We are anonymous, we are legion

Facebook launches Internet.org in India

praskrishna — 2015-03-13T02:27:14Z

Joins hands with Reliance Communications. Move spurs neutrality concerns.

The article by Lalatendu Mishra and Sriram Srinivasan was published in the Hindu on February 11, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Facebook on Tuesday announced a tie-up with Reliance Communications to launch Internet.org in India, bringing to the land of a billion-plus people a service that the social media giant says helps affordable Internet access but whose critics disapprove its restrictiveness.

India now becomes the sixth destination for Internet.org, a Facebook-led initiative envisaged about a year-and-a-half back with six other founding partners, including Samsung and Qualcomm. The service has already been launched in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Colombia and Ghana.

Facebook’s 30-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the development on his social network. He posted, “More than a billion people in India don’t have access to the internet. That means they can’t enjoy the same opportunities many of us take for granted, and the entire world is robbed of their ideas and creativity.”

The tie-up gives subscribers of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications who have Internet-enabled handsets free access to 38 Websites – a mix of news, music, education, weather and health sites. The list includes Facebook, Wikipedia, and Reliance Astrology. The lone search option available is Microsoft’s Bing. They can be accessed via an Android app.

For the time being, the service has gone live in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. The pan-India launch is planned in three months. Nearly 70% of Reliance’s customers who have Internet-enabled phones but are now offline are expected to avail themselves of this service.

Gurdeep Singh, CEO, Consumer Business, Reliance Communications, said during the launch in Mumbai, “This partnership will not only accelerate internet penetration In India, it will also open new socioeconomic opportunities to users in fields like education, information and commerce.”

Chris Daniels, Vice President of Internet.org at Facebook, said, “This is a big step forward in our efforts to connect every one in India to the internet and help people discover new tools and information that can create more jobs and opportunities.”

Critics, however, see little altruism in Internet.org. Rather, what they see is a huge challenge to the neutrality of the Internet. Their point is that a selective access to the Internet makes it extremely difficult for rivals not part of the service.

Lawyer Prashant Reddy said, “It will be interesting to see how Trai (the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) handles such deals, and whether the market will accuse both these players of violating network neutrality.”

He said, “Also one needs to see how public understands the principles of Net neutrality.” His point is: there is no outcry when data packs are offered free but controversy erupts when a service provider tries to charge subscribers for services, as in the case of Airtel recently.

Internet activist and director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, Ethan Zuckerman, told The Hindu in an email interview that "If Facebook were donating millions or billions to upgrade infrastructure - or even to lobby mobile phone carriers for cheaper data services for all - it would be less troubling. But instead, they're offering a limited version of the internet, one that centers on Facebook, to low-income internet users. That raises real concerns that this is not a charitable effort, but a customer acquisition strategy."

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director of the Bengaluru-based research and advocacy organisation The Centre for Internet & Society, said he is worried about the long-term consequences. “The Internet.org model violates most definitions of net neutrality, as it provides access to a limited menu of services claiming to be the Internet — being based on a cable TV model — rather than providing actual access to the Internet at a low cost.”

He said, “Since it is an exclusive deal with a single mobile service provider, it also calls into question the genuineness of Mark Zuckerberg’s publicly-stated motive of bringing the Internet to a billion people and bridging the digital divide.”

It isn’t clear how Facebook and Reliance would bear the cost of the free service. What Facebook said in its annual report of 2013 is that it would continue to invest in projects even if it doesn’t have a clear path to monetisation, “such as our commitment to the Internet.org initiative to increase global Internet access.”

Even prior to the internet.org initiative, companies such as Facebook and Twitter have individually worked out deals with telecom companies in fast-growing markets to make their services free for subscribers. Research firm eMarketer had forecast India to be the fastest-growing geography for Facebook in terms of users in 2014.

(With inputs from Sanjay Vijayakumar)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-lalatendu-mishra-sriram-srinivasan-february-11-2015-hindu-facebook-launches-internet-org-in-india

Facebook launches India tech scholars programme for law students

praskrishna — 2021-06-26T04:55:39Z

Facebook India on Friday announced a new initiative - the Facebook India Tech Scholars (FITS) programme - for law students in the country.

The article was published in the Times of India on June 4, 2021.

The novel programme aims to provide students from select leading law schools in the country a platform for research and mentorship on topics related to technology law and policy.

The first edition, the FITS programme 2021-2022, will offer eight law students an opportunity to work on a research project with leading Indian thinktanks who will also extend mentorship support to the students. It will be open to 4th and 5th year students from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, the WB National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, the National Law University, Delhi, and the National Law University, Jodhpur.

"With rapid advancements in technology and the evolution of technology law and policy in India, the programme is designed to encourage students to develop an independent voice on pressing topics that will have a bearing on future policy discussions in this area," the social networking giant said in a statement.

"We hope to expand the FITS programme to more students in coming years," it added.

The FITS programme 2021-2022 will see the Centre for Internet and Society, the Observer Research Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace India, and the Software Freedom Law Center participating as mentoring institutions. Facebook is also guided by an experienced and expert Advisory Committee for the duration of the programme. Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. will be a knowledge partner.

Applications will close on June 20. The FITS programme will run for a period of nine months, commencing in Summer 2021.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-june-4-2021-facebook-launches-india-tech-scholars-programme-for-law-students

Facebook launches FB Newswire for journalists; loses part of its immunity under IT Act 2000

praskrishna — 2014-05-06T05:41:03Z

A bus accident in California, a fire in New Jersey and another in Vasant Kunj, NASA's successful test flight of its vertical take-off and landing craft, a ceremony to honour the sherpas who died during an avalanche at the Everest last week, and, Israel's suspension of talks with Palestinian authorities. These were some of the news that were disseminated on the first day of Facebook's newest social tool: a newswire to aid journalists and newsrooms.

The article was published in DNA on April 26, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In a tie-up with News Corp's Storyful, Facebook launched the Newswire late on Thursday to function as a tool to aid journalists and newsrooms to "find, share and embed newsworthy content from Facebook in the media they produce". Apart from Facebook, the tool is also accessible on twitter at @FBNewswire.

