We are anonymous, we are legion

China outranks India in world’s first ever web index

praskrishna — 2012-09-07T09:08:37Z

India has been ranked 33rd on a list of 61 countries in a brand new web index that seeks to measure how effectively countries are using the Internet to improve people’s lives. And Indian Internet activists say that given the increasing level of control the government seeks to exercise over the net, that is no great surprise.

The article was published in FirstPost on September 6, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.

The index, which has been compiled by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World wide web, measures the economic, social and political impact of the internet, on criteria ranging from the proportion of people online to the amount of useful content available.

Sweden has topped the list ahead of the US and UK, while amongst Asian countries, the Republic of Korea came in at 13th. Interestingly, China ranked 20, 13 places ahead of India.

Speaking to Firstpost about the index and India’s ranking, Nishant Shah of the Centre for Internet and Society said that given the increasingly disturbing nature of the government’s response to the Internet in India, it was no surprise that the country had not fared well on the index.

“The Internet today doesn’t work according to the idealistic principles of openness, and democracy of information that Berners-Lee envisioned for it, and in India in particular, although the Internet has helped us rethink what the government can do, the attitude is that that Internet can only be used in ways that the government sees fit”, said Shah

The methodology of the ranking has rated countries on the basis of three parameters:

Web Readiness: The quality and extent of Communications Infrastructure (facilitating connectivity to the Web) and Institutional Infrastructure (policies regulating Web access and skill and educational levels enabling the full benefit of the Web).

Web Use: The Index looks both at Web usage within countries (such as the percentage of individuals who use the Internet) and the content available to these Web users.

The Impact of the Web: The Index uses social, economic and political indicators to evaluate the impact of the Web on these dimensions. This includes measures of social networks, business internet use and e-participation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-firstpost-com-sep-6-2012-china-outranks-india-in-worlds-first-ever-web-index

Bangalore's new champions for culture

praskrishna — 2012-09-07T08:59:59Z

The hundred and ninth imprint of TimeOut Bengaluru edition is dedicated to a group of people who TimeOut believes are playing critical roles in determining the cultural contours of this city, and are the new champions for the arts and culture in Bangalore. Lawrence Liang, founder of Alternative Law Forum is one of them.

Click to read the original published by TimeOut Bengaluru on August 31, 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/timeout-bengaluru-bangalore-beat-bangalores-new-champions-for-culture

UK DNA Database and the European Court of Human Rights: Lessons that India can Learn from Its Mistakes

praskrishna — 2012-09-17T03:40:07Z

On September 24, 2012, the Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with the Alternative Law Forum invites the public to a talk with international experts, Helen Wallace from GeneWatch, UK and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics in the United States. The meeting will be held at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bangalore from 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

The UK National DNA Database was the first to be established, in 1995, and is the largest per capita in the world. A major DNA expansion programme began in 2000 but is now being rolled back by the implementation of a new Protection of Freedoms Act, following a judgment against the UK government by the European Court of Rights. The lessons for the UK experience for the DNA Bill in India will be discussed, including the need for safeguards to protect privacy and rights, maintain public trust in police use of DNA, and prevent miscarriages of justice.

Dr. Helen Wallace

Dr. Helen Wallace is Director of GeneWatch UK, a not-for-profit organisation which aims to engage members of the public in ensuring that genetic science and technologies are used in the public interest. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on the social and ethical issues raised by DNA databases and is widely quoted in the UK press. Helen provided expert evidence to the applicants in the case of S. and Marper v. the UK at the European Court of Human Rights, in which the Court ruled unanimously that the indefinite retention of innocent people's DNA database records was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. She has supplied both oral and written evidence on this issue to numerous parliamentary committees including the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee and the UK Science and Technology, Home Affairs and Constitutional Committees, as well as the scrutiny committee for the Protection of Freedoms Act, 2012. This new Act requires the removal of about a million innocent people's records from the UK National DNA Database and the destruction of all stored biological samples.

Jeremy Gruber

Jeremy Gruber is the President and Executive Director of Council for Responsible Genetics. Jeremy joined CRG in March 2009. Previously he served as the legal director of the National Workrights Institute, a human rights organization dedicated to the rights of American workers. Prior to that he served as the field director for the ACLU’s National Taskforce on Civil Liberties in the Workplace. Jeremy has worked for over a decade on genetic non-discrimination legislation at the state and Federal level. He helped author and pass numerous state laws on genetic non-discrimination. Jeremy is a founder and executive committee member of the Coalition for Genetic Fairness, a group of 500 organizations that advocated for genetic non-discrimination legislation on Capitol Hill and played a major role in the recently passed Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) by Congress. He worked closely with members of Congress and staff on GINA language as well as strategy and support. He is a prolific writer on privacy issues and is often consulted by state legislatures. He is regularly featured in print, radio and television. Jeremy holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from St. John’s University School of Law and a B.A. in Politics from Brandeis University.

Overview and Concerns Regarding the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act

Forensic DNA: A Human Rights Challenge

The above video was originally posted in YouTube

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/uk-dna-database-and-european-court-of-human-rights-lessons-that-india-can-learn-from-mistakes

Need a standard strategy to deal with Web issues: Chandrasekhar

praskrishna — 2012-09-05T08:37:09Z

The government has been facing allegations of Internet censorship for over a year now.

This article by Surabhi Agarwal was published in LiveMint on September 4, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.

The government said it needed to improve the way in which it dealt with issues such as Internet hate messages besides blog posts and SMSes that seek to create panic so that it’s not accused of trying to gag free speech.

"We all have agreed that we need some combination of self-regulation and government interventions. But we need to do it in a proper way,” said department of telecom secretary R. Chandrasekhar, while addressing a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) conference on the issue of “legitimate restrictions on freedom of online speech".

