We are anonymous, we are legion

Chidambaram to Talk Budget on Google+ Hangout

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T04:14:29Z

Indian politicians are slowly warming up to social media.

This article by Dhanya Ann Thoppil was published in the Wall Street Journal on March 4, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In a first for a cabinet minister, Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram tonight is hosting a Google+ Hangout, a Web video chat, to answer citizens’ questions on the budget he presented last week.

At 8 p.m. on Monday India time, Mr. Chidambaram will be joined by a group of experts to discuss the state of India’s economy, which looks set to grow at its weakest pace in a decade this financial year.

On the panel are also Amit Singhal, senior vice president at Google Inc., Anand Mahindra, chairman and managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Jahangir Aziz, chief economist for India at J.P. Morgan and Manish Chokhani, chief executive officer at Axis capital.

The online chat, which the Ministry of Finance in a statement described as “a powerful communication platform,” is an attempt to engage India’s tech-savvy, middle-class youth in the political process.

“It is an attempt by the government to reach out to gen-next,” ahead of the general elections scheduled in 2014, said S. Chandrasekharan, the director of South Asia Analysis Group, a Delhi-based think tank.

Improving opportunities for the country’s younger generations was a major focus of Mr. Chidambaram’s budget speech to lawmakers Thursday. “My budget has before it one overarching goal: to create opportunities for our youth to acquire education and skills that will get them decent jobs or self-employment,” he said, adding, “Their concern are my concerns, too.”

But Mr. Chidambaram won’t be interacting with citizens directly. He will answer questions submitted by citizens in advance through video uploads on this YouTube channel or on this Google + page. The session will be streamed live on both websites.

Social media is only beginning to emerge as a tool Indian politicians use to reach out to the country’s citizens.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, often criticized for not being accessible to the media, set up a Twitter profile about a year ago. But the account is managed by his office staff, not by Mr. Singh himself, and it’s mostly used to share links to pictures or speeches of the Prime Minister.

Narendra Modi, chief minister of the state of Gujarat and possible prime ministerial candidate for the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party, has embraced digital media more than other politicians. In August he hosted a Google + Hangout session to answer questions from citizens and in December had a holographic image of himself projected live at rallies in four different locations to communicate with his supporters during his election campaign.

The government last year also came up with a series of guidelines for its various arms on the effective use of social media to reach out to people and to ensure public participation in policy framing.

Still, the government often views social media with suspicion, and has taken steps to regulate user-generated content on websites more tightly.

There are 14 million broadband connections in India, meaning that only a small portion of the country’s 1.2 billion population has reliable Internet access, says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

“So, unlike in the U.S., where you can fault the government for not being online, in India you can’t really fault the government,” says Mr. Abraham.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wsj-march-4-2013-dhanya-ann-thoppil-chidambaram-to-talk-budget-on-google-hangout

UID has no legal sanctity, says lawyer-activist

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T06:08:32Z

‘Iris scanning adopted for the UID project is flawed as the iris keeps changing’

This article was published in the Hindu on March 3, 2013. CIS organized a workshop at the event.

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the UID project have no legal sanctity, said independent law researcher and human rights activist Usha Ramanathan on Saturday.

Speaking at a workshop on the UID, the National Population Register and Governance, organised by the Centre for Internet and Society, Ms. Ramanathan said the UIDAI has “no clear legal status.” “The fact that there are no limits placed on its functioning is deeply worrying,” she remarked.

Ms. Ramanathan pointed out that an agency, which was created by a mere executive order in 2009, now “owns” the data obtained from Indian citizens. Although the UIDAI has said enrolment is not mandatory, a host of providers of essential services – from ration shops to LPG distributors and now even railway tickets – require Aadhaar authentication.

The idea of using biometric validation of identities was adopted despite there “being no evidence of its viability anywhere in the world,” Ms. Ramanathan said. In fact, several reports have established the failure of biometrics as a means of validating identities, she claimed. The iris scanning, which has been adopted for the UID project is flawed because the iris does change over time, she said.

Anant Maringati, a geographer from Hyderabad, said the “positive” potential of the project have been usurped by entities such as microfinance institutions, which sue them to track those who have defaulted on loans.

‘An agency, which was created by a mere executive order in 2009, now owns the data obtained from Indian citizens’

‘Although the UIDAI has said enrolment is not mandatory, providers of essential services seek Aadhaar authentication’

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-3-2013-uid-has-no-legal-sanctity

People should resist enforcement of UID scheme, say experts

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T06:45:23Z

Internationally recognized expert on law and poverty Dr. Usha Ramanathan Saturday urged citizens of the country to question the enforcement of the UID scheme that has no legitimacy.

This was published in newzfirst on March 3, 2013. CIS organized a workshop at the event.

Addressing the gathering of people from various sections of the society at a workshop- The Unique Identity Number (UID), National Population Register (NPR), and Governance - organized by the ‘Centre for Internet and Society’ and the ‘Say No to UID Campaign’ Ramanathan said that the enforcement of UID scheme is unconstitutional and a mere a experiment on the population.

The scheme is full of ambiguity, confusions and suspicions; while UIDAI says it as voluntary, other government agencies and enterprises have made them mandatory. Neither the government nor the UIDAI officials have the satisfactory answers for the concerns of citizens, she said.

Saying that the ‘Data’ is one of the important properties today, she elaborated that how the individual’s privacy and confidential data was breached after sharing with many companies and agencies, despite the assurances from the authorities.

Emphasizing the resistance against enforcement of UID scheme, another speaker Col. Mathew Thomas of Citizen Action Forum Bangalore, said “If we don’t resist this scheme now, we are putting pushing poor people of the country into more vulnerable situation. We need to fight it by protests and legal means.”

The workshop also discussed the National Population register (NPR), its impact on citizenship and the governance, and how they are linked with national security.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/newzfirst-march-3-2013-people-should-resist-enforcement-of-uid-scheme-say-experts

Foreign Funding of NGOs

praskrishna — 2013-03-04T23:52:31Z

Should FDI in India’s thinktank sector worry us? It is a debate long overdue.

This article by Prashant Reddy was published in the March issue of Open Magazine.

In 1976, at the height of the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, India’s Parliament enacted a piece of legislation called the Foreign Regulation Contribution Act. It prohibited political parties and ‘organisations of a political nature’, civil servants and judges, as also correspondents, columnists and editors/owners of registered newspapers and news broadcasting organisations— and even cartoonists—from receiving foreign contributions.

The very fact that the Act makes a specific reference to cartoonists should be hint enough of the establishment’s paranoia vis-à-vis the ‘invisible hand’ of foreign powers back then. During a Rajya Sabha debate on the proposed bill on 9 March 1976, the term ‘CIA’ (Central Intelligence Agency) was mentioned at least 30 times by different legislators, while ‘Lockheed Martin’ (a military aerospace corporation) came up at least six times in the context of alleged instances of Americans pumping dollars into governments worldwide to buy influence during the Cold War.

The sentiment of the times was captured by the following statement made during that debate by Khurshid Alam Khan, father of India’s present Minister for External Affairs: “The CIA’s doings all over the world have very clearly indicated as to what could be done by foreign money and foreign interference.”

In 2010, a different parliament, with opposition members who had not been imprisoned like those in 1976, unanimously voted to update the law by passing the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). In fact, the Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the bill was headed by the BJP’s Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, and it had no major objections.

This time round, there was no talk of the CIA or Lockheed Martin. Instead, concern was focused on the increasingly influential role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as institutions of civil society in India. The term ‘NGO’ found at least 40 mentions during the Rajya Sabha debate on the 2010 bill. The main concern of the Upper House appeared to be a lack of transparency among NGOs receiving foreign contributions. Hence the calls to strengthen the monitoring regime, although several MPs expressed worry that the new law would give the Centre too much discretionary power to crack down on dissenting NGOs.

Worries about the 2010 Act’s overreach were validated last year when the Government used it to clamp down on NGOs involved in anti-corruption and anti-nuclear protests. As part of that exercise, at least four NGOs were booked under the FCRA for allegedly diverting foreign funds to aid the organisation of protests against the Koodankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. Their bank accounts were frozen. The protests, however, did not end.

Perhaps the most ironic use of the FCRA was when the Ministry of Home Affairs reportedly held back potential funding from the US-based Ford Foundation for the Mumbai-based Institute for Policy Research Studies (IPRS), a thinktank that runs Parliamentary Research Service (PRS).

Incubated at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), a Delhi-based thinktank, PRS was spun off and institutionalised as IPRS in 2010 as a Section 25 non-profit company with a registered office in Mumbai. The main aim of PRS was to provide non-partisan legislative research services to parliamentarians, most of whom are starved of resources to conduct independent research required to hold the Executive accountable in Parliament. The service’s popularity among MPs was obvious from the fact that several of them reportedly made individual representations to the Home Ministry against blocking foreign funds for its parent institute.

The tragedy of why Parliament does not have a public-funded service like PRS is a debate for another day, but choking the IPRS of foreign funds raises a question of hypocrisy since the Central Government routinely collaborates with a wide range of civil society thinktanks that receive funds from the West.

Let’s start with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). According to its filings with the MHA, accessible on the FCRA website (http://mha.nic.in/fcra.htm), ICRIER has received over Rs 11.5 crore in foreign donations from a range of international institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Sasakawa Peace Foundation between 2007 and 2012. This council, currently headed by Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia, wife of Planning Commission Vice-chairperson Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, appears to have a cosy relationship with the present establishment. When the Government was in a fix over the contentious General Anti- Avoidance Rules (GAAR) of taxation, for example, it delegated the task of ironing out its problems to a four-member committee headed by Dr Parthasarathi Shome, a well-known economic policy expert at ICRIER. There are several other projects on which the Council’s faculty collaborates closely with the Government of India.

