We are anonymous, we are legion

Twitter users find several accounts suspended for unknown reasons

praskrishna — 2014-12-07T01:27:05Z

Twitter users woke up on Saturday to find several accounts suspended for unknown reasons, triggering conspiracy theories that only the accounts of right-wing supporters had been targeted.

The article by Vasudha Venugopal was published in the Economic Times on November 2, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

While it was said to have resulted from a technical glitch that suspended random accounts, several tweeters said there was a pattern to the suspension because 'suspended users' were asked to change their behaviour to be able to continue using the micro-blogging site. But by afternoon it was clear that many accounts, irrespective of their posts, had been suspended for a few hours. All suspended accounts were restored by afternoon.

A message sent out to a tweeter whose account was suspended read, "Twitter has automated systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk.

Unfortunately, your account got caught in one of these spam groups by mistake." Twitter also apologised for the inconvenience but added, "It is possible your account posted an update that appeared to be spam, so please be careful what you tweet... You will need to change your behaviour to continue using Twitter. Repeat violations of the Twitter rules may result in the permanent suspension of your account."

This triggered outrage among the Twitteratti who called it internet policing. There was humour too, with a tweeter posting, "In the Twitter canteen you never get chicken wings in pairs because the right wing is blocked."

Twitter officials said there was no deliberate blocking of accounts and that the incident was an accident as part of spam cleaning process. Pranesh Prakash, policy director, Centre for Internet and Society, said though there have been instances of 'privatisation of censorship' in the recent past, this incident did not look like one such attempt. "It doesn't look deliberate especially because even accounts such as eBay India were suspended."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-economic-times-vasudha-venugopal-november-2-2014-twitter-users-find-several-accounts-suspended-for-unknown-reasons

Twitter tweaks user policy a day after SC clampdown

Admin — 2018-01-03T02:00:02Z

This, when India is looking to crack down on global firms exporting customer data to servers.

The article by Alnoor Peermohamed and Raghu Krishnan was published in the Business Standard on September 8, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Microblogging platform Twitter on Thursday told its users in India that the data collected from them could be moved outside the country and were within the purview of using its service.

This comes as the government is considering making it mandatory for internet and mobile companies to store user data locally. Global internet giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter aggressively use user data they gather for targeted advertising.

This is in the wake of the Supreme Court issuing notices to Twitter and Google on Wednesday seeking their legal views on a petition drawing the court’s attention to the lack of control over data-sharing with cross-border corporate entities in violation of a citizen’s right to privacy. The Bench also asked WhatsApp and Facebook to file sworn statements on whether they shared any data collected from users with third parties.

India provides the highest number of active daily users for Twitter, which told them on Thursday that its updated terms of service, effective October 2, allowed user data to be moved overseas and shared with affiliates. Twitter did not respond immediately to an email.

“If private data is located in servers outside India, it will be a violation of privacy,” said Pavan Duggal, cybersecurity expert and lawyer, adding, “India needs to quickly come up with privacy legislation. Data localisation is a distinct option that India should look at.”

Internet firms collect personal information, contacts and location, apart from activities users share. In India, it is also critical as most users access these platforms on their smartphones, which they also use to do financial transactions with banks and the government.

The government last month asked 21 smartphone handset makers, the majority of them Chinese, to declare whether the data they collected from users were hosted on servers outside India.

“The government can come up with rules under Section 83 of the Information Technology Act, mandating steps needed to protect data generated by computers in India. This should be a priority,” Duggal said.

Not all concur with data localisation. “One of the oft-quoted reasons for data localisation is security, but it doesn’t help improve security at all. The idea that the data taken out of the country somehow become insecure is wrong. It is very easy to copy the data in India as well. It’s not going to help reduce snooping in any way,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

Instead he advocates India to frame laws similar to that of the European Union (EU), which mandates its laws apply to any data collected of an EU citizen.

“The question is not about whether your data is in India or not; it is about whether India’s laws are applicable to the data. This is the way laws in the EU work, by insisting on it wherever an EU citizen data is taken,” Prakash added.

“That’s what is most important when one is looking at security and privacy rather than where the data is stored. As long as they have a presence in the country, India should be able to take action against them if they’re breaking any Indian laws. With the internet, you can’t be sure of where the data is saved, and really, it shouldn’t matter,” Prakash said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-alnoor-peermohamed-and-raghu-krishnan-september-8-2017-twitter-tweaks-user-policy-a-day-after-sc-clampdown

Twitter reacts to the India's cryptocurrency drama

Rajarshi Mitra — 2019-07-30T00:25:58Z

An Inter-Ministerial Committee led by Subhash Chandra Garg, secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) has submitted a report which will recommend a ban on cryptocurrency in India to the finance ministry.

The blog post by Rajarshi Mitra was published by FX Street on July 26, 2019. Pranesh Prakash tweeted on this issue.

The IMC is, however, encouraging the use of blockchain technology and is agnostic about digital currencies backed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Prominent members of the crypto community have sounded off on the situation in India.

Tim Draper - Founder of DFJ Venture Capital:

“People behaving badly! India's government banned Bitcoin, a currency providing great hope for prosperity in a country that desperately needs it. Shame on India leadership. Pathetic and corrupt. #India #bitcoin.”

Anthony Pompliano - Co-founder & Partner at Morgan Creek Digital:

“We need to pay attention to what is happening in India around cryptocurrency regulation. I’m willing to fly to meet with lawmakers and regulators if someone can get me a meeting. Who can help?”

Pranesh Prakash:

“India's proposed #cryptocurrency ban would cover non-crypto currencies too, if they go ahead with the current definition. For instance, Amazon gift cards will also get covered, and be banned.”

Ajeet Khurana - CEO Zebpay:

“I have talked to most of the cryptocurrency decision makers in the Indian establishment and know that they are brilliant people with the best interest of India at heart. I implore them to avoid denying India its rightful place in history.”

XRPcryptowolf:

“Indian panel thinks a #Cryptocurrency created by RBI could be a boon for india & that regulators should consider creating a sovereign #Cryptocurrency At the same time they proposed a ban & up to 10 years in prison for general use of #Crypto in India What a bunch of hypocrites‍♂️.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/fxstreet-rajarshi-mitra-july-26-2019-twitter-reacts-to-india-s-crypto-currency-drama

Twitter India Workshop

Admin — 2018-01-01T16:10:28Z

Manasa Rao attended a workshop organized by Twitter titled "The Network Effort". It was an effort by the Public Policy and Government team at Twitter to enable NGOs and non-profits to conduct successful Twitter campaigns and teach them best practices.