	The Union government has been facing allegations of censorship after it sought to contain messages that led to communal violence and a panicexodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities. Last month, the government ordered the blocking of almost 310 web pages for content deemed to be attacking particular communities. According to a post by Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society, 33% of them were on Facebook, 28% on Google Inc.’s YouTube and around 10% on Twitter.

The Union government has been facing allegations of censorship after it sought to contain messages that led to communal violence and a panicexodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities.

Last month, the government ordered the blocking of almost 310 web pages for content deemed to be attacking particular communities. According to a post by Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society, 33% of them were on Facebook, 28% on Google Inc.’s YouTube and around 10% on Twitter.

Defending the government move, Gulshan Rai, chief of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in), said it was the first time that the emergency provision of the Information Technology Act 2008 had been exercised. Even though the list was not drawn up by his agency, due scrutiny was carried out before issuing orders to block the sites.

This came after allegations that government may have also blocked bona fide posts as it sought to block content related to the North-East.

Twitter accounts of some journalists and other individuals associated with and sympathetic to right-wing causes were blocked, according to a list published earlier by The Economic Times.

"This is certainly not the last time we are seeing such a situation, so meaningful ways to respond to such complex situations will have to be devised," said Chandrasekhar.

He added that there was also a need to collaborate better with all stakeholders to devise not just defensive strategies during a crisis but also ways to contain its impact using the social media.

Ankhi Das, head of public policy at Facebook India, said that during the London riots of 2011, the UK government enlisted the support of social networking sites to dispel rumours.

"Social media can also be allies of the government at times like this," she said.

Raman Jit Singh Cheema, a senior policy analyst at Google India, cited a similar example of authorities in Japan using such methods to send out correct information following the tsunami that hit the country in 2011.

"We need to collaborate on a continuing basis, so that when you are faced with such a crisis, you are able to deal with it," said Chandrasekhar.

The government has been facing allegations of Internet censorship for over a year after minister for communication and information technology Kapil Sibal raised the issue of regulating social networking sites. They had allegedly not complied with the government’s demand that offensive content be removed.

Chandrasekhar said that processes should be clearer, more transparent and well-defined.

"These need to be brought out in the form of some kind of a standard operating procedure, so that they (stakeholders) are expected to know how to conduct themselves and how they can expect the government to deal if a contingency arises," he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-surabhi-agarwal-sep-4-2012-need-a-strategy-to-deal-with-web-issues

Thinking with Data@CIS

praskrishna — 2012-09-05T08:11:49Z

The Thinking with Data course offered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) will be screened at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. The screening will be followed by online discussions with the faculty through Skype or Google+ Hangouts.

Introduction to the course

Rajesh and Anand are offering a course titled Thinking with Data at NIAS. It’ll be covered in 12 – 14 two-hour sessions. The course will cover the basic ways in which we can use data to enhance our thinking capacities. Click here for more information about the course.

Salient Features

How to think with data and work on interesting problems.
Refresher course in programming using Python and HTML.
Discussions and FAQs with faculty and participants.
Project work.

Timings and Venue

It will be screened every Wednesday, starting from September 12, 2012, from 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.
Venue: Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

As part of the class, we are also offering a refresher course in Python and HTML

Objectives: Introduction to Programming using Python

Hardware Requirement: Learners should bring their own laptops

Prerequisites: Enthusiasm to learn.

Audience Level: Learners with following answers are welcomed.

I’m not too comfortable with programming
I can program, but not that well in Python
I’m good at Python

Timings of the Refresher Course:

September 16, 2012: 5:00 to 8.30 p.m.

September 17, 2012: 5:00 to 8:30 p.m.

September 18, 2012: 5:00 to 8:30 p.m.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/thinking-with-data

Political war on the web

praskrishna — 2012-09-05T05:27:24Z

Twitter is not only the ‘people’s voice’. It is also a forum for orchestrated propaganda.Kunal Majumder tracks the BJP-Congress online duel.

Kunal Majumder's article was published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 36, Dated 08 Sept 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

New battlelines Digvijaya Singh (left) and Sushma Swaraj are active tweeples
Photos: Shailendra Pandey

ON 27 August, as the Congress and the BJP battled it out in Parliament and later through news conferences, the story on Twitter was a bit different. Congress supporters, who had been at the receiving end of the ‘Coalgate’ issue so far, finally started hitting back. Adopting a strategy they had so far been accusing right-wingers of, they launched into an all-out attack on anyone who supported the BJP. Every tweet was hashtagged with #RIPBJP. At the end of the day, #RIPBJP was trending, making it the most successful Congress campaign against the BJP — a first on Twitter.

“The social media battle against the BJP has just begun,” says a Congress supporter associated with the new project. “In the days to come, you will see our volunteers in a more combative mode.” However, he says it will not “replicate the negative campaign of the right-wing”.

The Congress’ social media strategy is spearheaded by its tech-savvy General Secretary Digvijaya Singh. On Twitter for nearly nine months, Singh has been readying to take on the BJP on its own turf and influence the ‘voice of people’. Though serious doubt remains about how much of this voice is real and how much is a result of political propaganda.

The push for the Congress to take the battle online comes from the recent ‘banning’ of Twitter handles of BJP sympathiser and senior journalist Kanchan Gupta. While the government insists that the handles were blocked due to security issues, Gupta claimed political martyrdom and launched a tirade against the Congress for imposing a second Emergency. Hashtags like #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks started trending, with BJP supporters turning their display pictures to black. "The fact remains none of the blockings were politically motivated,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with Centre for Internet and Society. Prakash instead points to the UPA’s earlier request to IT companies like Google and Facebook to pull down certain pages, which displayed morphed photos and cartoons of Congress “functionaries” as clear example of politically motivated intervention.

