Azerbajian, said he looked at internet as a public square and not a shopping mall but the situations vastly differ from one country to the other, he added, as contexts are very different. The Eurovision song contest, which was held in the country this year, was a great opportunity for civil society, with the help of international media to draw attention to the situation of Azerbaijan.

Dishad Othman, a Syrian activist and IT engineer, characterised himself as a security activist as he is helping people to use tools to hide themselves on the internet. Sharing experiences from different countries is very important, he said, calling for a larger group of international activists who could help people but also technology companies to provide a safer environment and to promote freedom on the internet so that “all people can benefit from it.”

Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said people have tools to protect themselves from surveillance that they do not use. In particular, he said, many journalists do not know how to use those tools, especially in the context of journalists’ computers and files that are seized, endangering their sources.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-freedom-at-home

Internet Freedom at Crossroads - Common Paths towards Strengthening Human Rights Online

Admin — 2018-12-04T16:11:52Z

The 2018 Freedom Online Conference took place from 28 to 30 November 2018 in Berlin. Elonnai Hickok participated as a speaker.

Elonnai attended the Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network meeting and larger Freedom Online Coalition conference. The agenda can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/internet-freedom-at-crossroads-common-paths-towards-strengthening-human-rights-online

Internet Freedom

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda — 2016-02-15T02:51:10Z

The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom.

The article by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda was published by Asian Age on February 14, 2016.

What would have gone wrong if India’s telecom regulator Trai had decided to support programmes like Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel’s Zero Rating instead of issuing the regulation that prohibits discriminatory tariffs? Here are possible scenarios to look at in case the discriminatory tarrifs were allowed as they are in some countries.

Possible impact on elections

Facebook would have continued to amass its product — eyeballs. Indian eyeballs would be more valuable than others for three reasons 1. Facebook would have an additional layer of surveillance thanks to the Free Basics proxy server which stores the time, the site url and data transferred for all the other destinations featured in the walled garden 2. As part of Digital India, most government entities will set up Facebook pages and a majority of the interaction with citizens would happen on the social media rather than the websites of government entities and, consequently, Facebook would know what is and what is not working in governance 3. Given the financial disincentive to leave the walled garden, the surveillance would be total.

What would this mean for democracies? Eight years ago, Facebook began to engineer the News Feed to show more posts of a user’s friends voting in order to influence voting behavior. It introduced the “I’m Voting” button into 61 million users’ feeds during the 2010 US presidential elections to increase voter turnout and found that this kind of social pressure caused people to vote. Facebook has also admitted to populating feeds with posts from friends with similar political views. During the 2012 Presidential elections, Facebook was able to increase voter turnout by altering 1.9 million news feeds.

Indian eyeballs may not be that lucrative in terms of advertising. But these users are extremely valuable to political parties and others interested in influencing elections. Facebook’s notifications to users when their friends signed on to the “Support Free Basics” campaign was configured so that you were informed more often than with other campaigns. In other words, Facebook is not just another player on their platform. Given that margins are often slim, would Facebook be tempted to try and install a government of its choice in India during the 2019 general elections?

In times of disasters

Most people defending Free Basics and defending forbearance as the regulatory response in 2015/16 make the argument that “95 per cent of Internet users in developing countries spend 95 per cent of their time on Facebook”.

This is not too far from the truth as LirneAsia demonstrated in 2012 with most people using Facebook in Indonesia not even knowing they were using the internet. In other words, they argue that regulators should ignore the fringe user and fringe usage and only focus on the mainstream. The cognitive bias they are appealing to is smaller numbers are less important.

Since all the sublime analogies in the Net Neutrality debate have been taken, forgive us for using the scatological. That is the same as arguing that since we spend only 5% of our day in toilets, only 5% of our home’s real estate should be devoted to them.

Everyone agrees that it is far easier to live in a house without a bedroom than a house without a toilet. Even extremely low probabilities or ‘Black Swan’ events can be terribly important! Imagine you are an Indian at the bottom of the pyramid. You cannot afford to pay for data on your phone and, as a result, you rarely and nervously stray out of the walled garden of Free Basics.

During a natural disaster you are able to use the Facebook Safety Check feature to mark yourself safe but the volunteers who are organising both offline and online rescue efforts are using a wider variety of platforms, tools and technologies.