The handbook for the workshop is here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/twitter-india-workshop

Twitter handles: How and why govt erred and what it can do to be smarter & more effective

praskrishna — 2012-09-07T09:22:47Z

Here's a weekend reading recommendation for the mandarins who run the Government of India: it's a freely downloadable, a 145-page long document called "After the Riots". It is a report by the Riot Communities and Victims Panel, set up by the British prime minister to study reasons for the cause, spread and the damage wreaked by the riots that occurred in towns and cities in England in early August 2011.

TV Mahalingam and Shantanu Nandan Sharma's article was published in the Economic Times on August 26, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

During the riots, many British politicians had blamed social media for the quick spreading of lawlessness. "Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media," British Prime Minister David Cameron had told the British parliament. Others called for social networking sites to be "switched off". That is perhaps why the word Twitter features four times in the report, Facebook twice, BBM once and the phrase 'social media' appears 39 times.

So, what did the report have to say about the role of social media in the riots that tore through England? "Although social media was used to mobilise rioters, it has also been acknowledged that a number of forces used social media extensively to engage with their communities and provide reassurance during the riots," reads the report.

The report also highlights that by using social media to provide and receive intelligence, social media "can become a crime fighting tool". It shot down the idea that social media be switched off during times of widespread and serious disorder. The panel also recommended that every neighbourhood policing team should acquire social media capability by the end of 2013.

Bangalore Falling

Bangalore's deputy commissioner of police Vincent S D'Souza has had a harrowing 10 days. He had been asking most of his friends to post his mobile number on all social media networks. D'Souza's message: if anyone from the Northeast feels insecure in any part of the city, contact him directly.

But by then, the damage was already done. In the three days beginning August 15, as many as 37,000 people belonging to India's Northeastern region fled the city after SMS threats spread like a wildfire among the closely-knit Northeastern communities living in the city.

"A lot of the damage happened through social media. The images of victims of Tibet earthquakes and Gujarat riots were morphed and passed on as those of Assam riots. We busted a module in Bangalore. Seized computers and mobiles have given us enough leads," says D'Souza, who is in charge of intelligence.

Nitin Pai, founder of Takshashila Institution, a think tank, believes that the current crisis unfolded in two phases. The first phase, says Pai, was the events (the riots and mobilised violence) that occurred in Assam before August 15. The second phase, starting August 15, was the flight of Northeastern people from various parts of India after rumours of attacks began to flow. "To be fair, what happened between August 15 and August 18 was unprecedented in India," says Pai.

"Perhaps, for the first time, the Indian government had legitimate reasons to censor speech," says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, adding that even international human rights treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), of which India is a signatory, provide for restrictions in free speech for the protection of public order.

However, what most people who have closely followed the events of the last fortnight, will disagree with is the way in which the government has gone about playing censor. "The government got in too late and went about too bluntly," says Pai.

Subtle as a Sledgehammer

"Given that SMS-based mobilisation isn't new in India (stone-pelting incidents in Kashmir led to a ban on SMSes since 2010), the government has had almost 2-3 years to put in place the strategy and ability to counter the problem. The arrests of miscreants spreading rumours through SMSes should have happened sooner," says Pai.

On August 17, two days after the trains from Bangalore began to fill up, an advisory signed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) chief Gulshan Rai cautioned intermediaries that "publishing and hosting of hateful and inflammatory content is an offence" under Section 69A and 79-3(b) of Information Technology Act, 2000. The advisory, which lacked specific details such as the names of the offenders and details of such content, asked all intermediaries to disable inflammatory and hateful content hosted on their website on "a priority basis". ICERT falls under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

"That essentially made intermediaries like ISPs the judges of what was inflammatory or hate speech and what wasn't," says Abraham. In the following days, more orders would come, this time from the Ministry of IT and Department of Telecommunications and they would worsen things even more. These orders were a lot more specific: they had URLs of websites, Twitter posts and Facebook pages that were ordered to be blocked.

However, like a Centre for Internet and Society posting revealed: the list wasn't compiled with enough care. Some items did not exist, others were not even web addresses and in some case, thanks to overzealous ISPs, whole websites were blocked instead of a page on the site. One webpage that actually busted doctored riot pictures was blocked.

What gave teeth to the rumours that the government was using the events of August 15 to go after its critics was its crackdown on Twitter accounts. First, the government asked for a list of accounts parodying the PMO's account to be blocked, on charges of impersonation (which Twitter eventually did on Friday).

On late Wednesday, several other people, including journalists, a tech entrepreneur, discovered that their accounts had been blocked by some ISPs. Even as speculation raged if this was the case of yet another trigger-happy ISP, the government maintained a stony silence, The Economic Times broke the story that it was a notification issued by Ministry of IT and Department of Telecommunications that resulted in these blocks. The blocked account holders meanwhile continued to tweet, thanks to the ISP-level blocks, making the whole affair shambolic.

Big, Bad Government?

For its part, heavyweights from the government like Sushil Kumar Shinde and Kapil Sibal have maintained that this was just an effort to censor hate speech and not free speech. That's a line many are increasingly finding tough to believe, especially what this government tried to do late last year. In December 2011, Sibal had called a meeting of social networking companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google and asked them to remove offensive content.

A New York Times report had said that Sibal had showed the companies a page that maligned Congress president Sonia Gandhi and told them that this was "unacceptable". After heavy criticism followed Sibal's call to "pre-screen" content, the government backed off. So, is this government's second attempt to muzzle voices that it doesn't want heard?

"Perhaps not. It's just government being itself: gauche, clumsy, big-brother like and swinging a club when it needs to be using a surgeon's knife," says a cyber security consultant who has worked with the government in the past. "But, it would be a good idea to keep track if any more blocks or bans come our way. That would be crucial," he adds.

As for the companies themselves, Facebook and Google have "co-operated" in removing the "objectionable pages", while Twitter, after taking its time, knocked off the PMO "impersonators".
Rules of Engagement

Social media is posing challenges and opportunities for governments and law enforcement agencies across the world. In the developed world, police departments like the New York Police Department (@nypd) or London's Metropolitan Police department (metpoliceuk) use Twitter to engage with citizens. They upload mugs and profiles of suspects, give advisories and ask for retweets of missing persons' pictures. It's a game Indian authorities have just begun to play.

"At best, cyber monitoring is a reactive intervention. So the strategy must be how best to live with social media and counter it [misinformation] from within," says GK Pillai, former Union home secretary. He suggests that the government must create a separate department to exclusively tackle issues arising out of social media and messages.