Though no explanation was forthcoming from the government as to why specific handles were blocked temporarily through ISPs (Twitter has still not blocked them), the PMO issued a statement saying it has requested Twitter to take “appropriate action against six persons impersonating the PMO”. Certain handles like @PM0India (with a ‘zero’) were often accused of impersonating the actual @PMOIndia. But that’s another story.

#Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks started trending, with various BJP supporters turning their display pictures to black	The day Gupta’s handle was ‘blocked’, former bureaucrat B Raman wrote a blog that gave an interesting insight into why the government might have targeted Gupta. Raman describes a meeting that took place in Ahmedabad in 2008 — just before the 2009 General Elections — attended by senior BJP leaders and sympathisers, including Gupta. Raman says the general feeling among BJP participants was that mainstream media was not giving enough opportunities to the BJP and other right-wing activists to air their views. Therefore, “it was suggested by some participants that the BJP could get over this handicap by making good use of the online media”. Raman goes on to point that supporters of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other right-wingers have since then used online media superbly with help of IT-savvy Hindutva supporters.

#Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks started trending,
with various BJP supporters turning their display pictures to black

The day Gupta’s handle was ‘blocked’, former bureaucrat B Raman wrote a blog that gave an interesting insight into why the government might have targeted Gupta. Raman describes a meeting that took place in Ahmedabad in 2008 — just before the 2009 General Elections — attended by senior BJP leaders and sympathisers, including Gupta. Raman says the general feeling among BJP participants was that mainstream media was not giving enough opportunities to the BJP and other right-wing activists to air their views. Therefore, “it was suggested by some participants that the BJP could get over this handicap by making good use of the online media”. Raman goes on to point that supporters of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other right-wingers have since then used online media superbly with help of IT-savvy Hindutva supporters.

What Raman wrote in his blog is confirmed by the BJP’s IT Cell Convener, Arvind Gupta. The BJP was not only the first political party in India to have a website in 1999, its social media network has been way ahead of any other political group in the country. From posting updates to engaging users, it has a well-oiled social media machinery in place. Arvind calls this the “listen, engage and inform” model. This includes Internet TV, YouTube and messenger chats. In fact, the next big thing on the party’s social media agenda is the interaction with Narendra Modi on Google+ Hangout.

Poli-Tweeting

Poli-Faking

BUT IT is not political agenda that has left Digvijaya Singh singed. Speaking to TEHELKA, Singh points to abusive — and at times, factually incorrect — tweets posted by right-wing supporters. In many cases, the mere mention of anything against Modi or Baba Ramdev would have scores of right-wing supporters bombarding Twitter timelines with counter-criticism, and often, abuses. “Anything that incites hate is a problem,” he says.

Though what can be called ‘hate’ is a very subjective matter, Arvind Gupta feels social media reflects the mood of the young population. “People call themselves Internet Hindus. We, as a party, have nothing to do with this. People are so passionate about Modi that they take up his case (against anyone who posts anti-Modi tweets),” says Gupta. He also points towards a similar trend when it comes to people tweeting against Team Anna.

Many right-wing Twitter users are accused of posting sponsored tweets against specific people who they believe are anti-BJP. This accusation has not been proven so far, though many users claim to have tracked interaction between rightwing Twitter users on coordinated attacks on users with liberal or pro-Congress ideologies. “There is a belief — and let me tell you that it is wrong — that we hire people,” says Gupta. So can the high number of right-wing users be put down to an ideological stance alone? Gupta says it’s got to do with understanding politics better. “Our volunteers are generally more educated and understand the the Congress’ wrong policies. That category also forms a major part of the ecosystem in this new media,” he says.

Within minutes of talking to this correspondent, Gupta posts a new hashtag on Twitter — #MotaMaal — taking a cue from Sushma Swaraj’s accusation of corruption against the Congress in the coal scam. The next day, Twitter became all about #MotaMaal versus #RIPBJP. Handles like @BJP0fficials and @PMAdvani have been created to counter the right wing. Clearly, Congress supporters are hitting back even at the risk of adding to the cacophony of an already-chaotic medium.

Kunal Majumder is a Principal Correspondent with Tehelka.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-kunal-majumder-tehelka-magazine-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-political-war-on-the-web

Cartonama Conference

praskrishna — 2012-09-17T13:59:05Z

HasGeek is organising a Cartonama Conference on September 22, 2012 at the TERI Complex in Bangalore, from 9.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Cartonama conference is centered around geospatial data, mapping and location based services. It deals with two primary themes: infrastructure for managing geospatial data including mapping software, cartographic techniques and tools; and application of geospatial data, primarily location-based services. Cartonama is open to entrepreneurs, developers, individuals and institutions working with GIS and cartographic techniques, advocacy groups, among others.

We will also host four workshops which will provide hands-on training about tools for managing geospatial data and how to build location-based services. Workshops will be held between September 23 to 25, 2012. Tickets for the Cartonama conference can be bought at http://cartonama.doattend.com

About HasGeek

HasGeek is a Bangalore-based organisation. We put together events for developers with the intention of creating discussion spaces about technologies that are new today, and could become mainstream tomorrow. HasGeek is supported by CIS.

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

Officials Raise Questions over Indian Government’s Efforts

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T12:36:48Z

As per a recent report, it has been revealed that the Indian government despite making several efforts to resolve the issue of hate speech seems failing in the same.

This post by Bruce Totolos was published in the French Tribune on August 22, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

It is being said that no doubt the government has taken strict actions since the rumours came into picture from the last week. 245 Web pages have been blocked with effect from Friday along with limitations over text messages to five a day for 15 days. But, many websites are still containing some morphed images of violence.

As per some officials in New Delhi, it is a matter of huge concern still not being taken seriously by online companies like Google and Facebook. It is known to everyone that previous such images and SMSs led some northeastern India’s people to leave Chennai, Bangalore and Pune, they say.

However, the internet firms claim that they are making all possible endeavours. It was told that only reason for not answering certain request was it hampered users’ rights.