"FB Newswire aggregates newsworthy content shared publicly on Facebook by individuals and organisations across the world for journalists to use in their reporting. This will include original photos, videos and status updates posted by people on the front lines of major events like protests, elections and sporting events," said Andy Mitchell, director of news and global media partnerships at Facebook, via a Facebook blog post.

Facebook has been in the centre of the internet security debate for a while; claiming immunity from legal provisions citing its non-curatorial approach and also denying responsibility for the news the social media network produces. "With the launch of this new tool, Facebook is not only curating information, it also directs knowledge of the content its produces through the newswire. That makes it legally responsible under the Information Technology Act (2000)", says Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The move is also seen as Facebook attempting to reach out to journalists, and eat away into the space that Twitter has occupied in the dissemination of information. Facebook has largely been operating as a social media network; and its move into the new-making space is seen as an expansion in that direction.

"There might be some competition for journalists and traditional media outlets. But largely, Facebook's tie-ups with broadcasters and political parties, where it has been promoting content in exchange for compensation, has not been transparent," says Abraham.

With more than a billion users, Facebook is considered the largest social media network. In a statement on April 24, Facebook revealed that more than half of the world's internet population now uses the social media network and recorded a 72% increase in its revenues in the first quarter of the year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-amrita-madhukalya-april-26-2014-facebook-launches-fb-newswire-for-journalists-loses-part-of-its-immunity-under-it-act-2000

Facebook is no charity, and the ‘free’ in Free Basics comes at a price

praskrishna — 2016-01-30T11:32:47Z

Who could possibly be against free internet access? This is the question that Mark Zuckerberg asks in a piece for the Times of India in which he claims Facebook’s Free Basics service “protects net neutrality”.

Free Basics is the rebranded Internet.org, a Facebook operation where by partnering with local telecoms firms in the developing world the firm offers free internet access – limited only to Facebook, Facebook-owned WhatsApp, and a few other carefully selected sites and services.

Zuckerberg was responding to the strong backlash that Free Basics has faced in India, where the country’s Telecom Regulatory Authority recently pulled the plug on the operation while it debates whether telecoms operators should be allowed to offer different services with variable pricing, or whether a principle of network neutrality should be enforced.

Not content to await the regulator’s verdict, Facebook has come out swinging. It has paid for billboards, full-page newspaper ads and television ad campaigns to try to enforce the point that Free Basics is good for India’s poor. In his Times piece, Zuckerberg goes one step further – implying that those opposing Free Basics are actually hurting the poor.

He argued that “for every ten people connected to the internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty”. Without reference to supporting research, he instead offers an anecdote about a farmer called Ganesh from Maharashtra state. Ganesh apparently used Free Basics to double his crop yields and get a better deal for his crops.

Zuckerberg stressed that “critics of free basic internet services should remember that everything we’re doing is about serving people like Ganesh. This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests”.

Zuckerberg’s indignation illustrates either how little he understands about the internet, or that he’s willing to say anything to anyone listening.

This is not a charity

First, despite his claims to the contrary Free Basics clearly runs against the idea of net neutrality by offering access to some sites and not others. While the service is claimed to be open to any app, site or service, in practice the submission guidelines forbid JavaScript, video, large images, and Flash, and effectively rule out secure connections using HTTPS. This means that Free Basics is able to read all data passing through the platform. The same rules don’t apply to Facebook itself, ensuring that it can be the only social network, and (Facebook-owned) WhatsApp the only messaging service, provided.

Yes, Free Basics is free. But how appealing is a taxi company that will only take you to certain destinations, or an electricity provider that will only power certain home electrical devices? There are alternative models: in Bangladesh, Grameenphone gives users free data after they watch an advert. In some African countries, users get free data after buying a handset.

Second, there is no convincing body of peer-reviewed evidence to suggest internet access lifts the world’s poor out of poverty. Should we really base telecommunications policy on an anecdote and a self-serving industry report sponsored by the firm that stands to benefit? India has a literacy rate of 74%, of which a much smaller proportion speak English well enough to read it. Literate English speakers and readers tend not to be India’s poorest citizens, yet it’s English that is the predominant language on the web. This suggests Free Basics isn’t suited for India’s poorest, who’d be better served by more voice and video services.

Third, the claim that Free Basics isn’t in Facebook’s commercial interest is the most outrageous. In much the same way that Nestlé offered free baby formula in the 1970s as development assistance to low-income countries – leaving nursing mothers unable to produce sufficient milk themselves – Free Basics is likely to impede commercial alternatives.

By offering free access Free Basics disrupts the market, allowing Facebook to gain a monopoly that can benefit from the network effects of a growing user base. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, in India, has aptly noted that expanding audience and consumer bases have long been as important as revenues for internet firms. Against Facebook’s immensely deep pockets and established user-base, homegrown competitors are thwarted before they even begin.

Poverty consists of more than just no internet

India will not always have low levels of internet access, this is not the issue – in fact Indian internet penetration growth rates are relatively high. Instead the company sees Free Basics as a means to establish a bridgehead into the country, establishing a monopoly before other firms move in.

There is decades of research about how best to help farmers like Ganesh: access to good quality education, healthcare, and water all could go a long way. But even if we see internet access as one of the key needs to be met, why would we then offer a restricted version?

In presenting Free Basics as an act of altruism Zuckerberg tries to silence criticism. “Who could possibly be against this?”, he asks:

What reason is there for denying people free access to vital services for communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming and women’s rights?

That is the right question, but Free Basics is the wrong answer. Let’s call a spade a spade and see Free Basics as an important part of the business strategy of one of the world’s largest internet corporations, rather than as a selfless act of charity.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-conversation-january-11-2016-facebook-is-no-charity

Facebook is censoring some posts on Indian Kashmir

praskrishna — 2016-07-28T03:03:53Z

Film makers, activists and journalists accused Facebook of blocking their accounts this week after they posted messages and images related to the violence in the trouble-torn province of Kashmir. In recent weeks, the India administered, Muslim-majority Kashmir state has been facing violence and curfews after protests erupted against the killing of a popular leader of a terrorist group.

The article by Rama Lakshmi was published by Washington Post on July 27. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

As people posted images, videos and stories about police violence and people injured by pellet wounds on Facebook, some discovered their accounts were disabled. On Monday, the account of Arif Ayaz Parrey, an editor with an environmental magazine in New Delhi, was disabled for more than a day. He administers the Facebook account of a discussion group called the Kashmir Solidarity Network, whose page was also removed.