"If social media is used for any propaganda, the government should use the same platform to counter it. If one hate message appears, there should be a thousand to counter it. We can't ban social media the way China has done it. We have to live with it," he adds.

Social media is a challenge to existing legal frameworks like never before, even in countries where free speech is protected a lot more than ours. Last week, the New York Police Department went to court to get Twitter to reveal details of a person who had tweeted: "people had gonna die like Aurora" at a Broadway theatre. Initially, Twitter had refused to share details but eventually relented (after lots of criticism) and the matter was resolved 'without an arrest'.

Things get even more complex, say government officials, because Twitter is a US-based company and claims that it is beyond India's jurisdiction. "Social media and disputes associated with it are relatively new areas [for India]. The US is already engaged in court battles with social media sites. We are a bit slow on this matter," admits Mohan Parasaran, additional solicitor general of India.

Centre for Internet and Society's Abraham believes that the government needs to put in a process which is transparent when it comes to censoring hate speech. "Even in Saudi Arabia, when you go to a blocked site, reasons are given why the site is being blocked along with addresses of the offices where redressal can be sought," says Abraham.

For now, observers say the Indian government needs to learn to engage and communicate better on social media. "There is a lot of hyperbole out there because the Indian government doesn't communicate — what it does and how it does things — very well. There is a lot of second-hand information and as a result a lot of speculation," says Pai. "Basically, the government is trying to use industrial age policies [like blocking] to solve information age issues," he adds.

A first step, perhaps, is fine-tuning the guidelines for social media use for its departments published by the government last week. It will be a big challenge — a change of mindset — for the Indian government which is used more to monitoring and posturing than engaging.

When the law & social media worlds intersect, the results can be not so pleasant. Here are a few examples:

1) An anonymous tweet that people were going to "die like Aurora" at Broadway show had the New York police department worried. So, the police approached Twitter for details about the account, which Twitter turned down. After some criticism, Twitter shared the details. The matter was resolved "without an arrest".

2) In Early 2010, Paul Chambers was stranded at Robin Hood Airport, south Yorkshire, thanks to cancellation of flights due to heavy snowfall. "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high," he tweeted. He was charged, asked to pay a fine and lost his job. However, two appeals later, Chambers conviction was overturned.

3) When footballer Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the field after suffering a heart attack, 21-year-old Liam Stacey posted a vile, racist remark on Twitter about Muamba. When others questioned him, Stacey was combative and a case was registered against him. Even though Stacey admitted that he was drunk and that he was sorry, a court sentenced him to a 56-day imprisonment.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/economic-times-aug-26-2012-twitter-handles

Twenty-five distinguished experts appointed to Global Commission on Internet Governance’s Research Advisory Network

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T07:20:24Z

Twenty-five distinguished scholars and internationally recognized experts have been appointed to the Global Commission on Internet Governance’s (GCIG) new Research Advisory Network (RAN).

Sunil Abraham is one the 25 experts appointed to the Global Commission on Internet Governance’s Research Advisory Network. Read the original published by the Global Commission on Internet Governance here.

The Global Commission is a two-year initiative launched in January 2014, by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and Chatham House. Chaired by Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the commission will produce a comprehensive stand on the future of multi-stakeholder Internet governance.

The commission’s RAN, led by CIGI Senior Fellow Laura DeNardis, will assist in identifying and prioritizing Internet governance and Internet policy related issues within the commission’s mandate. Members of the RAN will provide expert briefings to the members of the commission and conduct research and analysis for the commission’s preparatory work and final report.

“The research advisory network will be an indispensable component of the Global Commission on Internet Governance,” said Fen Osler Hampson, co-director of the commission and director of CIGI’s Global Security & Politics program. “Under the direction of Laura DeNardis, the RAN will be of great benefit to this initiative’s critical analysis and findings. I’m grateful that these experts have agreed to participate.”

The twenty-five member network consists of:

Sunil Abraham
Izumi Aizu
Peng Hwa Ang
Subimal Bhattacharjee
David Clark
Sadie Creese
Leslie Daigle
Oleg Demidov
William Dutton
Lorraine Eden
Laurent Elder
Patrik Fältström
Tobias Feakin
Urs Gasser
Clem Herman
Jeanette Hofmann
Konstantinos Komaitis
Ronaldo Lemos
Meryem Marzouki
Carolina Rossini
Michael Schmitt
Emily Taylor
Rolf H. Weber
Andrew Wyckoff
Christopher S. Yoo

Additional RAN members will be confirmed over time. For more information on the GCIG, including its twenty-nine commissioners and twenty-five research advisers, please visit: www.ourinternet.org. Follow the commission on Twitter @OurInternetGCIG.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/25-experts-appointed-to-global-commission-on-ig-research-advisory-network

Tweets with "IGF13"

pranesh — 2013-10-28T06:29:42Z

Tweets with "IGF13".

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/20131021T090102_igf13

Tweets from the afterlife

praskrishna — 2017-06-06T12:46:06Z

What happens to the digital legacy that celebrities leave behind after they die. Heena Khandelwal asks if their families must inherit their digital assets or can social media managers stake a claim.

The article by Heena Khandelwal was published by DNA on May 28, 2017.

Famous personalities and celebrities with millions of followers on social media platforms enjoy the stature comparable to high-value brands. Their Facebook posts, tweets and Instagram images not only have the potential to influence society but often become fodder for news, online discussions and even prime time debates. But have you paused to wonder what happens to their social media accounts in the event of their death? What becomes of the huge bank of online data that they leave behind? Do these digital assets naturally pass onto the next of kin, to the digital platform or to a third party that managed the said account/s in the first place?

While these are not new questions, the tussle over the social media accounts of former president late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam between his family and Kalam's former aide who managed his social media affairs, has thrown the issue under the spotlight. Nearly two years after Kalam's sudden demise, his family and Srijan Pal Singh find themselves on the opposing sides. It all started when Singh began handling Kalam's Twitter and Facebook accounts after his death on July 27, 2015. When the family sought the account details, stating their rights over Kalam's digital assets, Singh changed the username and the handle of his verified Twitter account from @apjabdulkalam to @KalamCentre. At the time of Kalam's death, his verified Twitter account (@apjabdulkalam) had nearly 1.5 million followers and 886 tweets. When this was renamed to @KalamCentre, it stopped being a 'verified' handle. Singh did not hand over the details of this account to the family but the details of a new Twitter account that he'd created with the same handle, @apjabdulkalam, which had barely 50 followers. Incidentally, Kalam's original Twitter account had 829 tweets (at the time of going to press), implying that some of Kalam's tweets have been deleted since his death. Regarding Kalam's Facebook page (Facebook.com/kalamcentre), Singh maintains that its username has always been Kalam Centre and that it doesn't belong to the family.