“The Internet intermediaries are responding slowly because now they have to trawl through their networks and identify hate speech. The government acted appropriately, but without sufficient sophistication”, said executive director Sunil Abraham from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/frenchtribune-com-bruce-totolos-aug-22-2012-officials-raise-questions-over-indian-governments-efforts

Legitimate Restrictions on Freedom of Online Speech: Deadlock to Dialogue

praskrishna — 2012-10-15T05:44:04Z

The event was hosted by FICCI Communications and Digital Economy Committee on September 4, 2012 at FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi. Pranesh Prakash spoke on censorship and the way forward.

The following were the speakers who spoke at the event:

Anja Kovacs, Project Director, Internet Democracy Project
Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Center for Internet and Society
Prabir Purkayastha, Founder Member, Delhi Science Forum
Prasanth Sugathan, Legal Counsel, Software Freedom Law Center
Parminder Jeet Singh, Executive Director, IT for Change
Ramanjit Singh Chima, Sr. Policy Analyst, Google India
Ankhi Das, Head of Public Policy for India, Facebook
Nikhil Pahwa, Editor & Publisher, Medianama.com
Rajesh Chharia, President, Internet Service Providers Association of India
Mahesh Uppal, Policy Expert
Virat Bhatia, Chairman, Communication and Digital Economy Committee, FICCI

Click to read the Digest of Comments and Inputs at the panel discussion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/legitimate-restrictions-on-freedom-of-online-speech

Internet Governance Plenary

praskrishna — 2012-10-01T14:14:07Z

Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria at this event organised by APNIC on August 28, 2012. Kuo Wei Wu, CEO, National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association (NIIEPA) was the moderator.

Theme: What mechanism works better to resolve the issues?

Objectives:

To discuss relevant Internet Governance Forum (IGF) related issues for the APNIC community.
Update APNIC Members about the IGF process, including recent national and regional IGF initiatives, such as the APrIGF 2012 in Tokyo, Japan.
Prepare for the seventh Annual IGF Meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan from 6-9 November 2012.

Panelists

Ang Peng Hwa, Director of Singapore internet Research Centre (SiRC) Presentation Slides
Paul Wilson, Director General, APNIC and MAG Member, IGF
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet Society, India
Duangthip Chomprang, Regional Affairs Manager, Internet Society
Raúl Echeberría, Executive Director/CEO, LACNIC and MAG Member, IGF

Click to read the Transcript
Watch the full video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/conference-apnic-net-aug-28-2012-internet-governance-plenary

Is the govt caught in the 'censorship' web?

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T06:54:25Z

NDTV aired a one-hour debate on censorship in "We the People" episode hosted by Barkha Dutt on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash participated in the discussions as a speaker.

Pranesh Prakash responded to Barkha Dutt's question on what does a government do in a time of social unrest:

"I think in a time of social unrest there is leeway provided in laws for the government to take action. The law existing and the law allowing for it is a very different matter from the government actually making use of it. There are as shown in the United Kingdom, much better ways of combating situations of riots. As we have seen in India for instance, there are people who provoke riots from podiums yet don't get arrested and as we have seen in the UK, there are people who take part in riots and have been punished a great deal."

Video

See the full debate on NDTV

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ndtv-com-we-the-people-aug-26-2012-is-the-govt-caught-in-the-censorship-web

Government to hold talks with stakeholders on Internet censorship

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T03:39:32Z

In an unprecedented move, the government, through the Department of Telecommunications and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, has agreed to initiate dialogue on Internet censorship with mega Internet companies, social media giants such as Google and Facebook, members of civil society, technical community, media, ISPs and legal experts.

This article by Shalini Singh was published in the Hindu on September 4, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.

The triggers for the discussion, which will be held on Wednesday, are the riots in Assam, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh, as well as the mass exodus of north-east Indians from Bangalore, which resulted in bringing the government, civil society organisations and the media to a flashpoint.

Two of India’s seniormost officers in the area of Internet censorship, DoT Secretary R. Chandrashekhar and Director General, CERT-IN, Gulshan Rai will engage with a range of stakeholders in a two-hour meeting titled ‘Legitimate Restrictions on Freedom of Online Speech: The need for balance – from Deadlock to Dialogue.’

Other panellists include representatives from Google and Facebook; Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society (a civil society group); Prabir Purkayasta, Delhi Science Forum (technical community); Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, president, Foundation for Media Professionals; Rajesh Chharia, president, Internet Service Providers Association of India; and Apar Gupta, an advocate dealing with cyber issues.

One analysis by the CIS has shown that 309 specific items, including URLs, Twitter accounts, IMG tags, blog posts and blogs were blocked. Complaints arose when blocking a page resulted in the blocking of an entire website — which has scores or hundreds of web pages. The government maintained that this was necessary as there was a sense of crisis. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde insisted that the government was “taking strict action only against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours.” However, the collateral damage of the move was the Twitter accounts of several people, including journalists like Kanchan Gupta, being blocked.

“Mass censorship is like killing a fly with a sledgehammer. Rather than blocking the sites, the government should have used the same media, Facebook, Twitter and Google to counter terrorism and hate speech. I am glad that they are now open to dialogue,” says Mr. Thakurta.

“It is an extremely productive move as it will generate awareness among content providers, government and users. In the absence of any dialogue, everyone was just sticking to their own positions without listening to the other stakeholders’ point of view,” says Mr. Chharia.

The meeting is to bring several stakeholders in dialogue on a single platform.

Nearly 50 other experts from industry, mobile service providers, Internet companies, intermediaries, academia and some international organisations as well as multilaterals are expected to join the conference, which will be held at 2.30 p.m. on September 4 at FICCI.