“The Kashmir Solidarity page was started by a Kashmiri anthropology student in New York. This is not a hate forum, we share stories,” Parrey said. More than 47 people have died and hundreds injured in angry clashes between the police and protesters in Kashmir this month, the worst outbreak of bloody violence in six years in the region claimed by both India and neighboring Pakistan.

“Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it,” said a Facebook spokesman in India. “We welcome discussion on these subjects but any terrorist content has to be clearly put in a context which condemns these organizations or their violent activities.”India and the United States topped the list of governments that requestFacebook for details of accounts in the second half of 2015.

India has more than 340 million mobile Internet users and has the second largest number of Facebook users after the United States. The company is seeking to expand its footprint here by introducing a pared down version called “Free Basics.” But earlier this year, New Delhi shot it down, saying service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet users.

A journalist in Kashmir said that many who shared stories about a new band of militants and videos of police brutality have been blocked. “It looks more like Facebook censorship rather than something initiated by the government. Maybe they are trying to please the government proactively,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Center for Internet and Society. “Nevertheless it will have a chilling effect. You will think twice before exercising free speech on Facebook now.”

Ather Zia, a political commentator from Kashmir who teaches anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado, said after her account was disabled on Tuesday: "It is safe to assume creating awareness for Kashmir using social media or writing about the ground reality is under severe threat." Meanwhile, users struggled to restore their accounts on Wednesday as they uploaded new documents requested by the company.

“I use my Facebook account not as a personal page to tell people about my last haircut or last holiday. I use it for work, I share media stories about whatever bothers me in the universe,” said Sanjay Kak, a documentary film maker whose account was disabled Tuesday. “Nothing I shared can be considered inflammatory or incendiary.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-july-27-2016-rama-lakshmi-facebook-is-censoring-some-posts-on-indian-kashmir

Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul

praskrishna — 2015-12-29T15:32:19Z

Facebook's media onslaught to garner support for its controversial Free Basics program is almost inescapable. Multi-page ads in national dailies, outdoor hoardings, television spots and perhaps the most effective of them all - Facebook notifications.

The blog post was published in IBN Live on December 29, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took out time during his paternity leave to pen an op-ed in The Times of India in which he tried to drum up support for the Free Basics service that offers people without the Internet free access to a handful of websites through mobile phones.

"If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services," Zuckerberg wrote, comparing the Internet to a library, public health care and education.

Zuckerberg said he was surprised that there is such a big debate around Free Basics in India.

The debate on Net neutrality stirred across India after Airtel decided to charge separately for Internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested. Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for 'Airtel Zero' service along with Facebook's Internet.org service, later renamed as 'Free Basics.'

Net neutrality implies that equal treatment be accorded to all Internet traffic and no priority be given to an entity or company based on payment to content or service providers such as telecom companies, which is seen as discriminatory.

Zuckerberg's personal appeal comes amid fierce criticism from Net neutrality activists who say Free Basics violates the principle that the whole Internet should be available to all and unrestricted by any one company.

In an op-ed response in The Times of India by Medianama's Nikhil Pahwa, who is also a volunteer with savetheinternet.in that is spearheading the campaign for Net neutrality and against Free Basics, asked why Facebook didn't opt for an option that doesn't violate Net neutrality and "why has Facebook chosen the current model for Free Basics, which gives users a selection of around a hundred sites (including a personal blog and a real estate company homepage), while rejecting the option of giving the poor free access to the open, plural and diverse web?"

Countries like the US, Chile, Netherlands and Brazil have already adopted Net Neutrality that doesn't allow discrimination of Internet content or charge users differently based on the content, site, or platform they consume, the debate is still raging in India with the last date for comments on a paper floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that is open for comments till December 30 and counter comments till January 7.

Facebook is using the might of its about 140 million user base in India urging them to send messages to TRAI supporting Free Basics.

A few companies such as Truecaller is attempting to counter Facebook's push by sending out messages to its millions of users in India asking them to petition TRAI against Facebook's Free Basics.

Earlier this month the TRAI ordered Reliance Communications, the sole mobile operator for the Free Basics in India, to suspend it temporarily.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, believes that Free Basics isn't exactly the evil that opponents picture it as. "In the absence of free Internet, Free Basics is a great enabler of freedom of speech. We ought to keep that in mind when asking for a ban," he said.

Meanwhile, Facebook's Internet.org vice president Chris Daniels, in a Reddit AMA said that Facebook was open to scrutiny of the process by any third party agency like IAMAI or NASSCOM and "We'd also be happy to have Twitter, Google+, etc on the platform which many people have asked for."

Earlier, in July this year the Department of Telecom panel on net neutrality has opposed projects like Facebook's Internet.org, which allow access to certain websites without mobile data charges, while suggesting that similar plans such as Airtel Zero be allowed with prior clearance from TRAI.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-goes-out-all-guns-blazing-in-push-for-free-basics-net-neutrality-advocates-cry-foul

Facebook Free Basics: Gatekeeping Powers Extend to Manipulating Public Discourse

vidushi — 2016-01-09T13:43:56Z

15 million people have come online through Free Basics, Facebook's zero rated walled garden, in the past year. "If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services. Who could possibly be against this?" asks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent op-ed defending Free Basics.

The article was published in Catchnews on January 6, 2015. For more info click here.

This rhetorical question however, has elicited a plethora of answers. The network neutrality debate has accelerated over the past few weeks with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) releasing a consultation paper on differential pricing.

While notifications to "Save Free Basics in India" prompt you on Facebook, an enormous backlash against this zero rated service has erupted in India.

The policy objectives that must guide regulating net neutrality are consumer choice, competition, access and openness. Facebook claims that Free Basics is a transition to the full internet and digital equality. However, by acting as a gatekeeper, Facebook gives itself the distinct advantage of deciding what services people can access for free by virtue of them being "basic", thereby violating net neutrality.

Amidst this debate, it's important to think of the impact Facebook can have on manipulating public discourse. In the past, Facebook has used it's powerful News Feed algorithm to significantly shape our consumption of information online.