That thinktanks are well networked goes without saying. In fact, ICRIER and PRS were involved in quite a controversy during last year’s Parliament vote on Foreign Direct Investment in India’s multi-brand retail sector. As reported by India Today, (‘Foreign Direct Instruction for our MPs?’ 6 December 2012), IPRS had organised a ‘close-door’ meeting at Delhi’s Constitution Club the day before the vote, where MPs were briefed on the benefits of FDI by Professor Arpita Mukherjee of ICRIER. Some MPs had publicly labelled this a ‘lobbying’ effort.

Another example of close collaboration between the Centre and a thinktank that gets significant foreign funding is the one between the Government and the CPR, headed by Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Between 2007 and 2012, according to its filings with the MHA, this thinktank received foreign funds of over Rs 40.8 crore from a range of donors such as the Ford Foundation, Google Foundation, International Development Research Centre, Economic and Social Research Council, Hewlett Foundation and IKEA Social Initiative.

Environmental policy is another area in which foreign-funded thinktanks have a significant impact. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), headed by Sunita Narain with a governing board that has Ela Bhatt, BG Verghese, Dr MS Swaminathan and Dr NC Saxena among others, has received over Rs 67.7 crore in foreign funds between 2006 and 2012. The CSE’s main donors, according to FCRA records, include the Denmark- based Dan Church Aid, Germany-based Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst EV, Heinrich Boll Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Other donors include the Commission of European Communities and Government of India.

Going by the media coverage that CSE receives, it is safe to say that this thinktank has a profound influence on India’s environmental policy. An indication of its ties with the Government is the fact that the two had their own ‘side-event’ at the recently concluded Doha talks on climate change.

The other green thinktank with generous foreign contributions that works closely with the Government is The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Consider this: the International Bioenergy Summit of 2012 held in New Delhi was organised by TERI and sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT). According to its FCRA filings, TERI, with a staff of over 900, has received about Rs 155.9 crore between 2006 and 2012 from a vast variety of donors.

In the field of health policy, one of the most influential thinktanks is the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Since it was founded in 2006, it has received a total of Rs 219 crore in funds, its biggest foreign donor being the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and biggest Indian donor being the Government of India. Other foreign donors, according to FCRA filings, include the National Institutes of Health (of the US government), Welcome Trust, International Development Research Centre and MacArthur Foundation.

A public-private initiative, the PHFI is expected to shape India’s approach to public health policy over the next decade. An example of its influence on India’s health policy is the fact that its secretariat has been thanked and praised in a report of the High Level Expert Group constituted by the Planning Commission to frame a new policy on ‘universal health coverage’ for all Indians.

On matters of internet policy, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based thinktank focused on internet governance and intellectual property issues, has been a member of some key government committees, like the one under Justice AP Shah to study privacy laws in India. The CIS also receives foreign funding. According to its website, it has received over Rs 8.3 crore in funds, a significant portion of it from foreign donors like the UK-based Kusuma Trust, which was founded by Anurag Dikshit, an Indian businessman who made a fortune selling his stake in a popular online gambling website. He eventually donated most of his wealth to the Kusuma Trust, which funds various charities across the world.

In the human rights space, there is the famous Lawyers Collective, which, apart from its human rights advocacy, also provides legal aid to members of disadvantaged communities. Although this collective does not appear to work all that closely with the Government, it is interesting to note that it was founded by Indira Jaising, who is currently one of the Centre’s Additional Solicitor Generals. Since 2006, according to its FCRA filings, the organisation has received around Rs 21.8 crore in foreign funds from the Ford, Levi Strauss and Open Society foundations and from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, among others.

Another thinktank that deserves a mention is the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), which was founded by Dr Parth J Shah and has a ‘Board of Scholars’ with Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Jagdish Bhagwati, Lord Meghnad Desai and Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, among others, as members. While it is not clear from its website whether it works closely with the Government, it was ranked 51st in a recent global survey of thinktanks by University of Pennsylvania. According to a CCS press release, these rankings were ‘based on not just our research and analysis, but also on our engagement with policy makers and ability to influence policy decisions’. The CCS’s rank was quite a surprise, given its modest resources. According to its FCRA filings, between 2006 and 2011, it received about Rs 6.2 crore from foreign donors such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, John Templeton Foundation and International Policy Network. As per its audited accounts, available on its website, donations from Indian donors were equally modest.

The above examples demonstrate the influence of foreign funded thinktanks on almost every major aspect of Indian policy today, be it economic or environmental, related to public health or internet governance.

Is this good or bad for India as a country? Given that most sectors of the economy are now open to foreign investment, does it make sense to regulate and restrict foreign funds for such thinktanks under laws like the FCRA?

The answer depends on what Indian society expects of them. Do we expect them to be completely independent of donors in their views? Would an organisation like the CSE still get foreign funds from European donors if it were to readily welcome genetically modified (GM) food in India? In such circumstances, how independent should we expect these thinktanks to be in the arena of policy?

Absolute objectivity—or at a least public perception of it—is an absolute myth. No matter who funds a thinktank, be it foreigners or Indians, it is impossible to be seen as such. The more pressing issue is of transparency. Are Indian policymakers aware of the details of foreign funds received by these thinktanks?

Take, for example, a recent Parliamentary Standing Committee report that expressed serious reservations about GM food. The Committee repeatedly quotes with approval the deposition of Dr Vandana Shiva against GM food. A little-known fact about Dr Shiva is that her organisation, Navdanya, according to its FCRA filings, has received a total of Rs 16.7 crore between 2006 and 2012 in foreign donations from mainly European organisations (some of which also contribute to the CSE) like Bread for the World, Diakonie Emergency Aid, Hivos Foundation, Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst EV, RSF Innovations in Social Finance, and even from the European Union itself.

Would a Parliamentary Standing Committee headed by an MP of the CPM, a party that is always suspicious of the ‘foreign hand’, show the same deference to Dr Shiva’s views if its members knew of Navdanya’s European donors, several of which are also Christian churches?

In an op-ed article in The Indian Express (‘Do not disagree’, 29 February 2012), Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta while criticising the FCRA, states, ‘Of course, NGOs should be transparent and accountable in terms of their sources of funding.’ Yet, the CPR, of which Dr Mehta is president, only discloses the names of its donors in its annual report, and that too without revealing the amounts received from each. Similarly, Navdanya offers no information on either of its websites, Indian and Italian (navdanyainternational.it), on any of its funding. Other thinktanks like the PHFI and CIS offer a more detailed breakup of their different sources of funding, while some like the CSE and CCS provide only a roll of donor names and a figure of cumulative funding with no breakup of individual contributions. So, while these thinktanks are forced to disclose their foreign funding sources to the MHA under the FCRA, why do they not volunteer exhaustive information on their own websites?

An amusing facet of this is that the Central Government and Corporate India are more transparent (even if forced to be) than these civil society institutions, thanks to the Right to Information Act, 2005, and the extensive disclosure requirements under the Companies Act, 1956. Of companies in particular, information is accessible over the internet on the MCA21 website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. This contrast is amusing because some of these thinktanks never tire of demanding transparency of the State and corporate sector.

For several thinktanks, it is often hard to figure out something as basic as the nature of the legal entity through which they conduct their activities. Are they societies, associations or trusts? More pertinently, why is the Government not pushing for a stricter transparency regime? A major stumbling block may be the fact that these thinktanks are set up under state laws and it is difficult for the Central Government to coordinate a nationwide transparency regime. However, given that most are beneficiaries of income tax exemptions, it may be possible for the Centre to use the Income Tax Act to demand comprehensive disclosures. Since they enjoy tax benefits, they might also qualify as ‘public authorities’ under the Right To Information Act, 2005.

Another reason that disclosure of funding is important is to inform the analysis of people who usually see NGOs as selfless entities dedicated to nothing but a higher cause. While this may be true of some NGOs, many leaders of these set-ups have personal stakes in ensuring certain outcomes. After all, future donor grants often depend on sustaining one’s influence in the policy space. Many of the institutions described in this article have been regular recipients of funds from the same sources year after year.

Another question is the volume of funds coming in and where it will leave India’s public institutions that were originally meant to aid policymaking with unbiased intellectual inputs. How are cash-strapped Indian universities to compete with these well-funded thinktanks?

Government-run institutions of higher learning are supposed to have an inbuilt guarantee of academic independence, but would their scholarly voices be drowned out by those backed by bigger resources?

Also, given the frequency with which a few foreign funders appear on donor lists, is it time to worry about their influence on Indian policies? After all, generous funding lets the faculty of these thinktanks jetset around the world to attend conferences, organise seminars in India and network with officials at a level that most public universities cannot afford. How does this impact our civil society discourse? Should Parliament limit the amount that a single foreign entity can donate, or are we better off sticking to a regulatory regime that only insists on a set of disclosure norms?

On a concluding note, let us not forget that a large part of the credit for the RTI Act of 2005—the country’s most empowering piece of legislation since the Constitution of 1950—goes to the advocacy efforts of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a farmers group in Rajasthan that does not accept institutional funding from either India or overseas. Bank interest on its corpus and donations by individuals are the MKSS’s only sources of funding. Together, the two gave it Rs 30 lakh for the financial year 2010-11, details of which are available on its website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/openmagazine-article-business-prashant-reddy-march-2-2013-foreign-funding-of-ngos

Iceland’s proposed porn ban ‘like repression in Iran, N. Korea’ – activists

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T03:56:30Z

A group of 40 human rights activists from around the world fear that Iceland could become “a role model for Internet censorship” if it introduces Internet filters blocking online content deemed pornographic.

This blog post was published in RT on March 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

“The act of censoring pornography in Iceland differs in no way from repression of speech in Iran, China or North Korea,” human rights advocates wrote in an open letter to Icelandic Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson.

Activists from nearly 20 countries, including the UK, America, Austria and Finland, said that Iceland’s moral reasons for the push to censor Internet pornography is “justifying rather than condemning the actions of totalitarian regimes.”

Critics – including Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director for India’s Internet and Society Center, and Ot van Daalen, head of the Dutch Bits of Freedom Center – have described the controversial measure as “an affront to basic principles of the society.”

They also argued that those advocating the Web porn ban have offered “no definition, no evidence, and suggested no technology.”

