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Grooming the geek

praskrishna — 2012-02-28T09:16:29Z

Generation 2.0, the iPad child, is enriched by technology, and many parents are embracing it wholeheartedly. But can technology transform the way a child’s abilities develop?

The article by Gopal Sathe was published in Livemint on 24 February 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.

Gauri Uttam, 11, loves reading books. Her room houses a huge number of books that her parents have collected for her over the years. But her favourite books are not in these piles. They are on her iPad. Ask her what her favourite book is, and pat comes the reply: The Pedlar Lady, downloaded on the family iPad 2.

The Pedlar Lady app, by Moving Tales Inc., is a beautifully animated story for children. Background images move, the text flows in and out, and the app reads the text aloud as well. “The book looks beautiful, and whenever you turn the page, it reads the words,” says Gauri. “You can carry it around anywhere, it’s not like sitting on the computer, but it’s much more fun than reading a book. There are pictures and if you get bored and want to draw something, you can, right there.”

Gauri’s father Sachin Uttam, 44, a director (consulting) with the Gurgaon-based technology start-up Enabling Dimensions, has also introduced her to software such as FaceTime on their iMac to teleconference with her cousins for homework. “Computers are a part of everything now,” Sachin says. “When children grow up, we try and teach them to sing, paint, write stories... In the same way, we need to teach them to be able to use computers. I’m a techie, so is my wife. We both have iPads and iPhones, and so it wasn’t surprising that Gauri started to use them too.”

Technology is revolutionizing the way children grow up. Parents put the Internet and technology to a variety of uses. It is not uncommon to see toddlers gurgling to a touch screen that tiny fingers don’t find daunting. In December, the Podar International School in Mumbai announced that from its next term, lessons for classes VI to XII would be on iPads.

The shake-up

For some parents, it is a way to help their children hone their creativity. Bangalore-based Viswanath Poosala, 41, head of Bell Labs Research India, has two children, a daughter (9) and a son (7) (names withheld on request), and he has been teaching them programming for the last year and a half. Poosala wanted to show his children how computers can be fun. “The key is to find ways to relate your children’s interests to computers. If you make a computer a tool that helps them do what they want, then they will learn enthusiastically,” he says.

Poosala’s son uses a tool called Scratch, a free MIT software for children, to make simple games that he can share with friends; his daughter uses Scratch to make animated, interactive versions of the stories she writes.

To teach his children programming, Poosala first introduced them to a free online game called Light-Bot. “In the game, you have to click on a set of commands, and once you are done, the robot will follow your choices to try and clear an obstacle course. It’s a fun game so children are keen to play it, and it shows them how a computer follows inputs.”

But in Light-Bot, commands are limited, and it is not possible to add custom elements. So Poosala downloaded Scratch. “It’s a visual programming language. You can add images and sounds, but it’s still completely visual, with no actual programming. You just click and choose from different icons,” he adds.

By engaging children with their own creations around their interests, they become more involved in what they are doing, and are keen to share their work with friends. They are more likely to finish projects and start new ones. Using such tools also helps them understand logic as a concept, which can then be applied to any field.

Sachin believes the iPad, especially, is a powerful reading resource that can make books far more attractive to children. He says, “Ever since Gauri discovered iBooks, she’s reading so much more than before. When she gets stuck on a difficult word, she just needs to tap it with her finger to get a definition.”

One such book is the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland app. The book is presented with big, interactive illustrations on every page. Give Alice different bottles when she falls down the rabbit hole, and she will become bigger or smaller, depending on the bottle. Tilt your iPad on another screen, she will fall down and stand up.

New avenues

Enhanced books, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Pedlar Lady, are more advanced, redefining our expectations of children’s books. Take, for instance, Khoya, an iPad app illustrated by Shilo Shiv Suleman and written by Avijit Michael. The app has been showcased at TEDGlobal 2011 in Scotland, the Wired conference in the UK in 2011, and launched at the INK conference in Jaipur in 2011. Khoya has artwork, animated pages, quests that have to be completed in the real world, that require children to help the two protagonists navigate various worlds.

Bangalore-based Suleman says, “People are so excited about how technology is functional and useable that they forget how technology is also magical. Sure, it’s useful to be able to fly to London in 10 hours, but the idea that we are actually floating in the clouds, flying around the world is forgotten.”

Khoya uses technology to get children to explore the natural world along with a screen. While the protagonists of the story undertake their quests, readers are given their own quests such as collecting flower seeds and making photo collections of these seeds. “It’s a real problem that children in the last 10 years have been glued to computers, but now with mobile technology we can get them outside their houses. Photo quests, augmented reality in the garden, are just two examples of how we’re trying to find the links between the earth, magic and technology,” Suleman says.

Technology can also help children find their passions, and guide them through life. Aveek, the son of Bangalore-based media expert Arun Katiyar (56), found his passion through technology. Lego blocks helped Aveek, now 23, develop an interest in mechanical engineering.

Katiyar says Aveek, now studying industrial design at the National University of Singapore, was a fan of Legos since he was 6. When Aveek turned 15, he was gifted Lego Technic, a programmable Lego set. Katiyar says, “The Technic was exceedingly advanced for its time. You take a programmable microchip, and connect it to a computer. You can then program commands in the remote to control the chip. Then you remove the chip, and put it in your Lego creation that is a lot more advanced than the coloured bricks most will be familiar with, as a Technic set includes moving parts, pistons, engines and much more.”

The Technic is not available any more, but Lego now sells the more advanced Mindstorm. Legos are particularly useful as learning tools because of how versatile they are. Children can fit the pieces together to make almost anything they can imagine. By fitting joints and gears, they can create a small machine, entirely by themselves.

Rajesh S. (full name not given on request), runs an environmental NGO in Bangalore, and has worked in the US with several leading IT firms. His two sons, Parthiv, 14, and Tarang, 11, have picked up their parents’ interest in technology and gone with it in different ways. Parthiv learnt about film-making thanks to a discarded video camera, Tarang experiments with circuits around the house, and knows his way around capacitors and resistors.

Rajesh says, “When my elder son was 8, I had an old video camera that no one was using any more. Instead of throwing it away, I gave it to my son. It was an expensive gift, but it didn’t matter even if he broke it.”