"These are digital assets of a former President of India. He (Singh) is changing the legacy by changing the name and handle of his Twitter account," says Kalam's grandnephew APJMJ Sheik Dawood, insisting that the account details should be given to the family. "Everybody was following Kalam and not anything or anybody else. He shouldn't have changed the name or handle."

Singh contends that since he was the one who created and managed Kalam's social media presence, he has sole rights over these assets. "Dr Kalam's social media accounts were started to spread the message about his ideologies. I am here to continue his mission... whoever handles his accounts should be in sync with his ideologies," says the 32-year-old. "I practically lived with him in the same house in the last few years of his life and was very close to him. I understood him."

Trust in times of tweets

Ask if his actions tantamount to misleading Kalam's followers and the public at large, Singh is dismissive. "On March 18, 2017, we informed our (Kalam Centre) users of the name change through a tweet, and so it is up to them to follow who they like. There are already plenty of fan pages and other accounts running in his name," says Singh.

Even as he defends his position, the fact that he was using Kalam's verified account for nearly 20 months after his demise can be seen as a breach of the right of reputation. "Posting or tweeting on behalf of a deceased person is breaching their right of reputation," says Chinmayi Arun, executive director, Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) at National Law University, Delhi. Third party agents, according to Arun, should refrain from impersonating their principals in the same manner that secretaries and administrators refrain from impersonating their employers. "In case of an individual's demise, the agents are expected to handover everything to the heirs and this should also apply to digital accounts," she says.

On its part, Twitter India refused to comment when contacted and pointed this reporter to the site's support page on deceased or incapacitated users. The micro-blogging site makes it clear on its website that it does not provide account access to anyone regardless of their relationship with the deceased person, and added that "this policy is about deactivating accounts, not transferring ownership of accounts".

Emails to Facebook India's corporate communication head remained unanswered. The social networking site states on its pages that it neither approves the inheritance of a user's account nor permits using an account following a user's demise. Instagram lists a similar policy and states that an account can be memoralised or removed after the user's demise.

Black, white & grey

While social networking sites' policies clearly mention that an individual user account should be operated by the person him/herself, it is common knowledge that celebrities often outsource the management of their social media accounts to digital and social media agencies or to a select team under their direct watch. They too tread nebulous waters. Digital marketing agency, EveryMedia Technologies, which manages celebrity accounts, states that although there is no clause regarding the protocol to be followed in the case of a client's death, they would do as per the social platform's guidelines after due consent from the family. "Our contracts do not have a clause that states the way forward in case of demise of the account holder and we hope such a day doesn't come," says Gautam B Thakker, CEO, EveryMedia Technologies. "In the event of such an unfortunate incident, the standard operating procedure would be to convert the account into a legacy account and memorialise it for fans and well-wishers or to deactivate and close it — whatever the social platforms' and the client's family permits."

Daksh Juneja says of Avignyata Inc specifies that the work is based on strict contracts, which never mention the course of action to be taken in case of the personality's death. "There is no contractual obligation towards the IPR rights for a celebratory client on both sides but it's important to share the access of the social media pages with the person's manager or a family member," says Juneja, the chief operating officer of the Mumbai-based digital agency, which handles social media accounts of Bollywood celebrities and sportsmen.

Supreme Court advocate and an expert in cyber law, Pavan Duggal, points out that the terms and conditions of social networking sites aren't clear. "Deactivating accounts can amount to loss of data, which can be used for reference and research. I think more clarity is required," says Duggal. "When a person has an account, only he/she should access it. However, if a person has an agent, then (in the case of death), the principle of agent applies."

Courtside view

Given the reluctance of social media platforms to engage and the lack of clarity as highlighted in the case of Kalam's accounts points to several questions — from handing over the digital accounts, intellectual property rights, right to reputation as well as unambiguous policies by service providers. Taking about Kalam's accounts, Duggal feels his family is the rightful legal heir to his digital assets. "The family should approach the court and file a case against Singh under the Information Technology Act and under IPC section 408 — criminal breach of trust," he says. "They can also reach out to service providers, and if they don't co-operate, they too can be sued under the IT Act."

Duggal strongly believes that "if a person has died without specifying, then his/her digital presence or accounts being a digital property, should be treated as movable assets and should pass on to the legal heir or representatives of the deceased person rather than to an NGO".

According to Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre for Internet and Society, Twitter India should help settle the Kalam case using its existing policy. "And if there is no space for a legacy contact, they might consider resetting the password so that nobody has access to it and then they can memorialise the account," says Abraham. "Social media accounts are increasingly being enumerated under digital assets in wills. Once the asset has been transferred to the heir, the heir can choose to transfer the account to another person or organisation for their services in maintaining the account. While this is not explicitly provided for in the law, there is no prohibition either."

WHEN THEY DIED...

Among the eminent personalities whose social media accounts continue to be operational after their demise are anti-apartheid leader and former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela, pop star Michael Jackson and boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

While Mandela's account has been turned into a foundation, Ali's account states that it pays tribute to the boxing legend. Jackson's account mentions nothing about the fact that he died in 2009. Their Twitter and Facebook pages witness a tweet or a post every few days. Both Jackson and Ali also have verified accounts on Instagram; their photos are posted every now and then.

Among the celebrities whose accounts have been left inactive are Bollywood actress Jiah Khan, television actress Pratyusha Banerjee and British singer-songwriter George Michael. While Khan's last tweet (on May 23, 2013) was an apology message for staying away from the social networking site, Michael had shared his song Heartbreak a day before Valentine's Day on February 12, 2016. Banerjee had tweeted '#prayforparis #prayfortheworld' on November 15, 2015, showing her support against the terrorist attack in Paris on November 13, 2015. This was her last tweet before she was found hanging in her apartment in Mumbai on April 1, 2016.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dna-may-28-2017-heena-khandelwal-tweets-from-the-afterlife

Tweets and twits

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T07:45:43Z

The orders issued by the Ministry of Communication and IT to block more than 300 items on the Internet, including Twitter handles, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, blogposts, pages of certain websites, and in some cases entire websites, tell a revealing story of a government that has simply not applied its mind to the issue of how to deal with hate speech, both cyber and traditional.

Published in the Hindu on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's blog post is quoted.