While this is seen as a brave attempt by some, there are an equal number of sceptics who believe that the discussion may not yield the desired result given the national security objectives governing law enforcement agencies on the one hand and the desire of users, media and civil society to preserve free speech on the other. Clearly, ISPs, Internet companies and social media are in a tough spot since they face legal obligations on legitimate orders for blocking on one hand while needing to protect their user privacy and rights to unhindered access to information.

If successful, it is possible that this dialogue will ensure that legitimate restrictions do not slide into illegitimate censorship.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-shalini-singh-sep-4-2012-govt-to-hold-talks-with-stakeholders-on-internet-censorship

The state. And the rage of the cyber demon

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T11:03:53Z

The Internet might be a Pandora’s box. But should the government be wasting time regulating the cacophony?

Shougat Dasgupta's article was published in Tehelka, Vol 9, Issue 36, Dated September 8, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

SOME YEARS ago a cartoon was doing the rounds that caught in a few sharp strokes the selfimportance and self-righteousness of the Internet warrior. A man sits hunched at his computer, the keyboard lit with his fervour. Not looking away from the screen, he has a terse, impatient exchange with his partner off-panel: ‘Are you coming to bed?’ ‘I can’t. This is important.’ ‘What?’ ‘Someone is wrong on the Internet.’ It is the anonymous exchange that gives cyber debates their peculiar animus; that anonymity coupled with the low stakes, as is famously said of academic politics, is what makes the sniping so bitter and vicious. The complaints about social media like Twitter or the comment sections on blogs have mostly centred on the incivility of the discourse, on ‘trolls’ too eager to throw rotting vegetables at journalists, politicians, celebrities unused to such irreverence. But action taken by the government in the last fortnight to block content from over 300 websites and a dozen Twitter accounts imputes a far more vitiating effect on society than the mere puncturing of already overinflated egos.

Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communications & Information Technology, has said in interviews that the government’s intent was to “protect the victims” from these “mischievous acts happening through these sites and blogs”. There is, by now, little doubt that the threats and fake pictures of slain Muslims spread through mobile phones and social media, “disseminating misinformation” in the minister’s phrase, helped exacerbate tensions and fears. There is equally little doubt that what action the government took was both late and clumsy: blocking blogs that debunked the rumours and morphed images that the government held responsible for causing panic; blocking web pages of international news organisations such as The Telegraph and Al-Jazeera; blocking Twitter accounts of journalists, the government’s political opponents, accounts parodying the prime minister, even people who tweeted mostly about information technology and cricket. Like a giant in clown shoes chasing a sprite, the government has looked lumbering and foolish, led a merry dance by light-footed ‘netizens’, while the rest of us pointed and laughed.

Can the government’s actions be at all justified? Appearing on NDTV’s ‘We the People’, R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, argued that “once a law enforcement agency has made an assessment you act first and then make corrections as you go along”. In essence, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, which along with concern for ‘national security’ is trotted out by every democratic government accused of ignoring civil liberties. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, on the same programme, claimed that the “mandate of section 69a of the Information Technology Act and the rules with regard to safeguards and blocking is fairly clear and rule 9 allows the government, if it thinks that there’s an expedient situation in order to protect the sovereignty of the State or public order, to go ahead with this blocking on an interim basis”.

We will discuss the section being referred to and the 2011 guidelines for intermediaries later but for now let’s accept the government’s argument that it acted in the face of a clear and present danger, to borrow from Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famous 19th-century US Supreme Court Justice. Kharan Thapar, citing another of Holmes’s shopworn phrases, wrote that “[ j]ust as it’s not acceptable to shout fire in a crowded cinema hall for the fun of it, it cannot be permitted to deliberately frighten helpless innocent people who, for whatever reason, believe you and panic”. Thapar is making the point that free speech is not without its responsibilities. He does so, however, using a long discredited cliché and compounds this error with condescension, refusing to grant people (“helpless”, “innocent”, like babies) their full agency. Besides, the government only acted from 18 August to limit text messaging, already months after initial images of supposed Burmese atrocities against Muslims had been widely circulated to stir anger. It also chose to block webpages and Twitter handles, some for spurious, even mystifying reasons. The result has been embarrassment. Acting arbitrarily in the name of communal harmony to prevent damage after terrible damage has already been done, does little to convince the people you are supposedly protecting that you have the situation in hand.

The government has left itself open to being serially lectured about free speech by the US government, by journalists (particularly Kanchan Gupta, whose apparently blocked Twitter account has made him a patron saint of free speech), by hysterical twitterers (ok, ‘tweeple’) drawing an entirely ridiculous parallel to the Emergency, and most egregiously by Narendra Modi. Presumably, Modi, by blackening his display picture was not commenting on the black irony of a man who bans books mourning constraints on freedom of speech. Pranesh Prakash of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a trenchant critic of the government’s recent blocks (social media not coal) and the “horrendously drafted” legislation that permits the leeway for such indiscriminate action, says that “people [were] losing a sense of reality”.

	He points to the criticism of the government’s blocking of parodies of the prime minister’s Twitter account. “An underreported part of this whole controversy,” he says,“is Twitter’s own terms of service and one parody account in particular violates those terms.” He confesses to “having to look quite closely” to tell the PMO account from PMO, which substitutes a zero for the letter ‘o’. Also, according to sources, a letter sent last year by the government to the likes of Google and Facebook asking them to screen for offensive content specifically excepted parody and satire. If accurate, this underscores that the Prime Minister’s Office did not have a problem with parody but a genuine, if peculiar, fear of misinformation stemming from the six accounts it asked Twitter to remove.

He points to the criticism of the government’s blocking of parodies of the prime minister’s Twitter account. “An underreported part of this whole controversy,” he says,“is Twitter’s own terms of service and one parody account in particular violates those terms.” He confesses to “having to look quite closely” to tell the PMO account from PMO, which substitutes a zero for the letter ‘o’. Also, according to sources, a letter sent last year by the government to the likes of Google and Facebook asking them to screen for offensive content specifically excepted parody and satire. If accurate, this underscores that the Prime Minister’s Office did not have a problem with parody but a genuine, if peculiar, fear of misinformation stemming from the six accounts it asked Twitter to remove.