Parthiv became fascinated by the camera, and would find new ways to keep using it. Rajesh says Parthiv would write short poems and then make small videos for them. Since he didn’t have a track or a dolly, he mounted the camera on an old toy truck and made his younger brother pull it to take panned shots.

“As he experimented with it, we also encouraged him. He was quickly teaching himself how to make the best use of it. Using their computers, the boys learnt to edit their footage, and put it up themselves as well. Parthiv is interested in the media, and is determined to either direct, or write, or act, undoubtedly because he had access to the right technology in his childhood.”

Tarang used the Internet and a lot of trial and error to find his way around a circuit board—a skill many adults lack. Rajesh says, “I don’t know what got him started. He’s fascinated by circuits, always experimenting and we are happy to buy circuits and capacitors too.”

At the same time, as an environmentalist, Rajesh also wants the boys to experience the outdoors. “My role has actually not been to support them but to discourage them. I want them to spend more time outdoors, and find more interests. Play sports and explore the world as well as their hobbies,” he says.

The points of debate

Expert opinion on the use of technology is divided. Chennai-based child psychologist Lakshmi Rajaram says parents need to monitor how their children are using technology and moderate the amount of time they spend with it. “While it can look harmless, these Internet-connected devices can be a gateway to pornography, violence and all kinds of disturbing and harmful content,” she says.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, also feels that it’s important that younger children at least be given limited access to technology. He says children have to learn fine motor and social skills; tablets and other technology hinder the development of these skills. “For young children, this is counter-productive—if your two-year-old can scroll and zoom on an iPad, that’s nothing to be proud of. You’re underestimating your child, who should be capable of much greater dexterity. New technology is too simple, and doesn’t give the child enough feedback to develop their skills.”

Ramya Somashekhar and her husband, both doctors, live in the UK, but grew up in India. They have a two-year-old son, whom they have kept away from new technology. Somashekhar says, “There’s an information overload in the world today. We want our son to grow up at his own pace, and let him stay a kid for as long as we can. Just because he thinks an iPad is pretty doesn’t mean we want our two-year-old playing with something that expensive. He thinks that a teddy bear and a singing toy truck are equally fascinating. A gadget doesn’t begin to compare to the real world, and we want to keep it that way, so he grows up the way we did.”

At Podar International School in Mumbai, though, students have started using iPads, and Vandana Lulla, director of the school, says only around 10% of the parents have not opted for it. While the school is not providing the iPads, they are offering a financing scheme for them.

She says, “Moving to iPads was a natural step because they are easier for students to use than laptops. We had observed how tech-savvy and comfortable they were, and had gone through studies that show the use of computers makes the learning of science more effective. We can also block access to games on the iPads, so the devices would allow students to work more effectively.”

Mumbai-based writer and freelance journalist Manisha Lakhe almost bought an iPad last year, but her then 13-year-old son Agni Murthy was able to talk her out of it. She says, "Agni told me to buy the Acer Iconia instead, because it was better. I was sure I needed a 3G tablet. He convinced me to get the Wi-Fi one, then sat with it, entered its programming and was able to change it so that it worked using my old 3G dongle, saving me a lot of money."

By looking up a lot of different methods, Agni was able to find the best way to change the installed operating system on the Iconia, and instead run a routed version which would support the function his mother needed, without buying the more expensive 3G model. He says, “I use my laptop to study, to work with my friends on chat, to do homework and Photoshop. I used to draw but now I do a lot of that on Photoshop. I look up a lot of tech stories on the Net, because that’s really interesting. I read about how to make the Iconia work on 3G so I could give my mother advice.”

This positive view is also supported by a study carried out by the US department of education. The 2010 study, Young Children, Apps and iPad, concluded that touch-screen technology allows younger children to play productively with a sophisticated media technology platform. The study found that “the use of touch-screen devices improved tacit and explicit learning, and was easy to pick up for children.”

It continues, “Children are fascinated and engaged by touch-screen devices, and the engagement goes up over time. Using such devices, children learn ‘motor skills, exploration, game concepts and generalization of skills’, where the learning from one app can transfer to another app.” The study also says, “Well-designed apps give children the opportunity to play/learn independently, and to participate in activities that would be messy in the real world, for example, finger painting.”

As Gauri says, “You can do everything with the iPad. You don’t need to carry anything else. I have books, cartoons, and games and we can take them in the car, or outside, or in any room, all the time.”

CHILD-FRIENDLY APPS

The App Store has a lot of child-friendly apps available—some are meant to entertain, while others have an educational component. We hand-picked five of the best apps that have launched this year, for different age groups. We have focused only on iOS apps that offer something over and above real-world analogues.

ALPHATOTS: $0.99(around Rs. 48)

Learning the alphabet is a slow process that involves a lot of repetition and trial and error. The AlphaTots app uses funny sounds and cute animations to make this more fun, and also demonstrates things that a

standard “A is for Apple” style book can’t. For example, F is for Flower is accompanied by a picture of a flower, and turning the page shows G is for Grow, and the flower gets bigger.

GRIMM’S RAPUNZEL POP-UP BOOK: $3.99
This version of Rapunzel’s story is simple, beautifully animated, and from time to time, the angle changes from a 2D view to a 3D angle, where parts of the book pop out of the page and can be played with.

SPARKY THE SHARK: $3.99

This funny e-book is meant

for children above six years of age, and tries to impart lessons of self-confidence, and the importance of being yourself through the adventures of ‘Sparky the Shark’. There’s clever animation work mixed with text and read-aloud sections as well.
FREDDI FISH AND THE STOLEN SHELL: $2.99
Somewhere between a game and an interactive book, ‘Freddi Fish and the Stolen Shell’ tasks children with solving a mystery. There are various touchable elements on each screen and by following the clues, it’s easy to go through the story. Unlike similar games, the app follows consistent logic, so it’s a fun way of teaching children critical thinking.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/grooming-the-geek

Govt working to set up financial CERT to tackle cyber threats

Admin — 2017-11-25T02:28:18Z

IT secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney says the government is getting the framework in place for financial CERT, which will be followed by other sectoral CERTs later.

The article by Komal Gupta was published in Livemint on November 16, 2017

The government is working to set up a financial Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to tackle a rise in cyber threats to India’s financial institutions.

This will be the first sectoral CERT to be introduced in India, said IT secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney on Wednesday.