There can be no argument against taking down material that can incite violence, and some of the targeted content rightly needed to be blocked. But this should have been done transparently, with judicial oversight. In the present case, it is not clear what laws have been invoked to block the items specified in the four orders issued from August 18 to 21. Certainly, the orders themselves do not make reference to any law. As pointed out by the Centre for Internet and Society (http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism), if the government had acted under the Information Technology Act, the host servers of the affected sites should have been notified and given 48 hours to respond under the IT Rules of 2009; and if it used the emergency provision in the Rules, which are themselves opaque, the orders should have come up before an ‘examination of request’ committee within 48 hours. Another serious problem is that the orders do not mention the duration of the blocks.

Especially disturbing is the decision to block the Twitter handles of right-wing agitators and one pro-Hindutva journalist. Bad taste, warped logic and chauvinist comment do not, by themselves, add up to hate speech or criminal incitement. If an individual is really spreading hate through speech, print or the Internet, let the government proceed against him or her under the Indian Penal Code — where the courts will have the final word — rather than indulging in censorship that is pre-emptive and arbitrary. And mindless too: among the sites blocked is an anti-hate page on a Pakistani website which was one of the first to expose how fake photographs had been used to whip up Islamist passion on the Rakhine clashes in Myanmar. A London School of Economics-Guardian study of the 2011 London riots documents how Twitter was used extensively in a positive way, to organise community clean-up operations after the riots. On the other hand, their analysis of 2.5 million tweets showed, the response to messages inciting riots was ‘overwhelmingly negative’. The lesson from this is that it is possible to counter hate on social media through the same platform. This is really what the government should be doing, instead of the Sisyphean task of trying to block noxious content that will always find other ways of bubbling to the surface.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-thehindu-com-opinion-editorial-aug-25-2012-tweets-and-twits

Tweeple say it pithily with hash tags

praskrishna — 2012-02-13T05:06:10Z

Twitter best captures public irreverence to pomposity and the powers-that-be, writes Deepa Kurup in this article published in the Hindu on February 11, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted in this article.

The Twitter world is divided into two kinds of people, those who are funny and those who try.

And nothing gets them going like a jolly controversy, particularly one that involves politicians — an easy target, always — and pornography. Of course, there's still them blogs and Facebook, but Twitter, with its sense of ‘right here, right now' (something that Facebook's Timeline tries to emulate) appears to be where every current event is made light of, ripped apart, hash-tagged and, of course, wildly re-tweeted.

Hash-Tag Bash

This week, for instance, it was all about the three Ministers from Karnataka who were caught watching porn on their phones in the Legislative Assembly when the House was in session. For at least two whole days, tweeple (people using Twitter) seemed to be gripped by what has been christened #PornGate (yes, every event these days is reduced to a single hash tag on Twitter).

So jokes ranged from the genuinely clever, funny and to the lame and obscene. Though many cannot be mentioned here in print, quite a few had to do with the ministers' state of mind and being, and even offered them advice on how to tide through these, ahem, hard times.

On Facebook, a space that doesn't stifle your creativity to 140 measly characters (for those who've been living under a rock for the past six years, that's the word limit for a single Tweet), there were more elaborate forms of humour such as morphed pictures, couplets and political satire.

The last time when social media in India went viral was the Shahrukh Khan-Shirish Kundar brawl (predictably, christened #SlapGate).

Does something about Twitter, or its format, inspire everyone to try their hand at humour? Perhaps, it's the brevity — the soul of wit, remember? —- that the platform demands. “It's also probably because it's difficult to be profound in 140 characters,” offers Nishant Shah, researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society, who tracks social media closely. Another factor could be what he calls the “gamification aesthetic” of web 2.0. “This is because our social networking sites and writing platforms are performances of a certain kind... they allow us to convert our everyday lives into games — with rewards, actions, punishments or rules.”

More Immediate

Ask Ramesh Srivats, a hugely funny ad man who's wildly popular on Twitter for his one-liners, and he believes that online humour, particularly so on Twitter, is fun because its immediate, more observational, real and allows people an opportunity to be irreverent.

There're no sacred cows here. And there's a certain mood that Twitter sets up, often depending on what's current; the rest is about timing. “Twitter doesn't allow you to analyse or discuss an issue… I'd rather do that on Facebook or elsewhere,” he explains. So is there pressure to say the next-most-funny thing on Twitter? “Of course not. If something comes to mind, I say it. It's just like a conversation among friends,” Mr. Srivats laughs.

Why not Facebook?

It's not that there aren't other forms of humour online — there are videos, blogs, Facebook pages and so on. There are indeed some incredibly humorous bloggers — many of them, however, have migrated to Twitter. But it's the mood that Twitter creates. Facebook, on the other hand, allows for more expression of angst, grief and even activism. Mr. Shah says that Facebook is to sadness what Twitter is to humour; perhaps, it is a more “nurturing and personalised space”.

The “gaming aesthetic” on Facebook, however, does exist with memes, videos, picture remixes and so on, he says. “But unlike Twitter, here the attempt is not to be merely humorous... banter on Facebook is about a post or an object, where as banter on Twitter is about the banter itself!

The original story was published in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tweeple-say-it-pithily-with-hash-tags

TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs

sunil — 2013-01-21T03:09:56Z

For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a toilet, and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.

Sunil Abraham's guest column was published in the Tribune on January 20, 2013.

Many in traditional media, especially television, look at social media with a mixture of envy and trepidation. They have been at the receiving end of various unsavoury characters online and consequently support regulation of social media. A common question asked by television anchors is "shouldn't they be subject to the same regulation as us?" This is because they employ the 'principle of equivalence', according to which speech that is illegal on broadcast media should also be illegal on social media and vice versa. According to this principle, criticising a bandh on national TV or in a newspaper op-ed or on social media should not result in jail time and, conversely, publishing obscene content, in either new or old media, should render you a guest of the state.

Given that Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, places more draconian and arguably unconstitutional limits on free speech when compared to the regulation of traditional and broadcast media, those in favour of civil liberties may be tempted to agree with the 'principle of equivalence' since that will mean a great improvement from status quo. However, we must remember that this compromise goes too far since potential for harm through social media is usually very limited when compared to traditional media, especially when it comes to hate speech, defamation and infringement of privacy. A Facebook update or 'like' or a tweet from an ordinary citizen usually passes completely unnoticed. On rare occasion, an expression on social media originating from an ordinary citizen goes viral and then the potential for harm increases dramatically. But since this is the fringe case we cannot design policy based on it. On the other hand, public persons (those occupying public office and those in public life), including television journalists, usually have tens and hundreds of thousands friends and followers on these social networks and, therefore, can more consistently cause harm through their speech online. For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a public or residential toilet and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.