The authors of the letter warned that the prohibition of pornographic content could create demand for an underground porn industry, unregulated and most certainly affiliated with other illegal activities, “as we have seen in the case of drugs or alcohol prohibition. Hiding the problem is not a solution and may in fact make things worse.”

The solution, according to the activists, could be better sex education at home and schools: “Sex education that deals not only with conception, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, but also relationships, communication and respect.”

Iceland, known for its feminist policies, could become the first Western country to censor online pornography, despite concerns over who will be given the authority to choose what is banned.

“It is tempting to regard filtering the Internet as a quick and easy way to restrict unwanted speech, opinions, or media, which the government regards as harmful for either them or the people,” the letter said. “The right to see the world as it is, is critical to the very tenets and functions of a democracy and must be protected at all costs.”

The activists claimed that it is technically impossible to censor the Internet without monitoring all telecommunications with automated machines: “This level of government surveillance directly conflicts with the idea of a free society.”

Iceland is not the only European country that has tried to implement such a ban. In December, the UK proposed blocking access to all pornographic websites, but UK ministers rejected the idea over a lack of public support.

According to supporters of the Icelandic ban, pornography has unquestionably damaging effects on both children and women.

"We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime," Interior Minister Jonasson, the author of the proposed ban, was quoted as saying.

While Iceland has already passed a law banning the distribution and printing of pornography, the proposed ban would eventually restrict access to pornographic websites in the country, and make it impossible to use Icelandic credit cards on X-rated sites.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/rt-march-1-2013-icelands-proposed-porn-ban

Don’t SLAPP free speech

sunil — 2013-02-28T11:22:09Z

IIPM is proving adept at the tactical use of lawsuits to stifle criticism, despite safeguards. THE DEPARTMENT of Telecommunications, on 14 February, issued orders to block certain web pages critical of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM).

Sunil Abraham's column with inputs from Snehashish Ghosh was published in Tehelka on February 3, 2013 (Issue 9 Volume 10)

Despite our best efforts, we have not managed to get a copy of the court order. Meanwhile, there has been a lot of speculation among Internet policy experts on Twitter. What is the title of the case? Which judge issued the order? Who is the affected party? Why have mainstream media houses like Outlook not been served notice by the court? Is the infamous Section 66A of the IT Act to be blamed? That is highly unlikely. News reports suggest that a lower court in Gwalior has issued an ad interim injunction in a defamation suit. Most experts agree that this is a SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) suit, where a company uses the cost of mounting a legal defence to silence critics.

Bullies with deep pockets use the law in very creative ways, such as forum shopping, forum shifting and the use of proxies. Forum shopping can be best understood through the example of mining giant Fomento suing Goan blogger Sebastian Rodrigues for $1 billion at the Kolkata High Court, even though Goa would have been a more logical location. Though IIPM lost an earlier case against Careers360 before the Uttaranchal High Court, the offending URLs from that case are included in the latest block order, exemplifying successful forum shifting. The doctrine of ‘res subjudice’ does not permit courts to proceed in a matter which is “directly and substantially” similar to a previous suit between the same parties. Proxies are usually employed to circumvent this procedural doctrine.

Article 19(2) of our Constitution empowers the State to create laws that place eight types (depending on how you count) of reasonable restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression. One of these reasonable restrictions is defamation. Tort law on defamation in India has been mostly borrowed from common law principles developed in the UK, which include a series of exceptions where the law cannot be used. In the present context, the exceptions important for the IIPM case include: fair and bona fide comment and matter of public interest. In addition, Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code provides for 10 exceptions to defamation. The exceptions relevant to this case are: “first: imputation of truth which public good requires to be made or published”, “ninth: imputation made in good faith by person for protection of his or other’s interests” and “tenth: caution intended for good of person to whom conveyed or for public good”. The criminal law on defamation in India is based on robust legal principles, but for the sake of public interest it’d be best to do away with such a law as it has far-reaching, chilling effects on free speech.

On interim injunctions in defamation suits, the Delhi High Court set an important precedent protecting free speech in 2011. While applying the English principle — the Bonnard Rule — the court in Tata Sons Pvt Ltd versus Greenpeace International held that a higher standard should be adhered to while granting an interim injunction in a defamation suit, because such an injunction might impinge upon freedom of expression and thus potentially be in violation of the Indian Constitution. This century-old rule states that “until it is clear that an alleged libel is untrue… the importance of leaving free speech unfetter – ed is a strong reason in cases of libel for dealing most cautiously and warily with the granting of interim injunctions…”

In the same case, the Court rejected the argument that since it was published online and thus had wider reach and greater permanence, an injunction should be granted. It observed that “publication is a comprehensive term, embracing all forms and mediums — including the Internet”, thus ruling out special treatment for the Inter net in cases of defamation. That is good news for free speech online in India. Now let’s stick to it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/tehelka-sunil-abraham-feb-3-2013-dont-slap-free-speech

Women in the IT Industry: Request for Data

jdine — 2013-03-06T10:52:00Z

For CIS's research on indicators of female economic empowerment in the IT industry in India, we have sent formal request for participation in a short survey to the six largest IT companies based in India. A copy of the letter of request and survey as well as some details of the request for data can be found in this post.

Click to see the Letter of Survey Request and the Income Bracket Form

As introduced in an earlier blog, CIS has begun a short research project on female employees in the IT industry in India. This project aims to gather quantitative and qualitative data on women employed by the six largest Indian software companies in order to generate insight into whether or not these employers foster workplaces that are conducive to female economic empowerment. We have decided to gather some very basic quantitative data for this project by directly asking each of these companies to provide some information on data points that we deemed important indicators of women-friendly workplaces. This request has been carried out via post and, when possible, electronic mail.

In this letter of request, we have asked each of the companies to provide information on the number of women they employ, how much paid leave employees are allocated per month and per year, whether or not they have any complaints committees in place as per the Vishaka guidelines, and whether or not they offer any support for childcare or childcare services on their worksites.

Further, we also requested that they complete a form listing ascending monthly incomes (from below Rs. 19,999 to above Rs. 1.5 crore) by filling in how many female and male employees they employ in each income bracket. A copy of the letter and the form are attached to this blog post.

Each of these letters was addressed to the Chief Human Resources Officer (or equivalent title) at the corporate headquarters, and mailed as Registered Post, Acknowledgement Due on February the 19^th, 2013. We plan to send two more copies of this letter on the same date for the next two months.

The contacts and addresses that these letters were sent to are listed below. All of this information was gathered from publicly available sources.

Tech Mahindra Ltd.:
Contact:
Sujitha Karnad - Senior Vice President: HR & QMG for IT Services
Address:
Tech Mahindra Limited, Department of Human Resources
Sharda Centre, Off Karve Road,
Pune 411004, Maharashtra
India

Mahindra Satyam:
Contact:
Hari Thalapalli - Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer
Address:
Satyam Computer Services Limited, Department of Human Resources
Mahindra Satyam Technology Center
Survey No.62/1A, Qutubullapaur Mandal
Bahadurpally Village, RR Dist
Hyderabad 500043

HCL Technologies Ltd.:
Contact:
Prithvi Shergill - Chief Human Resources Officer
Address:
HCL Technologies Limited, Department of Human Resources
A-104, Sector 58, Noida
Uttar Pradesh, 201 303
India

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.:
Contact:
Ajoyendra Mukherjee - Executive Vice President & Head, Global Human Resources
Address:
Tata Consultancy Services, Department of Human Resources
TCS House,
Raveline street,
Fort, Mumbai, 400 001
India

Infosys Ltd.:
Contact:
Nandita Gurjar - Group Head of Human Resources
Address:
Infosys Limited, Department of Human Resources
Electronics City, Hosur Road
Bangalore, 560 100
India

Wipro Ltd.:
Contact:
Pratik Kumar - Executive Vice President, Human Resources
Address:
Wipro Limited, Department of Human Resources
Doddakannelli
Sarjapur Road
Bangalore, 560 035
India

Further, emails were sent out and calls were made to the media contacts of each company requesting the contact information (email addresses in particular) of any relevant HR personnel and/or any individuals that may be able to provide us with the requested information. From the information gathered in this exercise, various Human Resources staff members from Wipro, HCL Technologies and TCS received the appeal to provide the requested information via email on the 11^th of February.

We have not yet received any replies to either the email or post requests for information.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/women-in-the-it-industry

"All Indian Enterprises should Be Very Worried": Centre for Internet and Society

praskrishna — 2013-02-28T09:21:32Z

This blog post by Shubhra Rishi was published in Computer World on February 25, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The chairman of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) is having a Barbara Streisand moment.

The American entertainer Barbra Streisand, in 2003, attempted to suppress photographs of her residence, involuntarily and indirectly fuelling further publicity. Arindam Chaudhuri’s order from a Gwalior Court has unfortunately resulted in more or less the same.

The DoT’s CERT team has successfully censored more than 70 URLs that didn’t particularly contain praises of IIPM. Amusingly, a URL containing a public notice issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in July 2012 was also blocked. The UGC notice said that IIPM cannot be recognized as a university according to the provisions of a particular section.

So while this issue has managed to hold our attention, it has also fervently highlighted the misappropriation of section 69 of India’s Information Technology (IT) Act 2000. According to this act, if the Director of Controller is satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so, he/she may order or direct any agency of the Government to intercept any information transmitted through any computer resource.

In short, intercepting or blocking is counter-productive in today’s scenario and is often seen as a direct infringement of people’s online freedom. “The Constitution of India does not put so many restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression that IT Act puts under a particular section,” says cyber law expert, Pavan Duggal.

Legal experts are also of the opinion that several provisions of the IT Act are unconstitutional. “It does not have built-in safeguards, especially transparency-related ones, around surveillance and censorship. Censorship in India, especially under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011, is completely opaque and results in invisible censorship, meaning that we don't even get to find out that censorship has happened and thus cannot challenge it,” says Pranesh Prakash, policy director, Centre for Internet and Society.

In the past, independent activists such as Binayak Sen, Assem Trivedi, and Arundhati Roy, or even commoners such as Shaheen Dhadha have come under fire of the said Act.