“Right now, the one which is directly being worked on is the financial CERT. We are getting the framework in place and once that is there, we will look at other sectors, said Sawhney, responding to a question on the progress of setting up of sectoral CERTs in the country. “It will oversee the entire financial sector including banks and financial institutions,” he added.

He was addressing the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) Open Conference in the capital on Wednesday.

In March, the power ministry had announced setting up of four sectoral CERTs for cyber security in power systems—CERT (Transmission), CERT (Thermal), CERT (Hydro) and CERT (Distribution).

According to Sawhney, as of now, there is a national CERT and no other sectoral CERTs. While addressing the conference, he said one of the themes to be discussed will be “How sectoral CERTs can function in conjunction with the national CERT.”

CERT-In is the national nodal agency under the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY), which deals with cyber security threats such as hacking and phishing. The agency is tasked with the collection, analysis and dissemination of information on cyber incidents and even taking emergency measures for handling cyber security incidents.

“The biggest task of sectoral CERT is to share information with the others in the industry. For example, if a bank undergoes an attack; normally the bank will perform all the necessary actions to limit the attack and to prevent it from happening in the future. But the obligation of sharing how the attack happened with all the other banks in India to make sure that they can protect their respective systems from such an attack, can be carried out by a financial CERT,” said Udbhav Tiwari, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based think tank

“From April to October 2017, around 50,000 cyber security incidents have been handled by CERT-In; including phishing, malware attacks, attacks on digital payments and targeted attacks on some of the critical industries,” said cyber security chief Gulshan Rai, who was also present at the event.

A total of 50 incidents of cyber attacks affecting 19 financial organizations have been reported from 2016 till June 2017, PTI reported in August.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-november-16-2017-komal-gupta-govt-working-to-set-up-financial-cert-to-tackle-cyber-threats

Govt websites to get new addresses

praskrishna — 2012-06-11T03:27:19Z

The government today said by December all its websites would switch over to IPv6 — the next generation Web standard that enables the creation of trillions of new Internet addresses and provides higher levels of security.

Click to read the original published by the Telegraph on June 7, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.

Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) went live across the globe today, with leading online giants, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Microsoft (Bing), introducing the new standard on their products and services.

Experts said Internet users would not feel any impact because of the shift.

At present, websites run on IPv4, a 27 year-old standard that allows just over four billion unique IP addresses, which are the sequence of numbers used to identify a device.

Each Internet-enabled device — computer, tablet or smartphone — needs its own IP address to connect to the Internet. However, because of the shortage of addresses, many devices have to share them, limiting the ability of the security agencies to track the exact device involved in a security breach.

Networking giant Cisco has predicted that 18.9 billion devices will be online by 2016.

Switching to IPv6 will ensure a unique IP address for each device.

“IPv6 is designed to handle security issues better... All government websites will be IPv6-compatible by December. For the country as a whole, the road map for transitioning to IPv6 is by 2020,” telecom secretary R. Chandrashekhar said.

Internet traffic that moves over to the new protocol is encrypted. Systems in IPv6 ensure that the traffic gets to the correct destination without being intercepted, analysts said.

To ensure a smooth transition and avert an abrupt disruption, both systems (IPv4 and IPv6) will work simultaneously for the next few years.

“The future of our connected networks is IPv6. Not only is it more efficient and faster than IPv4, which we are currently working with, it is also more reliable and secure,” said Nishant Shah, director (research) at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

India has 35 million IPv4 addresses against a data user base of about 360 million.

In addition, with the government targeting 160 million and 600 million broadband customers by the year 2017 and 2020, respectively, the need to move to IPv6 becomes more crucial. Moreover, there is a strong security requirement to provide unique IP address to each individual user.

The IT department has taken various steps, including organising workshops, to encourage state governments to hold pilot projects.

Twenty-seven government websites have been brought under IPv6 platform.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/govt-websites-to-get-new-addresses

Govt websites face major outage; hacking ruled out

Admin — 2018-04-07T16:17:55Z

Defence Minister orders probe.

The article was published in the Hindu Businessline on April 6, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

In a sudden outage on Friday, a few key government websites went down, sending officials into a tizzy as rumours of a widespread hacking of portals created panic across the corridors of power.

The Ministry of Defence website was the first to go down, with Chinese characters being displayed on the portal’s homepage. Thereafter, one after another, the websites of the Ministries of Home Ministry, Law and Labour and of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) went down.

All the sites were restored by late evening. Late in the day, the National Informatics Centre confirmed that the sites were not hacked. “The site showed what appeared to be a Chinese character and it was understandable that the site was perceived to be hacked . However, it has since been identified that the sites have not been hacked,” an NIC release said.

‘Technical snag’

While the IT Ministry tried to downplay the issue and said that the websites had not been hacked, and that it was a “technical snag”, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said she had ordered a probe into the matter, hinting that it may have been a case of hacking.

“Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website (http://mod.nic.in). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken,” Sitharaman said in a tweet.

This is not first time that Indian government websites faced an outage. The government had informed the Lok Sabha earlier this year that over 700 websites linked to the Central and State governments were hacked in the past four years. In February last year, the website of the Ministry of Home Affairs was hacked.

“Compromising a government website is a low-value attack, but results in a big win for the attackers in the battle over perception,” Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society told BusinessLine. “This usually happens because the server administrator has not configured the software stack properly or is not installing all the security updates in a timely fashion.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-businessline-april-6-2018-govt-websites-face-major-outage-hacking-ruled-out

Govt warns Facebook of stringent legal action if found misusing data

Admin — 2018-03-25T03:14:28Z

IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad says that under the IT Act, Facebook’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, can be summoned to India if required.

The article by Komal Gupta was published by Livemint on March 21, 2018.

The government on Wednesday warned Facebook of stringent legal action if it is found misusing data, with law and information technology (IT) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad saying that under the IT Act, the social media giant’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, can be summoned to India if required.

The warning came after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged that the Congress party was associated with London-based analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which is at the centre of a global storm on the alleged misuse of data from 50 million Facebook users.

Prasad said the Congress indulged in “theft of online data” to help with its election campaigns, a charge that the opposition party denied.

“Will the Congress party depend on data manipulation and theft to woo voters? What is Cambridge Analytica’s role in (Congress president) Rahul Gandhi’s social media profile,” Prasad, who is also a senior BJP spokesperson, said in an interaction with reporters.