Ideally speech regulation should address the asymmetries in the global attention economy by constantly examining the potential for harm. This applies to both 'speech about' public persons and also 'speech by' them. Since 'speech about' public persons is necessary for transparent and accountable governance and public discourse, such speech must be regulated less than 'speech about' ordinary citizens. Let us understand this using two examples: One, a bunch of school kids referring to a classmate as an idiot on a social network is bullying, but citizens using the very same term to criticise a minister or television anchor must be permitted. Two, an ordinary citizen should be allowed to photograph or video-record the acts of a film or sports star at a public location and upload it to a social network, but this exception to the right of privacy based on public interest will not imply that the same ordinary citizen can publish photographs or videos of other ordinary citizens. Public scrutiny and criticism is part of the price to be paid for occupying public office or public life. If speech regulation is configured to prevent damage to the fragile egos of public persons, then it would have a chilling effect on many types of speech that are critical in a democracy and an open society.

When it comes to 'speech by' those in public office or in public life - given the greater potential for harm - they should be held more liable for their actions online. For example, an ordinary citizen with less than 100 followers causes very limited harm to the reputation of a particular person through a defamatory tweet. However, if the very same tweet is retweeted by a television anchor with millions of followers, there can be more severe damage to that particular person's reputation.

Many in television also wish to put an end to anonymous and pseudonymous speech online. They would readily agree with Nandan Nilekani's vision of tagging all - visits to the cyber cafe, purchases of broadband connections and SIM cards and, therefore, all activities from social media accounts with the UID number. I have been following coverage of the Aadhaar project for the past three years. Often I see a 'senior official from the UIDAI' make a controversial point. If anonymous speech is critical to protect India's identity project then surely it is an important form of speech. But, unlike the print media, which more regularly uses anonymous sources for their stories, television doesn't see clearly the connection between anonymous speech and free media. This is because many of the trolls that harass them online often hide behind pseudonymous identities. Television forgets that anonymous speech is at the very foundation of our democracy, i.e., the electoral ballot.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sunday-tribune-january-20-2013-sunil-abraham-tv-vs-social-media

Turning off the internet: Chips with Everything podcast

Admin — 2019-09-26T02:09:18Z

Gurshabad Grover and Ambika Tandon recorded an episode with the Guardian's podcast on digital culture, called Chips with Everything.

The episode was on internet shutdowns in India, and can be found here. Ambika spoke about a book CIS published in collaboration with 101 Reporters last year on personal narratives of experiencing shutdowns, which can be found here. Gurshabad talked about the legal grounds through which shutdowns are imposed, possible routes of countering them, and the status of shutdowns in international law.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/guardian-september-3-2019-turning-off-the-internet

Trending Hate Against Muslims: Is Twitter Complicit?

Puja Bhattacharjee — 2019-10-23T00:54:41Z

Twitter claimed that it had ‘prevented’ the Hashtag while it had not.

The blog post by Puja Bhattacharjee was published in News Central on October 21, 2019. Pranesh Prakash was quoted in it.

In 2009, Twitter took down a trending hashtag. The hashtag in question started in South Africa and had the word “darkie” in it. That word is not a slur in South Africa, but it was used as a slur against the African Americans community in the USA. On receiving complaints, Twitter immediately removed that from trending topics though it was a clash of meanings between two different places.

On Sunday evening, a hashtag of more insidious nature was trending in India. The hashtag #मुस्लिमो_का_संपूर्ण_बहिष्कार, translated literally means “Total boycott of Muslims”. The incident is ominous given rising apprehension across the world that India is now in the grip of a violent form of Hindu Nationalism. The tweets in support of the hashtags were mostly from right-wing accounts, some of which not only called for the boycott of Muslims but also celebrated the persecution of Uighurs in China.

Speaking to NewsCentral24x7.com, a Twitter spokesperson claimed that it had ‘prevented’ the hashtag from trending: “There are Rules for trends and we have prevented this hashtag from trending as it is in violation of the Twitter Rules”. (Full statement at the end of the story)

However this was patently false since many users pointed out that the hashtag continued to trend even after Twitter’s statement. In Delhi, the hashtag continues to trend at number one. More disturbingly, as reported by The Wire some of the accounts tweeting in support of the hashtags are followed by the Prime Minister and several cabinet ministers.

Also Read: Need To Change Name To Save Myself From Sword Of Hate: Muslim Bureaucrat From M.P. On The Atmosphere Of Hate In Modi II

Pranesh Prakash, co-founder of Centre for Internet and Society, says that Twitter usually does not ban a hashtag. “They can remove it from trending and if people use it offensively, then they can ban that person or that tweet…. Twitter should put out a statement apologizing for and condemning this given they condemn white nationalists in the US.” he says.

The hashtag was started ostensibly in retaliation of the murder Kamlesh Tiwari, 45, the president of the Hindu Samaj Party. Over the weekend, the police arrested five people in connection to the murder.

However, Kamlesh Tiwari in his last Facebook Live video before his murder protested the removal of his security by the Yogi Adityanath government and trying to hatch a conspiracy to kill him. His mother echoed his sentiments and has come out to say that there is no communal angle to his murder.

The matter once again raises questions about the responsibility Big-Tech platforms like Twitter need to discharge in monitoring and combating hate speech. Many organizations in the USA, UK and Australia such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Women, Action and the Media (WAM!), Online Hate Prevention Institute and Sentinel Groups for Genocide Prevention have become increasingly invested in combating hate speech online by targeting Internet intermediaries and asking them to take greater responsibility in moderating content, in addition to raising awareness among users.

An interactive map showing the trends of the hashtag from October 20 evening till October 21 morning in the sub-continent.

However, in India, the government’s proposed changes to Section 79 of the IT Act for restricting hate speech has led to fears of widespread censorship. The Internet Freedom Foundation published a comprehensive blog on why such an amendment is undesirable.

In a report released in 2017, the Law Commission of India recommended broadening the existing provisions of hate speech to include other criteria that are based on their gender and sexuality.

“It does not look at underlying reforms. Like understanding the link to violence and whether it should only be a provision which should apply to members of a minority community -linguistic, caste, religion,” says Apar Gupta, executive director, Internet Freedom Foundation

He says if lawmakers are unwilling to substantively tinker with definitions in a very real and substantial way, they should come up with procedural safeguards instead.

Twitter or any social media company has two levels of obligation – its own obligations towards its users which is under the terms of service contract under which it can proactively take down a speech if there is a violation of those standards. “They have a degree of discretion to do it as well. This is where most of the content takedowns happen which also results in a certain amount of criticism because they lack the consistency desired by people,” says Gupta.