Frankly, if this loophole in the IT Act is not addressed, even Indian corporations could face a similar problem.

“I believe all intermediaries (websites that host user content, and networks that carry user traffic among others) are threatened now. Their executives can be dragged to court without any protection; thanks to the broad wording of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011, despite the IT Act itself granting them some protections. This is dangerous, and all Indian enterprises should be very worried,” says Prakash.

CorporateIndiawill have to tighten its belts. Despite the fact that the entire IT Act needs to be overhauled and employees need to be sensitized, currently, the first thing that corporate India needs to do is ensure that its operations in electronic format comply with the IT Act and its rules. “There's a lack of awareness about compliances in the corporate sector. Any kind of “jugaad” may not help a company get out of a potential exposure under the IT Act. An effective implementation of these compliances will relieve companies of the IT Act’s potential liabilities, both civil and criminal,” advises Duggal.

So the Streisand effect in the IIPM case will slowly wear off, but the potential threat of the IT Act will continue to haunt enterprises.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/computer-world-india-feature-shubra-rishi-feb-25-2013-all-indian-enterprises-should-be-very-worried

February 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T05:35:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wishes you a great year ahead and welcomes you to the second issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you an overview of our research programs, updates of events organised by us, events we participated in, news and media coverage, and videos of some of our recent events.

Memorial

Rahul Cherian, an expert and policy activist in disability law, intellectual property and technology law passed away due to an illness while on a visit to Goa on February 7, 2013. Rahul was the founder of the Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy, and a fellow at CIS. He was also a partner at IndoJuris Law Offices in Chennai and was one of the experts who drafted the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Hindu (February 8, 2013), First Post (February 8, 2013), Legally India (February 7, 2013), and Bar & Bench (February 8, 2013) covered this story. Lawrence Liang wrote an obituary page, A Lightness of Spirit (The Hindu, February 9, 2013) and Nishant Shah wrote a column One For All (Indian Express, February 17, 2013).

CIS organised a memorial function for Rahul Cherian at the TERI, Southern Regional Centre in Bangalore on February 28, 2013.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge and Openness), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One of this is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another is for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and many other organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities

Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Bihar and West Bengal:

The Bihar Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, February 14, 2013): The state of Bihar is in the process of formulating a comprehensive state policy on disability. The Bihar State Policy on Disability is an extension of the National Policy for Persons with Disabilities and is currently in a draft form awaiting government approval and notification.
The West Bengal Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, February 28, 2013): The state of West Bengal has issued the West Bengal Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Rules, 1999 to implement the provisions under the central Persons with Disabilities (Protection of Rights, Equal Opportunities and Full Participation) Act, 1995.

Media Coverage

Indian Users’ Perspective On WIPO Negotiations On Treaty For Visually Impaired (by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch, February 16, 2013). Nirmita Narasimhan is quoted.

Access to Knowledge

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. The project researches upon the noteworthy opportunities of the new types of low cost mobile devices, content and services as available in the market.

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval, and one new team member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who works from Bangalore office.

New Team Member

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja joined the A2K team as Programme Officer, India Language Initiatives on February 19, 2013. Dr. Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He is one of the earliest editors of Kannada Wikipedia. He has to his credit many firsts, viz., first Kannada website, first Kannada online magazine, first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for WinCE device (HP Jornado 720), first Indian language version (Kannada) of universally popular Logo (programming language for children) software, etc. His Kannada logo won the Manthan Award for the year 2006. He was a member of the technical advisory committee setup by the Govt. of Karnataka for Standardization of Kannada on Computers (2000). He is also a member of the Kannada Software Committee of Govt. of Karnataka (2008-current).

Events Organised

Knowledge Sharing through GLAM at Bangalore (Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore, February 25, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Nitika Tandon participated in this event.
Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup @ Indian Institute of Management (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (organized in partnership with Wikispeed and NASSCOM). Vishnu Vardhan spoke on the Access to Knowledge project. Noopur Raval participated in the event.

Blog Entries

Creative Commons comes to India (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).
Fifty-fourth Bangalore Wikimedia Meet-up at IIM, Bangalore (by Noopur Raval, February 28, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia Community Brings Wikipedia Education Program to IIMC, Dhenkanal (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).
FOSS, Wikimedia and Mozilla Under One Roof at GNUnify 2013, Pune (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).

Event Reports
CIS organised one Wiki workshop in the month of February 2013. We also bring you the report from an event organised in the month of January:

Celebrating Odia Wikipedia's Ninth Anniversary (organized by the Odia Wiki Community with support from CIS and Academy for Media Learning, January 29, 2013, Bhubaneswar). Few glimpses of the event are available as audio podcasts.
Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University (by Nitika Tandon, February 5, 2013).

Media Coverage

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ନ‌ବମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ଅବସରରେ କର୍ମଶାଳା: ଇମିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ର‌ୟୋଗ (Odishan.com, February 4, 2013).
ସମ୍ବାଦ: ଲିପି ବ୍ୟାକରଣ ଓ ମାନକ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ରୟୋଗ ଜରୁରୀ. (Sambad, February, 2013).
Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media (e India Bureau, March 2, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia’s 9th anniversary (fullOrissa News, February 13, 2013).
Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media (India Education Diary.com, March 2, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.
Odia language workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia Wikipedia: Application of Odia language in e-media (Odishaviews.com, February 5, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

Ongoing Events

Wikipedia Workshop @ BITS Goa (BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, March 7, 2013, 5.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.).
A Wikipedia Editing Workshop in Goa (Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa, March 8, 2013, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.).

Announcement

Sanskrit Wikiquote — Now Available: The Access to Knowledge team at CIS is happy to announce the availability of Sanskrit Wikiquote. Shiju Alex, an ex-team member played an active role in bringing this out. For more info see http://bit.ly/Y9OY9R.

Pervasive Technologies

Event Participated In

International Conference on Contours of Media Governance: Teaching, Disciplinarity, Methodology (organised by Jamia Millia Islamia University with support from Ford Foundation and ICSSR, Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, February 25 – 27, 2013). Sunil Abraham presented preliminary findings from the Pervasive Technologies project.

Other Openness Updates

Announcements from Other Organizations

Iryna Kuchma wins the second EPT award: The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development announced the winner of its 2nd Annual Award in recognition of the effort made by individuals working in the developing and emerging countries in the furtherance of Open Access (OA) to scholarly publications. Dr. Francis Jayakanth won the inaugural award last year.

HasGeek

HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works from the CIS office in Bengaluru.

Event Report & Video

Report of Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight (by Zainab Bawa, February 6, 2013). On January 19 and 20, 2013, HasGeek organized a hacknight to commemorate the life and work of Aaron Swartz. Zainab Bawa shares the developments.

Internet Governance

CIS has an agreement with Privacy International, London to facilitate the implementation of activities related to surveillance and freedom of speech and expression. We are also doing a project on examining the indicators of female economic empowerment in the IT industry in India.

Gender

Women in India’s IT Industry (by Jadine Lannon, February 27, 2013)
Women in the IT Industry: Request for Data (by Jadine Lannon, February 28, 2013).

Free Speech & Expression

Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked URLs by Department of Telecommunications (IIPM Edition) (by Snehashish Ghosh, February 14, 2013). The analysis was quoted in FirstPost.
Don’t SLAPP free speech (by Sunil Abraham with inputs from Snehashish Ghosh, Tehelka, February 3, 2013, Issue 9, Volume 10).
Freedom of Expression Gagged (by Chinmayi Arun, Hindu Business Line, February 15, 2013).

Media Coverage

Hate speech: ban or ignore? (NDTV, February 5, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Shivam Vij, and Sanjay Rajoura gave their expert views on the impact of hate speech.
Censorship and sensibility in India (by Samanth Subramanian, February 6, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests (by Betwa Sharma, New York Times, February 8, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Indian net service providers too play censorship tricks (by T Ramachandran, The Hindu, February 9, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Anonymous joins protests against Internet shutdown in Kashmir (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, February 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Why was the Gwalior court in such a hurry to block IIPM URLs? (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, February 19, 2013). Snehashish Ghosh’s analysis on blocked website is quoted.
Stop Press Carousel (by Arindham Mukherjee, Outlook, February 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
"All Indian Enterprises should Be Very Worried": Centre for Internet and Society (by Shubhra Rishi, Computer World, February 25, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Events Participated In

Freedom of expression online: identifying and addressing challenges and developing a shared vision and a working partnership: (organized by Wilton Park, Wiston House, Sussex, UK, February 13 – 15, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.
9th International Asian Conference (organized by ITech Law, Bangalore, February 14 -15, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on Censorship of Online Content.

Privacy

2012: Privacy Highlights in India (by Elonnai Hickok, February 12, 2013): Elonnai summarizes the top privacy moments of 2012 in India.
Surveillance Camp IV: Disproportionate State Surveillance - A Violation of Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok and Katitza Rodriguez of Electronic Frontier Foundation February 19, 2013).
BigDog is Watching You! The Sci-fi Future of Animal and Insect Drones (by Maria Xynou, February 25, 2013).

Events Organized

Analyzing the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 (March 1, 2013, CIS, Bangalore).
Unique Identity Number (UID), National Population Register (NPR), and Governance (March 2, 2013, TERI Southern Regional Centre, Bangalore).

Event Participated In

The Omnishambles of UID, shrouded in its RTI opacity: CIS sponsored Colonel Mathew Thomas to hold a workshop at the fourth National Right to Information (RTI) organized by the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, held in Hyderabad from February 15 to 18, 2013.

Upcoming Event

DML Conference 2013 (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013).

Internet Access – Knowledge Repository

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation was executing the telecom knowledge repository project which included producing and disseminating modules on various aspects of telecommunications including policy, regulations, infrastructure and market. However, from November 2012 there was a change in the mandate of the project. The new repository will cover the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access. It will also touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Upcoming Event

We are hosting an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registration and relevant details will be announced soon on our website.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Newspaper Column

The Supreme Court & Spectrum Management (by Shyam Ponappa, Organizing India Blogspot, February 14, 2013, originally published in the Business Standard, February 6, 2013).