“Indian National Congress or the Congress president have never used and never hired the services of the company called Cambridge Analytica mentioned by the Union law minister. This is a fake agenda, a white lie being dished out on fake facts by the law minister unfortunately, and this has become a daily order,” Randeep Surjewala, the Congress party’s chief spokesperson, said.

Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive Alexander Nix—who was suspended on Tuesday—was secretly recorded in a Channel 4 sting claiming that the company ran Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 US presidential election. The firm is accused of harvesting private data from millions of Facebook profiles to influence and identify voter behaviour.

As of January, there were around 250 million Facebook users in India.

According to security experts, the incident yet again highlights the need for a stronger data protection law in the country.

“It has been almost six years since the report of the Justice AP Shah group of experts on privacy, but India still doesn’t have a data protection law. We urgently need a law that enshrines privacy by design — that would prevent entities like Truecaller from gaining access to third parties’ data without their consent, and entities like Facebook from providing it— as well as a liability regime that would enable an Indian data protection authority to hold accountable those who violate the law,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at think tank Centre for Internet and Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-komal-gupta-march-21-2018-govt-warns-facebook-of-stringent-legal-action-if-found-misusing-data

Govt wants to scrub the Internet clean

praskrishna — 2011-12-07T04:07:03Z

Web advocacy groups, experts say govt’s move to evolve content guidelines amounts to censorship. This article by Surabhi Agarwal & Leslie D’monte was published in Livemint on 7 December 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.

India, the world’s largest democracy, may force companies such as Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Facebook Inc. to take down online content that it deems offensive because they haven’t been able to come up with an effective self-censorship mechanism governing millions of users.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had no option but to "evolve guidelines" to ensure that "blasphemous content on the Internet or television is not allowed", with Internet and social networking sites such as those above "failing to respond to and cooperate with" the government’s request to keep "objectionable" content out of their websites, Kapil Sibal, minister of communications and information technology (IT), said in New Delhi on Tuesday.

His comments unleashed a firestorm of criticism by Internet advocacy groups and experts, who said the move amounted to censorship and was anti-democratic, impractical and unwarranted since existing laws were comprehensive enough to remove "objectionable" content. The move, they argued, would also stem the growth of user-generated content sites, and thus the Internet itself.

The government has been battling a series of corruption scandals and criticism of its inability to move forward on policy reforms. A campaign against corruption fuelled by online support has also challenged the government’s authority to legislate, forcing its own version of an anti-graft legislation onto the agenda.

The latest move by the government follows the introduction of new rules to the Information Technology Act, 2008, that were published earlier this year, also heavily criticized, that called on Internet service providers (ISPs) along with other entities to police online postings, including blogs.

Sibal referred to what he considered objectionable content as a "matter of grave concern", which affects the "sensibility of our people and is against our cultural ethos".

Once the new policy framework is implemented, companies “will be duty-bound to share information about those who post content, even if it (the content) is posted outside India”. He didn’t say by when the policy would be put in place.

Discussions with executives from the firms mentioned above had begun in September, Sibal said. They had been asked to come up with solutions to address the perceived problem in a month’s time and had failed to do so, he said.

According to local media reports, the move follows posts about some senior Congress leaders, including party president Sonia Gandhi. The minister, who is also one of India’s top lawyers, did not refer to any specific "objectionable" material during his press briefing, but rued that “the content has still not been removed".

Google India defended the right of free speech, while saying that it didn’t condone illegality.

"Even where content is legal but breaks our own terms and conditions, we take that down too, once we’ve been notified about it," Google India said in a release. "But it also means that when content is legal but controversial, we don’t remove it because people’s differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal."

Facebook India also said that it would remove any content that crossed the line.

It "has policies and onsite features in place that enable people to report abusive content", the company said. "We will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service."

While Yahoo India declined to comment, Microsoft did not respond to an email till press time.

Internet censorship is a rising trend, with approximately 40 countries filtering the Web in varying degrees, including democratic and non-democratic governments. Governments are using increasingly sophisticated censorship and surveillance techniques, including blocking social networks, to restrict a variety of types of content, says the 2010 Global Network Initiative (GNI) report. GNI seeks to protect freedom of speech online.

This August, for instance, the Centre had written to the department of telecommunications, asking it to "ensure effective monitoring of Twitter and Facebook", which minister of state for communications and IT Milind Deora acknowledged a few days later in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha. He mentioned access to “encrypted data” on social networking sites, but did not elaborate on the subject.

Currently, the Indian Telegraph Act and the IT Act, 2008, (amendments were introduced in IT Act, 2000) give the government the power to monitor, intercept and even block online conversations and websites. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has put up a list of 11 such websites blocked by a government order. The data was received from the department of information technology (DIT).

Moreover, under section 79 of the IT Intermediary (Rules and Guidelines), 2011, intermediaries (comprising telcos, ISPs, network services providers, search engines, cyber cafes, Web-hosting companies, online auction portals and online payment sites) are mandated to exercise "due diligence" and advise users not to share/distribute information violative of the law or a person’s privacy and rights. Intermediaries are expected to act on a complaint within 36 hours of receiving it, and remove such content when warranted.

In case the intermediary doesn’t find the content objectionable, the matter will have to be contested in a court of law.

"Currently, you need a court of law to direct a company in case something has to be removed. That takes a lot of time. So there has to be a mechanism that is faster in dealing with such content as (it) can be very damaging," said a DIT official, who did not want to be named.

"The Indian government can, and should, monitor conversations and websites if it believes the content can harm the security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of the country," said Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer and cyber law expert. However, he wondered how the government would go about implementing the task of monitoring each and every conversation on an unstructured Internet.

Bangalore-based CIS, an Internet advocacy group, said "this pre-emptive manual screening of content, if implemented, would sound the death knell of freedom of expression in India".

"This screening is worrisome. Companies will err on the side of caution in a bid to please the government, and the courts will not be involved," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of CIS. “This is not only unconstitutional, but technically impossible too. Speech and words have nuances. Can humans decipher these with accuracy?"

The move will undermine key principles on which the Internet was built, said Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of digital industry news and analysis blog MediaNama.

"It is completely impossible to enforce this. There is no way that content can be prescreened before it is placed online," he said. “It also kills the concept of immediate communication, which the Internet stands for."