In July 2014, Facebook researchers revealed that for a week in January 2012, it had altered the news feeds of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users to control how many positive and negative posts they saw. This was done without their consent as part of a study to test how social media could be used to spread emotions online.

Their research showed that emotions were in fact easily manipulated. Users tended to write posts that were aligned with the mood of their timeline.

Another worrying indication of Facebook's ability to alter discourse was during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in July and August, 2014. Users' News Feeds were flooded with videos of individuals pouring a bucket of ice over their head to raise awareness for charitable cause, but not entirely on its merit.

The challenge was Facebook's method of boosting its native video feature which was launched at around the same time. Its News Feed was mostly devoid of any news surrounding riots in Ferguson, Missouri at the same time, which happened to be a trending topic on Twitter.

Each day, the news feed algorithm has to choose roughly 300 posts out of a possible 1500 for each user, which involves much more than just a random selection. The posts you view when you log into Facebook are carefully curated keeping thousands of factors in mind. Each like and comment is a signal to the algorithm about your preferences and interests.

The amount of time you spend on each post is logged and then used to determine which post you are most likely to stop to read. Facebook even keeps into account text that is typed but not posted and makes algorithmic decisions based on them.

It also differentiates between likes - if you like a post before reading it, the news feed automatically assumes that your interest is much fainter as compared to liking a post after spending 10 minutes reading it.

Facebook believes that this is in the best interest of the user, and these factors help users see what he/she will most likely want to engage with. However, this keeps us at the mercy of a gatekeeper who impacts the diversity of information we consume, more often than not without explicit consent. Transparency is key.

(Vidushi Marda is a programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/catchnews-january-6-2016-vidushi-marda-facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse

Facebook Free Basics vs Net Neutrality: The top arguments in the debate

praskrishna — 2016-01-07T02:26:16Z

On Twitter, there's a whole conversation around Facebook Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here's a look at the debate.

The article was published in the Indian Express on December 31, 2015. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash were quoted.

Facebook’s Free Basics app, which aims to provide ‘free Internet access’ to users who can’t afford data packs, has run into trouble in India over the last two weeks. After regulator TRAI issued a paper questioning the fairness of zero-rating platforms, it also asked Reliance Communications (the official telecom partner for Free Basics) to put the service on hold.

Facebook on its part has gone for an aggressive campaign, both online and offline, to promote Free Basics and ensure that its platform is not banned permanently. For Net Neutrality activists, zero-rating platforms are in violation of the principle as it restricts access to free, full Internet for users.

On Twitter too, there’s a serious debate unfolding around Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here’s a look at some of the prominent voices around this Net Neutrality vs Free Basics debate.

Watch our video

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of news website MediaNama, has been campaigning for quite some time against zero-rating platforms in general and Net Neutrality. On Twitter, Pahwa points out that the problem with the zero-rating apps is that it gives telecos right to play kingmaker, and get into a direct relationship between a website and a user.

Pahwa also wrote a counter-blog to Mark Zuckerberg’s column in The Times of India questioning why Facebook is going with this restricted version of the web on Free Basics, rather than giving access to all websites.

He posted recently on Twitter, “Why hasn’t Facebook tried any model other than on which gives it a competitive advantage?”

Pahwa adds, “With zero rating, telcos insert themselves into a previously direct relationship between a site and user. Some sites made cheaper versus others. Said it earlier, saying it again. Problem with zero rating is that it gives telcos the right to play kingmaker through pricing. So Net Neutrality battle isn’t just about Facebook. It’s about telcos lobbying for differential pricing+revenue share from Internet companies.”

Check out some of this tweets on the issue of Net Neutrality:

Pranesh Prakash, the director for policy at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore, has said that a total ban might not be the ideal solution and one should look at the platforms on a case by case basis.

He writes on Twitter, “My position: We should ban some zero-rating, allow some zero-rating, and deal w/ middle category either w/ +ve obligation or case-by-case. I’m all for banning Free Basics if it harms people more than it benefits them. I’ve even proposed tests for determining this. The regulator needs more data on a) conversion rates to full-Internet; b) cost of subsidy & c) QoE (speed, etc.) of Free Basics.”

Check out Pranesh's tweets below

Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre for Internet and Society, has however questioned Free Basics on Twitter. He also posted counter-points to Pranesh’s tweets about data on conversion being used to create regulations around zero-ratings. He’s also called for a ban on Free Basics.

Check out his tweets below

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-december-31-2015-facebook-free-basics-vs-net-neutrality-the-top-arguments-in-the-debate

Facebook Data for Good in New Delhi

Admin — 2019-07-31T02:10:23Z

When data is shared responsibly with the communities that need it, it can improve well being and save lives. Anubha Sinha participated in a session organized by Facebook on 29 July 2019 at University of Chicago Center in New Delhi.

Click to download the brochure

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-data-for-good-delhi

Facebook Data for Good in Bangalore

Admin — 2019-07-31T02:14:06Z

When data is shared responsibly with the communities that need it, it can improve well being and save lives. Shweta Mohandas participated in a session organized by Facebook on 25 July 2019 at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-data-for-good-in-bangalore

Facebook breach: Privacy advocates in India seek stronger data laws

Admin — 2018-03-20T23:37:04Z

Privacy advocates in India underlined the urgent need for stronger data privacy laws in India with the debate coming under focus after reports alleged that British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica had tapped into the profiles of more than 50 million Facebook users, without their permission, during the last US elections.

The article by Surabhi Agarwal and Devina Sengupta was published in the Economic Times on March 20, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Advocates of data privacy told ET that even in India — where issues around data privacy have been on the boil — voter opinion may be targeted by using their personal information without their approval. “The government has not moved with necessary pace on data protection,” said advocate Apar Gupta.

“Election commission (EC) has not taken up this issue of data protection for regulatory scrutiny. EC has in the past issued guidelines to protect election integrity and restrained exit polls and also required candidates to disclose social media handles. However, much more needs to be done,” he added.

His concerns around India’s voting process being potentially vulnerable to similar influence like in the US come amid a “case study” on the Cambridge Analytica website said the company had worked for Indian political parties as well.

It said that the British firm was “contracted to undertake an indepth electorate analysis for the Bihar Assembly Election in 2010…Our client achieved a landslide victory, with over 90% of total seats targeted by CA being won”.