Since you are unfamiliar with the rest of the Internet, you are ill equipped when you try to organise a rescue for you and your loved ones.

Content and carriage converge

Some people argue that TRAI should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only 9% market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market? At the Centre for Internet and Society (CI S), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for TRAI? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies - the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, TRAI has over regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as TRAI argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

What is Net neutrality?

According to this principle, all service providers and governments should not discriminate between various data on the internet and consider all as one. They cannot give preference to one set of apps/ websites while restricting others.

2006: TRAI invites opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from various telecom industry bodies and stakeholdersFeb. 2012: Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, suggests services like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, saying that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should be a tax on the highway
July 2012: Bharti Airtel’s Jagbir Singh suggests large Internet companies like Facebook and Google should share revenues with telecom companies.
August 2012: Data from M-Lab said You Broadband, Airtel, BSNL were throttling traffic of P2P services like BitTorrent
Feb. 2013: Killi Kiruparani, Minister for state for communications and technology says government will look into legality of VoIP services like Skype
June 2013: Airtel starts offering select Google services to cellular broadband users for free, fixing a ceiling of 1GB on the data
Feb. 2014: Airtel operations CEO Gopal Vittal says companies offering free messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp should be regulated
August 2014: TRAI rejects proposal from telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers/government
Nov. 2014: Trai begins investigation on Airtel implementing preferential access with special packs for WhatsApp and Facebook at rates lower than standard data rates
Dec. 2014: Airtel launches 2G, 3G data packs with VoIP data excluded in the pack, later launches VoIP pack.
Feb. 2015: Facebook launches Internet.org with Reliance communications, aiming to provide free access to 38 websites through single app
March 2015: Trai publishes consultation paper on regulatory framework for over the top services, explaining what net neutrality in India will mean and its impact, invited public feedback
April 2015: Airtel launches Airtel Zero, a scheme where apps sign up with airtle to get their content displayed free across the network. Flipkart, which was in talks for the scheme, had to pull out after users started giving it poor rating after hearing about the news
April 2015: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and information technology minister announces formation of a committee to study net neutrality issues in the country
23 April 2015: Many organisations under Free Software Movement of India protested in various parts of the country. In a counter measure, Cellular Operators Association of India launches campaign , saying its aim is to connect the unconnected citizens, demanding VoIP apps be treated as cellular operators
27 April 2015: Trai releases names and email addresses of users who responded to the consultation paper in millions. Anonymous India group, take down Trai’s website in retaliation, which the government could not confirm
Sept. 2015: Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics, launches in the country with massive ads across major newspapers in the country. Faces huge backlash from public
Feb. 2016: Trai rules in favour of net neutrality, barring telecom operators from charging different rates for data services.

The writers work at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom

Internet firms deny existence of PRISM

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:47:27Z

Nothing is private anymore. According to a leak in the US, which revealed the wide reach of a mass surveillance programme by intelligence agencies, messages, posts, chats on your computer or phone are all vulnerable to interception, thanks to direct access to servers of major tech companies.

The article by Javed Anwer and Ishan Srivastava was published in the Times of India on June 8, 2013. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash are quoted.

The existence of the programme, called Prism, was first reported by the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper after they received a tip-off from a whistleblower in National Security Agency in the US. The whistleblower claimed that NSA has direct access to all the data that flows through the servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Sykpe, Youtube, AOL and Paltalk.

Later, the NSA reportedly acknowledged the existence of the programme but said that it collected data only from foreign nationals. While it may come as a relief to the US citizens, it underscores the fact that people not residing in the US, including Indians, are fair game. What is even more alarming is the fact that US authorities are using the technology companies headquartered in the country to spy on the rest of the world.

All companies named in the leaks have denied the existence of Prism. A Yahoo spokesperson said on Friday, ""Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."

Privacy International, a privacy watchdog organisation, said it is possible that companies would not be aware of the government tapping into their servers. "Until we know whether this information was obtained through filters, interception, or some another method, it is difficult to know how the breadth of access the NSA has."

However, Indian users would seem to have no way to defend themselves if the US government wants to access their data. Pavan Duggal, a specialist in cyber law, said, "Indian users don't have any protection against the US authorities seeking their data from the US companies."

Technology companies said they comply with local laws while dealing with issues related to personal data of a user. In response to queries from TOI, both Google and Facebook said that they used "mutual legal assistance treaty" to handle international requests for data.