Cyber law expert NA Vijayashankar, who runs cyber law information portal Naavi, said: "The government has valid reason to control anti-national activities on the Internet. But there are existing laws for it. The current proposition is impractical since pre-scrutiny of content on the Internet is not possible. It will affect the growth of user-generated content, which is helping Internet penetration grow in India."

Internet censorship happens frequently in countries such as Myanmar, Cuba, China (which had blocked keyword searches of the word "Egypt" on the Internet as well as on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. On the very day the Egyptian government set out to block Internet services in the country (in January), US Republican senator Susan Collins floated the COICA Bill, popularly called the "kill switch" Bill, which, if approved, would give the US president similar powers.

Read the original published in Livemint here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/scrub-the-internet-clean

Govt wants to monitor Facebook, Twitter

praskrishna — 2011-08-09T09:21:55Z

The Union home ministry has written to the department of telecom asking it to "ensure effective monitoring of Twitter and Facebook".

Milind Deora, minister of state for communications and information technology, said in written reply to a question on Friday in the Rajya Sabha that DoT has received a letter from MHA to ensure monitoring of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to "strengthen cyber security paraphernalia".

He said that in cases where the data is encrypted, the department works with all concerned parties to obtain lawful access to it.

Citing security a reason, India in the recent months has sought more surveillance and monitoring from internet service providers as well as companies like Research In Motion, which sells BlackBerry phones capable of encrypted emails and messaging.

In April the government notified a new set of IT rules, virtually making intermediaries like internet service providers and web hosts and websites like Facebook and Twitter responsible for any wrongdoings on their networks. The rules were widely criticized by privacy activists.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society said these "blanket surveillance practices" are counterproductive.

"People advocating greater surveillance don't understand how the web works. In some cases, if there is evidence, targeted monitoring can be done but if governments wants to go through each tweet and every status update, it's just waste of money and resources. Agencies involved in monitoring can do better work by focusing on core issues. This will also save ordinary law-abiding citizens from unnecessary harassment," said Abraham.

According to their policies, Twitter and Facebook don't share any private information available on their servers without valid court order or subpoena. Twitter had said in the past that even if there was a court order, it would first inform the users in question before sharing information related to them.

This article was published in the Times of India on August 8, 2011. The original can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/govt-to-monitor-facebook-twitter

Govt vs Tweeple: Has clampdown hit free speech?

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T12:46:27Z

Has the Government crossed the line by ordering the blocking of several Twitter accounts, many belonging to prominent journalists? The debate was featured in NDTV on August 23, 2012.

Sunil Abraham spoke to Sonia Singh of NDTV. Sunil said that "we should focus on designing of the censorship regime in the country and the lack of compliance with the principles of natural justice".

Watch the full video on NDTV here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ndtv-com-aug-23-2012-govt-vs-tweeple-has-clampdown-hit-free-speech

Govt tweaks enforcement of IT Act after spate of arrests

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T08:27:01Z

The government on Thursday tweaked the law to make it tougher for citizens to be arrested for online comments that are deemed offensive after recent arrests came in for heavy criticism by Internet activists, the media and other groups.

Surabhi Agarwal's article was published in LiveMint on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

This took place just before the Supreme Court was to hear a public interest litigation seeking an amendment to the Information Technology (IT) Act.

Complaints under the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act, which criminalizes “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online or electronically, can be registered only with the permission of an officer of or above the rank of deputy commissioner of police, and inspector general in metro cities, said a senior government official.

The government, however, has not amended the terms in the section that are said to be vague and subject to interpretation.

The public interest litigation against Section 66A filed by student Shreya Singhal came up in chief justice Altamas Kabir’s court on Thursday. The matter will be heard on Friday.

Two girls near Mumbai were arrested last week for criticizing on Facebook the shutdown in the city for Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s funeral. Earlier in November, a businessman in Puducherry was arrested for comments made on Twitter against finance minister P. Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram.

According to people present at the meeting of the cyber regulatory advisory committee on Thursday, the Union government will issue guidelines to states with respect to the compliance of the new enforcement rules soon. The people didn’t want to be named. An official said the move was not related to the case.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society think tank, said that while the change in the law is a step in the right direction and will eliminate a lot of frivolous complaints, more needs to be done to make the legislation specific.

Chief justice Kabir said the apex court was considering taking suo motu cognisance of recent incidents.

Singhal contended in her plea that “the phraseology of section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, is so wide and vague and incapable of being judged on objective standards, that it is susceptible to wanton abuse and, hence, falls foul of Article 14, 19 (1)(a) and Article 21 of the Constitution.”

She submitted that “unless there is judicial sanction as a prerequisite to the setting into motion the criminal law with respect to freedom of speech and expression, the law as it stands is highly susceptible to abuse and for muzzling free speech in the country.”

The PIL was argued by Mukul Rohatgi, who said in his opening remarks that Section 66A was vague. Terms such as “offensive” and “annoyance” should be clearly defined as the section is part of criminal law, he said.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who was also present during the hearing, said India guaranteed the right to “annoy” and there was no need to have a separate law.

Salve, who is in the process of filing an intervention on behalf of some technology companies, added that the section needed to be narrowed to specifically cater to private messages sent electronically and not social media communications.

He said the existing law of defamation should suffice and could be extended to include electronic communications. According to a lawyer who is part of the team representing Singhal, the petition also demanded that the law be made non-cognisable so that the police can’t make an arrest without an order from a magistrate.

“There has been a lot of misuse and abuse of the law recently and we want it to be struck down absolutely and also the court to issue guidelines,” he said.

Apart from the incident at Palghar in Thane district involving the two girls, Singhal’s PIL referred to an April incident in which a professor of chemistry from Jadavpur University in West Bengal, Ambikesh Mahapatra, was arrested for posting a cartoon concerning chief minister Mamata Banerjee on a social networking site.

She also referred to the Puducherry case as well as the May arrests of two Air India Ltd employees, V. Jaganatharao and Mayank Sharma, by the Mumbai Police under the IT Act for posting content on Facebook and Orkut against a trade union leader and some politicians.

Singhal has sought guidelines from the apex court to “reconcile Section 41 and 156 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) with Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution” and that offences under the Indian Penal Code and any other legislation, if they involve the freedom of speech and expression, be treated as a non-cognizable offences for the purposes of Sections 41 and 156 (1).