Blog Entry

Who Minds the Maxwell's Demon: Revisiting Communication Networks through the Lens of the Intermediary (by Sharath Chandra Ram, February 28, 2013).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Events Participated In

D:coding Digital Natives - Seminar with Nishant Shah (organized by HUMlab, February 26, 2013). Nishant Shah gave a talk on D:coding Digital Natives at Samhällsvetarhuset.

Video Vortex # 9 Re:assemblies of Video (organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, Post Media Lab, Moving Image Lab, Leuphana, et.al, February 28 – March 2, 2013). Nishant Shah delivered a key note at this event.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers At Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University.

Upcoming Event

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (organised by CIS and Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah will be speaking at this event.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We have conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.

CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2013-bulletin

Research Initiative: Women in India's IT Industry

jdine — 2013-03-06T10:31:48Z

CIS has begun a brief research project which will examine indicators of female economic empowerment in the IT industry in India. Though the gathering of quantitative and qualitative data from the six largest publicly-traded Indian software companies, we hope to provide insight into state of female employment in one of the most important and rapidly growing economic sectors in the country.

The recent events and subsequent discussions surrounding the brutal gang rape and murder of a young Delhi woman on a bus last December in Munirka, New Delhi, have prompted dialogue in mainstream discourses about the position of women in India, and have lead many to scrutinize the treatment of women within various spheres of Indian society. What has become increasingly apparent following the events of December 16^th is that effective longterm change for Indian women cannot be achieved by harsher consequences or more rigorous transport regulations, but instead through widespread recognition of the routine discrimination faced by Indian women in their public, private and professional lives. The latter sphere is of particular interest to the Indian context, as although the last two decades have seen an unprecedented number of Indian women enter the formal workforce, issues of female economic empowerment tend to get downplayed when juxtaposed against the entirety of the system of discrimination and violence faced by women in India.

As a brief foray into the reality of female economic empowerment in India, CIS has decided to carry out a small though hopefully telling research project on some of the largest corporate players in the Indian IT industry. The aim of this research is to gain a better understanding of the state of female employment, gender equality and the qualitative experience of being a working woman in one of the most important and rapidly growing economic sectors in the country.

Using NASSCOM's annual industry ratings from 2007-2012,[1] we put together a list of the six software companies headquartered in India that appeared in the top five spots at least twice between the years 2007-2012. These companies are Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Ltd., Wipro Ltd., HCL Tech Ltd., Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam. Through formal requests for data and a handful of qualitative interviews, we will be gathering information from these companies and their employees that will eventually by compiled into a short report that will be publicly available on our website.

(A brief explanation of why we chose to use NASSCOM's industry list can be found at the end of this article,[2] along with some notes on the change of ownership of Mahindra Satyam and its merger with Tech Mahindra).[3]

Why the IT Industry?

In 2012, an international consulting and management firm called Booz & Company released “The Third Billion”, a global ranking of the level of economic empowerment attained by woman on 128 countries. The indicators used included equal pay for equal work, non-discrimination policies, the male-to-female-male employee ratio, and equality in terms of female managers and senior business leaders.[4] India rated quite poorly at spot 115.[5] Further, the International Labour Force recently reported that the rate of female participation in the total labour force[6] in India has fallen from 37% in 2004-05 to 29% in 2009-10, leaving India at the 11th lowest spot out of 131 countries.[7] Despite these declining rates, it was estimated in 2010 that approximately 5.5 million Indian women were entering the formal workforce each year at that period in time,[8] and though the aforementioned statistics likely indicate that a larger proportion of men are entering the formal workforce each year than women, this is a significant amount of employees, many of whom will be facing a unique set of challenges in the workplace simply because of their gender. In fact, research done by the Centre for Talent Innovation has found that 55% of female Indian employees routinely encounter such severe bias in the workplace that they disengage from their work or consider dropping out altogether.[9]

This is where the IT industry comes in. From an aggregate revenue of USD 3.9 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 1998[10] to more than USD 100 billion in FY2012,[11] the Indian IT-BPO industry has been growing exponentially over the last 15 years, and it continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors in the Indian economy. Further, it has rapidly become one of the most economically significant industries in India in terms of share of total exports (approximately 25% for FY2012)[12] export revenue (USD 69.1 billion and growing by more than 16%)[13] and proportion of national GDP (from 1.2% in FY1998 to 7.5% in FY2012).[14] IT services alone account for more than half of the software and services exports in the industry, and is the fastest growing segment of the sector at 18%.[15] Further, NASSCOM estimates that the sector will create 230,000 jobs in FY2012,[16] increasing the number of individuals employed directly in India's IT-BPO industry to about 2.8 million individuals.[17] The industry is estimated to indirectly employ another 8.9 million people.[18]

Because the IT industry in India is such an important source of employment for young Indian professionals (the median age of IT-BPO employees in India was about 24[19] in 2011), and because an unprecedented amount of those young professionals are women (women made up 42% of India's college graduates in 2010, and that figure was expected to continue to rise),[20] IT companies have the potential to become leading examples of women-friendly employers. However, according to DataQuest's Best Employer Survey 2012, the percentage of women employed in the IT industry in India has actually decreased from 26% in 2010 to 22% in 2012[21] even though the number of jobs created in this sector continues to increase annually. Again, these statistics most likely point to a larger number of males available for employment than females (and therefore a larger proportion of men being employed), but they also show that the number of women employed in the IT sector is not significantly increasing (or even increasing at all).

Considering, then, how important the IT industry may be for the employment of young female professionals (and if it is not now, it will be soon), the responsibility to create nondiscriminatory and comfortable workplace environments should fall heavily on the largest and most economically significant companies in the software sector, as they have the opportunity to set precedents not only for the rest of the industry but for Indian employers as a whole.

How are these industry giants faring in terms of the treatment of their female employees?

To commence this research, I have collected some basic facts about the Board of Directors and executive management teams of the six Indian IT companies off of their websites and annual reports. This brief preliminary foray into the industry has revealed that although many of these companies promote gender equality in the workplace and women in senior positions of authority, the Indian software sphere continues to be almost entirely male-dominated.

The collected statistics on Board members and executive management teams are listed below. It bears keeping in mind that while the information on the Board of Directors may be quite reliable (depending on how recently each company has updated their website) and therefore appropriate to use as a tool of comparative analysis, the information on the executive management teams can be misleading, as each company appears to have a different criteria of what constitutes a senior management team (for example, Tata Consultancy Services lists two individuals, their CEO and CFO, as their executive management team, but Wipro Ltd. lists 24 individuals from a variety of different departments).

Because we were not certain of how recently each company had updated its website, we have prioritized the data on the Boards from their annual Investor's Reports over the information available on their websites.

Tata Consultancy Services Limited
TCS' annual report for the 2011-2012 fiscal year reports a 14 member Board of Directors with one female non-executive director. This woman is not Indian. The report also lists a 28-member strong management team with two female members, and their website lists

Number of women on the Board: 1/14

Number of women holding executive management positions: 2/30

Infosys Limited
Infosys Ltd. has 15 Board members: six executive members, none of which are women; one male chairperson; and eight non-executive independent members, one of whom is a woman, but not an Indian woman.

Further, Infosys lists 14 individuals in their executive management team,[22] one of whom is a woman. It is interesting to note that this female member is the group head of Human Resources as well as being one of five senior Vice Presidents.[23] Infosys also has an Executive Council made up of 13 members, including one Indian woman.

Number of women on the Board: 1/15
Number of women holding executive management positions: 1/14

Wipro Limited
Wipro's Board of Directors is made up of 12 men: one executive chairman, two executive directors, and nine independent directors.

As for their executive management team, the website lists 24 executive leaders, two of whom are women.[24] Wipro also has a Corporate Executive Council of six men.

Number of women on Board: 0/12

Number of women in executive management team: 2/23

HCL Tech Limited
HCL's Board has nine members, two of whom are executive members. The other seven members are listed as being independent, non-executive members. One of these non-executive members is a woman; she is not Indian.

On their website[25] they list 18 members of their leadership team, none of whom are female.

Number of women on Board: 1/9

Number of women holding executive management positions: 0/18

Tech Mahindra
On Tech Mahindra's Board of Directors sits a non-executive chairman, one executive member, six non-executive independent members, and three non-executive directors. None of these individuals are female. On their website, seven employees appear to make up the leadership team of this company, one of whom is a woman. Interestingly, this individual is also the head of HR.[26]

Number of women on Board: 0/11

Number of women holding executive management positions: 1/7

Mahindra Satyam
According to their 2011-2012 annual report, Mahindra Satyam's Board of Directors boosts 6 members: a male chairman, one male CEO, and four non-executive board members, one of whom is an Indian woman.

Further, there appears to be six members of the leadership team[27] including the CEO, none of whom are female.

Number of women on Board: 1/6

Number of women holding executive management positions: 0/6

Summary of Board of Director Data

Number of female chairpersons in the 6 largest IT companies in India: 0/6

Number of women seated on the Board of Directors of the top 6 IT companies in India: 4/67

Executive (excluding chairmen/vice-chairmen): 0/14

Non-Executive (excluding chairmen/vice-chairmen): 4/47

Female Indian members: 1/4

Number of female employees in senior management positions: 6/98

While these numbers may be sobering, they are not exceptionally low, or even below average. According to The Globe and Mail's 11^th annual Board Games report on corporate governance, the percentage of Board seats held by women on Boards of Directors in the Indian corporate sector in 2012 was 5.3%, meaning that, at an approximately 6% of seats held by female members, our very small sample size is actually sitting just above the Indian average. However, when compared to the other BRIC countries at 5.1%, 5.9% and 8.5% respectively,[28] India is still lagging behind when it comes to having women in positions of senior authority in the corporate world.

Further, considering that these are the largest corporate IT companies in the industry, and the majority carry out activities across the globe, they probably have, on average, larger and more diverse Boards of Directors than our average mid- to large-sized Indian software company. Further, two out of six companies do not even have one female member on their Board. As for those remaining four, it is likely that these companies may be the exception and not the rule when it comes to the number of women on the Boards in the Indian IT.