NONE OF this is to say that the government, in its haste, acted with reason. Certainly, it has since last year been working assiduously to exert at least some control over online content. The rules from April last year updating sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000, requires “due diligence” from companies like Twitter, or Facebook, to not “host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any information that… is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever…” Disparaging? Encouraging gambling? Well, gambling, at least in casinos, is lawful in Goa and Sikkim. No wonder Kapil Sibal felt he was on firm legal ground when he complained in December about “derogatory pictures” of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh that the government had culled from Facebook accounts.

Prakash, of the CIS, describes the Information Technology Act, particularly sections 69a and 66 as “having issues and being badly worded”. The powers it gives the government are too intrusive and that the prison sentences for offenders “are greater than those for death by negligence”. What he finds most troubling is how little transparency exists around issues of censorship; how, for instance, there is no easily accessible central list of banned books. “How,” he asks, “are people even supposed to know if their website or Twitter account is blocked if the government won’t issue proper notices and lists?” Our democratically elected government appears fond of the aristocratic maxim to never contradict, never explain, never apologise, as if hauteur and bluster are adequate substitutes for communication and we are subjects rather than citizens.

Seen in isolation, the blocking of websites and rationing of text messages is just a comical bungle by an unwieldy, Luddite administration. In the context of the last 12 months though, the government’s recent actions are a logical extension of its drive to bring the Internet to heel. The unregulated nature of the Internet is a particular bugbear of this government. It had already made a proposal to the United Nations in October last year, at the 66th session of the General Assembly, for the institution of a Committee for Internet- Related Policies. This 50-nation body would be tasked not to control the Internet, “or allow Governments to have the last word in regulating the Internet, but to make sure that the Internet is governed not unilaterally, but in an open, democratic, inclusive and participatory manner, with the participation of all stakeholders”. For all the incompetence the government has displayed, both most recently and in previous attempts to censor Internet content, it asks an important question about the future of Internet regulation, about the need for multilateral debate and international consensus.

TEHELKA, as cyber chatter about the blocked sites grew increasingly frenzied, asked its online readers to define the forum provided by social media. Most agreed that Twitter, for instance, was a public space, a place to give vent to private thoughts publicly with, if wanted or needed, the comfort of anonymity. The metaphor used is often that of a public square or town hall. I’ve always thought of Twitter as a carnival — a space, as defined by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, where the existing social order is overturned, where social pieties are profaned. Twitter, like carnival, appeared to me an exhilarating space. This is utterly naïve. The fact is that Twitter is not a public space, it is privately owned and its investors are in the business of revenue generation and profit. This means Twitter’s terms of service are subject to change, as is its cooperation with governments over the private information it controls and owns.

Rahul Bose, the actor, told me in a conversation about social media that he thinks individual freedom is increasingly an “illusion”, that the very idea has become “laughable”. We live our lives, particularly our online lives, under the unblinking gaze of government: “You don’t need a close circuit camera at Flora Fountain to know you’re being watched, that every piece of information is on a file somewhere.” (This is probably not quite true of our dozy government.) It is indisputable that private entities such as Facebook and Twitter hold enormous amounts of information about individuals. In that light, surely, the Indian government is correct about the need for multilateral oversight of a system currently beholden in significant ways to the United States. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, for instance, still makes only a token gesture at global participation and any question of greater United Nations involvement is generally met with US suspicion.

Arguably, the Indian government doesn’t go far enough in its call for greater inclusivity in the governance of the Internet. The academic Jeremy Malcolm, an influential figure in discussions about Internet governance, has written that the World Summit on the Information Society has “established at the level of principle that governance of the Internet should be a transparent, democratic and multilateral process, with the participation of governments, private sector, civil society and international organisations, in their respective roles”. More immediate, perhaps, is the question of how a democratic country, committed to free speech, should regard social media.

This is not a discussion confined to India. During the August 2012 London riots, David Cameron threatened to ban people suspected of planning criminal activity from using Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry Messenger. In words similar to those used by Sibal, Cameron spoke about reminding these companies of their responsibilities. In an interview with TEHELKA, Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh held close to the party line, insisting that “anything that incites violence is problematic, as is anything that is factually incorrect, and must be removed”. He envisages a future where online exchanges are governed by the same rules as public life, governed by similar cultural codes and basic civility. This is, it has to be said, an optimistic view of public life.

There are, as discussed earlier, as many different ways to see online exchanges as there are Internet users. The Internet’s shapelessness, its Moby Dick-like vast blankness, makes it impossible to apply the same standards to conversation on Twitter or Facebook, even if it is in print and in public, as you might apply to a magazine article. Pranesh Prakash points out that “while some people may see Twitter as akin to friends talking in the pub, others use the service as a bulletin board”. When I propose to Prakash the idea of an ombudsman to monitor online dialogue in the same way an independent press commission might monitor newspaper reports, he makes a cogent rebuttal: “There is no ombudsman for regular speech, or to outline what you can or cannot say from a podium. Besides, there are laws that deal with defamation, slander and unless there is a requirement for an extra-legal authority I cannot see the need for an ombudsman.”

Much of the debate over the last couple of weeks has devolved, as so much debate in all our media, mainstream or online, does, into grandstanding — in this instance about ‘freedom of speech’ versus the national security imperative. This is to miss the woods for the trees. For all its heavy-handedness, the Indian government is correct to be concerned about oversight of the Internet and correct that not enough stakeholders are currently involved in its governance. Cant about freedom of speech cannot change the fact that the government is also correct that in a precariously held together democracy comprising various, widely different cultures and religions, certain standards of respectful speech are necessary. Of course, we can and should argue those standards and there needs to be a national conversation about the strictures of Internet legislation in India. Still, let us not pretend that the mob mentality of political discourse on the Internet is not a cause for worry and is not, as are all mobs, subject to manipulation.