Mutual legal assistance treaty is understood to have governed by actual treaties that two nations may have between them for sharing of user data. A Facebook official said that if a US agency wanted to access the data belonging to an Indian citizen, the sleuths would have to follow the diplomatic channels and get the data only when Indian authorities have approved it.

Google too talked "mutual legal assistance treaty" but it didn't clarify how it worked. Google officials pointed out the company guidelines which noted that any non-US government agency would have to use mutual legal assistance treaty to access user data. But the company public guidelines don't make any mention of the procedure followed in the cases where a US agency requests data on non-US users.

Microsoft directed TOI to its official statement denying the existence of Prism. It refused to discuss how it handled the requests from US authorities seeking data of foreigners.

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), said that it was high time the Indian government stood up for its citizens.

"Indian government needs to come with a strong and clear law to protect the privacy of Indian users. The law has to make it clear to companies operating in India that they need to respect the privacy of Indian users, even when they are dealing with the governments outside India," he said.

However, providing direct access to servers to an agency like NSA may not necessarily be a breach of agreement between the users of websites like Google and Facebook and its owners. Sunil Abraham, executive director at CIS said, "I have not studied end-user agreements carefully, but usually they have provisions for communication interception and data access in accordance with legal procedure."

"But more importantly, this is a violation of US data access and interception law. The US government has been going around the world preaching Internet freedom to authoritarian regimes. And now it turns out that their practices are worse that many of the regimes they have been criticizing. That is why it is a complete scandal," Abraham said.

Besides, the surveillance may run contrary to a whole range of international legal instruments. For example, the ICCPR, ratified by the USA, says that "no one shall be subject to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his private life, family, home or correspondence," said Joe McNamee, executive director of European Digital Rights, a privacy watchdog based in Europe.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-javed-anwer-ishan-srivastava-june-8-2013-internet-firms-deny-existence-of-prism

Internet expert Pranesh Prakash criticizes Indian cyber blockades

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T12:58:02Z

The government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top internet expert said on Friday.

Published in the Economic Times on August 24, 2012.

Earlier this month, thousands of people from the country's remote northeast began fleeing cities in southern and western India, as rumors swirled that they would be attacked in retaliation for ethnic violence against Muslims in their home state.

Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images - said to be of murdered Muslims - that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

After that, the government began interfering with hundreds of websites, including some Twitter accounts, blogs and links to certain news stories. The government also ordered telephone companies to sharply restrict mass text messages.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable,'' said Pranesh Prakash, who studies internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.

The center has published a list of over 300 internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.

The exodus of people from the northeast followed clashes in Assam state over the last several weeks between ethnic Bodos and Muslims settlers. At least 80 people were killed in that violence and 400,000 were displaced. Most of those who fled were living in Bangalore, where text messages spread quickly threatening retaliatory attacks by Muslims.

The Bodos and the Muslim settlers - most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh_have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/economic-times-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-pranesh-prakash-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades

Internet expert criticizes Indian cyber blockades

praskrishna — 2012-08-28T10:11:44Z

The Indian government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top Internet expert said Friday.

Written by Muneeza Naqvi, this was originally published in Associated Press on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images — said to be of murdered Muslims — that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable," said Pranesh Prakash, who studies Internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.

The center has published a list of more than 300 Internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.

On Friday, the Twitter account of Milind Deora, India's junior communications minister, appeared blocked. A message at his (at)milinddeora account said "the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."

Deora told the Press Trust of India news agency that his account was being verified and was only temporarily suspended. PTI said Deora had been tweeting in defense of the government blocking efforts before the account was suspended.

The Bodos and the Muslim settlers — most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh — have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.

"The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumors and it did a really bad job of that," said Prakash, adding that the government should have at least tried to counter the panic through the same social media sites that it was blocking.

The government's actions have sparked outrage on social networking sites, with hashtags critical of the government quickly becoming top trending topics on Twitter's India site.

But Prakash was as dismissive of that reaction as he was of the government attempts at censorship.

The government's actions reek of "the kind of incompetence one has come to expect," he said, "but the hashtags (hash)Emergency2012 etc. suffer from a lack of perspective, too."

Kapil Sibal, the senior minister of communications and information technology, said in a statement that Facebook and Google were cooperating with the government and shutting down some sites that the government had pointed out as objectionable. Sibal said Twitter had also said it was ready to talk with the government.