As for executive management, the world average for the percentage of women in senior management roles was 21% in 2012, a meagre increase from the global average of 19% in 2004.[29] The same study that produced these figures also found that the proportion of women holding senior management positions in India was 14%, placing the data from our sample size way below the curve at approximately 6%. However, due to issues discussed earlier in this post, this figure is not an accurate representation of the executive management teams of all six companies; future research will hopefully provide us with more factual statistics.

This is not to say that the IT sector in India is the only industry that should be concerned with its low rates of female employment and attainment of seniority, nor should its industry giants be the only corporate entities publicly scrutinized in this manner. The economic empowerment of women in India is an on-going struggle that is played out in many spheres in the Indian society, including the non-profit sector. In fact, if we perform a similar breakdown of CIS' Board of Directors and staff, the results are comparable to those of the IT companies:

According to our 2011-2012 annual report, our Board of Directors boosts 8 members, two of whom are executive members of CIS' management team. One of these individuals is an Indian woman.

Further, of our 14 staff members, four are women.

[1]. NASSCOM. 2012. Industry Rankings: Top 20 Players in IT Services. [online] Retrieved from http://www.nasscom.org/industry-ranking on January 21st, 2013.

[2]. The NASSCOM industry ranking is a well-regarded annual ranking of the IT sector in India that is often used as a resource in various research initiatives and similar publications, and it appears to be widely accepted as a legitimate ranking by both those within the industry and by entities from other sectors. The ranking is determined using revenue information provided by each company for their activities in India, which we thought was a strong indicator of their significance to the industry and the Indian economic engine as a whole. Finally, NASSCOM carries out this ranking each year, which will allow us to use a similar methodology in choosing our research subjects should we choose to reproduce this research annually.

[3]. If you look at the NASSCOM list of top 20 for 2007-2008, you will see that a company called Satyam Computer Services. This company was taken over by the Mahindra Group in 2009, and was rebranded as Mahindra Satyam to reflect its new parent company. This is why Mahindra Satyam is included in our list, though it first appeared on the NASSCOM Industry Rankings for the 2011-2012 fiscal year; we counted the appearance of Satyam Computer Services in the fourth spot in the rankings for 2007-2008 as a point towards Mahindra Satyam.

Further, it was announced in March of 2012 that Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra would be merging; however, this had not yet happened by the end of the 2012 fiscal year and therefore we will treat Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra as separate and independent entities in this research project.

[4]. Aquirre, D., Hoteit, L., Rupp, C., & Sabbaugh, K. 2012. Empowering the Third Billion: Women and the World of Work in 2012. [pdf] Booz & Company. Accessible at: http://bit.ly/SXdZ6P

[5]. ibid.

[6]. The rate of female labour participation indicates the proportion of the female population above the age of 15 that supplies labour for the production of goods and services on the formal market in a given time period.

[7]. International Labour Organization. February 13, 2013. India: Why is Women's Labour Force Participation Dropping? [online] Retrieved from http://bit.ly/11EGYCM on February 22^nd, 2013.

[8]. Hewlett, S. A., Fredman, C., Leader-Chivee, L., & Rashid, R. 2010. The Battle for Female Talent in India. New York: Center for Work-Life Policy.

[9]. Hewlett, S. A. November 1, 2012. “More Women in the Workforce Could Raise GDP by 5%.” Harvard Business Review. [online] Retrieved from http://bit.ly/YrxyFA February 23^rd, 2013.

[10]. Embassy of India. 2007. India's Information Technology Industry. [online] Retrieved from http://www.indianembassy.org/indiainfo/india_it.htm on February 23^rd, 2013.

[11]. NASSCOM. 2012. Indian IT-BPO Industry. [online] Retrieved from http://www.nasscom.in/indian-itbpo-industry on February 24^th, 2013.

[12]. ibid.

[13]. ibid.

[14]. ibid.

[15]. NASSCOM. 2012. IT Services. [online] Retrieved from http://www.nasscom.in/it-services on February 25^th, 2013.

[16]. NASSCOM. 2012. Indian IT-BPO Industry. [online] Retrieved from http://www.nasscom.in/indian-itbpo-industry on February 24^th, 2013.

[17]. ibid.

[18]. ibid.

[19]. Business Standard. January 31, 2011. Employee Retention Key Challenge for IT, BPO Cos. [online] Retrieved from http://bit.ly/13sCizA on February 24^th, 2013.

[20]. Hewlett, Sylvia A. & Rashid, Ripa. December 3, 2010. “India's Crown Jewels: Female Talent.” Harvard Business Review. [online] Retrieved from http://bit.ly/gpv7CQ on February 23^rd, 2013.

[21]. Sharma, P. October 29, 2012. “Gender Inclusivity, Still a Key Challenge.” DataQuest. [online] Retrieved from http://bit.ly/TPkz1F on February 19^th, 2013.

[22]. Information retrieved from: http://infy.com/cVfEwp

[23]. According to the Grant Thornton International Business Report for 2012, the majority of women employed in senior management positions are heads/directors of Human Resources (21%). It has been argued that women tend to get employed in Human Resources due to a perceived “natural transfer of skills”--meaning that women are believed to be pre-disposed to excel at Human Resources-related tasks and responsibilities simply because of the experiences and norms of their gender. For a more profound discussion of this phenomenon, please visit: http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=533345673

[24]. Information retrieved from: http://bit.ly/13sBtXJ

[25]. Information retrieved from: http://bit.ly/Kdm0vP

[26]. Please see footnote 23

[27]. Information retrieved from: http://bit.ly/148kLsv

[28]. Information retrieved from: http://bit.ly/XVvpp3

[29]. Grant Thornton. 2012. “Women in Senior Management: Still Not Enough.” in Grant Thornton International Business Report 2012. Grant Thornton. [pdf] Accessible at: http://bit.ly/HCjKTG

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/women-in-indias-it-industry

Analyzing the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012

praskrishna — 2013-02-25T09:56:19Z

The Centre for Internet & Society invites you to a workshop on analyzing the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill on March 1, 2013 in its Bangalore office, from 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

The Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill seeks to establish DNA databases at the state, regional, and national level for the purposes of establishing identity in criminal and civil proceedings. The Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill has been critiqued by the committee chaired by Justice AP Shah in the “Report of Group of Experts on Privacy” for a lack of adequate privacy safeguards.

In Fall 2012 the Centre for Internet and Society held a series of public meetings to raise awareness about the Bill and submitted feedback to the Department of Biotechnology. This workshop is in response to an April 2012 draft of the Bill and seeks to analyze the text of the Bill, look at technical aspects of the Bill and DNA profiling, and compare the current draft of the Bill with previous drafts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/analyzing-draft-human-dna-profiling-bill

BigDog is Watching You! The Sci-fi Future of Animal and Insect Drones

maria — 2013-07-12T15:38:33Z

Do you think robotic aeroplanes monitoring us are scary enough? Wait until you read about DARPA´s new innovative and subtle way to keep us all under the microscope! This blog post presents a new reality of drones which is depicted in none other than animal and insect-like robots, equipped with cameras and other surveillance technologies.

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

Just when we thought we had seen it all, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded another controversial surveillance project which makes even the most bizarre sci-fi movie seem like a pleasant fairy-tale in comparison to what we are facing: animal and insect drones.

Up until recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise called drones, depicted the scary reality of surveillance, as robotic pilot-less planes have been swarming the skies, while monitoring large amounts of data without people´s knowledge or consent. Today, DARPA has come up with more subtle forms of surveillance: animal and insect drones. Clearly animal and insect-like drones have a much better camouflage than aeroplanes, especially since they are able to go to places and obtain data that mainstream UAVs can not.

India´s ´DARPA´, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has been creating UAVs over the last ten years, while the Indian Army first acquired UAVs from Israel in the late 1990s. Yet the use of all UAVs in India is still poorly regulated! Drones in the U.S. are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), whilst the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulates drones in the European Union. In India, the Ministry of Civil Aviation regulates drones, whilst the government is moving ahead with plans to replace the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) with a Civil Aviation Authority. However, current Indian aviation laws are vague in regards to data acquired, shared and retained, thus not only posing a threat to individual´s right to privacy and other human rights, but also enabling the creation of a secret surveillance state.

The DRDO appears to be following DARPA´s footsteps in terms of surveillance technologies and the questions which arise are: will animal and insect drones be employed in India in the future? If so, how will they be regulated?

BigDog/LS3

Apparently having UAVs flying above us and monitoring territories and populations without our knowledge or consent was not enough. DARPA is currently funding the BigDog project, which is none other than a drone dog, a four-legged robot equipped with a camera and capable of surveillance in disguise. DARPA and Boston Dynamics are working on the latest version of BigDog, called the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), which can carry 400 pounds of gear for more than 20 miles without refuelling. Not only can the LS3 walk and run on all types of surfaces, including ice and snow, but it also has ´vision sensors´ which enable it to autonomously maneuver around obstacles and follow soldiers in the battle field. The LS3 is expected to respond to soldiers' voice commands, such as 'come', 'stop' and 'sit', as well as serve as a battery charger for electronic devices.

BigDog/LS3 is undoubtedly an impressive technological advancement in terms of aiding squads with surveillance, strategic management and a mobile auxiliary power source, as well as by carrying gear. Over the last century most technological developments have manifested through the military and have later been integrated in societies. Many questions arise around the BigDog/LS3 and its potential future use by governments for non-military purposes. Although UAVs were initially used for strictly military purposes, they are currently also being used by governments on an international level for civil purposes, such as to monitor climate change and extinct animals, as well as to surveille populations. Is it a matter of time before BigDog is used by governments for ´civil purposes´ too? Will robotic dogs swarm cities in the future to provide ´security´?