Media reports quoted sources at Cambridge Analytica, and its Indian partner, Oveleno Business Intelligence, as saying that the local company was in talks with leading Indian political parties for a pact for their 2019 parliamentary poll campaigns.

“This shows integrity of elections and voter trust may be undermined through data analytics and target voters on the basis of their personal data,” said Gupta Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Center for Internet and Society, said India urgently needs a strong data protection regulation, that require companies to have oversight and pin liabilities on them if they fail to have oversight over data they transact with.

“So, in this case for instance, the companies that provided Cambridge Analytica DATA are seriously culpable and Facebook --right now it is unclear if under any current law it is culpable --there are some discussions in the US etc. Regardless of it, they should be required to exercise greater diligence when it comes to personable data that they have taken consent for,” said Prakash.

“Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook. If these reports are true, it's a serious abuse of our rules.

All parties involved — including the SCL Group/Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie and Aleksandr Kogan — certified to us that they destroyed the data in question. In light of new reports that the data was not destroyed, we are suspending these three parties from Facebook, pending further information. We will take whatever steps are required to see that the data in question is deleted once and for all —and take action against all offending parties.”

In a statement to ET, Facebook said there was no breach of its data base and that protecting people’s information was core to the company. “Like all app developers, Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent. People knowingly provided their information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked,” Paul Grewal, VP & Deputy General Counsel, Facebook said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-march-20-2018-surabhi-agarwal-devina-sengupta-facebook-breach-privacy-advocates-in-india-seek-stronger-data-laws

Facebook Arrests Ignite Free-Speech Debate In India

praskrishna — 2013-01-07T10:16:39Z

Shaheen Dhada is an unlikely looking protagonist in the battle under way in India to protect free speech from government restrictions in the new media age.

This article by Julie McCarthy was published in npr on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Slight and soft-spoken, Dhada perches on the edge of her bed in a purple-walled room that has been her own for the past 20 years. Outside, police officers are posted for her protection in the town of Palghar, 2 1/2 hours outside Mumbai.

The 21-year-old management science grad's Facebook post last week triggered her arrest and the wrath of local residents. Her "crime" was questioning the shutdown of Mumbai as mourners gathered for the cremation of Bal Thackeray, who had dominated the city's political stage for decades with cagey intimidation tactics.

In a Facebook post on Nov. 18, Dhada wrote: "Every day thousands of people die, but still the world moves on. ... Today, Mumbai shuts down out of fear, not out of respect."

Within minutes, she got a call from a stranger. "And he told me, 'Do you really think whatever you posted is right?' " Dhada says. "I was actually confused about what he was asking for."

She hung up and deleted her comment. But by then a mob had gathered at her uncle's medical clinic around the corner, smashing windows and equipment, and vandalizing the operating room.

"Within 10 minutes, the police came and told me to come to the police station. I had to apologize in a written statement," says Dhada, who was held until 2 a.m. and then released on bail. A friend of hers, Renu Srinivasan, who "liked" the post, had been detained with her. A mob descended on the station. Dhada says she couldn't see it, but heard: "They were shouting, and at that time I was really very scared."

Meanwhile, Dhada's father, Farooq Dhada, says his family cowered inside their home for hours in the darkness, afraid the mob would come for them next.

The episode has shaken the Muslim father of two, who says he never expected things to escalate to such a frightening pitch. Reflecting on the incident days later, he says freedom of speech in India "exists only on paper." He says he doubts the common person feels any sense of security — no matter what religion they are.

Shiv Sena's Legacy Of Violence

Shaheen Dhada's post had angered followers of Thackeray, a political cartoonist turned Hindu hard-liner. His Hindu party, Shiv Sena, won popular appeal in the state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located. Exploiting enmity against migrants from other states, the party encouraged brute force to win jobs and opportunities.

Journalist Naresh Fernandes says when Hindu nationalism became a potent force, Shiv Sena turned its ire on Mumbai's Muslims — igniting riots that killed 900 people in 1992 and '93.

Thackeray fanned the violence, Fernandes says, by "making extremely provocative statements essentially calling upon his followers to attack Muslims."

Vaibhav Purandare, author of The Shiv Sena Story, says the party's legacy of violence has cost it support over the years.

"They refused to believe that the India of the 21st century was very different from the India of the 20th century ... when a section [of the population] would not mind the use of violence," Purandare says. The bust-up of the medical clinic "shows they continue with violence tactics," he adds.

Anil Desai, the secretary of Shiv Sena, says it is not a matter of disowning the violence. "It was an emotional outburst," he says, "and the incidents ... were blown out of proportion, that much I say."

Inciting Religious Enmity

At a restaurant in Palghar on Friday night, the talk among locals turned to the Facebook row. Sunil Mahendrakar said Dhada should be prohibited from posting comments critical of Thackeray because he was considered a father figure to many, if not to her.

"Talking cheap or bad about somebody's father should be denied, anywhere in the world. In India ... in America," he said. "It's wrong."

Retired Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju says every freedom is subject to "reasonable restrictions in the public interest." But he says in the case of Dhada, her post actually underscores a Supreme Court ruling that bringing a city to a standstill is illegal.

"You can mourn a death in whichever way you want, but you can't bring a whole city to a stoppage. So what this girl wrote was in consonance with the verdict of the Supreme Court — nothing illegal," Katju says.

Nonetheless, police charged Dhada under a statute that makes it a crime to promote "religious enmity" between groups. The initial police report refers to her as a Muslim. But Dhada says she does not believe she was singled out for her faith.

Writer Fernandes says it's more likely police were scrambling for a convenient hook on which to hang a charge.

"They needed to find a cause of anger and suggested that she, as a Muslim girl, had insulted them, who were Hindus," he says. "That's ridiculous. She questioned why a city shut down after Bal Thackeray's death — and Bal Thackeray is not a religion; he's a leader of a political party."

The general consensus seems to be that the police not only misapplied the law but also succumbed to the will of the mob.

"There were thousands of guys outside their police station and inside the station house who were doing what the Shiv Sena has always done — threatening to burn the town up," Fernandes says. "They just wanted to get them off their backs and wanted to make sure that order was maintained even as they didn't quite uphold the law."