Section 41 of CPC empowers the police to arrest any person without an order from a magistrate and without a warrant in the event that the offence involved is a cognizable offence. Section 156 (1) empowers the investigation by the police into a cognizable offence without an order from a magistrate.

The government official present at the cyber regulatory advisory committee said the expressions used in Section 66A had been taken from different statutes around the world, including the UK and the US.

“There has been a broad consensus that the parameters of the law concerned might be in order but from a procedural standpoint there might be difficulty,” the official said.

Prakash said that while some of the terms in the section may be taken from legislation overseas, the penalty imposed under the Indian law is far more stringent at three years of imprisonment than, for instance, six months under the UK law. “Criminal offences can’t be put at the same level as something which causes insult.”

The cyber regulatory advisory committee meeting was attended by minister for communications and information technolgy Kapil Sibal, and secretaries of the department of telecommunications and information technology, besides representatives of technology companies such as Google and Facebook, industry associations and civil society.

The official also said that the situation will be reviewed every three to four months based on “ground realities”.

A government official said on condition of anonymity that the decision to revive the cyber regulatory advisory committee had been taken at a meeting in August. Section 66A was put on the agenda since it was the subject of much debate, he said. The meeting, however, was not a pre-emptive measure ahead of the PIL that was taken up in the Supreme Court. The official also said that the government will spell out its position in court in favour of the legislation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-politics-november-29-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-tweaks-enforcement-of-it-act-after-spate-of-arrests

Govt to keep Aadhaar record for 7 years, activists worried

praskrishna — 2016-10-17T01:53:24Z

The government will keep for seven years a record of all the services and benefits availed using the Aadhaar number, say new rules, prompting fears that the database could be used for surveillance.

The article by Aloke Tikku was published in the Hindustan Times on October 17, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues the 12-digit biometric identity to all Indian residents, will be required to preserve its record of verification of an Aadhaar number for the duration.

“This is an unprecedented centralised data retention provision,” said Sunil Abraham, director of the Bengaluru-based think tank, Centre for Internet and Society.

UIDAI chief executive officer ABP Pandey said the concerns were exaggerated. The agency was keeping records in case a dispute arose over a transaction.

The information will be retained online for two years and another five years in the offline archives, say the rules notified in September.

Users will be able to check the records but only for two years.

This restriction won’t apply to security agencies. Pandey, however, said the records would not be available to them without a district judge’s permission.

But, HT found that the rules allow designated joint secretary-level officers at the Centre to order access to information on the grounds of national security.

“Once Aadhaar becomes mandatory for all services, it can be used by benign and malignant actors to conduct a 360-degree surveillance on any individual,” Abraham said.

This is how the system, which will need millions of fingerprint-reading machines, works.

Every time a person fingerprints and quotes the Aadhaar number, the agency concerned sends the data to UIDAI to crosscheck the particulars.

The UIDAI authenticates about five million Aadhaar numbers, which are quoted to avail LPG subsidy, cheap ration and even passport, a day against a capacity to verify 100 million requests daily.

“You can think of it as Natgrid Plus,” Abraham said, a reference to the National Intelligence Grid being built by the government.

A one-stop database for counter-terrorism agencies, Natgrid will collate information real time from databases of various agencies such as bank, rail and airline networks.

“…we do not record the purpose for which an authentication request was received but only the details of the agency that sent it,” UIDAI’s Pandey said.

But seven years is a long time. Only a select category of government files are kept for longer than five years.

Asked about two-year deadline for users, Pandey said it would have been a logistic nightmare to let people access the records once the information was offline.

The Supreme Court has a ruled that Aadhaar is not a must for availing welfare schemes and is to decide if collecting biometric data for the 12-digit number infringed an individual’s privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-aloke-tikku-october-17-2016-govt-to-keep-aadhaar-record-for-seven-years-activitsts-worried

Govt releases white paper on data protection framework

Admin — 2017-11-28T14:34:09Z

Public comments are welcome till 31 December on the data protection white paper, which is aimed at securing digital transactions and addressing privacy issues.

The article by Komal Gupta was published in Livemint on November 28, 2017

A nuanced approach towards data protection will have to be followed in India, keeping in mind the fact that individual privacy is a fundamental right limited by reasonable restrictions, according to a white paper issued by the government on a data protection framework.

The government has sought public comments till 31 December on the white paper, which is aimed at securing digital transactions and addressing customer and privacy protection issues.

The white paper, drafted by the committee of experts on data protection framework, was released by the ministry of electronics and information technology on Monday.

On 31 July, the government constituted a 10-member committee of experts headed by former Supreme Court justice B.N. Srikrishna to study various issues relating to data protection and make specific suggestions on the principles to be considered for data protection as well as suggest a draft Data Protection bill.

Other members of the committee include telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan, Unique Identification Authority of India chief executive Ajay Bhushan Pandey, and additional secretary in the information technology ministry Ajay Kumar.

The committee seeks to put the onus on stakeholders and the public through a questionnaire on issues such as collection of personal data, consent of consumers, penalties and compensation, code of conduct and an enforcement model that should be set up.

“The sensitivity of the data could also develop based on its combination with other types of information. For example, an email address taken in isolation, is not sensitive. However, if it is combined with a password, then it could become sensitive as it opens access to many other websites and systems, which may expose the individual to harm such as cyberattacks and phishing frauds,” the white paper said.

It is also possible that personal or even non-personal data, when processed using big data analytics, could be transformed into sensitive personal data. Therefore, there may be a need to create safeguards which will prevent misuse of personal information in these contexts of use, it added.

The white paper also seeks “to designate certain lawful grounds under which data can be processed, even in the absence of consent.”

In some situations, seeking consent prior to a data processing activity would not be possible, or it may defeat the purpose of the processing. For instance, where law enforcement officials need to apprehend a criminal, seeking the consent of the criminal prior to processing would defeat the purpose of the investigation, it said.

“It seems to be an eminently reasonable white paper which raises the right questions. However, it lacks analysis of data protection vis-a-vis Aadhaar,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based think tank.