But he said that "the accusations that we are aggressively targeting someone's account or websites are incorrect."

On Thursday, Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, had told reporters that it was urging the Indian government "to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world" while addressing its security concerns. She said the U.S. was ready to help India's efforts to talk to social networks regarding the issue."

The above was carried in the following places:

Bloomberg Businessweek (August 24, 2012)
Khaleej Times (August 24, 2012)
ABC News (August 24, 2012)
Seattle Times (August 24, 2012)
Vancouver Sun (August 24, 2012)
Kansas City. (August 24, 2012)
Times Colonist (August 24, 2012)
Merced Sun-Star (August 24, 2012)
Yahoo News (August 24, 2012)
SanLuisObispo.com (August 24, 2012)
Terrorism Watch (August 25, 2012)
Sci-Tech Today (August 26, 2012)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hosted-2-ap-org-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades

Internet Democratisation: IANA Transition Leaves Much to be Desired

vidushi — 2016-11-03T07:52:37Z

At best, the IANA transition is symbolic of Washington’s oversight over ICANN coming to an end. It is also symbolic of the empowerment of the global multistakeholder community. In reality, it fails to do either meaningfully.

The article was published in the Hindustan Times on October 6, 2016.

Many suspect Washington’s 2014 announcement of handing over control of the IANA contract to be fuelled by the outcry following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the extent of US government surveillance. Source: AFP

September 30, 2016, marked the expiration of a contract between the US government and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to carry out the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.

In simpler, acronym-free terms, Washington’s formal oversight over the Internet’s address book has come to an end with the expiration of this contract, with control now being passed on to the “global multistakeholder community”.

ICANN was incorporated in California in 1998 to manage the backbone of the Internet, which included the domain name system (DNS), allocation of IP addresses and root servers. After an agreement with the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), ICANN was tasked with operating the IANA functions, which includes maintenance of the root zone file of the DNS. Over the years Washington has rejected calls to hand over the control of IANA functions, but in March 2014 it announced its intentions to do so and laid down conditions for the handover. Many suspect the driving force behind this announcement to be the outcry following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the extent of US government surveillance.

The conditions laid down by the NTIA were met, and the US government accepted the transition proposal, amidst much political pressure and opposition, most notably from Senator Ted Cruz.

This transition is a step in the right direction, but in reality, it changes very little as it fails to address two critical issues: Of jurisdiction and accountability.

Jurisdiction is important while considering the resolution of contractual disputes, application of labour and competition laws, disputes regarding ICANN’s decisions, consumer protection, financial transparency, etc. Many of these questions, although not all, will depend on where ICANN is located. ICANN’s new bylaws mention that it will continue to be incorporated in California, and subject to California law just as it was pre-transition. Having the DNS subject to the laws of a single country can only lend to its fragility. ICANN’s US jurisdiction also means that it is not free from the political pressures from the US Senate and in turn, the toxic effect of American party politics that were made visible in the events leading up to September 30.

Another critical issue that the transition does not address is that of ICANN accountability. Post-transition, ICANN’s board will continue to be the ultimate decision-making authority, thus controlling the organisation’s functioning, and ICANN staff will be accountable to the board alone.

To put things in perspective, look at the board’s track record in the recent past. In August, an Independent Review Panel (IRP) found that ICANN’s board had violated ICANN’s own bylaws and had failed to discharge its transparency obligations when it failed to look into staff misbehaviour. Following this, in September, ICANN decided to respond to such allegations of mismanagement, opacity and lack of accountability by launching a review. The review however, would not look into the issues, failures and false claims of the board, but instead focus on the process by which ICANN staff was able to engage in such misbehaviour. This ironically, will be in the form of an internal review that will pass through ICANN staff — the subjects of the investigation — before being taken up to the board.

At best, the transition is symbolic of Washington’s oversight over ICANN coming to an end. It is also symbolic of the empowerment of the global multistakeholder community. In reality, it fails to do either meaningfully.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-october-6-2016-vidushi-marda-internet-democratisation

Internet Curbs

praskrishna — 2012-02-13T12:29:24Z

A Delhi high court judge threatens to go the China way. The IT act is closing in. The war on the web is a war on us, writes Rishi Majumder in an article that was published in Tehelka on 18 February 2012.