Communal Harmony

The case also throws a harsh light on India's new Information Technology Act that governs electronic speech. Police charged Dhada with violating a section of the law, which prohibits speech that, among other things, causes "annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will."

Pranesh Prakash, the director of the Centre for Internet and Society, says it's a poorly drafted catchall. Under such a sweeping statute, Prakash says, 95 percent of India's Internet users could well be imprisoned.

"I have 3,500 followers on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure I annoy 100 of them on a daily basis," he says.

Tackling issues of communal harmony is a serious issue in India, but, Prakash says, "it should not lead to forsaking fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution."

The government conferred Thursday over problems with the IT Act, while the Supreme Court is hearing challenges to it.

Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan are not expected to face prosecution under the country's controversial IT Act or any other law. Following a public outcry, two senior officials from the local Palghar police have been suspended and a magistrate transferred.

From her self-imposed house arrest, Dhada says she'll venture back onto Facebook, but her experience is certain to color her musings.

"I don't want this to happen again," she says, laughing, "but I'll be careful next time."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/npr-julie-mccarthy-november-29-2012

Eye on Mumbai

praskrishna — 2016-10-02T10:22:20Z

The feeds will be beamed to a video wall that stretches 21 feet across at the police’s command and control room.

The article by Tariq Engineer was published in Mumbai Mirror today. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

When seven bombs exploded on local trains between Khar and Borivali killing 209 people and injuring 714 in 2006, the Maharashtra police looked for CCTV footage but couldn’t find any because no cameras existed at railway stations back then.

When terrorists landed near Machimar colony in Cuffe Parade in 2008 and proceeded to slaughter hundreds of people in the city, CCTV footage was found only at the Taj and Trident hotels, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and near the Times of India building. Places like Cama Hospital, Nariman House and Leopold Café were simply off the grid.

When Mumbai journalist J Dey was gunned down in Powai in 2011, the police obtained CCTV footage from a shopping centre nearby but it was so blurry, it was useless.

In each of these situations, a fully functioning high-definition CCTV system could have altered the outcome or aided the investigation in critical ways. That glaring gap in Mumbai’s security has now been filled by the Mumbai City Surveillance Project, which officially goes live today.

Over the last 20 months, a total of 4697 cameras have been installed at 1510 locations around Mumbai city. In addition to these, another 146 will survey the Bandra Kurla Complex. The tender for the project was issued in 2015 and won by a consortium led by construction major Larsen & Toubro with MTNL, CMS Computers and Infinova, which supplied the cameras, as partners.

The project is actually an outcome of the 26/11 attacks, having been recommended by the Ram Pradhan Committee, which was appointed to evaluate the city administration’s responses to the terror strike. According to Additional Chief Secretary (Home) KP Bakshi these cameras will ensure roughly 80 per cent of Mumbsi will be watched 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The city’s inhabitants will now have to be on their best behaviour.

“It was the police’s call to decide what they want to observe,” Bakshi said. “Do they want to look at the traffic or at a place where people gamble or do a lot of drinking?” The policeman in charge of selection of spots for installation of cameras was former additional commissioner of police Vasant Dhoble. Calling him a “game-changer”, one of the project managers said it was thanks to Dhoble that all the locations were surveyed in just twoand-a-half months. Dhoble was also instrumental in ensuring that the cameras were installed at the appropriate angles.

While the initial estimate was for 6,000 cameras, it was eventually determined that 4,697 were sufficient at this stage. The cameras have been placed on poles similar to street lights — 2290 of them — some with multiple cameras. “Let’s say there is a pole at Haji Ali Juice Center,” Bakshi said. “It may have three cameras — one looking towards Heera Panna, the other looking towards Mahalaxmi, the third looking towards Worli.”

The vast majority of the cameras — roughly 4200 — will be fixed and stare unblinkingly in one direction. The other 500 will be PTZ, or pan/tilt/zoom cameras, so those watching can scan an area or take a closer look at something that seems suspicious. All of the cameras can see in high definition, with visibility ranging from 50m to 120m. Some of them also have thermal imaging and night vision.

According to those involved in the project, the cameras have been built to withstand the rigours of Mumbai’s weather — specifically the heat and rain. Larsen & Toubro and CMS Computers are responsible for the maintenance of the system. Once the system is fully operational, the target is to have 99% of the cameras live at all times barring accidents. The responsibility for this lies with the service providers.

A smart system

The software that runs the cameras includes a Picture Intelligence Unit (PIU) that will conduct facial recognition analysis. If there is an image of a wanted person in the database, the program will scan the footage for matches and send a signal if it finds any. It will also send an alert if it notices a suspicious object, say one that has been left unattended for a pre-specified amount of time, so the cops can check it out. Tracking police vehicles — like you can follow the path of an Uber or Ola — is yet another feature, so if there is trouble, the nearest vehicle can be dispatched.

By Bakshi’s reckoning, if it is a small crime, then the police should be on the scene in five to ten minutes. If it is something like a bomb blast, then a Quick Response Team will be deployed, which will take a little longer – say 10 to 15 minutes.

Who will be watching you?

The feeds from these cameras will be fed to a video wall that stretches 21 feet across in a control room that has been set up in the Commissioner of Police Headquarters at Crawford Market. The footage will be monitored by about 20 observers who have been specially trained for the job.

However, a project manager said, watching the wall for more than eight minutes “would make anyone mad” because it is so chaotic. Therefore, each observer has his own workstation with three computer screens where he can only watch the feeds he has been assigned.

Entry to the control room is also strictly monitored. It requires five fingerprint access just to get in the room and a thumb print to turn individual workstations on. Mobile phones and personal effects are banned and the computers have no USB ports, so data can’t be copied.

In addition, there are viewing screens in each of the additional commissioner’s zonal offices and in all 23 police stations and roughly 200 observers will eventually be required to operate them. A project manager said he hoped to have a 60-40 or 50-50 split between male and female observers. The observers are monitored by the police, who will decide what actions to take depending on what alerts are generated.

The manpower is being provided by CMS Computers, with applicants having their resumes verified by the police. Observers will spend anywhere from four to six weeks in training before they get on the job, one of the project managers said.