The second level of compliance is when a legal notice is sent by a judicial or executive authority. If they do not comply, their online immunity from liability for the content posted by the user can be removed and they can be prosecuted as an accessory or abettor to the content published on their platform. “Twitter can block the hashtag but what we are looking for is a much more credible law enforcement response based on the content of each tweet,” Gupta adds.

In her book, HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen, the author argues that that censorial measures are ineffective and do not promote equality. Instead, Strossen, recommends forceful counter-speech and activism.

“In 2016, a report was issued about counterspeech on Twitter, coauthored by a group of scholars from the United States and Canada. The report, which included the first review of the “small body” of existing research about online counterspeech, concluded that hateful and other “extremist” speech was most effectively “undermined” by counterspeech rather than by removing it,” she writes.

Editors Note: The hashtag discussed above is absolutely horrifying and historically widespread calls for ‘boycott’ have preceded genocide. While on one hand we cannot allow hate speech to become an excuse for governments to curb non-harmful, legal speech, the censor or counter debate cannot be allowed to become a veil for big-tech to wash its hands off the matter. There is now significant reportage which shows that hate speech essentially benefits social media platforms and therefore they are unwilling to curb it. In this specific case the double standards twitter has displayed in being prompt in one country while unresponsive in other is also a very disturbing aspect.

Full statement by Twitter:

“At Twitter our singular goal is to improve the health of the public conversation, including ensuring the safety of people who use our service. As outlined in our Hateful Conduct Policy, we do not tolerate the abuse or harassment of people on the basis of religion. As per our Help Center, there are Rules for trends and we have prevented this hashtag from trending as it is in violation of the Twitter Rules. If people on Twitter see something that violates the Twitter Rules, the most important thing they can do is report it, by clicking the drop down arrow at the top of the Tweet and selecting “Report Tweet.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/news-central-october-21-2019-puja-bhattacharjee-trending-hate-against-muslims

Transparent Government, via Webcams in India

praskrishna — 2011-07-21T05:41:53Z

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India — Little Brother is watching you. That is the premise for the webcam that a top government official here has installed in his office, as an anticorruption experiment. Goings-on in his chamber are viewable to the public, 24/7.

The chief minister of Kerala state in India has installed a webcam in his office and puts the feed online as an anticorruption measure.

In an India beset by kickback scandals at the highest reaches of government, and where petty bribes at police stations and motor vehicle departments are often considered a matter of course, Oommen Chandy is making an online stand.

"Instead of taking action against corruption, I believe that we have to create an atmosphere where everything should be in a transparent way," Mr. Chandy, who recently became chief minister of Kerala state after his coalition won a close election, said in an interview in his office. "The people must know everything."

About 100,000 visitors logged in to the video feed on the day it began, July 1. And through last Friday afternoon, it had been visited by 293,586 users.

The chief minister — equivalent to an American governor — gave the interview during a break in negotiations with leaders of the state’s private colleges over the fees they can charge students.

Although the proceedings were being streamed on his office’s Web site, as with everything captured by the webcam there was no audio. (The minister says he wants visitors and aides to speak freely when they meet him.)

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said he applauded Mr. Chandy’s webcams, even if the effort amounted to no more than tokenism.

"This type of tokenism is also quite useful," said Mr. Abraham, predicting it might check the behavior of not only the chief minister, but also his underlings and the powerful executives and politicians who come to visit him.

Of course, he noted, if people are intent on paying bribes, they could probably still do it outside the office.

Mr. Abraham said webcams might be a far more powerful tool if installed in police stations, drivers’ licenses offices, welfare agencies and other places where Indians interact with officials who sometimes demand bribes to do routine work. A few agencies around the country have started such surveillance, he said, but most have not.

Mr. Chandy’s effort comes as India has been racked by one corruption scandal after another. A former federal telecommunications minister is sitting in jail on charges that he gave cellphone licenses to favored companies, costing the government as much as $40 billion. Several corporate executives, an official involved in planning the Commonwealth Games and the scion of a political family are also behind bars while being tried on various corruption charges.

But transparency is tedious. For most of the day, as the videos stream from the Chandy chambers, the chief minister is either out of the office or sitting with aides and other politicians. The video from a second camera, trained on the outside chamber, shows aides at their desks answering phones or staring into their computer screens.

A career politician and a member of the ruling Congress party, Mr. Chandy, 67, had a webcam in his office when he was chief minister for two years from 2004 to 2006. But his successor, the leader of a communist coalition government, removed the device when he took over. Now in the opposition, the communists deride the webcams as a publicity stunt.

But others see virtue in such efforts, even if the details are still being refined.

In Bangalore, the top executive of a government-owned electricity utility has been using a webcam in his office. The official, P. Manivannan, said he was now installing a "hemispheric" camera that would capture the goings-on in his entire office rather than just show his visitors.

But he said he would no longer broadcast the video stream to the Web site of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company.

"I have been getting a lot of brickbats because of the cameras,” Mr. Manivannan said in a telephone interview. "My colleagues were telling me, 'What are you trying to prove — that you are the only honest one?' "

Once the new camera is installed, Mr. Manivannan said it would record everything. But anyone interested in viewing segments of the video would have to request the clips, at no cost. That should ease tension in the office, he said, while still keeping things on the up and up.

He said he had success with a similar camera when he was in the city government and some politicians threatened to call a strike unless he reinstated a fired employee. The politicians backed off, Mr. Manivannan said, when he threatened to give a recording of their meeting to local television stations.

"I definitely believe that putting a camera helps you prove that you are accountable," he said. "I would be very happy if tomorrow the government of India decided you must have a camera."

A version of this article appeared in print on July 18, 2011, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Transparent Government, Via Webcams in India.

This news by Vikas Bajaj was published in the New York Times on 17 July 2011. It can be read here. (Photo of Oommen Chandy, the Chief Minister of Kerala taken by Sanjit Das for the New York Times)

The above news was published in other languages as well:

Read the news in wprost here [Polish]
Read the news in ictnews here [Vietnamese]
Read the news in@rret sur images here [French]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/transparent-government-india

Transparency Reports — A Glance on What Google and Facebook Tell about Government Data Requests

prachi — 2013-09-13T09:44:53Z

Transparency Reports are a step towards greater accountability but how efficacious are they really?

Prachi Arya examines the transparency reports released by tech giants with a special focus on user data requests made to Google and Facebook by Indian law enforcement agencies.

The research was conducted as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is doing with Privacy International and IDRC.