With inputs from Ajachi Chakrabarti.
Shougat Dasgupta is an Assistant Editor with Tehelka.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-shougat-dasgupta-the-state-and-the-rage-of-the-cyber-demon

Facebook's Delicate Dance With Delhi On Censorship

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T04:39:45Z

At the end of last week, a hashtag briskly rose across India: #Emergency2012. It was a reference to the 21-month stint, beginning in the summer of 1975, when then PM Indira Gandhi determined democracy an inconvenience.

Contributed by Mark Bergen, the post was published in Forbes on August 29, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

This time around, the government launched a jumbled attempt, following ethnic violence in the northeast, to stem rumors behind a panicked exodus. They blocked over 300 sites and axed at least 16 Twitter accounts, including those of political opponents and journalists. Many of us found our cell phone texts suddenly, with no announcement, cut off after five missives.

It was hardly the Emergency of 1975. The government’s actions were far less draconian than three decades ago. But, back then, there were no foreign internet companies to complicate matters—and, it seems, absolve the government.

In response to the recent charges, Delhi claimed that there was “no censorship at all.” As the communications minister, Kapil Sibal, put it, “Facebook and Google are cooperating with us.”

Under the circumstances, shutting down the incendiary hate speech online was warranted, explained Sunil Abraham, the director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore. The process was just incredibly inept. “There were so many things they did wrong,” he told me when I asked about the government’s response. And the reaction can be tacked onto a very recent history of Delhi issuing sweeping, usually empty, threats of censoring U.S. internet companies.

“Perhaps the Indian government has wasted, frittered a way goodwill,” Abraham continued. “It has cried ‘wolf’ so many times that this time the internet intermediaries are not taking them as seriously as they should.”

His group analyzed the sites shut down last week, pointing out the “numerous mistakes and inconsistencies that make blocking pointless and ineffectual.” It’s clear that the censorship was also opportunistic—used to stamp out political parody Twitter accounts—and counterproductive. Among the sites blocked was a Pakistani blog debunking the rumors behind the whole exodus episode.

Abraham criticized the government for coming to the intermediaries with broad demands first, rather than directly to Twitter, Facebook and Google. That approach, coupled with earlier censorship demands, may strain the trust between the ruling coalition and the web giants.

Still, Facebook has every reason to keep Delhi happy. This year, the number of users in India hit 32 million—a 85 percent jump from the last. The total is expected to nearly double next year, leap-frogging Indonesia for the title of second largest market. An overwhelming chunk of that growth will come from mobile users. As this solid report from Forbes India shows, the company is still struggling here, as it is in the U.S., to turn those new users into ad revenue:

Indian businesses spent Rs 2,850 crore on digital advertising as of March 2012, a number that’s expected to grow to Rs 4,391 crore next year, according to a report by the Internet Mobile Association of India/Indian Market Research Bureau (IAMAI/IMRB).

…But Facebook has not been able to capture much of this share. Mahesh Murthy reckons that businesses spent about Rs 150 crore on Facebook marketing, but only a third went to Facebook’s own kitties in the form of ad revenues. The rest went to social media marketing firms which handle Facebook accounts.

That’s not to say that the company will discontinue its aggressive efforts. It likely will not be deterred by policies that attack free speech—Zuckerberg’s empire has long been accused of complacency with censorship. It’s India’sinfamously unpredictable tax policies toward foreign entities that would conceivably slow the company’s expansion.

There’s little reason to suspect, then, that Facebook, Google and the western web behemoths will not continue to cooperate with Delhi moving forward. And much of that cooperation should come not as blatant censorship but covert surveillance. According to the Google Transparency Report, India has made over 2,000 data requests and 100 removal requests, third only to the States and Brazil. As the mobile revolution soars, that number will surely rise.

On Monday evening, Christopher Soghoian, a D.C.-based privacy analyst, spoke at the CIS before a crowd of young Indian law students and activists. Despite the shoddy security default of internet firms, he said, they can impose limits on government surveillance. “When these companies receive requests from where they don’t have an office,” he claimed, “they refuse.” Two years ago, Facebook India opened its first office in Hyderabad.

Soghoian advised his audience to push for privacy and transparency standards in India. He shared the story of the long-fought battle for encryption protection with Facebook in the U.S. Yet, he admitted that security provisions can falter when a government is bent on policing the internet—and a company is bent on cooperation. “If you can force companies to hand over the keys,” he said, “then encryption is useless.”

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India Blocks Facebook, Twitter, Mass Texts in Response to Unrest

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T02:46:42Z

The Indian government has gone on the offensive against Internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, demanding hundreds of pages be removed or blocked after political unrest erupted in various parts of the country.

This post by Simon Roughneen was posted in Media Shift on August 28, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.

On August 15, India's independence day, Indian northeasterners began fleeing Bangalore, the country's southern IT hub and 5th largest city, after text messages said to threaten Assamese people and other northeasterners were sent around.

Authorities restricted text messages so they could be sent to only five recipients to stop bulk sending, which was followed by a government backlash against social media and news sites; more than 300 pages have been blocked in recent days.

Exodus

The scene during the exodus was reminiscent of an old newsreel from World War II Europe, or, more aptly, from the separation of India and Pakistan in the late 1940s when around 25 million people took flight amid chaos and bloodshed as the contours of the new states were drawn up after British withdrawal.

On the platform at a Bangalore train station were hundreds of people from Assam state and other areas of India's northeast, a remote part of the country almost 2,000 miles away. The region is mostly surrounded by Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Burma and is linked to the rest of India only by a narrow strip of land nicknamed the chicken-neck.