AT TIMES, the law becomes a smoke-screen for itself. How things seem to be shrouds the way they actually are. Here’s how things seem to be. Righteous Indian crusader Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi and journalist Vinay Rai have taken multinational giants Facebook, Google and 19 other websites to task. They have done so by filing a civil suit and a criminal complaint because of images they thought were offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians, as well as several political leaders.

Both cases lie in Delhi’s lower courts. The civil suit, filed by Qasmi, prays for the removal of this content and assurances that such content will not be hosted by the websites in the future. The criminal complaint calls for the prosecution of these companies under Sections 292 (“sale, etc. of obscene books, etc.”), 293 (“sale, etc., of obscene objects to a young person”) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

While judgment on these cases are pending, the efforts of Qasmi and Rai have begun to bear fruit. In the criminal case, the websites have been issued summons by a Delhi trial court. Facebook and Google India sought a stay on these from the Delhi High Court, which was not granted. Instead, Justice Suresh Kait warned that, “like China, we will block all these websites”, while asking the companies to develop a mechanism to keep a check on and remove “offensive and objectionable” material. With respect to the civil suit, the companies have been told by the court on 6 February to submit within 15 days reports of steps they have taken to block offensive content. Also on the same day, Facebook and Google removed content from the Indian domains of their websites.

Now for how things actually are. First, the least one would expect of such a criminal complaint is that it would mention the actual perpetrator of the crime. But, as Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society, wrote in TEHELKA (The Quixotic Fight to Clean Up the Web, 28 January): “It is curious that the complaint (of Rai) does not mention specific individuals or groups directly responsible for authoring the allegedly offensive material. Only intermediaries (the websites) have been explicitly named.”

Second, to hold these websites responsible for these crimes, one would have to prove that they had “actual knowledge” of this content (as stated in Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, that is being read along with the IPC to interpret the latter in the context of this case), and did nothing to prevent it.

Otherwise, as Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tweeted in the middle of this imbroglio, prosecuting Facebook and Google for this content would be like “phone companies being sued if someone sends a defamatory or obscene SMS”.

Third, what mechanism does the court expect Facebook and Google to develop to keep a check on and remove “offensive and objectionable” material? According to Oxblood Ruffin, a Canadian hacker who is a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc, the hackers group that coined the term ‘hacktivist’), it’s “impossible” for websites such as Facebook and Google to actually ensure that such content isn’t hosted in the future.

Facebook and Google are fast emerging as the biggest platforms for expression and exchange in a country that has the third largest number of Internet users in the world (175 million broadband connections by 2014, according to the Department of Telecommunications).

Instead of creating an authority to police the Web, the Internet rules outsource this job to intermediaries

“You will have to double the workforce to have content monitors, and even then it won’t be possible,” says Ruffin. “You aren’t going to filter the content (according to keywords) because that will raise censorship issues.”

Yet filtering content seems to be the only way Facebook and Google can deliver what Justice Kait asks of them. And blocking so many websites because they happen to contain “obscene” keywords like ‘sex’ or ‘virgin’ is a lot like banning lawful assembly because someone made a hate speech. The irony is this would make us “like China” anyway.

AT THE heart of this controversy is one of two new sets of Internet rules notified by the Centre last April, dealing with the liability of intermediaries, which is being used to give the provisions of criminal and civil law more specific effect in the courtrooms. For instance, Rai’s counsel argued that Google’s terms of service didn’t reflect these rules, as they were supposed to. This was refuted by his opposing counsel, who pointed out that the terms of service of the Department of Information Technology website didn’t contain them either.

Rightly so. This set of rules, like the two cases pegged on it, infringes upon our Constitution as well as our common sense. Instead of giving us a clear idea of what they wish to censor, the rules pretend to elucidate this with terms like “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “disparaging” or “insulting any other nation”. And “blasphemous” — a frightening term. “Blasphemous is a word alien to Indian legal language,” says Internet freedom activist Anja Kovacs. “But now, with these rules, it could gradually be incorporated into mainstream law.”

Further, instead of appointing an authority to administer them, the Internet rules outsource this job to the intermediaries — making them liable to remove within 36 hours any information they store, host or publish, if a complainant claims that this contravenes the rules.