Keeping the data secure

The images from the standard cameras will be stored for 90 days, while those taken with PTZ cameras will be stored for 30 days. “If you store for longer periods, it involves more cost,” Bakshi said. “We feel that if something has to be reported to us, it will be reported within 90 days.”

MTNL has set up a data centre in Worli and a disaster recovery centre in Belapur. If something goes wrong in Worli, there will still be connectivity via Belapur. Both centres have been “tied-up” to make the data as safe as possible. At the test lab at Larsen & Toubro’s project headquarters in Mallet Bunder, they even have a rodent detection device that broadcasts an ultrasonic frequency to drive away rats and stop them from chewing up the wires.

False starts

The project took some time to get off the ground because getting the details worked out was a painstaking elaborate process, former Maharashtra chief secretary ( home) Amitabh Rajan, told Mumbai Mirror. The committee wanted to make sure everything was transparent and that there were no allegations against the project. Control and security were also zealously guarded. “No compromise on security, not even cost,” Rajan said. “Like titration in chemistry, we eventually got the right concentration.”

There was also a battle between a lobby that wanted the system to be set up using dedicated fibre optic cables, and a lobby of technology providers that wanted to use wireless technology. The cops backed cables, which are not only safer but make it easy to add additional bandwidth, whereas wireless networks have limited bandwidth. It was a battle the cops would eventually win but at the cost of time.

The tender process didn’t go smoothly either. Larsen and Toubro were actually the winners of the fourth tender the Maharashtra government put forward. The first tender had to be cancelled because the winning consortium had not properly disclosed its ownership structure — one of the companies turned out to be controlled by a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. The second was cancelled when the vendor’s bank guarantee cheque of Rs 2 crore bounced and the owner disappeared. He was eventually found and arrested two years later.

The third tender received no bidders because it did not offer up-front payment for capital expenditure, according to then IT secretary Rajesh Aggarwal, who was part of the committee. It was finally on the fourth occasion, when the committee decided to offer a certain percentage of the project cost at the start and the rest over the remaining five years as maintenance fees, that a deal could be sealed.

Coordination headache

The next hurdle was coordinating the work between all the different organisations that populate Mumbai. The final total was around 35 or 40 bodies, including the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), BEST and Reliance Power, the police, MMRDA, the Government of India and the High Court. “To explain to everyone that it is a security project and please don’t go by normal rules, you have to give concessions for all these things, all this co-ordination was a big job,” Bakshi said.

It led to delays, which is why the project had to take the extraordinary step of getting permission from the MCGM to dig up roads during the monsoon to lay the fibre-optic cables. It was the only way the project could make its deadline.

“If we had done it like a normal project, it would have taken five years,” an engineer said.

A question of privacy

Two experts in privacy issues that Mirror spoke to said that such a system is in the public interest, but safeguards must be built to prevent abuse. “If the data falls into the wrong hands, it can create havoc,” said Pavan Duggal, an expert in the field of cyber law. “Large scale surveillance of the public should not be the norm, it should be the exemption to the norm.” he said. “It can create unease and lessen the enjoyment of living in a democratic society.”

According to Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, the biggest problem is that India does not have an “omnibus privacy law”.

Instead, it has about 50 different laws across sectors and therefore privacy regulations are not consistent, which has created a legal thicket. “110 countries have passed privacy laws to European Union standards. India is really far behind,” he said.

He also listed a number of principles that he hoped the project would abide by, such as the principles of notice (CCTV cameras should be advertised as such), of openness (details of the system should be made public), security (“if you don’t have security, you can’t ensure privacy”) and of access (“we should have a right to get the footage of ourselves”). He also warned against the footage being shared between different security agencies without due process.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Bakshi said most of these principles were part of the system. There would be boards demarcating the CCTV cameras, the system would be publicly launched, it was being made as secure as possible and footage could be handed over depending on the circumstances. “If it is your own, then no problem,” Bakshi said. “If it is someone else’s then there are privacy issues. Is it because of criminal intent or you want to track your girlfriend’s other boyfriend to see if he is following her? These are issues. If you want yours, on merit we can give. No issue.”

Another concern Abraham raised is unique to India and the Aadhaar card, which uses biometric data as passwords, not identification. Since the CCTV cameras are high resolution, it raises the risk of someone recreating your iris or finger prints from a captured image and then “somebody could empty your Aadhaarlinked bank accounts,” Abraham said.

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Abraham pointed out that in 2014 a member of the Chaos Collective Club, the largest association of hackers in Europe, recreated the finger print of a German minister from a photograph they took of her hand.

“Other risks are smaller, a revealing photograph or someone trying to blackmail you,” Abraham said.

Not just for crime

The camera feed has other applications too, beginning with traffic management. An automatic number plate recognition system will be installed as well. If you look around the corner, don’t see a cop and jump a light, you could still get in trouble. “6000 [sic] police in the sky are watching you and you will get a challan sitting at home,” Aggarwal said. Other uses include tracking of encroachments by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai which will have an additional viewing centre. Also garbage disposal and other civic issues such as water logging and a subject dear to Mumbai citizens — potholes. “Somebody complains that this road has a pothole, immediately you can zoom in and see that yes, there is a pothole on this road,” Bakshi said.

There is also a provision to allow a further 103 locations to plug-in and play. For example, if the Taj Mahal Hotel wants the police to survey the hotel for a period of time, the hotel’s CCTV system can be hooked up to the main control room within 48 hours. The same goes for the airport or the railway stations.

Effect of CCTV surveillance

Worldwide the academic literature on CCTV surveillance suggests its effectiveness, especially on crime prevention, is uncertain or limited. “Post crime it really, really helps,” Aggarwal said, “but for prevention, we have to wait and watch. If it reduces sexual harassment for example, then that is priceless. Time will tell how people try to beat the system and how the system tries to catch up.”

Joint Commissioner of Police, Law and Order, Deven Bharti said he was already seeing an improvement in traffic management and in prevention and detection of crimes thanks to the 3000-plus cameras that were live when Mirror spoke to him two days ago, though he said he could not provide details. “The system is working to our satisfaction,” Bharti said.

Bakshi said the effects of the system should start showing roughly a month after the project is fully operational. “In Pune, results started being seen within a month. Once all 4700 [cameras] are live, you will start seeing the results on traffic violations, street crimes, and at general discipline level. [First] Let the people know they are under surveillance, that they are completely covered in Mumbai by CCTV.”