In July, fighting in the northeast's Assam state between local ethnic groups and Muslims -- which some Indians say are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh -- killed 80 people and forced 400,000 more from their homes, most of them Muslims. On August 11, a march in Mumbai , India's financial capital, ended up in a riot, with two killed and dozens injured, when Muslims there protested attacks on Muslims in the northeast and on Muslim Rohingya in Burma.

The SMS scare in Bangalore came next, but who sent what and why has never been clearly established, though three men were subsequently arrested in Bangalore on suspicion of mass-forwarding threatening text messages.

Nonetheless, the scare, real or hyped, was enough to prompt panic among the 300,000 or so northeasterners who study and work in Bangalore. Interviewees at the city's rail station, waiting for a train to Guwahati in Assam state, a two-and-a-half-day journey, said they hadn't received or even seen any messages, but the rumor mill went into overdrive and their parents in the northeast urged them to come home, temporarily at least.

A lack of confidence in police, perceived racism against northeasterners -- some of whom appear east or southeast Asian and are sometimes called "chinki" by other Indians -- as well as political discord ahead of elections next year all contributed to the exodus.

Government Reacts

The Indian government urged the northeasterners to stay put, as the exodus spread to Pune, Chennai and other large cities in the south and west where northeasterners work. Text messages were limited to five recipients to stop bulk messages spreading fear, a bar later raised to 20 recipients. India has around 750 million cell phone subscribers, the world's second biggest market after China, and the government's nationwide restriction seemed an over-reaction given that the exodus was confined to a few cities.

In a country of 1.2 billion people -- the world's fourth biggest economy measured in purchasing power parity terms -- the government is worried about a recent economic slowdown. Growth is at its lowest since 2003, and foreign investors are complaining out loud about hazy rules and red tape. India feels it needs to nip any political unrest in the bud with foreign investment dropping by 78 percent year-on-year, according to June figures.

Apparently with public order in mind, the Indian government began blocking websites and pages said to contain inflammatory content, even as the exodus slowed.

Nishant Shah of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society said that the government is trying to figure out how best to react to the transition from an era when news and information was carried via broadcast and print.

"In the older forms of governance, which were imagined through a broadcast model, the government was at the center of the information wheel, managing and mediating what information reached different parts of the country. In the [peer-to-peer] world, where the government no longer has that control, it is now trying different ways by which it can reinforce its authority and centrality to the information ecosystem. Which means that there is going to be a series of failures and models that don't work," Shah told PBS MediaShift in an email.

Overdoing It?

However, for a country that has long styled itself as the world's biggest democracy, and is home to some of the world's biggest selling English language newspapers, the last few days have seen the government take a forceful line against Internet giants such as Google and Facebook that some feel threatens freedom of speech.

The text messages were said to be from some of India's 170 million or so Muslim population, the world's third largest after Indonesia and Pakistan -- and the Indian government at first sought to blame Pakistan for fomenting the exodus by whipping up anger among India's Muslims.

Following the text restrictions, Indian authorities blocked what they describe as "incendiary" and "hate-mongering" content on websites in Pakistan and Bangladesh that they say spurred the northeast fighting -- including images of the 2010 Tibet earthquake passed off as images of Burmese Buddhists after attacking Burmese Muslims -- and asked Google and Facebook to remove the content.

However, news reports on the exodus, as well as other coverage of Muslim-Buddhist clashes in Burma, were blocked. Among those affected were Doha-based news agency Al-Jazeera and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). And stories on sectarian fighting in Arakan in western Burma -- where Buddhist Arakanese have clashed with Muslim Rohingya, with the flare-up catching the attention of Islamist groups elsewhere, including India -- were blocked in India.

ABC said on Friday content that "in relation to the particular blocked ABC, we are surprised by the action and we stand by the reporting."

An April 2011 law says that the government must give 48 hours before blocking pages, as well as an explanation for the block in each individual case, though this can be sidestepped in an emergency. "Every company, whether it's an entertainment company, or a construction company, or a social media company, has to operate within the laws of the given country," said Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the Ministry of Communications, speaking about the recent restrictions.

There's more to the back-story than just the 2011 IT law, however. Prior to the recent exodus from Bangalore and the government reaction, Google and Facebook were facing charges for allegedly hosting offensive material.

A Google spokesman, speaking by telephone from Singapore about the Indian government's recent blocks, said that the company abides by the law of the land, in India and elsewhere. "We also comply with valid legal requests from authorities wherever possible, consistent with our longstanding policy," he said.

All told, 80 million to 100 million Indians are online, and India has the world's third biggest number of Facebook users, at 53 million. But, that just makes up just 4.5 percent of the country's population.

Some commentators see the government as oversensitive. For example, using the pushback to put a block on an account parodying the country's prime minister.

Twitter has 16 million accounts in the country. By Friday, a stand-off between New Delhi and Twitter saw around 20 Twitter handles blocked by Indian ISPs, on the orders of the government, with threats that the government could block Twitter completely.

The hashtag #GOIblocks gets about 10-12 tweets per minute -- going by a quick scroll-through -- from users protesting the government's measures. However, caught up in the dragnet so far are accounts with little apparently to do with the Bangalore exodus. The Indian opposition said the blacklist is partisan, while other commentators see the government as oversensitive, using the pushback to put a block on an account (@PM0India) parodying the country's prime minister, for example.

Adding to the irony, though it is not clear whether this was by accident or design -- the Twitter account of Milind Deora, the country's minister of state for communications and IT, and a vocal proponent of the recent blocks, was taken down by Twitter for 12 hours before being restored -- along with an apology by Twitter on Saturday.

This story has been altered to correct the date of India's independence day.

Simon Roughneen is an Irish journalist usually based in southeast Asia. He writes for the The Irrawaddy, Christian Science Monitor and others. He is on twitter @simonroughneen and you can Circle him on Google+.

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