FINALLY, LET’S return to the law. These rules, adopted by the Centre under powers conferred to it by the IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, are a smokescreen that covers the infringement of a very basic Indian fundamental right. Article 21, which says: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”

In 1977, animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi was asked by the government to surrender her passport, and not given a reason for this. Not given a chance to be heard. A writ petition filed by her led the Supreme Court to deliver a landmark judgment that held that the right to “life or personal liberty” included Maneka’s right to travel because “a fundamental right is not an island in itself” and so Article 21 was to be understood in conjunction with other fundamental rights [such as the freedom of speech, enshrined in 19(1)(a)]. Justice VR Krishna Iyer, who was on the Bench that delivered the judgment, explained that “the spirit of man is at the root of Article 21”, “personal liberty makes for the worth of the human person” and “travel makes liberty worthwhile”.

But most significantly, the court held that the “procedure established by law” in Article 21 could not be a mere semblance of procedure but should fulfil the principles of natural justice — one of which is “the right to be heard”.

With the passing of these rules, millions of Indians have been denied this right — including the writer of this article. If, on going online, there is a complaint calling it “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “disparaging”, or worse still, “blasphemous”, it will have to be taken down, in 36 hours, with his only recourse being to line up at the same courts that lawyers representing Facebook and Google and Qasmi and Rai have been visiting for months now. That’s where the smokescreen dissipates.

The original was published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 07, Dated 18 Feb 2012, Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.

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

Internet clamp outrage

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T05:13:31Z

The Indian government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top Internet expert said yesterday.

Published in the Gulf Daily News on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Earlier this month, thousands of people from the country's remote northeast began fleeing cities in southern and western India, as rumours swirled that they would be attacked in retaliation for ethnic violence against Muslims in their home state.

Last weekend, the government said the rumours were fed by gory images - said to be of murdered Muslims - that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-gulf-daily-news-com-aug-25-2012-internet-clamp-outrage

Internet Censorship: Anonymous Can’t be Just Harmful Hackers

nishant — 2012-08-06T06:56:50Z

If there was ever an interesting time for people concerned with freedom of speech and expression to live in, it is now, and it is definitely in India. It has been a series of battles the last couple of years, where a slightly out-dated government machinery has been trying to control and contain the burgeoning online spaces, only to be put in their place by the new-age tech-ninjas that have risen as the new heroes in our digital times.

Nishant Shah's column was published in the First Post on July 13, 2012

We might not have had our Wikileaks moment in India yet, but the recent consolidation of resources by civic hacker groups and a public outrage against top-down blocking of everyday webspaces have steadily and surely put the questions of censorship and freedom on our minds.

The protests have taken many forms – from civic action routes of campaigns and petitions by civil society and non-governmental organisations to guerrilla warfare in the shape of distributed denial of service attacks and hacking of government websites.

Anonymous must be more than just a hacker group: AP	A lot of these efforts have found popular interest and media attention, but they haven’t always found a solid ground for negotiation and dialogue with the policy makers and legislators designing this information regime. However, after the first off-line mobilisation of protests by Anonymous in India, the government has had to face the fact that the clicktivist users are not going to remain passive, merely venting their discontent on their blogs and social networking spaces. With the sustained and systemic attacks on government, public and corporate websites, revealing sensitive information and taking down web resources the new hackers have shown that they mean business. In a recent attack, Anonymous hacked the Tamil Nadu police’s websites and revealed information about the complaints people have made and the actions taken on them.

Anonymous must be more than just a hacker group: AP

A lot of these efforts have found popular interest and media attention, but they haven’t always found a solid ground for negotiation and dialogue with the policy makers and legislators designing this information regime. However, after the first off-line mobilisation of protests by Anonymous in India, the government has had to face the fact that the clicktivist users are not going to remain passive, merely venting their discontent on their blogs and social networking spaces.

With the sustained and systemic attacks on government, public and corporate websites, revealing sensitive information and taking down web resources the new hackers have shown that they mean business. In a recent attack, Anonymous hacked the Tamil Nadu police’s websites and revealed information about the complaints people have made and the actions taken on them.

They leaked the document under their Twitter handle ‘opindia_revenge’ to show the police inaction. The documents have redacted some information but it has also revealed personally identified data about the people involved, without taking into consideration that it might affect the people involved in the cases adversely. Acts like these have the cybercrime bureau now tracking down the attackers and taking the help of Internet Service Providers and other intermediaries to punish those responsible.