Like any other surveillance technology, the LS3 should be legally regulated and current lack of regulation could create a potential for abuse. Is authorisation required to use a LS3? If so, who has the legal right to authorise its use? Under what conditions can authorisation be granted and for how long? What kind of data can legally be obtained and under what conditions? Who has the legal authority to access such data? Can data be retained and if so, for how long and under what conditions? Do individuals have the right to be informed about the data withheld about them? Just because it´s a ´dog´ should not imply its non-regulation. This four-legged robot has extremely intrusive surveillance capabilities which may breach the right to privacy and other human rights when left unregulated.

Humming Bird Drone


Source: HighTech Edge

TIME magazine recognised DARPA for its Hummingbird nano air vehicle (NAV) and named the drone bird one of the 50 best inventions of 2011. True, it is rather impressive to create a robot which looks like a bird, behaves like a bird, but serves as a secret spy.

During the presentation of the humming bird drone, Regina Dugan, former Director of DARPA, stated:

"Since we took to the sky, we have wanted to fly faster and farther. And to do so, we've had to believe in impossible things and we've had to refuse to fear failure."

Although believing in 'impossible things' is usually a prerequisite to innovation, the potential implications on human rights of every innovation and their probability of occurring should be examined. Given the fact that drones already exist and that they are used for both military and non-military purposes, the probability is that the hummingbird drone will be used for civil purposes in the future. The value of data in contemporary information societies, as well as government's obsession with surveillance for ´national security´ purposes back up the probability that drone birds will not be restricted to battlefields.

So should innovation be encouraged for innovation’s sake, regardless of potential infringement of human rights? This question could open up a never-ending debate with supporters arguing that it´s not technology itself which is harmful, but its use or misuse. However the current reality of drones is this: UAVs and NAVs are poorly regulated (if regulated at all in many countries) and their potential for abuse is enormous, given that ´what happens to our data happens to ourselves....who controls our data controls our lives.´ If UAVs are used to surveille populations, why would drone birds not be used for the same purpose? In fact, they have an awesome camouflage and are potentially capable of acquiring much more data than any UAV! Given the surveillance benefits, governments would appear irrational not to use them.

MeshWorms and Remote-Controlled Insects


Source: NY Daily News

Think insects are creepy? Now we can have a real reason to be afraid of them. Clearly robotic planes, dogs and birds are not enough.

DARPA´s MeshWorm project entails the creation of earthworm-like robots that crawl along surfaces by contracting segments of their bodies. The MeshWorm can squeeze through tight spaces and mold its shape to rough terrain, as well as absorb heavy blows. This robotic worm will be used for military purposes, while future use for ´civil purposes´ remains a probability.

Robots, however, are not only the case. Actual insects are being wirelessly controlled, such as beetles with implanted electrodes and a radio receiver on their back. The giant flower beetle´s size enables it to carry a small camera and a heat sensor, which constitutes it as a reliable mean for surveillance.

Other drone insects look and fly like ladybugs and dragonflies. Researchers at the Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, have been working on a butterfly drone since 2008. Former software engineer Alan Lovejoy has argued that the US is developing mosquito drones. Such a device could potentially be equipped with a camera and a microphone, it could use its needle to abstract a DNA sample with the pain of a mosquito bite and it could also inject a micro RFID tracking device under peoples´ skin. All such micro-drones could potentially be used for both military and civil purposes and could violate individuals´ right to privacy and other civil liberties.

Security vs. Privacy: The wrong debate

09/11 was not only a pioneering date for the U.S., but also for India and most countries in the world. The War on Terror unleashed a global wave of surveillance to supposedly enable the detection and prevention of crime and terrorism. Governments on an international level have been arguing over the last decade that the use of surveillance technologies is a prerequisite to safety. However, security expert, Bruce Schneier, argues that the trade-off of privacy for security is a false dichotomy.

Everyone can potentially be a suspect within a surveillance state. Analyses of Big Data can not only profile individuals and populations, but also identify ‘branches of communication’ around every individual. In short, if you know someone who may be considered a suspect by intelligence agencies, you may also be a suspect. The mainstream argument “I have nothing to hide, I am not a terrorist’ is none other than a psychological coping mechanism when dealing with surveillance. The reality of security indicates that when an individual’s data is being intercepted, the probability is that those who control that data can also control that individual’s life. Schneier has argued that privacy and security are not on the opposite side of a seesaw, but on the contrary, the one is a prerequisite of the other. Governments should not expect us to give up our privacy in exchange for security, as loss of privacy indicates loss of individuality and essentially, loss of freedom. We can not be safe when we trade-off our personal data, because privacy is what protects us from abuse from those in power. Thus the entire War on Terror appears to waged through a type of phishing, as the promise of ´security´ may be bait to acquire our personal data.

Since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, India has had more reasons to produce, buy and use surveillance technologies, including drones. Last New Year´s Eve, the Mumbai police used UAVs to monitor hotspots, supposedly to help track down revellers who sexually harass women. The Chennai police recently procured three UAVs from Anna University to assist them in keeping an eye on the city´s vehicle flow. Raj Thackeray´s rally marked the biggest surveillance exercise ever launched for a single event, which included UAVs. The Chandigarh police are the first Indian police force to use the ´Golden Hawk´ - a UAV which will keep a ´bird´s eye on criminal activities´. This new type of drone was manufactured by the Aeronautical Development Establishment (one of DRDO's premier laboratories based in Bangalore) and as of 2011 is being used by Indian law enforcement agencies.

Although there is no evidence that India currently has any animal or insect drones, it could be a probability in the forthcoming years. Since India is currently using many UAVs either way, why would animal and/or insect drones be excluded? What would prevent India from potentially using such drones in the future for ´civil purposes´? More importantly, how are ´civil purposes´ defined? Who defines ´civil purposes´and under what criteria? Would the term change and if so, under what circumstances? The term ´civil purposes´ varies from country to country and is defined by many political, social, economic and cultural factors, thus potentially enabling extensive surveillance and abuse of human rights.

Drones can potentially be as intrusive as other communications surveillance technologies, depending on the type of technology they´re equipped with, their location and the purpose of their use. As they can potentially violate individuals´ right to privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of movement and many other human rights, they should be strictly regulated. In Europe UAVs are regulated based upon their weight, as unmanned aircraft with an operating mass of less than 150kg are exempt by the EASA Regulation and its Implementation Rules. This should not be the case in India, as drones lighter than 150kg can potentially be more intrusive than other heavier drones, especially in the case of bird and insect drones.

Laws which explicitly regulate the use of all types of drones (UAVs, NAVs and micro-drones) and which legally define the term ´civil purposes´ in regards to human rights should be enacted in India. Some thoughts on the authorisation of drones include the following: A Special Committee on the Use of All Drones (SCUAD) could be established, which would be comprised of members of the jury, as well as by other legal and security experts of India. Such a committee would be the sole legal entity responsible for issuing authorisation for the use of drones, and every authorisation would have to comply with the constitutional and statutory provisions of human rights. Another committee, the Supervisory Committee on the Authorisation of the Use of Drones (lets call this ´SCAUD´), could also be established, which would also be comprised by (other) members of the jury, as well as by (other) legal and security experts of India. This second committee would supervise the first and it would ensure that SCUAD provides authorisations in compliance with the laws, once the necessity and utility of the use of drones has been adequately proven.

It´s not about ´privacy vs. security´. Nor is it about ´privacy or security´. In every democratic state, it should be about ´privacy and security´, since the one cannot exist without the other. Although the creation of animal and insect drones is undoubtedly technologically impressive, do we really want to live in a world where even animal-like robots can be used to spy on us? Should we be spied on at all? How much privacy do we give up and how much security do we gain in return through drones? If drones provided the ´promised security´, then India and all other countries equipped with these technologies should be extremely safe and crime-free; however, that is not the case.

In order to ensure that the use of drones does not infringe upon the right to privacy and other human rights, strict regulations are a minimal prerequisite. As long as people do not require that the use of these spying technologies are strictly regulated, very little can be done to prevent a scary sci-fi future. That´s why this blog has been written.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/big-dog-is-watching-you

Unique Identity Number (UID), National Population Register (NPR), and Governance

praskrishna — 2013-03-01T04:32:06Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Say No to UID campaign invite you to a workshop to discuss and learn about the present state of the UID and the NPR schemes. The event will be held on Saturday, March 2, 2013, at TERI, Bangalore, from 10.30 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.

Among other questions, the workshop will address:

What is the UID and NPR?
How do the UID and NPR impact citizenship?
Will NPR and UID schemes transform governance?
Why and how is national security linked with UID / NPR?
What is the relationship between UID and Big Data?

Speakers:

Usha Ramanathan, Independent Law Researcher and Human Rights Activist
Anant Maringanti, Hyderabad Urban Labs & Right to the City Foundation
Kaveri R, Researcher, CES, IISc

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/uid-and-npr

Stop Press Carousel

praskrishna — 2013-03-06T04:27:15Z

The silent blocking of URLs by the DoT assaults freedom of expression.

Arindam Mukherjee's article was published in the Outlook on February 22, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Five Questions

On what grounds did the DoT ask for a ban on the 55 Facebook URLs pertaining to Afzal Guru?
Why did the Gwalior court rush into blocking of 73 URLs related to IIPM even though the content was very old and clearly some of it was even prima facie non-defamatory?
Why is the Gwalior court order not being made public?
Why doesn’t DoT keep the whole process transparent by putting up all its block orders on its website, giving reasons in each case?
How many URLs in all has the DoT asked for a ban on so far?

***

It’s the perfect recipe for a potboiler—a sudden, mysterious and arbitrary blocking of web pages, sparked off by an irate ‘educationist’; several upset publications (Outlook included); a government department with a blocked web page; a ministry trying to figure out how to react to a court order that is at the root of all the action, but which no one has been able to see.

As the cliche goes, truth is often stranger than fiction—as the affected parties discovered on February 15. That’s when it became known that the government had sought to block 78 web pages, reportedly following an order from a court in Gwalior. Around 73 of these articles sought to be blocked are on the controversial Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), promoted by self-styled management guru Arindam Chaudhuri.