Safeguarding privacy rights needs much more than a data protection law; it needs a larger consultation that includes issues like surveillance as well, added Prakash.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-november-28-2017-komal-gupta-govt-releases-white-paper-on-data-protection-framework

Govt proposal to muzzle bloggers sparks outcry

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:46:23Z

A government proposal seeking to police blogs has come in for severe criticism from legal experts and outraged the online community. The draft rules, drawn up by the government under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, deal with due diligence to be observed by an intermediary. This article was published in the Times of India on March 10, 2011.

Under the Act, an 'intermediary' is defined as any entity which on behalf of another receives, stores or transmits any electronic record. Hence, telecom networks, web-hosting and internet service providers, search engines, online payment and auction sites as well as cyber cafes are identified as intermediaries. The draft has strangely included bloggers in the category of intermediaries, setting off the online outcry.

Blogs are clubbed with network service providers as most of them facilitate comment and online discussion and preserve the traffic as an electronic record, but equating them with other intermediaries is like comparing apples with oranges, says Pavan Duggal, advocate in the Supreme Court and an eminent cyber law expert.

'This will curtail the freedom of expression of individual bloggers because as an intermediary they will become responsible for the readers' comments. It technically means that any comment or a reader-posted link on a blog which according to the government is threatening, abusive, objectionable, defamatory, vulgar, racial, among other omnibus categories, will now be considered as the legal responsibility of the blogger," he explains.

Even Google, the host of Blogger, among India's most popular blogging sites, expressed displeasure at the proposal. "Blogs are platforms that empower people to communicate with one another, and we don't believe that an internet middlemen should be held unreasonably liable for content posted by users," a spokesperson told TOI.

Blogs, which are typically maintained and updated by individuals, have showcased their political importance in recent times and the internet community views these rules as a lopsided attempt to curtail an individual's right to expression.

"If individual blogs are an intermediary, then why can't Facebook and Twitter also be classified as such, as they too receive, store and transmit electronic records and facilitate online discussions," retorts the spokesperson of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based organization, which works on digital pluralism. "These rules will not only bring bloggers and the ISP provider on the same platform, but the due diligence clause will also result in higher power of censorship to the larger player. Imagine your ISP provider blocking your blog because it finds that certain user-comments fit these omnibus terms," the CIS spokesperson added.

Most experts, including Duggal, see these rules as the outcome of the government's one-size-fits-all approach — at least in regulating online activities — and ask for an amendment to the IT Act.

Read the original article in the Times of India here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/govt-proposal

Govt presses 'undo' button on draft encryption policy

praskrishna — 2015-09-25T01:55:57Z

The decision came a day before PM embarked on a visit to the US, where he is expected to meet leaders of firms such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla.

The article was published in Business Standard on September 23, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

The government on Tuesday scrapped a draft national encryption policy that mandated firms and individuals to allow authorities access to all encrypted information on email, apps, websites and business servers.

The decision came a day before Prime MinisterNarendra Modi embarked on a visit to the US, where he is expected to meet leaders of firms such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla. Activists and executives from technology firms had expressed outrage on the draft policy, saying the move would have taken India a step back in technology adoption.

At a meeting of the Union Cabinet on Tuesday, Modi was livid at the controversy generated by the draft policy and directed officials to withdraw it ahead of his US trip, sources said.

The draft had global ramifications, as Facebook,Twitter and messaging apps such as WhatsApp were named in it.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for communications and information technology, distanced the government from the draft hosted on the IT department site, but admitted it gave “uncalled-for misgivings”. He directed officials to rework the draft but did not set a timeframe for seeking feedback from the public.

“Yesterday (Monday), it was brought to our notice that the draft had been put in the public domain for, seeking comment. I read the draft. I understand that the manner in which it was written could lead to misconceptions. I have asked for the draft policy to be withdrawn and reworded. I personally feel some of the expressions used in the draft are giving rise to uncalled-for misgivings,” Prasad said. “Experts had framed the draft policy. It is not the government’s final view.”

According to the original draft, the encryption policy sought every message sent by a user, be it through services such as WhatsApp, an SMS or an email, be mandatorily stored in plain text format for 90 days and made available on demand to security agencies. Failure to do so, it added, would draw legal action.

This was because typically, all messaging apps and services such as WhatsApp, Viber, Line, Google Chat and Yahoo! Messenger have high levels of encryption, which security agencies find hard to crack and intercept.

Early on Tuesday, before Prasad announced the withdrawal of the draft policy, the government had issued an addendum to keep social media and web applications such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook out of its purview.

In a three-point clarification, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) said some encryption products were exempt. “Mass-use encryption products, currently being used in web applications, social media sites and social media applications, such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter…SSL/TLS encryption products being used in internet banking and payment gateways, as directed by the Reserve Bank of India”, and SSL/TLS encryption products being used for e-commerce and password based transactions,” it said.

“Ideally, the new policy should only focus on two objectives: It should mandate encryption standards within the government, military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It shouldn’t regulate the use of encryption by the private sector; the private sector should be allowed to use whatever it believes is appropriate, as long as it is considered a reasonable security measure by courts, under section 43A of the IT Act,” said Sunil Abraham, director,Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Prasad reiterated the government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had promoted social media activism. “The right of articulation and freedom we fully respect. But at the same time, we need to acknowledge that cyber space transaction is rising enormously for individuals, businesses, the government and companies,” he said.

Opposition parties slammed the Draft policy. Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala said, “Subjugation of individual freedom, surveillance of the citizen and suppression of dissent have emerged as the DNA of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government. The draft policy on encryption, first circulated, then amended and now, withdrawn with a rider for re-issuing it, is a totalitarian, misconceived and a failed attempt of the Modi government to override all sense of individual freedom of speech and expression and encroach upon the right to privacy of communication…With 243.1 million internet users in India at the end of 2014 (173 million being mobile internet users), 112 million Facebook users, 80 million WhatsApp users, 22 million Twitter users and 950 million mobile connections, the intrusion of individual liberty is fraught with dangerous dimensions under the Modi government.”

Aam Aadmi Party spokesperson Raghav Chadha said, “Only a fascist government can bring such a policy. The draft policy was in violation of the right to personal liberty and the fundamental tenets of freedom of speech and expression…the draft policy was for snooping. It presupposes the 1.2 billion people of India are potential criminals. It reflects the inclination of the government and its intention to turn India into a totalitarian state.”

ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENCRYPTION POLICY

Five things the government draft policy wanted

Information security for individuals, businesses and government agencies
Development of indigenous encryption standards
Use of digital signatures to authenticate transactions
Legal interception and data retention
Service providers to register under appropriate government agency

Things that caused outrage

Regulation of private sector encryption
Storage of all encrypted communications for

90 days

Gaining backdoor into private communications of users

Amendment & withdrawal

Omission of mass encryption products such as those used by social networks
Withdrawal of draft policy following Ravi Shankar Prasad’s statement

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-23-2015-govt-presses-undo-button-on-draft-encryption-policy

Govt plans inter-ministerial panel on Internet policy

praskrishna — 2012-09-25T10:28:08Z

The government may set up an inter-ministerial panel to improve coordination among the various arms of the government on Internet-related issues such as governance, commerce and security, according to a senior government official who didn’t want to be named.

Surabhi Agarwal's article was originally published in LiveMint on September 19, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The panel will have representation from government departments including information technology, telecom, home, external affairs and commerce among others. The proposal is being considered because there are multiple stakeholders involved, said the official. The panel will be most likely be headed by the department of electronics and information technology, which is currently the policymaking body on the Internet.

Over the past year, the government has been criticized over several Internet-related issues, all of them to do with censorship. It received flak recently for the way it sought to contain the spread of hate messages over the Internet that had led to communal violence and a panic exodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities.

Moreover, with the underlying aim of having a bigger say in global policymaking pertaining to the Internet, the government had proposed the establishment of the United Nations Committee on Internet Related Policy (UN-CIRP). The agency’s mandate will include developing and establishing international public policies relating to the Internet; coordinating and overseeing bodies responsible for the technical and operational functioning of the Internet; facilitating negotiation of treaties; undertaking arbitration and dispute resolution; and crisis management, among others.

The government has said that the intent behind proposing such a body was not to control the Internet but to develop a mechanism for globally acceptable and harmonized policy making. The move though has largely been construed as an effort by governments to regulate the Internet.

Currently, the Internet is largely governed by the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). However, the government says ICANN is dominated mostly by the US, explaining the need for a body such as UN-CIRP.

Another government official confirmed that an inter-ministerial panel is currently being “mulled” over. This official, who also did not want to be identified, said the Internet governance policy is increasing in importance and there was a need to discuss whether the current global policymaking structure would be relevant in the next five years.

“We need to firm up the country’s stand at international forums of the Internet and an inter-ministerial committee will aid in bringing some kind of clarity,” he said.

Any proposal for better coordination between different wings of the government would be welcome, said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization Centre for Internet and Society.

“The thumb rule with governance, be it international or national, is that coordination policy formulation bodies is a good idea, but we can’t damn or praise them over the process,” he said. “We have to see what coordination results out of the body.”

Rajya Sabha member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opposing UN-CIRP, had said that India’s proposal was made without much discussion and stakeholder consultation.

There wasn’t enough clarity about what the government trying to regulate through the body, Abraham said.

“Is it to regulate citizens or industry or government activity or for regulation around IP (intellectual property), competition, data protection, crime or tax, we don’t know,” he said.

The problem with UN-CIRP is that India would be supported by countries that are against free access to the Internet such as Cuba, China and Russia to name a few, Naresh Ajwani, a member of the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a meet in Delhi on the issue.

However, the government feels that not only will UN-CIRP lead to India having a bigger role in global policymaking for the Internet, it will also help in dealing with crises better as it will lead to enhanced cooperation between nations.

Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-sep-19-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-plans-inter-ministerial-panel-on-internet-policy

Govt panel wants curbs on phone taps

praskrishna — 2012-10-22T09:57:05Z

A government-appointed panel on Thursday recommended several measures, including guidelines on interception of telephonic conversations, video and audio recordings, use and storage of data as well as setting up of dispute resolution entities at Centre and state-level to protect the privacy of individuals.

Read the original published in the Times of India on October 19, 2012.

The group led by former Delhi High Court chief justice A P Shah was set up by the Planning Commission to identify privacy issues and prepare a document to facilitate the proposed Privacy Act.

The group was set after concerns were raised about the impact on privacy of individuals with the emergence of several national programmes such as Unique Identification number, NATGRID, DNA profiling, Reproductive Rights of Women, privileged communications and brain mapping, most of which will be implemented through information and communication technology (ICT) platforms.

The panel recommended that reasons for interception must be specified and be recorded in writing and the provisions establish conditions for authorization by the competent authority. It said that all interceptions can be in force for 60 days and renewed for not more than 180 days. The panel said records of interception be destroyed by the security agencies after six months or nine months and service providers must destroy records after two months or six months. It also said that intermediaries must provide an internal check to ensure the security, confidentiality and privacy of intercepted material, and intermediaries would be held legally responsible for any unauthorized access or disclosure of intercepted materials.

The panel said the proposed Act should extend the right of privacy to individuals and bring under its regulation data controllers, which includes all corporates, public/ governmental bodies and organizations. Minister of State for Planning Ashwani Kumar said, "The group has evaluated what is happening in the other country and what is the constitutional position in India... how imperatives of national security and right to privacy of individual can be harmonized."

It said the Act should clarify that publication of personal data for artistic and journalistic purposes in public interest, use of personal information for household purposes and disclosure of information as required by the RTI Act should not constitute an "infringement of privacy".

The proposed Privacy Act should also articulate national privacy principles. The principles will extend and be binding to all private/ public data controllers. It said the principles must establish safeguards and procedures over the collection, processing, storage, retention, access, disclosure, destruction of sensitive personal information, personal identifiable information and identifiable information.

The Act should establish the Central office of the privacy commissioner, regional level privacy commissioner, self regulating organizations at the industry level and data controllers and privacy officers if required at the organization level, the report recommended.

The panel also recommended that the infringement of any provision under the Act should constitute as an "offence" and individuals may seek "compensation" from organizations/ bodies held accountable.

The group agreed that any proposed framework for privacy legislation must be technologically neutral and interoperable with international standards. "Specifically, the Privacy Act should not make any reference to specific technologies and must be generic enough such that principle and enforcement mechanisms adaptable to changes in society, the market place, technology and government," the report said.

Note: The Centre for Internet & Society was part of the expert committee even though not explicitly mentioned.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-october-19-2012-govt-panel-wants-curbs-on-phone-taps