What the outcomes of this battle are going to be, will eventually change the ways in which our digital publics shape up. Given the lack of resistance that ISPs have shown in the past, when pressed for private information on suspicious users, the chances are that we might soon have a public spectacles of hacker-criminals. Looking at the past bungles in this arena, one also hopes that it will not be yet another instance of mixed up administration leading to wrong and misplaced prosecution.

But more than anything else, one hopes that the attackers, who have seen their protests as a part of their civic action and right to protest and demonstrate, have been wise enough to protect themselves because they are going to be tracked and tried as criminals if they are caught.

Much can be said about the nature of civic hacking, and much has already been said, heralding them as code warriors and berating them as a public nuisance. But in all that cacophony, we might need to separate the ideology (constitutional rights, free speech and expression) from the tactics (DDoS, hacking, parking on websites) and see what interests they eventually serve.

Because even as my heart sings with these sounds of protests, there is a growing alarm that these seemingly radical guerrilla warfare might actually be more counter-productive than helpful to the cause of building an open and inclusive internet.

Over the last years, many civil society and citizen collectives have realised that policies and regulation are more a dialogue than open warfare. Polarising ourselves on an axis of ‘good versus bad’, at the end of the day, only leads to more regulation and draconian measures because it makes the state feel under threat. Considerable energy has gone into building a culture of public policy consultations and dialogue that allows for different stakeholders to work towards a collective future of the internet.

And so we come back to the question of whose interest gets served in the spate of these attacks? This is the same question that haunts us when we hear about our favourite political parties taking to destroying public property and blocking public infrastructure. It is the question that resurfaces when you realise that you might agree with the politics but the tactics are actually harming what you think is important.

In the case of the Anonymous attacks, it unfortunately seems more bravado and aspiration to radical heroism than a sustained and strategic set of interventions. With this particular act they seemed to have not only hurt the people on whose behalf they are fighting, but also given the government more reasons and plausible excuses to exercise more regulation and control over the digital technologies.

The attacks are a bold move to put the questions of censorship into public discourse, and force the state to acknowledge the problems with its governance. But it would be great to see if we can build on these energies and momentum and lead to a more sustained engagement with the political questions at stake, so at to construct a larger movement to protect our rights to free speech and expression that is beyond the world of ad-hoc hacking and random acts of protest.

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

Internet Censorship, Surveillance, and Corporate Transparency

praskrishna — 2013-03-25T10:29:50Z

Google’s Dorothy Chou will be in conversation with international experts Annenberg School of Communication, St., Philadelphia, on April 3, 2013, from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m. Malavika Jayaram is participating in the event as a panelist. The event is organised by Center for Global Communication Studies and Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Read full details of the event was published on the website of Center for Global Communication Studies.

Since mid 2010 Google has been publishing data about the requests it receives from governments to remove content or hand over user data. This regularly updated Transparency Report reveals alarming trends: Government surveillance is on the rise, everywhere. Even worse, a large number of government censorship and surveillance requests are of dubious legality even according to the host countries’ own laws. In a world where citizens increasingly rely on digital products and services owned and operated by private corporations for their civic and political lives, the implications for human rights and democracy around the world are troubling.

Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst who leads Google's efforts to increase transparency about how it responds to government censorship and surveillance demands, will discuss Google's Transparency Report with Rebecca MacKinnon, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and an international panel of experts:

Ronald Lemos, the Director of the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Hu Yong, Associate Professor, Peking University School of Journalism and Communication

Malavika Jayaram, Fellow, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore and Annenberg CGCS;

Gregory Asmolov, PhD Candidate, London School of Economics; Global Voices "RuNet Echo" contributor and Russian social media expert.

This event is part of the cross-disciplinary, university-wide “New Technologies, Human Rights, and Transparency” project funded by the university’s Global Engagement Fund and hosted by Annenberg’s Center for Global Communications Studies in partnership with Wharton, PennLaw, Engineering, and the School of Arts and Sciences. The project aims to examine the relationship between government and corporate power in today’s digitally networked world, bringing together research partners from across the university and around the world to develop a methodology to evaluate and compare the policies and practices of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies as they affect Internet users’ freedom expression and privacy in a human rights context.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-asc-upenn-events-internet-censorship-surveillance-and-corporate-transparency