According to a recent comScore Report India has now become the third largest internet user with nearly 74 million citizens on the Internet, falling just behind China and the United States. The report also reveals that Google is the preferred search engine for Indians and Facebook is the most popular social media website followed by LinkedIn and Twitter. While users posting their photos on Facebook can limit viewership through privacy settings, there isn’t much they can do against government seeking information on their profiles. All that can be said for sure in the post-Snowden world is that large-scale surveillance is a reality and the government wants it on their citizen’s online existence. In this Orwellian scenario, transparency reports provide a trickle of information on how much our government finds out about us.

The first transparency report was released by Google three years ago to provide an insight into ‘the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe’. Since then the issuance of such reports is increasingly becoming a standard practice for tech giants. An Electronic Frontier Foundation Report reveals that major companies that have followed Google’s lead include Dropbox, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Twitter with Facebook and Yahoo! being the latest additions . Requests to Twitter and Microsoft from Indian law enforcement agencies were significantly less than requests to Facebook and Google. Twitter revealed that Indian law enforcement agencies made less than 10 requests, none of which resulted in sharing of user information. Out of the 418 requests made to Microsoft by India (excluding Skype), 88.5 per cent were complied with for non-content user data. The Yahoo! Transparency Report revealed that 6 countries surpassed India in terms of the number of user data requests. Indian agencies requested user data 1490 times from 2704 accounts for both content and non-content data and over 50 per cent of these requests were complied with.

The following is a compilation of what the latest transparency reports issued by Facebook and Google.

Google

"The information we share on the Transparency Report is just a sliver of what happens on the internet"
Susan Infantino, Legal Director for Google

Beginning from December 2009, Google has published several biannual transparency reports:

It discloses traffic data of Google services globally and statistics on removal requests received from copyright owners or governments as well as user data requests received from government agencies and courts. It also lays down the legal process required to be followed by government agencies seeking data.

There was a 90 per cent increment in the number of content removal requests received by Google from India. The requests complied with included:
- Restricting videos containing clips from the controversial movie “Innocence of Muslims” from view.
- Many YouTube videos and comments as well as some Blogger blog posts being restricted from local view for disrupting public order in relation to instability in North East India.
For User Data requests, the Google report details the number of user data requests and users/accounts as well as percentage of requests which were partially or completely complied with. In India the user data requests more than doubled from 1,061 in the July-December 2009 period to 2,431 in the July-December 2012 period. The compliance rate decreased from 79 per cent in the July-December 2010 period to 66 per cent in the last report.
Jurisdictions outside the United States can seek disclosure using Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties or any ‘other diplomatic and cooperative arrangement’. Google also provides information on a voluntary basis if requested following a valid legal process if the requests are in consonance with international norms, U.S. and the requesting countries' laws and Google’s policies.

Facebook

"We hope this report will be useful to our users in the ongoing debate about the proper standards for government requests for user information in official investigations."
Colin Stretch, Facebook General Counsel

Facebook inaugurated its first ever transparency report last Tuesday with a promise to continue releasing these reports.

The ‘Global Government Requests Report’ provides information on the number of requests received by the social media giant for user/account information by country and the percentage of requests it complied with. It also includes operational guidelines for law enforcement authorities.

The report covers the first six months of 2013, specifically till June 30. In this period India made 3,245 requests from 4,144 users/accounts and half of these requests were complied with.

Jurisdictions outside the United States can seek disclosure by way of mutual legal assistance treaties requests or letter rogatory. Legal requests can be in the form of search warrants, court orders or subpoena. The requests are usually made in furtherance of criminal investigations but no details about the nature of such investigations are provided.

Broad or vague requests are not processed. The requests are expected to include details of the law enforcement authority issuing the request and the identity of the user whose details are sought.

The Indian Regime

Section 69 and 69 B of the Information Technology (Amended) Act, 2008 prescribes the procedure and sets safeguards for the Indian Government to request user data from corporates. According to section 69, authorized officers can issue directions to intercept, monitor or decrypt information for the following reasons:

Sovereignty or integrity of India,
Defence of India,
Security of the state,
Friendly relations with foreign states,
Maintenance of public order,
Preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to the above, or
For investigation of any offence.

Section 69 B empowers authorized agencies to monitor and collect information for cyber security purposes, including ‘for identification, analysis and prevention of intrusion and spread of computer contaminants’. Additionally, there are rules under section 69 and 69 B that regulate interception under these provisions.

Information can also be requested through the Controller of Certifying Authority under section 28 of the IT Act which circumvents the stipulated procedure. If the request is not complied with then the intermediary may be penalized under section 44.

The Indian Government has been increasingly leaning towards greater control over online communications. In 2011, Yahoo! was slapped with a penalty of Rs. 11 lakh for not complying with a section 28 request, which called for email information of a person on the grounds of national security although the court subsequently stayed the Controller of Certifying Authorities' order. In the same year the government called for pre-screening user content by internet companies and social media sites to ensure deletion of ‘objectionable content’ before it was published. Similarly, the government has increasingly sought greater online censorship, using the Information Technology Act to arrest citizens for social media posts and comments and even emails criticizing the government.

What does this mean for Privacy?

The Google Transparency Report has thrown light on an increasing trend of governmental data requests on a yearly basis. The reports published by Google and Facebook reveal that the number of government requests from India is second only to the United States. Further, more than 50 per cent of the requests from India have led to disclosure by nearly all the companies surveyed in this post, with Twitter being the single exception.

Undeniably, transparency reports are important accountability mechanisms which reaffirm the company’s dedication towards protecting its user’s privacy. However, basic statistics and vague information cannot lift the veil on the full scope of surveillance. Even though Google’s report has steadily moved towards a more nuanced disclosure, it would only be meaningful if, inter alia, it included a break-up of the purpose behind the requests. Similarly, although Google has also included a general understanding of the legal process, more specifics need to be disclosed. For example, the report could provide statistics for notifications to indicate how often user’s under scrutiny are not notified. Such disclosures are important to enhance user understanding of when their data may be accessed and for what purposes, particularly without prior or retrospective intimation of the same. Till such time the report can provide comprehensive details about the kind of surveillance websites and internet services are subjected to, it will be of very limited use. Its greatest limitation, however, may lie beyond its scope.

The monitoring regime envisioned under the Information Technology Act effectively lays down an overly broad system which may easily lead to abuse of power. Further, the Indian Government has become infamous for their need to control websites and social media sites. Now, with the Indian Government’s plan for establishing the Central Monitoring System the need for intermediaries to conduct the interception may be done away with, giving the government unfettered access to user data, potentially rendering corporate transparency of data requests obsolete.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/what-google-and-facebook-tell-about-govt-data-requests