What has taken everyone by surprise is how the blocks were executed—in a clandestine manner, without informing the affected parties, without serving them a notice or a copy of the order, or giving them a chance to react or defend themselves. The enormity of the ban is evident from the list of websites targeted, which include The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wall Street Journal, FirstPost, Careers360, Rediff.com and Caravan. When it came to Outlook, there was a clear case of overreach, as not just the web pages, but the entire blogs area was blocked for more than eight hours (see Jump Cut).

What is even more surprising is the smokescreen that is being maintained over the Gwalior court order that has caused this consternation on the Internet. At the time of going to print, no one—the affected websites, authors, lawyers or activists—had access to the order or had seen it, and the government was evading media queries on details of the order and the case. Despite repeated requests, the head of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), Gulshan Rai, did not speak to Outlook.

So, in the absence of the order, no one even knows who the complainant is. Significantly, IIPM’s Chaudhuri has said that one of his ‘channel partners’ approached the court, though he clearly is the chief beneficiary of the episode. What this entire episode serves up is a blatant use of the law to muzzle press criticism while the government and official machinery have been willy-nilly forced to become mute players.

This surreal, Kafkaesque scenario continues apace at Outlook’s website, where on protesting the block on its blogs, the ISP said, “As only some of the URLs are mentioned in the DoT letter, we have reactivated the website and requested you to delete the mentioned contents,” adding that they had “attached the DoT instructions alongwith”. What they had attached was not one but two DoT orders, both dated February 14. One was, of course, the order about the 78 URLs. The other order came as news: an order on 55 Facebook URLs on Afzal Guru that the DoT wanted blocked.

As expected, internet activists and advocates of freedom of speech are livid. Shivam Vij, founder of kafila.org, one of the blogs that was blocked in the IIPM matter, says, “We were never given a chance to defend or explain. If only the DoT had put up the notice on their website, there would have been a healthier debate on regulation or censorship. But this was done in an opaque and arbitrary manner. If a book is banned, everyone gets to know. Why was there so much secrecy here?”

The arbitrariness of the twin government action also stems from the new IT Act which authorises the government or a competent authority to block or take down content considered “harmful”. And, according to the law, there is no obligation on the authorities’ part to inform the defendants. Cyber law expert Apar Gupta says, “Under the blocking rules, there is nothing that says that a copy of the court order has to be given to the affected parties. The rules also do not talk about the authors being given a chance to explain. It permits ad interim injunction to block content.”

Says Nikhil Pahwa, internet activist and editor of Medianama, which first reported about the IIPM blocks, “It is not clear why the DoT has taken this cloak-and-dagger approach. These are legitimate issues being raised by people regarding IIPM and its students. This is an infringement on the freedom of speech and expression. The DoT should have executed the blocks in a transparent manner by sending the affected parties a copy of the court order and making it public.”

That’s important, because legal experts feel that full facts may not have been considered in the IIPM case. “For this kind of a blocking order, the content should have come to the notice of the plaintiff recently. In this case, most of the content was much older. But sometimes plaintiffs also do not provide full details in a case,” says Gupta. Lawyers also feel that the Gwalior court may not be equipped to deal with litigation on new technologies.

There are other issues. In the IIPM case, the issue is primarily of defamation. But it is not clear whether defamation was established in all the articles that were sought to be taken down, especially a University Grants Commission (UGC) notice. Thus, the evidence that was presented to the court is important. Once again, till the court order becomes public, no one will know who the complainant was or what evidence was presented. The temporary ban on UGC’s web page is particularly surprising—and this has been noted by Shashi Tharoor—considering it is an independent regulator. “The regulatory body’s job is to regulate and nobody considers its notice as defamatory,” says Parminder Jeet Singh of IT for Change, an organisation dealing with internet issues.

The real purpose of such exercises, say experts, is to create a scare and embroil people in the legal process so that the process itself becomes a punishment and acts as a deterrent to others to engage in such writing. And that is why such cases are filed in remote and unusual destinations like Gwalior, Silchar, Dehradun and Guwahati. “There is a concept of forum shopping and forum shifting where cases are filed at remote destinations and by asking for huge damages, an attempt is made to scare people away from free speech. There are also many bullies who use defamation to create a scare effect. IIPM seems to have pioneered forum shopping in India,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The problem, everyone agrees, stems from the faulty nature of the Information Technology Act, which is open to interpretation and misuse. Says Singh, “The law tries to cover everything under a single head. It does not look specifically at the nuances of new media and give an appropriate response. So it is misused.” It is time that DoT became transparent and stopped its arbitrary, covert war against freedom of expression.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/outlook-feb-22-2013-arindam-mukherjee-stop-press-counsel

Surveillance Camp IV: Disproportionate State Surveillance - A Violation of Privacy

elonnai — 2013-02-19T12:37:09Z

This is the fourth in a series of posts mapping global surveillance challenges discussed at EFF's State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This article has been co-written with Elonnai Hickok — Centre for Internet and Society India, and a speaker at EFF's Camp.

This article by Katitza Rodriguez and Elonnai Hickok was originally published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on February 13, 2013.

States around the world are faced daily with the challenge of protecting their populations from potential and real threats. To detect and respond to them, many governments surveil communication networks, physical movements, and transactional records. Though surveillance by its nature compromises individual privacy, there are exceptional situations where state surveillance is justified. Yet, if state surveillance is unnecessary or overreaching, with weak legal safeguards and a failure to follow due process, it can become disproportionate to the threat—infringing on people's privacy rights.

Internationally, regulations concerning government surveillance of communications vary in approach and effectiveness, often with very weak or nonexistent legal safeguards. Some countries have strong regulations for the surveillance of communications, yet these regulations may be largely ineffective or unenforceable in practice. Other countries have no legal safeguards or legal standards differing vastly according to the type of communication data targeted. This is why, EFF organized at the end of last year a State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp in Brazil to build upon this discussion and focused on how states are facilitating unnecessary and disproportionate surveillance of communications in ways that lead to privacy violations.

State-Mandated Identity Verification

In 2012 the Constitutional Court in South Korea declared that country's "real-name identification system" unconstitutional. The system had mandated that any online portal with more than 100,000 daily users had to verify the identity of their users.[1]This meant that the individual has to provide their real name before posting comments online. The legal challenge to this system was raised by People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD)'s Public Law Center and Korean Progressive Network—Jinbonet among others.

Korea University professor Kyung-shin Park, Chair of PSPD's Law Center told EFF that portals and phone companies would disclose identifying information about six million users annually—in a country of only 50 million people. The South Korean Government was using perceived online abuses as a convenient excuse to discourage political criticism, professor Park told EFF:

The user information shared with the police most commonly has been used by the government to monitor the anti-governmental sentiments of ordinary people. All this has gone on because the government, the legislature, and civil society have not clearly understood the privacy implications of turning over identifying information of individuals.

The decision by the South Korean Constitutional Court to declare the "real identification system" unconstitutional was a win for user privacy and anonymity because it clearly showed that blanket mandates for the disclosure of identifying information, and the subsequent sharing of that data without judicial authorization, are a disproportionate measure that violates the rights of individuals.[2]

States Restrict Encryption and Demand Backdoors

Some States are seeking to block, ban, or discourage the use of strong encryption and other privacy enhancing tools by requiring assistance in decrypting information. In India service providers are required to ensure that bulk encryption is not deployed. Additionally, no individual or entity can employ encryption with a key longer than 40 bits. If the encryption equipments is higher than this limit, the individual or entity will need prior written permission from the Department of Telecommunications and must deposit the decryption keys with the Department.[3]The limitation on encryption in India means that technically any encrypted material over 40 bits would be accessible by the State. Ironically, the Reserve Bank of India issued security recommendations that banks should use strong encryption as higher as 128-bit for securing browser.[4]In the United States, under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, telecommunication carriers are required to provide decryption assistance only if they already possess the keys (and in many communications system designs, there's no reason carriers should need to possess the keys at all). In 2011, the US Government proposed a bill that would place new restrictions on domestic development or use of cryptography, privacy software, and encryption features on devices. The bill has not been adopted.

Allowing only low levels of encryption and requiring service providers to assist in the decryption of communications, facilitates surveillance by enabling States easier access to data and preventing individuals from using crypto tools to protect their personal communications.

States Establish Blanket Interception Facilities

In Colombia, telecommunications network and service providers carrying out business within the national territory must implement and ensure that interception facilities are available at all times to state agencies as prescribed by law. This is to enable authorized state agencies to intercept communications at any point of time. In addition to providing interception facilities, service providers must also retain subscriber data for a period of five years, and provide information such as subscriber identity, invoicing address, type of connection on request, and geographic location of terminals when requested.

Though Colombia has put in place regulations for the surveillance of communications, these regulations allow for broad surveillance and do not afford the individual clear rights in challenging the same.

Conclusion

The examples above demonstrate that, although state surveillance of communications can be justified in exceptional instances, it leads to the violation of individual privacy when implemented without adequate legal safeguards. Clearly there is a need for international principles articulating critical and necessary components of due process for the surveillance of communications. Those strong legal safeguards are necessary not only in countries that don't have laws in place, but also in countries where laws are lacking and fail to adequately protect privacy. Last year, EFF organized the State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp to discuss a set of International Principles on State Surveillance of Communications, a global effort led by EFF and Privacy International, to define, articulate, and promote legal standards to protect individual privacy when the state carries out surveillance of communications.

[1].Constitutional Court's Decision 2010 Hunma 47, 252 (consolidated) announced August 28, 2012.

[2].The illegality of this practice was proved by a High Court decision handed down 2 months after the Constitutional Court's decision in August 2012. Seoul Appellate Court 2011 Na 19012, Judgment Announced October 18, 2012. This case was prepared and followed singularly by PSPD Public Interest Law Center.

[3].License Agreement for Provision of Internet Services Section 2.2 (vii)

[4].Reserve Bank of India. Internet Banking Guidelines. Section (f (2)).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/eff-feb-13-2013-katitza-rodriguez-and-elonnai-hickok-surveillance-camp-iv-disproportionate-state-surveillance-a-violation-of-privacy