The total cost of the project is Rs 1008 crore. Out of this, about Rs 400 crore has already been spent. The balance will be paid out in regular installments until October 2021. At that point the Maharashtra government and Mumbai police will take complete control of the project. “We presume that in five years’ time, we will have enough trained people to run it ourselves,” Bakshi said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mumbai-mirror-tariq-engineer-october-2-2016-eye-on-mumbai

Extra-Territorial Surveillance and the Incapacitation of Human Rights

Arindrajit Basu — 2020-01-02T11:02:26Z

This paper was published in Volume 12 (2) of the NUJS Law Review.

Our networked data trails dictate, define, and modulate societies in hitherto inconceivable ways. The ability to access and manipulate that data is a product of stark power asymmetry in geo-politics, leading to a dynamic that privileges the interests of a few over the right to privacy and dignity of the many. I argue that the persistent de facto violation of human rights norms through extraterritorial surveillance conducted by western intelligence agencies, compounded by the failure of judicial intervention in the West has lead to the incapacitation of international human rights law. Despite robust jurisprudence including case law, comments by the United Nations, and widespread state practice on the right to privacy and the application of human rights obligations to extraterritorial stakeholders, extraterritorial surveillance continues with aplomb. Procedural safeguards and proportionality tests regularly sway towards a ‘ritual incantation’ of national security even in scenarios where a less intrusive option is available. The vulnerable citizen abroad is unable to challenge these processes and becomes an unwitting victim of nefarious surveillance practices that further widens global power asymmetry and entrenches geo-political fissures.

The full article can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/extra-territorial-surveillance-and-the-incapacitation-of-human-rights

Extending Aadhaar to more areas is a hare-brained idea, it should be dropped

praskrishna — 2016-08-24T03:05:01Z

News reports that the mandatory use of Aadhaar could be extended to a host of new areas are extremely disturbing. According to these reports, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has identified 20 new areas for which Aadhaar can be made mandatory. This includes registration of companies and NGOs, insurance, competitive examinations and property and vehicle registration.

The article by Seetha was published in First Post on August 23, 2016. CIS article by Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha was quoted.

If this happens, then it confirms the worst suspicions of all those who are opposed to Aadhaar – and this spans ideological divides – that it can be used to seriously compromise individual privacy.

A villager scanning fingerprint for Aadhaar. Reuters file photo

The defenders of Aadhaar – mainly the previous and current governments, the UIDAI and Nandan Nilekani, the father of the Aadhaar – have always argued that these concerns are exaggerated. They have pointed out that Aadhaar does not take any details that are not already in the public domain – name, date of birth and permanent address – and that the biometric data is not shared with any of the authorities that seek verification by Aadhaar. That data remains with the UIDAI and it only confirms that a person with a particular Aadhaar number is who he claims he is.

But Aadhaar’s opponents have argued that the extensive use of Aadhaar allows disparate bits of information to be linked and this could become a genuine concern if this hare-brained idea gets official approval.

Now, there is certainly no doubt that Aadhaar is, in the absence of anything better, the best technological tool for establishing identity. It is not entirely fool-proof – there are issues relating to the fingerprints of manual labourers and iris scan of aged people or those with cataract – a solution needs to be found for this. According to this report by the Centre for Internet and Society, there was fingerprint authentication failure in 290 of 790 ration card holders in Andhra Pradesh who did not lift rations, and there was an ID mismatch in 93 instances. These problems notwithstanding, there is no denying that Aadhaar has helped in significantly containing (perhaps not entirely eliminating) the problem of identity theft for diversion of government doles and other benefits.

So making Aadhaar compulsory for such cases is perfectly justifiable. Indeed, the Act giving legal status to Aadhaar is called Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.

Mandatory quoting of Aadhaar can even be justified in the cases where duplication or falsification of identity can be used by criminals or those who fall foul of the law. Passports, for example, can be brought under the ambit of Aadhaar. Or even driving licences. A person whose licence has been suspended for repeated traffic violations should not be allowed to get another one under the same name or an assumed name.

But why should it be mandatory for bank accounts, if an individual is not interested in getting government doles? The quoting of Aadhaar for property transactions also does not make sense. If the idea is to prevent fraudulent transactions, it will not be foolproof. A person intending to sell an already sold property or one he does not own can do so even with an Aadhaar number, since people are allowed to own more than one piece of property. What will prevent this from happening is compulsory registration and digitisation of records as well as mandatory property titling; there has been little progress on both.

When filing of income tax returns is not possible without a PAN, there is little rationale for making Aadhaar mandatory for filing returns and even for PAN. It is not clear how quoting of Aadhaar is going to help in ensuring that fly-by-night companies and NGOs do not get established.

The insistence of Aadhaar on purchase of vehicles, landline and mobile phone connections and demat accounts is seriously violative of individual privacy and has enormous potential for misuse. The Act does give the government unbridled power to access data in the name of national security. This itself is worrying, since it can allow security agencies to go an random fishing expeditions to access personal financial transactions. Making it mandatory for even buying cars and phone connections (even though it is not illegal to own more than one vehicle or telephone connection) makes it even riskier – private agencies get access to one’s Aadhaar number. Forget security agencies, even unscrupulous private persons can track an individual’s personal activities, especially financial transactions.

As it is, investigating agencies want to tap Aadhaar and biometric data at the drop of a hat. The UIDAI had to approach the Supreme Court in 2014 against a Goa High Court order ordering it to share biometric details of everyone enrolled in the state for solving a gang rape case. Even after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of UIDAI, a Kerala special investigation team wanted it to share biometric details to solve another rape case. If Aadhaar now becomes mandatory for a host of financial and other transactions, the points of potential privacy breaches only increase.

The move to extend the mandatory use of Aadhaar has to be stopped in its tracks. The mandatory use should be limited to delivery of government welfare benefits and doles (after ensuring that glitches are eliminated) and security-related services like passports. For everything else, it should be purely voluntary. There can be no compromise on this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/first-post-august-23-2016-seetha-extending-aadhaar-to-more-areas-is-a-hare-brained-idea-it-should-be-dropped